Sunday afternoon Catherine walked over to her parents' apartment. It was about one o'clock, early by their standards, when she arrived, and as she expected, her mother wasn't yet out of bed. Her father answered the door in his robe.

"Hi, Dad. I've come to see Sh.e.l.ly."

"Come in, Catherine. Christ, I feel like a truck hit me. Sh.e.l.ly's in the living room. I'm going back to bed."

She found Sh.e.l.ly sitting alone by a window. He was dressed for the day in khakis, a b.u.t.ton-down shirt, and red crewneck sweater, but the clothes hung loosely on him. Catherine was glad to have a few seconds to catch her breath before he saw her. He sat hunched over like an old man. He was twenty-one years old, and he sat looking out the window at nothing.

"Sh.e.l.ly!" She crossed the room and bent over to kiss his cheek. "Don't get up." She put her hands on his shoulders.

"I can stand up!"

"Go ahead, then. But I'm sitting down." Catherine ignored his bad humor, pulled a chair close to him.

"How are you, Sh.e.l.ly?"

"Just great, can't you tell by looking?"

Catherine had leaned forward, but she could tell that her scrutiny made Sh.e.l.ly nervous; he was trembling, like someone with palsy.

"I mean, really, how are you?"

"I'm okay now. I'm clean. This has not been the best time I've ever had. But I'm clean now. I'm tired, though, man. I'm beat."

To Catherine's horror, Sh.e.l.ly's face crumbled and he began to cry. He covered his face with his hands.

"I know you think you're being nice to come see me, but I wish you'd go away. I hate this charity s.h.i.t."

"Sh.e.l.ly. I'm not here out of charity."

"Yeah, you're here because I'm such fun. Because we're so close."

"Sh.e.l.ly, you're my brother. I love you."

"I don't know why. I'm such a f.u.c.k-up."

"No, you're not."

"Give me a break. You've turned into Miss Moneybags and even dippy little Ann's going to graduate from college. I've just wasted my life. s.h.i.t, Dad's an alcoholic, but people only think he's charming. I'm not even charming."

"I think you're charming." But she didn't think Sh.e.l.ly heard her. Catherine was surprised at how much it hurt to see Sh.e.l.ly like this-her handsome brother, once so full of energy and mischief. When he had wiped his eyes, she said, "I do think you're charming. I think you're smart. I know you're smart. Remember how you always used to win at Monopoly? G.o.d, it always made me crazy, Sh.e.l.ly. You're six years younger than I, and you still always beat me at Monopoly, every time."

Remembering brought a smile to Sh.e.l.ly's face. "You used to get so mad."

"And at Everly, when we played hide-and-seek. I could never find you. You could always find me."

"You'd get so mad, you'd scream your head off at me when you found me."

"You were a whiz at poker. You've always been good at tennis, and I've always been a spaz."

"Now you're successful, and I can't do a d.a.m.ned thing."

"That's not true."

"Name one thing-just one thing I could do."

"You could go back to college."

"I doubt it. Besides, all my friends have graduated." Sh.e.l.ly was choking up again. "I just totally f.u.c.ked up my life. I'm just sitting here, left behind, like some p.i.s.sy helpless old man."

Catherine took a deep breath. "Then why don't you come work for me?"

Sh.e.l.ly looked shocked. "Work for you? What could I do for you? Don't you understand? I can't do anything." He laughed. "Anyway, can you see me standing around playing with flowers like some fairy?"

"Sh.e.l.ly. Every day, six days a week, my employees have to carry in over a hundred boxes. They're packed with flowers and newspapers and ice, and they weigh about a hundred pounds each. I think that you, brain-dead and pathetic thing that you are, could still lift and carry. I always need another body. I need someone to deliver. Someone who knows the city well enough to get around it fast. Perhaps when you're through feeling sorry for yourself you'll remember that you know this city as well as you know the Monopoly board. Or if you really want to stay at the basket-weaving level, I can stick you in the bas.e.m.e.nt and let you mold sphagnum moss into cubes. I just had a guy quit. Honey, I need help so much I'd hire the Hunchback of Notre Dame."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"What if I don't like it there?"

