"What ever happened to Dr Brooks?"

"Who?" Liz asked.

Cathy turned to the Holtzmans. Times really were different back in the 70s, weren't they? Dr Elliot just had her masters, and the PoliSci department was - well, kind of radical. You know, the fashionable kind." She turned back. "Surely you haven't forgotten Dr Brooks and Dr Hemmings! Where was that house you shared with them?"

"I don't remember." Liz told herself to maintain control. This would be all over soon. But she couldn't walk away.

"Wasn't it on that three-way corner, a few blocks from the campus - We used to call them the Marx Brothers," Cathy explained with a giggle. "Brooks never wore socks - in Vermont, remember, he must have gotten terrible colds from that - and Hemmings never washed his hair. That was some department. Of course, Dr Brooks went off to Berkeley, and then you went out there, too, to finish your doctorate. I guess you liked working under him. Tell me, how is Bennington now?"

"Just as nice as ever."

"I never get back there for the alum meetings," Cathy said.

"I haven't been back there myself in over a year," Liz replied.

"What ever happened to Dr Brooks?" Cathy asked again.

"He teaches at Vassar now, I think."

"Oh, you've kept track of him? Still trying to bed every skirt in sight, too, I bet. Radical-chic. How often do you see him?"

"Not in a couple of years."

"We never understood what you saw in them," Cathy observed. "Come now, Caroline, none of us were virgins back then."

Cathy sipped at her champagne. "That's true, times were different, and we did lots of very dumb things. But I got lucky. Jack made an honest woman of me."

Zing! Libby Holtzman thought.

"Some of us haven't had time."

"I don't know how you manage without a family. I don't think I could handle the loneliness."

"At least I never have to worry about an unfaithful husband." Liz observed icily, finding her own weapon, not knowing it wasn't loaded anymore.

Cathy looked amused. "Yes, I suppose some women have to worry about that. But I don't, thank God."

"How can any woman be sure?"

"Only a fool is unsure. If you know your man," Cathy explained, "you know what he can and cannot do."

"And you really feel that secure?" Liz asked.

"Of course."

"They say the wife is always the last to know."

Cathy's head cocked to one side. "Is this a philosophical discussion, or are you trying to say something to my face instead of behind my back?"

Jesus! Holtzman felt that he was a spectator at a prize-fight.

"Did I give you that impression? Oh, I'm so sorry, Caroline."

"That's okay, Liz."

"Excuse me, but I prefer -"

"I go by "professor" too, you know, medical doctor, John Hopkins, and all that."

"I thought you were an associate professor."

Ryan nodded. "That's right. I got offered a full professorship at the University of Virginia, but that meant moving away from the house we like, moving the kids out of school, and, of course, there's the problem with Jack's career. So, I turned it down."