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of concrete atop the stereo cabinet-the ugliest so-called sculpture she’d ever seen-made her feel nostalgic.

But something has changed. I have.

She felt the way she once had revisiting her old elementary school after she’d graduated. Part of her had belonged, and part of her had been a stranger. Had it been only three and a half months? Looking at Dolly, elegant in a low-cut ruby velvet caftan studded with tiny rhinestones, darting and swooping among her guests like some exotic parrot, Annie felt as if she were watching it all through a window.

She looked about, peering at the faces eddying around her, searching for just one, the only one who would make her feel as if she had truly come home.

Joe.

Where was he? Yesterday, by the time she arrived home, she’d been too exhausted to see anyone until she’d had some sleep. Then late this afternoon, she’d been jolted out of a dream by Dolly telephoning to say that her driver would be picking her up in exactly one hour, and she was to put on her sexiest dress. Her aunt, it seemed, was making her a little homecoming party-the last thing Annie needed or wanted, but with everything already all arranged, how could she refuse? She owed Dolly so much.

And how on earth could Dolly have been expected to know it was Joe she wanted, not all these people-some of whom she didn’t even recognize? She longed to be off with him somewhere quiet, just the two of them, where she could …

One step at a time, she cautioned herself. What if he wasn’t eager to share her dream? Or what if he’d taken up with someone while she was away?

She felt a stab of jealousy, then thought of Emmett. A dormant warmth stirred to life low in her abdomen, below the lacy hem of her ivory satin camisole, a gift from him. Who am I to talk?

The difference was … well, she didn’t love Emmett … at least not the way she loved Joe, with all her heart and soul.

Annie glanced at her watch. Almost nine-thirty.

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Dammit, where was he? If one more person asked how she’d liked Paris, she’d scream. The doorbell announcing each new cluster of guests had stopped chiming a while ago. And the prettily garnished platters of shrimp toast, crab cakes, and stuffed mushrooms that two tuxedoed waiters were passing about the crowded living room had grown sparse.

Annie caught a glimmery reflection of herself in the huge window that looked over Madison and Fifth and then Central Park. Had she overdone it with this dress? What would Joe think?

Not her style, really, but it was chic, tr่s Parisienne-this black crepe sheath that skimmed her thighs well above the knee, adorned only by a loop of faux operalength pearls knotted just below her plunging neckline. She’d worn this on her last night in Paris with Emmett. Remembering the obscenely expensive dinner at Taillevent he had insisted on, the grand cru wine they’d drunk too much of, and afterwards, going back to Emmett’s apartment… . God, had she really done that thing with the ice cube? Emmett had showed her how, but she had gone along with it-even now, she could feel the ice cube numbing her fingers, the fierce spasm that jerked through Emmett as she pressed it into the seam of flesh below his scrotum, just as he was about to come… .

Annie, suddenly aware that she had begun to tremble, and that her face was on fire, quickly slammed her mind shut against the memory.

Emmett. He’d made her feel things, do things … things she’d never even known existed. Again, and again, he’d pushed her to the edge of losing control… and that had excited her, and frightened her, too. Mornings, drifting up from sleep, feeling bruised by and half ashamed of the things they’d done the night before, half terrified of the things they still hadn’t done, she would nevertheless find herself stealing over to him, wrapping herself around him, needing to feel him in her.

But would she ever see him again? He’d talked about maybe coming to New York, but he didn’t say when. And anyway, what difference would it make if he did come?

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Whatever they’d had in Paris wouldn’t, couldn’t, be a part of her life here in New York. Still, at the thought that she might not see him, Annie felt a pang of regret … along with a childish desire to relive the wickedly delicious sensations he’d introduced her to.

Okay, so you had great sex with Emmett. That doesn’t take anything away from how you feel about Joe.

