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apartment, crossed to
the dresser and studied her image in the mirror one last time. The
word drab sprang to mind.
    Most of the clothing she owned had been
purchased for work and the cooler climate of Washington
state—wools, tweeds, silk blouses and tailored suits. One local
shopping trip had harvested the sleeveless shift she’d worn last
night and the cotton walking shorts she was wearing now. The
cream-colored shell she had on looked too formal, but it would have
to do. If Joe had been looking for a babe, he wouldn’t have
proposed marriage to Pamela.
    She gathered up her map, her purse, and her
cocktail napkin and left the apartment. This time, she noticed,
Kitty’s curtains were open. She told herself she only wanted a
clarification of where Joe lived, but deep inside she knew she
really needed a pep talk. If anything, she was edgier today than
she’d been last night. Perhaps Kitty could offer some guidance.
    Pamela tapped lightly on Kitty’s door. “Hold
your goddamn horses!” Kitty’s voice bellowed from inside.
    Pamela’s tension increased. She didn’t know
much about her neighbor, other than that she worked the evening
shift at the Shipwreck, her hair was bleached a radioactive shade
of blond, and she had the sort of physical endowments that made
women like Pamela feel pathetically scrawny. Yet something about
Kitty had put Pamela at ease yesterday morning, when they’d met in
the laundry room. As they’d folded their clothing across a long
Formica-topped table from each other, Kitty had somehow convinced
Pamela that Joe was the greatest thing since French fries and if
Pamela didn’t marry him she’d regret it for the rest of her
life.
    “ Marry him?” Pamela had
asked, wondering why, if this guy was so great, he needed Kitty to
find him a wife.
    “ He’s got a legal situation.
Nothing major, nothing criminal. It’s just, he’s looking for a fine
upstanding woman like yourself who’ll serve as his wife for a short
while. Someone who’ll take his name and wear his ring. Nothing
serious.”
    Nothing serious? Pamela had thought. Taking a
man’s name and wearing his ring sounded pretty serious to her. So
serious she wouldn’t consider it. Pamela was definitely not the
home-and-hearth type. She was devoted to her career and her craft,
and she’d always been an exceedingly private person. Marriage meant
opening up to someone else, making oneself vulnerable, feeling
someone else’s fears as longings as if they were one’s own. Pamela
simply wasn’t ready to make a commitment like that, and everyone
who knew her knew that.
    Which meant that if she got married, the
likelihood of her being found, by Mick Morrow or anyone else, might
decrease. Who would hunt for a single-minded, independent woman
like architect Pamela Hayes in a cozy, domestic setting? Who would
expect to find her doing her impersonation of a wife?
    “ Marry him,” she’d ruminated
once Kitty had run out of superlatives for Joe.
    “ Yeah. He’d make one helluva
husband. And you better believe I know a thing or two about
marriage.”
    Pamela smoothed the cocktail napkin between
her hands and gazed hopefully at the open curtains, longing for
Kitty to give her another inspiring speech before she paid a call
on what might soon become her new home.
    At last the door swung open. Kitty filled the
doorway, a vision of wild platinum hair and cleavage in a colorful
silk kimono. Her face broke into a smile. “Oh, Pamela! I didn’t
realize it was you. I thought it was this jerk who tried to pick me
up at the bar last night. A real loser, you know? Swore he was the
reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway, which was reason enough to want
to punch him in the nose. He kept saying he was going to look me up
in the phone book and come after me.”
    Pamela found nothing amusing about that. Her
own experience with Mick Morrow made her suspicious to the point of
paranoia about men who threatened to come after women. She stepped
inside Kitty’s