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to my work. Fifteen minutes to showtime. I still needed to be wired. A bubble of panic rose in my throat. Arthur nodded to me, then in Rorry's direction. While Jack and Eileen leafed through the script to make sure I had every single ingredient, I hurried over to the screen.
    "Rorry?" I asked nervously. "Remember me? Goldy? Fellow church school teacher? Supervisor of kids carving clay tablets of the Ten Commandments?" One of our more memorable projects, the tablet-making had been surpassed only by the blowing of horns to bring down the Sunday school walls, a la Jericho.
    Rorry turned and faced me. She was wearing a sagging gray sweatshirt, and looked uneasy and out of place. She was dunking a tea bag into hot water. Her look was unexpectedly defiant.
    "I'm sorry," I stumbled on, wishing I hadn't tried to be funny. "This day must remind you of Nate - "
    "Long time no see, Goldy." Rorry's face was unreadable, her tone bitter. She slurped some tea. "Don't feel sorry for me."
    "I'm so sorry," I repeated, in spite of what she'd said. "Didn't mean to upset you - "
    "I'm not upset," she interrupted. "Just puzzled."
    . "About what?" My question sounded stupid, even to me. I shakily wired the microphone Arthur handed me through my double-breasted chef's jacket.
    "Two minutes," he warned. "Mrs. Bullock, I don't suppose we could convince you to say a few words for PBS - "
    "No!" Rorry's reply was nearly a shout. The hand holding the plastic cup trembled; pale green tea slopped out. Arthur rushed away.
    "Rorry," I murmured. "I just heard about the, your, other loss. I didn't know about the baby, and I know you loved Nate - "
    "Nate is the only man I've ever loved," she cut in fiercely.
    Why the rudeness? I didn't get it. My cheeks reddened. Why did I always make things worse when I was nervous? "I know you did - "
    Rorry lifted her chin. "You don't know a thing, Goldy."
    She walked away from the screen, toward the spectators' seats. Slowly, she seated herself. I gasped, stunned. During my years of marriage to my first husband, Doctor John Richard Korman, a.k.a. The Jerk, I'd seen plenty of his ob-gyn patients. I could read them pretty well. Why had no one told me about Rorry?
    Three years after the death of the only man she swore she'd ever loved, Rorry Bullock was nine months pregnant.
    I didn't have time to reflect on Rorry and her condition, though. Arthur raced back and sternly ordered me to test my mike. I nodded, swallowed, and rasped, one, two, six. My tongue was dry. When Arthur moved away, I poured myself a glass of water from the hot line sink. Had Rorry remarried? Did she have a lover? What was going on?
    Don't be preoccupied while you're on TV, everyone will be able to tell something's wrong, Arthur had warned when we'd first begun shooting. After the turkey-boning and sauce-spilling incidents, I'd concentrated harder. Now Arthur - clutching Pepto and clipboard-murmured into his headset about the sequence of shots. He rechecked the audio for the six-person phone bank. Then he trotted over and delivered a last set of directorial laws: "Never admit you've made a mistake. We'll break at the halfway point to show a clip from one of Nate's old shows. Watch the screen, watch your time, but don't be obvious. I'll signal you."
    Finally he backed away. I blinked into the bright lights, forced myself to clear my mind, and shuffled through my notes. Do the egg rolls first. On the counter, the delicate wrappers lay next to the glimmering bowls of stuffing. Quickly, the crab cokes. Talk about how satisfying a hot, succulent shellfish dish is after skiing.
    On the hot line's closest stovetop, a finished set of crab cakes was waiting for the final shot of the entree. Lost, do the dessert. I would have preferred a chocolate treat, but Arthur said chocolate was too tricky with dessert wine. So I was making gingersnaps. The wine Arthur had paired with them cost seventy-five dollars a pop.
    Arthur morosely called for silence, then counted down