Pushing Emmett out of her mind, Annie crossed the room toward the bar. She could feel the faint whispering of her smoke-colored silk stockings-real ones, from Aux Trois Quartiers. Would Joe even recognize her at first? She’d gotten her hair cut, too, really short-Dolly had said she looked like Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina. And to complete her new look, she had bought a pair of these huge dangly earrings, intricately fashioned silver wire and glass beads, from a street vendor on the rue des SaintsP่res. But now, swinging from her ears, they felt as conspicuous as chandeliers. He’ll look at me and he’ll wonder if I’m the same person. He-Annie was distracted by a bray of laughter. She glanced to her left and saw a woman who clearly was tipsy, sharing a joke over by the piano with Mike Dreiser, the buyer for the Pierre. He was a stout man with a gray mustache, who couldn’t keep his eyes off Dolly, now perched on the glass coffee table a few feet from him, holding court with the handful of men seated on the couch. At the keyboard, the Bobby Short soundalike Dolly had hired was improvising some kind of jazz version of the Stones’ hit “Ruby Tuesday.”

Enough mooning, Annie told herself. Who should she go and talk to? That blade-thin woman in a cashmere dress the shade of clotted cream, wasn’t that Bitsy Adler, who’d played in Dames in Chains with Dolly? She was chatting it up with a potbellied, droopy-eyed man who looked vaguely familiar. Then she remembered-Bill, the drunken Santa Claus from Macy’s. Thanks to Dolly, he now worked here in her building as a doorman. Certainly, no one could ever accuse Dolly of snobbery. But Annie didn’t feel up to making small talk.

Threading her way through the cluster of people at

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the bar (who were they all, anyway?), Annie accepted the dripping glass of champagne the barman thrust at her. Then she spotted Laurel, at the far end of the bar, sipping what also looked like champagne. Laurel looked gloomy, and Annie felt a dart of unease. At the JFK arrivals terminal, her sister had seemed so happy to see her, but in the car driving back, she’d sort of clammed up.

Something’s wrong with Laurey. She’d gotten so thin! Annie had noticed it right away, but until now it hadn’t fully sunk in. Her thinness had a feverish brightness to it that bothered Annie, yet in some uncanny way it seemed to make her more beautiful. With no makeup or jewelry, wearing a simple, peach-colored halter dress she’d probably made herself, and a silk orchid in her hair, she outshone every woman in this room.

There was only one other time she’d seen such high color in Laurel, such sparkle-when she was six, and had had pneumonia. Annie remembered, too, that Laurel hadn’t wanted any breakfast this morning.

Probably just a touch of flu, she told herself.

She hiked herself onto the bar stool beside her sister. “What’s up, Doc? You look a little down. I guess this isn’t your kind of party. No Grateful Dead … no black lights … no body paints.”

Laurel shrugged, smiling a little to show that she knew Annie was just teasing. “I guess I’m in the wrong place then.”

“Entre nous,” Annie confided, “it’s not my scene, either.”

“Hey, you’re the guest of honor.”

“Listen, I’m sure Dolly meant well. She usually does. It was sweet of her. But …”

“But,” Lfcirel echoed.

“Remember the white stretch limousine she rented for your junior prom?”

Laurel winced. “Red seats. The color of red licorice. I almost died of embarrassment. And a bar. On the way to the restaurant, Rick just sat there staring out the window like he had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t wait. It was awful. If Joe hadn’t …”

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“Yeah, I remember,” Annie finished with a laugh. “He showed up just in time to rescue you with his beatup old Ford.” She’d heard this story so many times she felt as if she’d been there-Laurel coming out of the restaurant and finding Joe, who, with a conspiratorial grin, had tossed Rick his car keys and then climbed into the limo idling at the curb. Hours later, Laurel nad come back from the prom, Annie remembered, with roses in her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes that she suspected had had very little to do with Rick Warner. “Hey, have you seen much of Joe this summer?” She tried to sound casual, but it came out sounding somehow false, pitched too high.

She wasn’t prepared, either, for Laurel’s reaction. Her sister flushed, and her eyes slid away. She put her drink down and began chasing bubbles with her index finger.

Panic crept into Annie’s heart. Was Joe seeing someone? That would explain why Laurel seemed upset, wouldn’t it? God, yes-she’s jealous.

How stupid of her ever to have kidded herself into thinking that what Laurel felt for Joe was just some silly girlish crush. When had Laurel ever acted silly or giggly over a boy? In grade school, when all her friends were mooning over Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, she had been this solemn-eyed woman in a little girl’s body, more interested in Rivka’s babies than in rock stars.

