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  When she got back to her desk she had an e-mail from Philip Liman titled, "Liman's Lands the Joe Camel Account." She read the message in horror, but then it dawned on her, given the peals of laughter emanating from all corners of the floor, that it was a joke.

  She said over the cubicle wall to Diego, "I take it that we're not all going to be immediately receiving a hundred percent increase in salary and two free

  cartons of cigarettes every week?" In very small print, a footnote to a footnote announced, "Lung cancer is no longer covered by the company health plan."

  Diego was still giggling. "I've been here six years and this is one of Philip's better holiday missives. Last year on April Fool's we had been bought by Microsoft."

  She went to work with a smile on her face. As the first weeks of her new job went by the routine was punctuated by frequent fire drills — situations that needed immediate attention from a project team. She kept her head down and concentrated on learning the recently upgraded graphics program.

  She was proofing a printout when her phone beeped that the intercom was open. "Hey, Teresa. We need you in conference room C — bring your sketch¬pad."

  Amy disconnected before Teresa could do more than stutter out, "Okay."

  It was a most welcome interruption. Diego had not been kidding when he'd said he would dump all his shitwork on her. She was getting really fast at com¬posing display art, adding text and zapping it to the printer. For several days she'd just done what was asked without really looking, but after a week and a half she felt as if she could evaluate what she was working on and give an opinion on it — a couple of times Amy had actually asked. She was really sorry that Amy's last day was tomorrow.

  She settled into a conference room chair, glad that she knew everyone. Jena Davies was an account manager and Gene Huang was a copywriter. It looked

  like they were working on one of Jena's biggest clients, Ardley Foods. Display ads used in wholesaler's magazines were scattered around the table.

  Amy picked up one, then let it slip through her fingers. "The cartoon image is just not working for them. I think we're relying too much on the idea that it conveys organic simplicity. It has no distinction. Teresa, what we want is something not cartoon but still not mechanically rendered."

  "Like ... children's drawings?"

  "More sophisticated than that, but still looking illustrated by hand. Jena?"

  "Let's see what it would look like." Jena had a dreamy British accent that was a sexy contrast to her dreadlocks.

  Teresa pushed that thought back into the closet, where her libido was destined to stay forever. "Some¬thing easy — the sheaf of grain. You mean bold colors —" Her goldenrod pencil swept over the page. "— with soft lines." She used a light brown to differentiate the stalks, then charcoal to outline it. "Thicker lines is more childlike, but it's still sophisti¬cated." It felt great to be using pencil and paper for a change.

  "What do you think, Gene?"

  "I'd do the same thing with the type. Use the same font we've always used but hand-lettered." Gene smiled at Teresa. "Could you do the Ardley name?"

  Three shades of red and the same charcoal outline later, it was done.

  Amy said, "We can go with this. Thanks, Teresa. Would you be up to doing all the boards? We'd need

  them by. .." She narrowed her eyes at Jena as if cal¬culating. "They'd have to be done by tomorrow morn¬ing, wouldn't they?"

  Jena nodded reluctantly. "I'd say so. Otherwise we can't run them by Philip before they go to the client. I'm sorry, Teresa."

  "I have no plans," Teresa said. "Let me run out and get a big dinner and a really large supply of chocolate. I could use the fresh air." It looked like there were nine to ten display ads to do. Once she got the color palette set up, they'd be straightforward enough to sketch out on the computer's stylus pad.

  "Thanks, Teresa." Amy checked her watch. "Lord, I'm late for a meeting. Another ten bucks for Green¬peace."

  Teresa skipped back to her cubicle. She didn't mind the long night at all. It felt terrific to be a part of the team.

  The elevator had descended about two floors when her mind registered the identity of the other occupant. What on earth was that. .. that woman doing in the building? As was typical, she was not taking any notice of Teresa, as if Teresa wasn't even there.

  She deliberately turned so that Rayann Germaine could not ignore her. It was a breach of elevator eti¬quette, she knew. "Hi."