"Then you can always quit. And believe me, if I don't like the way you're working out, I'll fire you in a minute. I'm serious. I didn't get to be successful by being softhearted."

Sh.e.l.ly smiled, a real smile. Even his eyes were brighter. "When do you want me to start?"

"The sooner the better."

Walking back to her apartment later that afternoon, Catherine noticed poinsettias in apartment windows and Christmas wreaths still hanging on some front doors. She remembered the Christmas night long ago at Everly when her mother banished her to the third floor. She had been furious then, certain that she did not belong with her family, terrified that she didn't belong anywhere. Now, ten years later, she was surprised at how strong, how lasting, the bonds of family felt. No matter how she chafed at them, hated them, fought them, they would not break. Was it possible that in other families pity, hate, and anger held as fast as comfort, grat.i.tude, and love?

Catherine told both Jason and Sandra that she'd asked her brother to come to work for her, but that he was not being given any special privileges or treatment. To her surprise and relief, Sh.e.l.ly endeared himself to everyone by working hard and eagerly. His only real problem was an amazing ignorance of flowers. "Honey, bring me that bucket of glads, will you?" Jason would call.

"Do you mean the tall things?" Sh.e.l.ly would respond. But he tried hard, and learned fast, and as he grew more comfortable with his duties, the magical charm he'd inherited from his father and grandfather returned, and it became a real pleasure for them all to have him around.

Catherine always received invitations to all the best galas and parties. As Sh.e.l.ly improved, she began to ask him to be her escort. He had always loved good times, and he was wonderful fun. After their harried and often grimy work during the day, Sh.e.l.ly and Catherine would run home and get glamorous. Wherever they entered, heads turned: Catherine, dark and exotic; Sh.e.l.ly, boyishly all-American and blond. They hardly looked alike, yet you couldn't miss the family resemblance. Sh.e.l.ly always met lots of pretty young women and inadvertently picked up new contacts for Blooms in the bargain.

Catherine was moderately famous in New York and was frequently invited to serve on the boards of prestigious artistic and charity organizations. Always, she refused. With Piet gone, it took all her time and energy to keep Blooms running with the perfection she insisted upon. Besides, the compet.i.tion was always out there, so she was constantly searching for new ideas, new styles, new trends. She worked as ferociously as she had when she'd first bought her shop and took an equally pa.s.sionate pleasure in its success. Her old school friends Robin, Terry, Melonie, and others openly admired Catherine's achievements, and in the spring of 1970 she was asked by Miss Brill's to be their graduation speaker. With a great warm wash of inner smugness, she agreed with pleasure.

Even her own parents were behaving civilly toward her, and at Easter dinner that year Catherine looked around the table at her parents' house with a sense of triumph and pride. There sat pretty Ann, well on her way to becoming a horticulturist. And Sh.e.l.ly, now handsome and healthy, entertaining his mother with tales about the posh parties he'd been to-all because of Catherine and Blooms. And there sat Kathryn, clearly delighted to be talking with Ann about new techniques in grafting. Drew was openly grateful to Catherine and now never lost an opportunity to hug her tightly in appreciation. Only Marjorie remained wary, as if Catherine's success might suddenly turn out to be a trick or an insult.

Catherine knew her success was real, solid. She felt it in the silk of the dresses she wore, the bite of her custom-blended perfume, the glow of her brother's healthy skin, the laughter shared among her employees, the continual ringing of the telephone at Blooms.

Still, sometimes at night, when she had come home from a party or wakened early to go buy flowers, she would sit in her peach-and-indigo bedroom, staring out her window at the night sky, remembering a richer sweetness: love. In certain ways, the silk-and-velvet texture of the flowers she worked with, their scents and saps, filled her life as a lover might. She did not miss colors or the slide of skin. But to last, flowers had to be kept cool. The moist chill of their stems and leaves made her lonely.

She missed warmth. She missed heat and breath and movement.

She remembered how Kit, after climaxing, had collapsed on top of her, letting his body touch hers all over. She had wrapped her arms around his naked back; he had put his face against her neck. Together their bodies had slowed, readjusted, like ocean divers fathoms deep.