Still waters run deep-the phrase could have been coined just for Laurel.

“Joe?” Laurel muttered. “Not much. My job kept me pretty busy.” Licking a drop of champagne from her finger, she managed a tiny smile. “Though no one ever told me that interning in the creative department of an ad agency means mostly sharpening pencils, emptying wastebaskets, and fetching people coffee.”

“I guess Joe must be pretty busy too … with the restaurant, I mean.”

“I guess so.”

Annie waited for her to elaborate, but Laurel seemed far away somewhere, off in her own world.

“You wouldn’t happen to know if …”

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… he’s been seeing anyone, would you? Come on, she couldn’t say that. What would it sound like? Besides, Joe had never kept the women he’d dated a secret; if he was seeing someone, he’d tell her himself.

“… he’s still planning on showing up tonight?” she finished weakly. He’d told Dolly he was coming, but something-some crisis at the restaurant-could have cropped up at the last minute.

“I don’t know.” She looked up at Annie, tossing back the hair that had slid down over her cheek. Her eyes glittered against the fevered pinkness of her face. “I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

Annie shrugged. “I guess he must’ve gotten stuck.”

“Sure. Probably.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Annie caught sight of a familiar face. Gloria De Witt, Dolly’s old assistant. She’d be hard to miss in a snowstorm, Annie thought. Wearing a hot-pink minidress and huge silver ear hoops, with an Afro that stuck out like a Christmas wreath, she waved enthusiastically to Annie from across the room. It had been what? … four years since Gloria had left Girod’s for a job selling display ads for the Voice. By now she was probably running the place.

“I see someone I want to say hello to,” she told Laurel. “Talk to you later.” She slipped off her stool and made her way over to Gloria, who slung an arm casually about her shoulders as if it’d been hours, not years, since they had seen one another.

“How does it feel to be back? You leave your heart in Paris, like the song goes?”

“Wrong song … and no, I was too busy being a slave for that kind of thing,” she told Gloria with a little laugh. Well, it was partly true … she had felt like a slave to Pompeau.

“I must’ve been thinking of the one that goes, ‘They don’t wear pants in the sunny south of France.’ You mean to tell me it’s not for real?”

Annie laughed, an image forming in her mind of Emmett, naked except for his cowboy boots, standing

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straddle-legged in front of the bed while she knelt in front of him, and—God, is that all you can think about? Sex?

Annie, fighting to bank the rush of heat she felt climbing up her neck, forced herself to’concentrate on Gloria.

But Gloria now was looking at something beyond Annie’s shoulder. “Hey, will you look at who the cat just dragged in?”

Annie’s heart gave a little slip-sliding thump, and she turned so suddenly she nearly spilled the flute of champagne gripped tightly in her hand.

“Joe,” she said with a tiny gasp, but he was too far away to have heard.

He was just coming out of the glass-brick vestibule and stepping into the living room, smiling and greeting people. A tall, loose-limbed man who just missed being Gregory Peck-handsome, wearing faded but clean khakis, a crisp white shirt, with an old World War II aviator’s jacket slung over one shoulder. The lenses of his round wire-rimmed glasses were flecked with September rain—rain that had also brought out the curl in his streaky brown hair. Light drizzle, the weatherman had promised, no storm expected. But she felt as if a hurricane had been let loose inside her.

Then his gaze caught hers, and she felt herself being pulled toward him … not as if she were actually moving, but as if the two ends of the room were being pushed together by powerful bookends. And suddenly he was close enough to touch, and to smell his good outdoors autumn-rain smell. But she didn’t reach out to embrace him. She just stood there, an unbearable awkwardness clamped over her like a bell jar.

He doesn’t want me. He never did.

Panic swarmed through her, stinging, making her acutely aware of every nerve ending.

She found herself saying the first stupid thing that popped into her head: “I didn’t know if you were coming or not.”

“I got held up,” he said. “Traffic jam, water main

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broke on Park … it’s really backed up, I ditched the cab and walked the last few blocks.” He forked a hand through his damp curls, making them spring up in wild corkscrews. “So how does it feel to be back?” His words sounded as awkward as she felt.