  It was the eyes that shocked her most. As hateful as her mocking gaze had been before, it had at least been alive, filled with fire. The eyes that looked at Teresa now were cold, extinguished. Then she took in the pallor. The suit looked two sizes too large. Gone

  ?

  were the full breasts she had been so close to taking into her mouth —

  "Hi." The voice was the same. Slightly husky. Definitely off-putting.

  She'd started a conversation, Teresa realized. And now there was nothing to do but blush and watch the floor indicators.

  "Do you work for Liman's?"

  Looking at Rayann was like looking into a black hole. Teresa could feel the pull of something dark and unhappy. The woman was miserable and yet she looked ... composed. "In the art department."

  The elevator ride ended, thank God. Several of the media buyers clumped on and Rayann was on the street before Teresa cleared the elevator. She looked after the rigid figure, walking upright as if in defiance of horrific weights. If Teresa wanted to illustrate A Christmas Carol she would use Rayann for a female Jacob Marley. But where had the chains come from?

  Teresa dismissed the chance encounter as she savored a huge plate of pad thai liberally sprinkled with spiced peanuts. What did it matter to her if Rayann Germaine had business with someone at Liman's? It wasn't unheard of. Besides, she was so over that whole mess.

  On the way back to the office she slipped into See's and bought three peanut crunches, two Victoria toffees and five Scotch kisses. The drugstore had peach Snapple in diet. It was so cold it had ice crystals in it. Perfect.

  She set her goodies down next to her computer

  and went in the direction of a general hubbub from the big conference room.

  "What's up?" Mike Freeman occupied the third of three cubicles that made up the cluster she and Diego shared.

  "They hired Amy's replacement. Philip was just giving us background, but I can't hear a word of it."

  Teresa prickled all over. Oh no. No. It couldn't be.

  "Did you get the name?" She was talking to Mike as if from the end of a tunnel.

  "Ray something. But not a guy."

  "Rayann Germaine." Christ on a cross.

  "That's it. Rayann Germaine. I think Philip said she won a Clio. I would have thought we were low-rent for someone like that."

  "So would I," Teresa murmured.

  The thud from the other shoe dropping left Teresa feeling as if she'd just survived an earthquake.

  After her final meeting at Philip Liman's, Rayann decided to stop in at her mother's. She called ahead to make sure her mother was home from work, but kept the reason for her visit a secret. She was going to be ecstatic, Rayann predicted.

  She was. "Ray, I'm so happy for you!" The exuberant hug left Rayann gasping for breath. "I have a cheesecake — let's celebrate."

  Jim was equally enthusiastic. "Should we open a bottle of wine?"

  Rayann intercepted a look from her mother to Jim that said no. How worried they all must be, she thought. She hadn't been fooling anyone. "None for me," she said. "I've turned over a new leaf."

  Her mother rushed away, but not before Rayann saw a shimmer of tears.

  "I'm glad to hear that," Jim said quietly. "Your mother worries so."

  Her mother wasn't the only one, obviously. She strove for a lighter tone. "You know what the worst part is? I have to confess to Judy that her silly grief therapy book worked." It hadn't been a panacea, but taking that one step of visiting the place where the accident happened had shatte
red her illusion of con¬trol. She had accepted that she was not, could not be in control all the time. The bouts of depression and anger were still frequent, but they were more manage¬able.

  "Patrick's mother didn't die," Jim was saying. "But when she left me I went through some of the same stages. I remember that conventional wisdom was not to go through it alone, but I couldn't conceive how it was possible to do it any other way. Of course then I had to realize that I'd been a selfish bastard who didn't show wife or son anything but annoyed tolerance when they intruded on my work. Luckily, Pat forgave me. When he was older. And Ann doesn't put up with me at all when I'm in that mood."

  "Mom can be an irresistible force sometimes."

  Jim chuckled. "Sometimes?"

  "II Fornaio," her mother sang. "Chocolate New York style cheesecake. Raspberry coulis on the side."

