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boat people, and was accessible only by water—had been happy to take my reservation. Romance, again; I had found that little out-of-the-way restaurant, barely half full on a Friday night in August, where we could sit on an open deck built out into the bay and watch the distant lights of Long Island beneath a sky full of stars.
    Betty sipped at her sherry, while I pulled gently on my rum and tonic. She said, “I understand you and your brother are in business together.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said, and prompted by her friendly inquisitive look I added, “We’re in publishing.”
    â€œOh, publishing!” she said happily, making the same mistake I’d made with Lydia. “Do you mean books?” More cautious than I’d been, you’ll notice.
    â€œOh, nothing that grand,” I said, in my modest way. “We have a small line of greeting cards. Like Hallmark, you know.”
    â€œOh, really! That’s fascinating.” And apparently it was, since she went on from there to ask several hundred questions about the company. My answers were generally more descriptive of Hallmark than of Those Wonderful Folks, but the gist was there.
    Meantime, nothing was happening on the food front “Excuse me,” I finally said to Betty, and snagged the waiter as he pirouetted by. He assured me our appetizers were scant seconds from delivery, but his manner struck me as shifty-eyed, so I ordered another sherry for Betty and another rum-and for me. “By Pony Express, all right?”
    â€œCertainly, sir.” And he gamboled off.
    â€œYou’re very masterful,” Betty told me. Her disappointment that I was not my brother seemed to have waned. In fact, she now said, “I bet you have the business head in the family, don’t you?”
    â€œOh, we both do our share,” I said.
    Still, she pursued the subject, and I gradually permitted myself to admit that Art was more the clever intuitive member of the family, while I was the practical one who kept the company stable and afloat. “Liz and I are like that,” Betty said. “She’s just so clever and witty sometimes, and I’m the plain practical one.”
    â€œNot plain,” I assured her. Reaching across the table, I squeezed her hand. “Anything but plain.”
    She squeezed back. “You are nice,” she said.
    Then it was back to the greeting card company, and now she wanted to know if we did all the “verses” ourselves, or did we accept work from “free-lancers.” On the assumption that Mr. Hallmark doesn’t do all his own writing, I said, “Oh, we buy most of our verses from professionals.”
    Something flustered and coy overtook her now, and she said, “You may not believe this, but I write verses myself.”
    My heart sank. “Do you really?”
    â€œOh, not for publication, just for family occasions. I don’t suppose I’m good enough to be a real professional.”
    Nor did I. However, I now had no choice; it was required of me that I coax her, blushing and reluctant, to quote me some of her crap. Which at last, of course, she consented to do.
    â€œI wrote this for my mother’s fiftieth birthday,” she said. “Mother, when I think of all/The things you’ve done for me,/I know no other mother could/Compare on land or sea./I think you’re sweet, I think you’re great/In short, I think you’re nifty—”
    â€œOh, good!” I said. “Here come our drinks.”

    â€œG OOD MORNING, SWEETHEART.”
    I must be awake; nobody could dream a headache this bad. Cautiously—or incautiously, as it turned out—I opened one eye, and a needle of sunlight struck straight through into my brain. “Holy Mother of God!” I groaned, and snapped the eyelid shut again over my charred eyeball.
    A smell of coffee threatened my stomach with upheaval, and a voice I recognized said,