Desmond held the note, letting the wind blow the paper into a backflip. He was being dismissed. The project he’d been nurturing for years was being passed off to someone with no interest in it or him, someone who had agreed to do his departing editor the favor of looking at it, someone whose main qualification was her hairdo. It wasn’t just bad news, it was a death sentence. And worst of all, the whole business of his project, his career, was considered so inconsequential, the death sentence was announced in a cheerful little note that had been dashed off so hastily there hadn’t been time for complete sentences. A gust of hot wind blew his napkin off the table. He sat watching it float into the pale sky on a strong updraft. He took off his sunglasses and rubbed at his eyes. What am I doing here? he thought. Why didn’t I order the pastry? When he put the glasses back on and looked up, he saw Helen strolling down the street with her unmistakable arthritic gait, and her yellowing, windswept fur. What’s she doing here? he thought. At the other end of her leash was a swarthy Marlboro man in a gray suit, carrying on a lively conversation with a woman. As they got closer to where Desmond was sitting, he realized they were arguing. “You don’t take her seriously,” the woman snapped. “You’re not sympathetic to her problems.” “Which problems?” “Primarily? You,” she said. “Ah, Janey, you’re so indirect.” The woman grabbed the leash out of the man’s hand, yanked on it and said, “For Christ’s sake, heel!” Helen complied, the man grinned, and the three of them stopped while Helen sniffed at a parched tree.

She was a tall woman, with long, shapely legs and the kind of robust figure that would have been described as womanly in a more generous decade. Her brown hair was brushed back in a casually unkempt fashion, and loose strands of it were blowing into her mouth in the strong breeze. Underneath the hair was a freckled, weathered face with the untended beauty of a minor European film star who’d started to let herself go around the edges. For one brief moment, Desmond thought she was looking at him, but then realized she was gazing at the half-eaten cheeseburger on his plate. With her free hand, she reached up and adjusted a string of colorful Bakelite beads, and then, as he was about to stand and introduce himself, the three of them moved on. She was wearing an immoderately short skirt that tugged slightly at her hips, and there was something provocative and sensual in her long strides and even in the way she held the leash.