She wanted to say L.A., but she didn't. “I'm from Connecticut. New London.”

“I'm from New York. But I hardly ever get back there. Do you get back to Connecticut sometimes?”

“Not if I can help it.” She grinned. “It stopped being fun right about the time they stopped going to Martha's Vineyard, when I went to college. My sister lives there, though.” She and her kids and her incredibly boring husband. It was so hard to relate to any of them, and ever since she'd married Steven, she didn't even try. She knew she had to tell them about the baby one of these days, though, but she wanted to wait until Steven came home, after he came to his senses. It would be just too complicated to explain that she was pregnant and he was gone, let alone why, all of which was why she was trying to put the pregnancy out of her mind for the moment.

“It's too bad you can't make it tonight,” he said forlornly. She nodded, embarrassed about the lie, but it was just easier not to go. She got in the pool and swam again, and he went back to his preparations for dinner, and a little while later he went back to his apartment to marinate the steaks. The barbecue sounded like a big production.

And at five o'clock she went back to her apartment and lay on the bed and tried to read. But she couldn't concentrate. Lately it was hard to do that most of the time, there were just too many things on her mind. And as she lay there, she could hear the sounds of the barbecue going on. At six o'clock people started to arrive. There were music and laughter, and she could hear what sounded like about fifty people. She went out on her deck after a while, where she could hear the noise and smell the food, but they couldn't see her, and she couldn't see them. But it all sounded very festive. There was the clinking of glasses, and someone was playing old Beatles albums and music from the sixties. It sounded like fun, and she was sorry she hadn't gone. But it was too awkward to explain why Steven wasn't there, even though she had said he was in Chicago on business. But it was embarrassing going out alone. She hadn't done it yet, and she wasn't ready to start. But smelling the food was making her desperately hungry. She finally went back downstairs and looked in her fridge, but nothing looked as good as what she smelled, and all of it was too much trouble to cook. She was suddenly dying for a hamburger. It was seven-thirty and she was absolutely starving. She hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, and she wondered if she could just slip into the group, grab something to eat, and disappear again. She could always write Bill Thigpen a check later for what she owed for participating in the dinner. There was no harm in that. It wasn't really like going out. It was just eating. Like going to a fast-food place, or Chinese takeout. She could even grab a hamburger and bring it back. She didn't have to hang around for the party.

She hurried upstairs again, looked in the mirror in her bathroom, combed her hair, pulled it back and tied it with a white satin ribbon, and then she slipped on a white lace Mexican dress she and Steven had bought on a trip to Acapulco. It was pretty and feminine and easy to wear, and hid the tiny bulge that didn't show but made it difficult to wear slacks or jeans now. But it still didn't show in her dresses. She put on silver sandals and big dangly silver earrings. She hesitated for just a moment before she went back downstairs. What if they all had dates, or if she didn't know anyone at all? But even if he had a date, at least she knew Bill Thigpen, and he was always easygoing and friendly. She went downstairs then, and a moment later, she was hovering at the edge of the crowd near one of the big picnic tables where the food was laid out. There were groups of people clustered everywhere, laughing and chatting and telling stories, some were sitting near the pool, with their plates on their laps, or drinking wine, or just relaxing and enjoying the party. Everyone looked as though they were having a good time, and standing at the barbecue in a red-and-white-striped shirt and white pants and a blue apron over them was Bill Thigpen.

Adrian hesitated, watching him, he was handing out steaks with a professional air, and chatting with everyone as they came and went, but he seemed to be alone, not that it really mattered. And she realized then that she didn't even know if he had a girlfriend, not that it really made any difference. But somehow she had assumed that he wasn't involved with anyone. He had always seemed so unencumbered. She walked slowly over to him, and his face broke into a broad smile as he saw her. He took it all in, the white lace dress, the shiny dark hair, her big blue eyes, she looked beautiful, and he was thrilled to see her. He felt like a kid, with a crush on a neighborhood girl. You didn't see her for weeks, and then suddenly you turn a corner, and there she is, looking gorgeous and you feel like a fool, stumbling all over yourself, and then she's gone again, and your whole world is over, until you meet again. Lately, he'd been beginning to feel as though his whole life, or the only worthwhile part of it, was just a series of chance meetings.

“Hi, there!” He blushed, and hoped she thought it was the heat of the barbecue. He wasn't sure why, but she was the first married woman he'd ever had a serious crush on. And it wasn't just that he liked looking at her. He liked talking to her too. The worst of it was that he liked everything about her. “Did you bring your friends?”

“They called at the last minute and said they couldn't make it.” She told the lie with ease, and looked up at him happily as he watched her.

“I'm glad … I mean …yeah, actually, I am glad.” And then he pointed to the meat he was cooking. “What can I do for you? Hot dog, hamburger, steak? I recommend the steaks myself.” He tried to cover what he felt with ordinary pastimes, like cooking dinner. He really did feel like a kid every time he saw her. But so did she. And the funny thing was, all she wanted to do was talk to him. He was always so easy to be with and to talk to.

She had been dying for a hamburger a few minutes ago, but suddenly the steaks looked terrific. “I'll have a steak please. Rare.”

