When they were half a block away, she stopped and pulled out a cell phone while the man squatted down to pet Helen. Then the man took her arm and the three of then continued on in the direction of the river.

The breeze came up again and fluttered the letter he still clutched in his fingers. He couldn’t have been distracted by Jane Cody—undoubtedly this was she; Celeste Gray was still hospitalized and Thomas had dog-sitting responsibilities—for more than a couple of minutes, but for that brief time, he’d nearly forgotten that his life and livelihood were crumbling around him. He looked down the street again, but Jane and her companions had disappeared.

And then it struck him, the wonderful irony of seeing Jane Cody just as he read this letter. This was fate reminding him that as one door closes, another opens. Jane Cody was his salvation. She, with her long resolute strides and her television connections, was the break he’d been waiting for all these months. This hadn’t been a coincidence, seeing her on the street; it had been a sign. What better way to finish the book and revive big-haired editorial enthusiasm than to work with her on a television project? A series of biographies. Surely he could slip Anderton into the mix. A collaboration, a fresh eye to spot whatever it was he’d been missing. The dinner was only a few days away. He tossed back his coffee, bundled his mail, and pushed back from the table. He hadn’t received a death notice at all, merely a prod. On his way out of the restaurant, he dumped the pleas for money and bank statements and the editor’s letter into a trash barrel. Newbury Street was lined with expensive hair salons and overpriced clothing shops. Maybe it was time he walked into a few of them and saw what they had to offer.

Seven

The Circumstances

1.

Jane often wondered what made people so angry these days. The country was in the middle of a blizzard of economic prosperity and peace, job and real estate markets were booming, virtually everyone you bumped into had gaudy academic credentials, even if they were completely uneducated, and if all that wasn’t enough to drive away the demons of fury, you could take pills. Some of the men at her office spent half their time cruising the Internet in search of the best deals on Viagra, Propecia, and Human Growth Hormone.