“Give the woman a break,” Rivera said. “Maybe she’s just glad to get away from those sisters of hers. Paint samples and dish patterns and flower arrangements—feh.” She flicked her fingers.

Tony rubbed the back of his head. “Christ, Rivera, you got mitts on you like a quarterback.”

Angie was bothered by Tony’s tone and expression, and so she asked outright. “Why don’t you like Caroline?”

“That’s obvious,” Rivera said. “Harriet Darling. Caroline got between Tony and her sister.”

His head came up slowly and he gave Rivera a hard look. Then he got up from the table, patted his shirt pocket to locate his cigarettes, and walked out of the kitchen.

“Well, hell,” Rivera put back her head and examined the ceiling. “Guess I pushed too hard.”

“I’d say so.”

Angie yawned. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t go get himself shot by Tab Darling in order to prove a point.”

“I wonder what Caroline said to Harriet. That would have been an interesting scene.”

“Maybe it was Miss Zula,” Angie said. “In which case it really would have been worth shooting.”

“Oh, that’s a picture,” Rivera said. “Miss Zula telling Harriet Darling to keep it in her pants.” She gave an uncharacteristic giggle and then pressed her hands to her eyes in a gesture that struck Angie as sad.

“Hey,” she said. She resisted the urge to get up. “What is it?”

Rivera shook her head, shook it again more forcefully, and then forced a smile. “All work and no play.”

Tony came through the screen door trailing a cloud of cigarette smoke. “Just what I was thinking,” he said. “Come on, Rivera, let’s go to down to the Hound Dog.”

Rivera brightened. “That’s the first good suggestion you’ve made today. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“And if we don’t, we can comfort each other,” Tony said.

There were many things to like about Tony, but at the moment the two most important were quite clear to Angie: he never held a grudge against a friend, and second, he loved Rivera with a cheerfully unrequited passion that was content with wordplay and celibacy.

She got up and hugged him, her arms around his middle. “I might take you up on that someday, you know,” she said into his chest.

“Anytime, honey.” Tony winked at Angie over Rivera’s dark head. “Just say the word.”

With the house to herself Angie found that she was unexpectedly lonely. After a short hesitation she called her parents, bracing herself for impact as she punched in the numbers.

She said, “Is that Tommy Apples?”

“Ang! What the hell! I was just telling your ma, she’s disappeared into a swamp someplace. It’s been a month since you called.”

“It’s been less than a week, Dad.”

“And the mail we forwarded to you came back undeliverable, ‘No such person.’”