  "Take that away." Rayann pointed at the raspberry sauce. "Do not mess up my chocolate with fruit stuff."

  "Oh pooh. You don't know what's good. When do you start?"

  "Monday, bright and early. Amy Bledsoe is willing to stay on for a few extra days to clue me in. I think

  I'll use these couple of days to find a new place to live."

  "Maybe that's for the best," her mother said.

  "We weren't there long enough for it to feel like home. And we chose it because it was close to the bookstore. It was ideal for us, but not right for just me." Her rationalizations sounded fine, but she felt a stab of guilt. She had been a long time dealing with the irrational feeling that if she moved, Louisa wouldn't know where to find her.

  "Where are you thinking of moving to?"

  Rayann took note of her mother's crossed fingers. She smiled reluctantly. "Back to the city."

  "Yes!" Her mother did a double thumbs-up. "Jerry Ingram at work is selling his condo because he's moving to Marin. It's just south of Market with a view of the estuary. You can see Alcatraz from the balcony."

  "I couldn't possibly afford something like that. Not if I want to hold on to what I have for a partnership buy-in at Liman's."

  "Well, run the numbers. But mortgage rates have never been this low. You could walk to work from there. And to the new ballpark."

  "Oh, now I see the interest."

  Jim stifled a yawn. "I don't know where that came from."

  Rayann immediately yawned. "Stop that. I have to get going, anyway. It's been a longer day than I'm used to. Thanks for the cheesecake, Mom."

  "Anytime. Let's do lunch next week." Her mother beamed. "I've been waiting to say that to you again."

  Let's do lunch, Rayann thought. She was back in the corporate world. And it felt okay.

  *****

  Wallpapering is not particularly easy to do by your¬self. Rayann knew the general steps, and they had chosen an easy-to-match pattern. It still took her most of a day to paper one wall. She was pleased when she was done. When she rehung the pictures the house would look more saleable.

  It looks as nice as we thought it would.

  A walk in the rain was a welcome break from some quick and dirty sponge painting to spruce up the kitchen. It wasn't far to Everett & Jones. She carried her barbecue home and once she was sated on ribs and potato salad, she called the broker who had helped them buy the house. It was still hard to accept condolences, and she preferred to avoid them as much as possible, but a good real estate broker is a good real estate broker, she told herself. The broker promised to drop by in the morning with the listing forms and agreements.

  I've set it all in motion. I'm officially getting on with my life, she thought.

  And I'm proud of you. Since taking the first step toward coping with her grief, Louisa had been speak¬ing to her again. She knew that accepting her own wishful thinking as Louisa's presence was a step backward, according to the book. Well, the book was not perfect. She didn't believe that death was the end of life, not anymore. Louisa was with her and always would be. And that meant having spontaneous con¬versations with her was perfectly sane.

  The following morning she went to see the condo her mother had mentioned and made an offer. The location was great and always would be, from an

  investment perspective. It was a three-bedroom box in a building of boxes, but the light and view were definite pluses. At home again, she tackled the filthy condition of the bathroom with a great deal of bleach and energy. Louisa pointed out the corners she missed.

  When she was too tired to clean she turned on her laptop instead of the television and wandered around the online message boards, then dipped into a couple of the Web sites that did advertising reviews. She'd missed some major campaigns, and it looked like the trend of paying megabucks to superstars to sell prod¬ucts was waning. Only sports figures with sporting goods were a sure match. The trend seemed to be turning toward spokespeople the buyer identified with rather than looked up to.

  Her browser locked up three times trying to load the site of one of Liman's biggest clients, so she gave up for the night.

  She changed the sheets, scrubbed herself pink in a hot shower, then curled up with the electric blanket on. She would keep the bed and the tapestry, she thought. The memory of waking up for the first time under it was a sweet one. She had added her own carvings in the fired olive wood of the posts, echoes of the emerald runes working in the tapestry's zodiac circle. She would keep the bed. But she could not think that in some very distant future she might share this view with someone. That she would even want to was inconceivable. Her body still belonged to Louisa as surely as if Louisa had marked every cell with an L.