With Piet it had been more like skydiving. He always took her breath away. She had fallen, exhilarated, calling out with terror and joy, pushed to her limits, pushed beyond her limits, frightened and finally triumphant.

With Ned it had been almost a kind of child's play, sharing a candied apple, not frightening, not significant. An easy pleasure.

She missed s.e.x, love, life. Perhaps, Catherine mused, she should go to England this summer.

But before she could make her plans, Kathryn phoned her in June to tell her the Boxworthys were coming to visit. Not all the Boxworthys, unfortunately, and not the one Catherine was hoping to see. Ann was going to fly over to work at the British Everly until the last week in August. Then she'd bring Madeline and Hortense back with her while Ned and Elizabeth and Elizabeth's husband, Tom, ran the bed-and-breakfast back home. Kathryn was hoping Catherine would help spruce up her garden, especially the purple-and-white one.

So the summer unfolded. She worked at Blooms and Everly. When Madeline and Hortense arrived in August, she took pride in showing them around Blooms and pleasure in their company at Everly. Kathryn held a great dinner dance in honor of her British guests, with the garden strung with hundreds of tiny white lights and a band that played old jazz and buffet tables laden with delicacies and champagne. It reminded Catherine of Kimberly Weyland's wedding party so many years ago, which made the night bittersweet for Catherine. She was glad when the summer was over, Ann back at college, the Boxworthys back in England, and a bracing chill back in the air.

All afternoon and into the evening, Catherine had met with clients. It was after seven when she finally got back to Blooms. Everyone else had gone home, and she was glad for the quiet. Walking through her cool, fragrant shop, she breathed deeply, relaxing.

As always, Carla had left the important mail and messages on her desk and fresh coffee in the pot. The late September sky shone silver through the windows. Catherine turned on her desk lamp. Bursts of honking horns and laughter from the street below drifted upward as the city slid into night. Catherine took off her suit jacket, kicked off her heels, collapsed onto her desk chair. Yawning, she stretched and picked up the pile of pink memo slips awaiting her. It was an evening like hundreds before.

The name Kit Bemish, written in Carla's firm, rounded script, struck her like a slap. Catherine's heart turned inside out. She pulled the pink slip from the others. It took a few seconds for her to steady her hands, which were trembling so hard that she couldn't read what was written before her.

Carla hadn't written "Kit Bemish." She had written "Mrs. Kit Bemish." Mrs. Kit Bemish wanted an arrangement for a dinner party two weeks away and asked that Catherine call her.

Mr. and Mrs. Kit Bemish lived in a building on East Eighty-sixth. Catherine arrived precisely at four-thirty. She had tried on every outfit in her closet, looking for the one that would give her confidence, would express the real Catherine-the woman who was successful, intelligent, clever, and also madly sought after by men. She'd settled on a red paisley silk suit with a long swinging jacket of solid red lined with the same rich paisley.

She had had two b.l.o.o.d.y Marys at lunch, unusual for her, but she still felt nervous, almost manic. She gave her name to the doorman, took the wood-paneled elevator to the tenth floor, and was deposited in a marble foyer, facing the Bemishes' door.

A maid with a white crimped cap opened the door at her knock and led Catherine into Kit Bemish's home.

It was very modern. Leslie's abstracts would have fit right in. Chrome-framed mirrors hung everywhere. The living room sofa was deep grape leather. A bearskin rug stretched across the white carpet in front of the brick fireplace. The coffee table was chrome and gla.s.s. A gigantic white tortoise sh.e.l.l sat upside down on the coffee table as an ashtray. A mountain goat with elaborate whirled horns hung above the chrome stereo cabinet. On a chain anch.o.r.ed to the ceiling hung a basket chair woven from cane. So did several baskets of the creepy spider plant, its skinny stalks reaching out like the arms of something starving. A beautiful Kentia palm towered in one corner.

"I hunt."

Catherine turned.

