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Mr. Paul Feder; Ms. Marianne Montgomery; Ms. Diana Montgomery; a couple she didn’t know; and, at the bottom of the list, just below her own name, Mr. Edward Norwood. No Mrs. Norwood was listed.
    Taking a deep breath, Charlotte went back to her chair and picked up her drink and the copy of L’Atlantique . The headline was “100th Crossing of Normandie. ” The front page featured a story on the crossing, along with photographs of the ship. The middle two pages were taken up by a photo layout of celebrities who had sailed on the ship in the one hundred crossings since its maiden voyage in 1935. They were displayed according to category: stage, screen, society, sports, diplomatic service, and so on. The back page listed all the records that had been broken by the Normandie , including 572,519 bottles of wine and champagne consumed in one hundred voyages.
    Setting down the paper, she then picked up the menu. The cover was the same as the menu aboard the Normandie : a colorful drawing of fish, poultry, game, fruit, and wine. Seeing it brought back memories of that marvelous dining room, which had been the length of a football field—supposedly the largest single room ever built aboard a ship.
    Inside, the menu was headed:
    SS Normandie
    Diner de Gala
    Samedi 16 Juillet 1938
    The menu was typical of the first-class dining room, with eight courses, ranging from hors d’oeuvres and potages to fromages and pâtisserie .
    “Yes,” she thought, “it’s going to be quite an evening.”
    Spalding and Connie picked her up in front of the Brazilan Court at five-thirty. Marianne would be going with Paul, and Dede would be going on her own. Charlotte was waiting for them as they pulled up in Spalding’s ten-year-old Cadillac. Though he came from wealth, Spalding was a throwback to an earlier, more conservative era of society in a Palm Beach that was rapidly being taken over by junk bond financiers, German industrialists, and fifteen-minute celebrities. It was typical of Spalding’s old-money social stratum that they drove cars until they fell apart. Charlotte was enormously fond of him. He sat now behind the wheel, portly, rubicund, and comfortingly dependable, attired in the same English-tailored tuxedo that he’d been wearing to social events for as long as Charlotte had known him. Finding a thirties-style tuxedo wouldn’t have been a problem for Spalding, since his own was probably of that vintage. Though Connie had been married three times, her marriage to Spalding had lasted now for more than twenty years and seemed as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar. In fact, Charlotte suspected that her own subconscious envy of their marriage had been one reason she had married her fourth husband. As with Spalding, Jack Lundstrom’s appeal had been his dependability. But Charlotte should have known that what worked for Connie wouldn’t work for her. Though she and Jack had worked very hard at making a go of it, they’d eventually come to recognize that Charlotte wasn’t cut out to be the wife of a Midwestern businessman—she especially hadn’t been cut out to live in Minneapolis!—and Jack was unsuited to play the part of Mr. Charlotte Graham. After several years of vacillating, they’d parted amicably a couple of years ago.
    After four husbands, Charlotte figured it was time to put the whole “men” issue to rest. It had taken her some time to come to terms with this decision, which is why she was finding the anticipated meeting with Eddie Norwood so disturbing.
    “You look beautiful this evening, Charlotte,” said Spalding politely as the doorman helped her into the back seat. “As always,” he added.
    “Thank you,” she replied. “This is the gown that I wore in The Normandie Affair . I haven’t had it on in fifty-three years.”
    “I’m amazed you could still fit into it,” said Connie, referring to her own plump figure, which was clothed in a diaphanous blue gown that matched the sapphires in her gem-encrusted