Tammi, Debbie, Dori, Kristi, Marci, Angie, Barbi — in Florida it was the diminutive all in vogue, never mind the lady's age or true dimensions. Take Tammi, for instance, working the adjoining chair: a crimson-lipped pudding of a woman, had to carry an easy one-eighty on a fireplug frame, sun-creased fortyish face, set of lungs would make a drill sergeant proud. Kittenish, you couldn't call her. Or the one busily snipping away at the shag of hair coiling over his ears and trailing south on the back of his neck. Stood six feet in her working flats. Tack on a good three inches in the killer heels she habitually wore for her other, after-hours employment with Bennie's Key Line Services, Inc. Piecework, she liked to call that supplemental vocation, giggling over her excellent joke. She went by "Steffi," out of "Stephanie," but moving rapidly and, he supposed, inevitably toward an even more truncated Steff ("Hey, Steff," Tammi was braying at her now, "loan me a bottle of that jojoba?"). Give it enough time and she'll answer to nothing more than a sibilant hiss.

And after prison you could give him another thousand years and he'd still never feel right in these unisex salons, all gleaming mirrors and walls of amber-tinted glass and may-I-put-you-on-hold music sedating the chill conditioned air. Pungent perfumes of hair spray, shampoo, perm solution, mousse, jojoba — whatever that was. And the voices, the incessant chattery voices — female mostly, at this time of day — quacking about diets, fashions, Caribbean cruises, dinner parties, shiftless domestic help. Wildly amusing anecdotes and general discontents. Like Steffi was doing just then, regaling him with a tale of an obnoxious client who demanded a nostrils trim.

"I'm telling you, Tim, this twink had bristles coming out his nose, looked like a couple Brillo pads. He goes, 'But you do my ears,' and I go, 'Hey, heads, eyebrows, ears — fine. No problem. But no noses. Thanks a whole heap, but no thanks.' "

"You've got to draw the line somewhere," Waverly said. Say anything to keep her moving, get himself out of here.

Wrong approach. Instead, what she did was pause in the efficient circuiting of his skull and stab the scissors perilously close to his face, punctuation to her annoyance. "That's what I said. That's exactly what I told him. You don't, next thing it'll be your basic cling-ons they want clipped, right? You know what I'm talking here, cling-ons?"

Waverly nodded, to signify he understood.

"Well, when that happens, that's when little Steff starts looking for another line of work."

She was nothing if not earthy, little Steff.

"Speaking of that," she said, voice descending to a confidential murmur, "when you fellas look to be off the shelf?"

Not your most subtle segue. Waverly said he didn't know.

"What's it been? Couple months?"

"At least."

"Things ought to be chilling out by now, all the juice Bennie's got."

"He hasn't got that much anymore."

"What's he hear?"

"Not a lot."

"Well, when's he coming back?"

Some urgent fishing going on here. He understood why, and he could sympathize. But he wasn't about to reveal Bennie's latest scheme, a strategy born out of purest desperation. "Don't know that either. This weekend maybe."

"Reason I ask is, see, Lonnie got laid off again. And Darryl's tuition's coming up. I could use some action."

Lonnie, he remembered, was the boyfriend of record, Darryl the son, a sophomore at FAU. Nose-packers, both of them, came weighted down with costly habits. They kept her scrambling.

"The fact is," he said, "it doesn't look good for us. Not in this vicinity. You might want to think about going solo."

"Jesus, Tim, anymore that's not so easy."

"I know." He lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. "What can I tell you?"

It took her no more than a moment to dismiss that disagreeable notion. "Bennie'll come through with something," she said, resuming the brisk scissoring. "He always delivers."

An optimist, if Brecht had it right, is someone who hasn't yet got the bad news. Bennie was never one to broadcast disaster, so by that definition Steffi surely qualified. In no other respect, though, was her myopic faith in the happy ending justified. Waverly tried to understand the contours of her peculiar reality, but it wasn't easy. She figured to be somewhere near his own age, pushing deep into the thirties and beginning to show signs of fraying at the edges, same as he. Medusa ringlets bleached a startling platinum framed the vacantly pretty face of an amiable sheep. But splayed out from eyes hooded with purple shadow was a network of fissures settling under the layers of paint. And blue veins, time's notarized seal, were tunneling visibly through her nimble hands. Alas for little Steffi, clinging stubbornly to a forced girlishness in the face of the departing years. The ultimate Florida calamity. It was sad.

"So how about you?" she asked. "How you holding up?"

The condo gone, car hocked, bank account emptied, living out of a damp-sheets efficiency on the beach, less than a dime on his hip — not so famously was how he was holding up, but that wasn't the sort of thing you announced. That much he'd learned from Bennie. "Doing just fine," he said.

In the mirror her reflected face registered a mild impatience. "No, getting by, I mean."

"I'm keeping my head down, Steffi. Gone to ground." In the wan hope she'd take the hint, speed it along, he added, "By rights, I shouldn't even be here."

