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Cully
always
knew what he wanted to say. ‘I’m sure coming back here fitted in with your plans, but I’m glad you did come back to town and move in with Mimi,’ he finished.
    Surely not for the sake of my beaux yeux.
    The slap and the stroke, or the stroke and the slap. Cully had never said an unmitigated thing to me in our whole acquaintance.
I’m sure you came back to Knolls for your own, doubtless selfish, reasons, but I’m also glad it’s what my sister wanted and needed
.
    One thing I could say for Cully – he’d always adored Mimi, and the feeling was mutual. Now, I decided, Cully was angling toward something. But I wasn’t going to bite.
    Things had never, never been simple between us.
    ‘I’m glad too,’ I said briefly. ‘Now when, and where, is this party going to be?’
    ‘Friday night, here. I’m going to bartend.’
    ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ I said sincerely. Mimi had never mixed a decent drink in her life. Then my mind started racing. Friday was two days away. Some of our moving boxes were still strewn through the house. I was itching to make a list of things that had to be done. I began rummaging through my purse for a pencil and a pad.
    ‘Listen, as long as we’re alone . . .’ Cully began, capturing my undivided attention.
    ‘Yes?’ I fixed my eyes on his. That usually either frightens men or inflames them. One of my photographers, a romantic, had said that my eyes were exactly like opals – a compliment that had pleased me no end, of course.
    Just as a little voice inside me was protesting that I had promised to stop using my face as bait – and I’d told that little voice to shut up – Cully went on: ‘I want you to watch out for Mimi.’
    I was back in the real world, with a thud.
    ‘I’ll tell you something in confidence—’ He broke off as Alicia Merritt and Mimi blew into the living room.
    I had to jump and scream and embrace Alicia in the accepted fashion. If I’d done less, she would have thought I wasn’t happy to see her. Alicia was refreshingly the same, her accent still one of the heaviest I’d ever heard. Her voice dripped magnolias and molasses. When she exclaimed ‘You sweet thing!’ the product sounded like ‘Yew sweeet thang!’ I held our former schoolmate at arm’s length to take a survey.
    ‘You look great, Alicia,’ I said. And I meant it.
    Her short hair was more golden than God had made it, and curlier; but her figure was definitely her own, and still tempting as a ripe peach. Alicia had the happy face and assured manner of someone who has seldom in life denied herself an impulse – someone who has pretty nice impulses, that is.
    ‘How’s Ray?’ I asked, when I decided we’d gushed enough. Mimi beamed in the background.
    ‘Oh, he’s just fine, Nickie. He still has that same old job, though, and he’s on the road all week. At least he comes back home on the weekends. I’m glad I’m not the jealous type!’
    ‘You don’t have anything to worry about,’ I assured her.
    ‘Oh, I’m fat as a butterball,’ Alicia protested untruthfully. ‘And you’re still long and thin and totally gorgeous. It must be staying single that does it.’
    I’d forgotten Alicia’s little needles, the way you tend to forget little faults in otherwise nice people. For a second, this little barb almost got to me. I was off guard and back in the ambience of girlhood, and I actually found myself defensively totting up the proposals I’d received. Shame! If I’d been alone, I would’ve slapped myself for my regression. As it was, I had to clamp my mouth shut: I had been on the verge of retorting, ‘Oh, Alicia, I’m just so
picky!
’
    ‘Where are you all living now?’ I said instead, and promised myself something nice for my restraint. Earrings?
    ‘Didn’t Mimi tell you?’ Alicia gave Mimi a look of mock reproach. ‘We bought the house two doors down from here, the other side of Mrs Harbison, oh I guess about a year ago. So I’ll get to see a lot