Dance said good-bye to them all and pulled on her coat as Lon Sellitto showed her out. On the street Dance walked to the curb, where she plugged the iPod earbuds back in and clicked the unit on. This particular playlist contained folk rock, Irish and some kick-ass Rolling Stones (once at a concert she’d done a kinesic analysis of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for her friends’ benefit).

She was waving down a cab when she realized there was an odd, unsettled feeling within her. A moment passed before she recognized it. She was feeling a nagging sense of regret that her brief involvement in the Watchmaker case was now over.

Joanne Harper was feeling good.

The trim thirty-two-year-old was in the workshop a few blocks east of her retail flower store in SoHo. She was among her friends.

That is to say, roses, cymbidium orchids, birds-of-paradise, lilies, heliconia, anthurium and red ginger.

The workshop was a large ground-floor area in what had been a warehouse. It was drafty and cold and she kept most of the rooms dark to protect the flowers. Still, she loved it here, the coolness, the dim light, the smells of lilac and fertilizer. She was in the middle of Manhattan, yes, but it seemed more like a quiet forest.

The woman added some more florist’s foam to the huge ceramic vase in front of her.

Feeling good.

For a couple of reasons: because she was working on a lucrative project that she had complete discretion to design.

And because of the buzz from her date the previous night.

With Kevin, who knew that angel trumpets needed exceptionally good drainage to thrive, and that creeping red sedum flowered in brilliant crimson all the way through September, and that Donn Clendenon whacked three over the wall to help the Mets beat Baltimore in 1969 (her father had captured two of the homers with his Kodak).

Kevin the cute guy, Kevin with the dimple and grin. Sans present or past wives.

Did it get any better than that?

A shadow crossed the front window. She glanced up, but saw no one. This was a deserted stretch of east Spring Street and pedestrians were rare. She scanned the windows. Really ought to have Ramon clean them. Well, she’d wait till warmer weather.

She continued assembling the vase, thinking again about Kevin. Would something work out between them?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Didn’t really matter (okay, sure it did, but a thirty-two-year-old SUW—single urban woman—had to take the didn’t-really-matter approach). But the important thing was she had fun with him. Having played the post-divorce dating game in Manhattan for a few years, she felt entitled to have some fun with another man.

Joanne Harper, who bore a resemblance to the redhead on Sex and the City, had come here ten years earlier to become a famous artist, live in a storefront studio in the East Village and sell her paintings out of a Tribeca gallery. But the art world had other ideas. It was too harsh, too petty, too, well, unartistic. It was about being shocking or troubled or fuckable or rich. Joanne gave up on fine arts and tried graphic design for a while but was dissatisfied with that too. On a whim she took a job in an interior landscaping company in Tribeca and fell in love with the business. She decided that if she was going to starve at least she’d be hungry doing what she was passionate about.