"What happened anyway, Tim? All this steam coming down."

So much for hints. What happened? Ah, there lies a melancholy tale. But not one he was disposed to share with her. "You got me," he said.

"But out of like nowhere like that. And why just Bennie? You know Armand Zender, operates out of Pompano? Look at him. His people are still working."

She had this pressing need for answers. Couldn't leave it alone. "Maybe it was our turn in the barrel," Waverly said.

"It still don't add up."

Not unless you had all the numbers, which she didn't. Missing for her was the pivotal half of the equation. The Michigan half: another stiff to his credit (or shame, depending on your perspective), this one gone up in flames with half a mil worth of sniff, and a hardballer name of Dietz dogging his heels ever since. "You got any idea who it is you was fuckin' with up there in Michigan?" Bennie had demanded once he heard that name. No idea. "Where you been, boy?" Sheltered, evidently. But not for long. "Just Dietz is all," his dismayed partner had been quick to inform him, letting the squawky monosyllable hang ominously in the air a moment. "Gunter Dietz. Lemme fill you in on his weight. It ain't fly." And now this Dietz — deep pockets, long memory, a weight something heavier than fly — now he was come to collect. And there was no skating out of this one. Their turn in the barrel indeed.

But to Steffi all he could say was, "It's a mystery." Best he had to offer. Thinking about it made him edgy, so he added, in gentle prompting, "Listen, are we about finished here?"

"Hey, you come in looking like the Wolfman, it's gonna take some time. Relax. Almost done." A few more quick passes with the scissors and she was satisfied. She stepped back and studied the results of her art critically. "So what do you think?"

Waverly gazed at the likeness gazing back at him out of the polished mirror. In contrast with the black cape drawn up around the neck, the face looked extraordinarily pale. Also worried, older. But not, he was obliged to conclude, one snippet wiser, to which his very presence here testified: out in the world in the pitiless light of day, careless of Bennie's sound advice to stay buried till the heat got lifted. The now neatly barbered hair seemed to have more gray in it, and the vertical cleft between the brows and the lines of parentheses around the nose were deep as trenches. Distress furrows of a man nursing a persistent grinding headache. Which in a figurative way is what he'd been, these past months. "You do good work," he said, for something to say.

Steffi gave him an impish look. "Yeah, that's what all you nasty men tell me. I know you." She removed the cape with a grand flourish, whisked the stray hairs from his collar and said, "Ta-da! Welcome back to the human race. Next time don't wait so long."

More advice. Everybody's a counselor these days. He got his wallet and counted out some bills, laying a fifty on top of the standard charge. It wasn't much. Most he could manage.

The look turned to genuine gratitude. "Thanks, Tim. I can use it."

He put a hand in the air. "Nothing, forget it."

She followed him to the front of the salon. At the door she glanced about quickly and whispered, "Any buzz comes down, you let me know, will you?"

"I'll do what I can, Steff."

"You're a good shit, Waverly. Always was. Take real special care now, y'hear?"

He stood there a moment, filling his pallid face with the late afternoon sun. Good shit Waverly, nowhere to go but a scummy apartment in Roach Arms, and nothing to do but watch and worry and wait. Taking some care, if not the kind that qualified as real special. At the other end of the small strip mall was a tavern with a sign that laid immodest claim to the world's coldest beer and finest burgers. It was almost five o'clock, and he supposed he was hungry. Or ought to be. Thirsty, maybe. Okay, stalling.

He scanned the parking lot cautiously. A scattering of vehicles, Bennie's pink Seville among them, last flagship of a forfeited fleet. Some shimmery pools of water standing in the seams of the asphalt, remnants of the routine midday downpour. A few shoppers hurrying here and there, fleeing the muggy heat. Over to his left, traffic streaking down Old Dixie Highway. And to the right, along the line of storefronts, no one even remotely suspicious-looking. Nothing out of order anywhere, as far as he could tell. He stepped out into the lot and headed for the tavern.

When he was no more than halfway there, an urgent, upward-inflected voice summoned him: "Timothy? Timothy Waverly?" Instinctively, he ducked behind the nearest car and spun around and discovered an owner to go with the voice, a woman coming through the door of the salon, sprinting toward him. And across some forty yards of south Florida parking lot and the considerably wider distance of the years, he recognized her at once. Of all the unlikely people in all the improbable places. He came out from behind the car and waited till she overtook him. And then, shaking his head slowly from side to side, he said her name. "Caroline."

"Timothy. It's really you."

"None other."

"When I saw you leaving the shop, I knew it was you. I just knew it."

That fact established, she wrapped joyous arms around him, and in the instant they clung together he was conscious of the glow of her body and the delicate fragrance of her hair. A swarm of memories buzzed in his head. Simultaneously, they ungripped and stood gaping at each other in that momentary daze that freights any too-sudden breach in the steady flow of time.

"You look.. .wonderful," she said finally, a bit uncertainly.

