Caroline’s smile was brittle. “Well. Let me see—the script was good, excellent cinematography, a compelling and insightful accounting of a socioeconomic anomaly …” Her voice trailed off. She knew how stilted she sounded, or at least John hoped she did.

“A good story?” Kai asked.

“Well, yes.” Caroline’s irritation was rising as surely as her color. “I suppose that would be one way to put it.” She sent Miss Zula a sidelong glance.

“Good,” Kai said, her English clear and precise. “I would like to see it.”

Later John said, “She’s like a kitten, Caroline. You dangle yarn in front of her, of course she’s going to want to play.”

They were sitting in John’s car, parked at the curb in front of Old Roses, where Caroline lived with her mother.

“Kai Watanabe is more like a tiger than a kitten,” Caroline said. Her hand strayed toward the door handle. “I suppose I had best learn how to deal with her, and the sooner the better.”

That was one of the things about Caroline that John liked best. She was uncomplicated in the ways that mattered most, logical where she might have been reactionary, calm at all costs. He had known her only by sight when they were children, but then last year she had come to Princeton to give a paper just about the same time he had accepted the Ogilvie offer, and they had had a lot to talk about. John had been taken in by what had seemed to him an odd combination of southern soft and academic sharp.

John ran a finger down her arm, the skin cool and pale, her elbow a perfect right angle. “Do you want me to come in?”

She smiled at him. “Harriet and Eunice are coming over in a half hour to look at bridal magazines with me.”

John sat back. “What, just the two of them?”

“The others will be by later.”

When John thought of Caroline’s four older sisters it was always as a unit, one he thought of as the Army of the Thoroughly Married. Not happily married, all of them, but determined to draft new inductees nevertheless. Caroline went along with it because she loved them but also, John believed, because she actually liked all the wedding fuss. Not that she could admit that, even to herself, and it would have shocked her if he told her that he found this pocket of sentimentality a reassuring thing.

“These planning meetings mean a lot to my sisters, you know.”

“I’ve got paperwork to take care of, anyway.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “The film people and all that.”

“Just as well,” she said. Then she leaned forward suddenly and kissed him. “Call me later.”