  L could stand for lesbian, Louisa whispered.

  Oh hush, Rayann thought. That wasn't Louisa, that was just her pesky sex drive in the "on" position

  as always. Rayann's chief problem, Judy had informed her after two years of psych classes, was her body's willingness to engage in meaningless sex when her mind was stuck in the Victorian era. Therefore she fell in love with every woman she had sex with.

  Which was not true, Rayann thought. When she'd been resisting her unrelenting lust for Louisa she'd had a very pleasing dalliance with a woman, no strings. And she'd been well in love with Louisa even when she thought there was no way Louisa would ever touch her.

  That first time — the memory of it washed over her. Christmas Eve, ten years ago. Kisses that came out of nowhere, the savage ache of her body, the burn of Louisa's jeans against her bare thighs. She had felt naked, open, raw with need. Louisa had quenched it all, understanding what Rayann wanted more than Rayann did.

  She would not find that again.

  She abruptly remembered the woman in the alley behind that bar she'd wandered into. God, she'd been so drunk. She had enough distance now to understand why she'd let it happen ... why she had wanted it to happen. What she remembered of it sent her pulse racing.

  She turned her face into the pillow and opened the memory of fingertips tracing her spine, parting her thighs, teasing her breasts. The memory was a sweet solace now and she drifted into a more restful sleep than she had had in months.

  9

  The inevitable summons came. Teresa had been dreading it all week.

  She hadn't been at work the first day that Rayann took over for Amy — a day off in return for the all-nighter she'd done on the Ardley display ads and for two other really late nights. Then Rayann and Amy had spent one day in seclusion. Going over client backgrounds, probably.

  Pressing business had kept Rayann in her office

  most of yesterday, but apparently she was wanting to meet with all of her staff, one by one.

  You're not the same person, Teresa reminded her¬self. Just don't fly off the handle. You really like this job. Diego said she was really nice. Give her a second chance. Third chance.

  She continued the pep talk all the way to the office door. Then she rapped on the doorjamb and went in.

  "You must be Teresa," Rayann said. She rose to shake Teresa's hand, then settled into her chair again.

  She really does not remember me.
Not from the old job, not from the alley, probably not even from the elevator.

  Rayann went on, "We met in the elevator, didn't we?"

  "That's right. I didn't know you worked here — that you were going to be working here." Okay, so she had registered, at least on some level, in the elevator.

  "A surprise to me, as well. I understand you've only been here a short while, too."

  "Since New Year's."

  "And yet, look at this mountain of work." Rayann gestured at the Ardley Foods display ads. "I don't know if anyone has told you this lately, but true artists in commercial art are getting rare. People with talent are going directly to commercial art trade school without stopping to develop their own art-for-arts-sake talent first. One can hardly blame them — a paycheck is a paycheck."

  "I did a year at the Sorbonne." Maybe that would spark a memory of their earlier clash. "My grand-

  mother lives in France, which helped a lot." Of course remembering the first time they'd met might make Rayann remember the second, and Teresa did not think their working relationship would be helped by memories of that alley.

  Rayann's reaction was completely different this time. "I saw that on your resume. I'd have given my eyeteeth to do that. But wood scuplting is not exactly haute art, if you know what I mean."

  Where on earth had this woman come from? Who had stolen the Queen of Mean Rayann Germaine and left this... nice person in her place? "It's good to feel as if I have something unique to contribute."

  "I understand that feeling all too well. Well, I didn't have a specific agenda. I just wanted to get a chance for a normal conversation with everyone before it gets insane. More insane, rather."

  The meeting was over, which was no problem. She'd expected the worst, but she was just really con¬fused. Maybe Rayann was manic depressive. Maybe she was a manic depressive alcoholic. A manic depressive alcoholic lesbian who had stopped taking her steroids.