Two hundred people. The old guard was there, longtime friends of Tim and Dick, and a younger crowd too, a couple of the men wearing their hair long and swept across the brow, Beatles fashion. And there were girls everywhere, half of them fresh from the pool and sauntering around in bikinis, an illustration of the flesh that brought home to him all over again the fact that he was sleeping alone and hadn’t laid eyes on Lori all day. Which was maddening. This was the biggest party of the year—she knew that as well as anybody. For the past hour he’d been asking people if they’d seen her and he must have gone down to her room looking for her half a dozen times already, everything a muddle, the dogs underfoot, the monkey screeching from some hidden perch, everybody grinning in his face and pumping his hand. And Maynard. Maynard wailing away.

He was just about to go up the steps and back into the house to check again, when he caught himself: two young women were coming up the walk, arm in arm, striding in perfect sync as if they were working the runway at a fashion show. They were wearing dresses, stockings, heels, though this was an outdoor party, a country party, with steamed corn and paper plates, but then maybe they hadn’t gotten the message—or didn’t care. And why should they? They were exquisite. And if they wanted to get down and dirty out on the back lawn, they could always take their shoes off, right? That was what he was thinking, if he was thinking at all, because he was mesmerized. One of them, the taller of the two, had a dog with her, a Pekingese with an elaborate hairdo done up in ribbons and bows, tucked like a muff under her arm. She was blond, five nine or ten even accounting for the heels, and every bit as stunning as Flora Lu, or maybe even more so—definitely more so—and she gave him a big melting smile as she passed by and strode up the steps and onto the porch, where Charlie, who was just emerging from the house, held the front door for her and her companion, then threw him a look as if to say, Did you see that?