Haley Bemish stood there, unsmiling, perfect. She had the type of body that always unnerved Catherine. Tall, lanky, naturally slender, even bony, Haley Bemish showed off her easy elegance in a khaki jumpsuit. She wore gold flats of alligator skin. Her honey-blond hair swung chin length, Mary Quant style. She wore no makeup. Her skin was smooth and tanned, her eyes aquamarine. Here was the daughter Catherine's mother had wanted. Still wanted. They shook hands.

"Scotch?" Haley asked. When Catherine hesitated, she said, "Or a vodka gimlet. I make a dynamite vodka gimlet."

"A vodka gimlet would be nice."

The gla.s.s Haley handed Catherine was thick blue, rough, uneven, full of bubbles.

"From Mexico," Haley said. "Cheers."

They sank onto opposite ends of the grape sofa.

"I've heard you were at Miss Brill's."

"Yes. That was it for me and school, though. The traditional path seemed like too much of a rut."

"G.o.d. How true." Haley took a Gauloises from a lacquered box. She offered one to Catherine. "I only did one year of college. At Va.s.sar. I was so bored. So I went off fishing with Daddy. We did some hunting, too. I miss it."

They chatted formally, two civilized women. The fishing had been in Alaska and Scotland. The hunting had been in India and Africa.

Catherine couldn't help it. She admired Haley Hilton Bemish. She was a strong character.

"I've brought my portfolio," Catherine said at last. "Photos of what we've done before, and-"

Haley tossed her head irritably and interrupted Catherine. "Forget it. I don't want to see anything you've done before. I want something completely new. Something you haven't done before. This is an important dinner party." Her tone implied that Catherine probably hadn't encountered that level of importance before.

In fact, Catherine had encountered that level of importance many times before. All too often. With relief, she stopped liking Haley.

"Perhaps if I could see the dining room ..."

"Of course."

Haley rose and led Catherine into an enormous room. The walls were orange, covered with African and North American Indian masks. The fireplace mantel, stripped down to bare wood, was covered with wooden fertility G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, squat creatures with swollen bellies, funnel-shaped b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and exaggerated p.e.n.i.ses. A sharp-leafed yucca plant stood guard in one corner. A huge rubber plant stood in another. Its flat leaves were well dusted. Clearly Haley liked the bold and unusual. Yet all this p.r.i.c.kly harshness made Catherine wonder what it would be like to live with her.

"What table service will you be using?"

Haley crossed to a teak hutch, took out a wooden plate, handed it to Catherine. The grain was beautifully striped, like a wild animal.

"The plates and bowls are zebrawood. From Africa. The gla.s.ses will be Mexican. Blue. Like the one in your hand. The napkins bleached burlap. The silver will be our own pattern from Tiffany's. At least it's plain." Haley sounded as if she wished they could all eat with their fingers.

Catherine watched Haley carefully. She wasn't kidding. Catherine couldn't imagine dear gentle Kit with this Tarzanella.

Catherine turned. She walked up and down the long gla.s.s-and-chrome dining room table.

"There will be twenty for dinner," Haley said.

"I see snakes," Catherine said.

"What?" Haley's eyes widened.

"Snakes," Catherine repeated. She stretched out her hands toward the table. "Four terrariums down the length of the table. Live snakes inside. Harmless, of course, and with lids on the terrariums. Moss-no-gra.s.ses and straw and bamboo on the lids. Carrot and beet greens wound in and trailing to the table. Orange allium heads, very spiky, sticking out. Pebbles here and there. Ranunculus heads stuck here and there for color, harmonizing, of course, with the color of the snake inside. Or moss roses. Candles scented with Indian jasmine in your pottery holders."

Haley looked at Catherine. Her blue eyes were as pure as truth. Catherine met Haley's gaze.

"Snakes," Haley said.

"I've never done them before. I've always wanted to. So colorful, you know, and then movement is always clever. I've done birds. It would give the table a rather ... mysterious ... wilderness ... atmosphere."

"Um. Yes. I see."

Haley walked around the table, envisioning it as Catherine had described.

"Wonderful," she said at last. "Brilliant. Of course you'll come get the snakes after the party? The next morning?"

"Of course." Catherine waited a beat, then said, "I'm afraid it will be rather expensive...."