“Coming right up. There's lots of other stuff over there on the table. Fourteen different kinds of salad, some kind of cold soufflé, cheese, Nova Scotia salmon, I don't do anything with that stuff. I'm the barbecue specialist, but go take a look and by the time you get back, I'll have your steak for you.” She did, and he noticed that she had piled her plate with the salads and shrimp and other things she had found at the buffet table. She had a healthy appetite, which was surprising, given how thin she was. She was obviously very athletic.

He put the steak on her plate, offered her some wine, which she declined, and she went to sit near the pool, and he hoped she'd still be there by the time he finished cooking. It was half an hour later when he finally decided he'd done his bit, everyone had been served, and most of the guests had had seconds. Another man, from a condo near his, offered to take over for him, and Bill gladly accepted and went to find Adrian, happily polishing off dessert, as she sat quietly by herself, listening to the people chatting around her.

“How was it? It couldn't have been too bad.” The steak had disappeared, along with everything else she'd had on her plate. She looked embarrassed and laughed self-consciously.

“It was delicious. And I was starving.”

“Good. I hate to cook for people who don't eat. Do you like to cook?” He was curious about her, what she was like, what she did, how happy she was with her husband. It shouldn't have mattered to him, but it did.He could hear alarm bells go off in his head, and he was telling himself to stop, but another, stronger, voice told him not to.

“Sometimes. I'm not very good. I don't have much time to cook.” And no one to cook for. Now, at least. But Steven wasn't much of an eater anyway. He had always preferred just making a salad.

“Not if you do both shows on the evening news. Do you come home between shows?” He wanted to know everything about her.

“Most of the time. Unless there's something really dramatic going on and I can't get out between shows. But generally I come home around seven and go back around ten or ten-thirty. Then I'm home again around midnight.”

“I know.” He smiled. That was usually when they ran into each other in the Safeway.

“You must keep pretty long hours too.” She smiled. She was toying with the apple pie on her plate, embarrassed to devour it while he watched her.

“I do. Some nights I just sleep on the couch at the office.” It made him great company, as any number of women would have been happy to tell her. “Our scripts change so fast sometimes, it shifts everyone's position in the show. It's kind of a ripple effect, and sometimes it's difficult to keep up with. But it's fun too. You ought to see the show sometime.” It sounded like fun to her and they talked about the show for a while, how it had started in New York ten years ago, and eventually he had moved it to California. “The hardest thing about coming out here was leaving my boys,” he said quietly. “They're such great kids. And I really miss them.” He had talked about them before, but there was still a lot about them she didn't know, just as there was about their father.

“Do you see them much?”

“Not as much as I'd like to. They come out for school vacations through the year, and for about a month in the summer. They'll be here in two weeks.” His whole face lit up as he said it, and it touched her to see it.

“What do you do with them when they're here?” Working the way he did, taking care of two young children couldn't be easy.

“I work like a fiend before they come, and then I take four weeks off. I go in once in a while just to keep an eye on things, but basically, much as I hate to admit it, the show does fine without me.” He smiled almost sheepishly over the admission. “We go on a two-week camping trip, and we hang around here for about two weeks. And they love it. I could do without the camping trip. My idea of camping is a week at the Bel-Air Hotel. But it means a lot to them and they love getting grubby and uncomfortable and sleeping in the woods. Actually, we do that for about a week, and we stay at a hotel somewhere for the other week. Like the Ahwahnee in Yosemite, or we go up to Lake Tahoe. A week is about all I can handle in a tent and a sleeping bag, but it's good for us. It keeps me humble.” He laughed, and Adrian finished her apple pie as she listened. They were nervous with each other this time, but it wasn't so much nervous as a kind of excitement. This was the first time they had been together, intentionally, in a social setting.

“How old are they?”

“Seven and ten. They're great kids. You'll see them here at the pool. They think California is all about swimming pools. It's a lot different than Great Neck, outside New York, where they live with their mother.”

“Do they look like you?” Adrian asked with a smile, she could imagine him with two little teddy bear clones, just like him.

“I'm not sure. People say that the little guy does, but I think they both look like their mother.” And then, nostalgically, “We had Adam right away. And it was rough. Leslie had to stop dancing, my wife was a dancer on Broadway then. And I was really struggling. There were times when I really thought we'd starve, but we never did. And the baby was the best thing that ever happened to us. I think that's one of the few things we still agree on. Adam and the show happened at about the same time. I always felt that it was providence sending us what we needed for him, and for us. The show has been good to me for a long time.” He looked appreciative as he talked about it, as though he didn't really deserve it but had been very lucky, and he knew it. And it struck Adrian as she listened to him how different he was from Steven. His children meant a lot to him, and he was very modest about his success. The two men had very little in common. “What about you?” he asked her then. “Do you think you'll stay with the news?”

“I don't know.” She had wondered about that, too, and maybe when she took her maternity leave, she would have time to think about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life, other than being a mother.

“I think about starting another show sometimes. But I never seem to have time to think about it, let alone do it. A Life is still a full-time commitment.”

“Where do you get the ideas for it?” she asked, sipping at a glass of lemonade someone had poured her.

“God knows.” He smiled. “Real life, my head. Anything that comes to mind and seems to fit. It's all about the kinds of things that happen in people's lives, all poured into one pot and stirred around. People do the damnedest things, and get into the most incredible situations.” She nodded pensively. She knew exactly what he meant, and he was watching her expression. And when she looked up again, her eyes met his, and she looked as though she was about to say something, but she didn't.