"You, too," he said, only meaning it. The same clear, wide-spaced eyes, cobalt blue with sprinklings of gold. Same abundance of hair rising off the high white brow and splashed over the slender neck and shoulders in a tumbling wash of honey curls. Same cleanly defined bones in a heart-shaped face innocent of makeup but for a touch of coral on the lips. Luster of youth still in the skin. Remarkable. And that's pretty much how he put it: "Like you've been preserved in ice, Caroline."

She rewarded him with a brief, whimsical smile. "I knew there was something absent in my life all these years. How many now?"

"Got to be fifteen."

"Fifteen," she repeated around a rueful sigh, as though the full weight of the number had only just occurred to her.

"Robbie? How's he doing?"

"Robbie? Same as ever. No, that's not right. Better than ever. You know Robbie."

He thought he detected an edge in her voice, the barest trace of irony. Unless he was mistaken. He said, "You two still in Boston?"

"Oh no. Houston. Since 1980."

"Robbie with a firm there?"

"In a manner of speaking. He's got some partners. They're into a lot of things."

"Children. No doubt you have children."

"Boy and a girl, one each. Just slightly under the two-point-two national average for an upscale family like ourselves."

No mistaking the self-mockery in that. He wasn't sure what to say, so he dealt another banality. "And what is it brings you to sunshine heaven?"

"Vacation, I suppose you'd call it. Actually, more of a working vacation, for Robbie anyway. He's become quite the entrepreneur."

"Good for him," Waverly said, watching her. The same Caroline, yes, but taller than he remembered, slimmer, infinitely more elegant somehow. Maybe it was the outfit: candy-striped silk blouse, designer jeans looped by a tooled cowboy belt, carelessly scuffed docksiders. The knockabout wear of the rich. Slung over her shoulder was a soft buckskin handbag with western studs and stitches to match the belt. Around one wrist a gold tennis bracelet laced with tiny glittery diamonds, lady's Rolex on the other. Couple of small stones on the fingers, nothing gaudy. All her easy natural grace, only magnified now by money. That, he decided, was the difference. That, and the peculiar restiveness in her eyes, the odd fluttery motions of emphasis her hands made whenever she spoke.

As now: "What I want to know is what you're doing here."

"Getting my hair cut. Same as you, it seems. Styled, I guess, in your case."

"No, here" Her gesture went floating past him to include by implication a wider region.

"Here? This is where I live."

"But I thought — well, wed heard ..." She let it trail away. Her face worked through various attitudes, as though not quite certain which one was right. Her eyes searched the ground.

It figured, of course, that she'd know. But it didn't take her long to get to it either. "It's over four years now I've been on the street," he said, a little stiffly. "Paid my debt. Rehabilitated, you might say. More or less."

"I'm sorry, Timothy. About what happened. I wanted to write but I couldn't think of anything to say. I'm truly sorry."

"You shouldn't worry about it."

"I do though. I worried about you."

A silence opened between them. Caroline Vanzoren Crown, sweet Dutch girl grown into this sleek girl-woman, and still worrying about him, or so she said. Robbie Crown, the nearest there had been to a friend in that other life of his, long since vanished, departed to the Ultima Thule of blurred and wistful memory. A lot of past going on here. On impulse he said, "Look, you have time for a drink?" He caught the quick glance at the watch. "You don't, that's all right, too."

Now she lifted her eyes and fixed him with a fond gaze. "Nothing I'd rather do, Timothy Waverly."

"Terrific. There's a place right over —"

"But I can't."

Waverly examined his palms. "I understand."

"No you don't. In about two hours there's a cocktail party over on The Island. Command performance, wives will be there. I've got to get back to the hotel and arrange my face. In every sense of that awful expression, by the way."

"It's okay, Caroline."

"It's not okay. But we're going to make it so it will be." She fumbled through the handbag, came up with a pen and a scrap of paper, scribbled something, and handed it to him. "That's our room number. We're at the Breakers. Tomorrow it's our turn to host the nightly fest. Seven o'clock. You're instructed to attend."

"We'll see."

"You'll come, Timothy. If you don't I'll have you tracked down and trussed and delivered to the door." Her face clouded suddenly. "Oh, maybe that's not so funny."

He let it go by. "We'll see," he said again.

"That's not good enough. You've got to come. Robbie'd do me in if you didn't. Say it."

"Say what?"

"You'll be there."

He thought about it, but not for long. Palm Beach (or The Island, as the locals and other hip insiders liked to call it), the Breakers, the frolicking rich — it was probably safe. And anyway, there were twenty-four solitary hours to reconsider. "I'll be there."

"Good. It's settled, then. Now walk me to my car."

She slipped an arm through his and led the way to a silver Jaguar at the end of the file.

"Nice machine," he said.

"It's a loaner. One of Robbie's partners in intrigue. Guess what I drive at home."

"You're not going to tell me a wagon."

"Bingo."