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the smoky woman. Even in her worn, sleeveless dress, gray denim, it appeared, plainer than all the other dresses, the woman was utterly striking. Louise felt embarrassed to look at her and yet did not know where to turn her eyes. She was not accustomed to this feeling, which she realized was jealousy.
    As if reading this, Nora looked straight at Louise and locked in the connection. “I think the whiskey is talking in all of us. With that disclaimer, I can say this: As a poet, I hope I can communicate with both the realists and the dreamers.”
    “Hear, hear,” said Sam, chortling. He was a slight but handsome man Louise and Bill had talked to several times in the yard. They had stood as if on either side of a nonexistent fence—fences were not fashionable in Sylvan Valley—while his friendly little dog did figure eights around their legs. “You’ve expressed a noble sentiment, Nora. It’s dated nonsense to divide people into categories, especially us. Although of all of us, I’d identify Nora as one of the true dreamers of this world.” He turned all his attention to her. “I can tell from your garden alone—all those lilies, and thistles, pretty little white things scrambling over the rocks …”
    “She is a dreamer, indeed,” said her husband, Ron, in a lazy baritone voice. Large, elegant, with white hair, he seemed much older than his wife, whom Louise had pegged to be about her own age. “Any person who can back our new car into a concrete wall at the rear of a parking lot because she was thinking so hard about a poem surely qualifies as a dreamer.”
    Everyone laughed. Nora smiled and put a garden-worn hand gracefully on her husband’s knee. “Darling,” she said in a soft, low voice that caused the others to lean closer to hear, “please don’t give Louise and Bill a distorted picture of us.” She looked first at Bill and then at Louise. “Despite his remarks, he is not a chauvinist, and I don’t want you to think that he is. As for the women being the realists, I see more than just that: I see in Jan and Laurie and Mary people who help other people achieve their dreams, whether they’re schoolchildren, or shoppers, or people in developing countries. As for myself, well …”
    All ten of them waited, silent, while she paused. “I am not
just
a poet; I am a published poet with an agent who gets fifteen percent—which places me, just like all of us here, with one foot in the order of dreamers and the other foot in the order of realists.”
    Merry applause greeted her words. Nora smiled gently at them. Ron grinned and reached over and massaged his wife’s supple arm. Eric took final drink orders.
    This woman could make an interesting friend … or would it be enemy?

4
Lunch at Pomodoro

    P ETER SCOOPED IN THE LAST FORKFUL OF creamed herring, then carefully patted his mouth with the white linen napkin. His eye caught that of one of the other diners, and he realized this person and probably others in the restaurant were watching. It wasn’t him; it was because the president’s well-known chief of staff, Tom Paschen, sat opposite him. They occupied Paschen’s favorite table at Pomodoro, apparently the man’s favorite restaurant.
    Peter knew most celebrities liked tablesin corners. But this one was in a bay window overlooking the restaurant’s on-the-street herb garden, where even now through Belgian lace curtains Peter could see a Mexican planted in midstoop, picking large basil leaves off thriving two-foot bushes. These were for use in their renowned hors d’ocuvre, toast with fresh tomato slice and fresh mozzarella, topped with basil leaves and drizzled with olive oil. Which Paschen was finishing right now. Peter wished he’d ordered it rather than the herring.
    He leaned back and in the process dwarfed the captain’s chair with his large frame. He peered down through thick-lensed aviator glasses to be sure no herring had landed on his tie. Satisfied that there was none, he looked over