It was the last sentence the woman uttered before she left the beauty shop.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come home.”

Virginia Sargent looked at the fragile Vietnamese girl sitting across from her at the manicure table. Intense in her concentration as she put the finishing bright cherry glaze on Virginia’s right-hand nails, the girl hadn’t moved a hairbreadth in reaction. Of course, Virginia decided, the language barrier. During the entire extraordinary conversation between the woman and Virginia, the doll-like manicurist had remained, except for her diligent nail work, impassive.

Well, then, Virginia wondered, to whom were the woman’s words directed? A panning glance in either direction of the beauty shop did not reveal anyone who reacted to the remark. And since neither Jack, Virginia’s husband, nor Basil, their dog, were among the missing at last roll call, Virginia dismissed any thought that the words were meant for her.

Then why did the woman’s words trigger a sense of ominous expectation? Face it, she addressed herself, that woman knows more about my personal life than it’s possible for a stranger to know.

Virginia had met the woman only a short while before.

She had been sitting at the manicure table, her nails just finished by the same girl who was about to do Virginia’s nails.

The woman had remained seated, waiting for the polish to dry while Virginia, obeying the marching orders of the tyrannical shop owner Mel, had planted herself on the chair next to her.

In a beauty parlor women engage each other in conversation. It is commonplace, coincidental, banal. When the woman had said, “You have beautiful hands,” Virginia was flattered, of course—her hands were, indeed, one of her greatest assets—but not surprised.

“My grandmother’s legacy,” she had replied.

“I’m sure she wanted you to have them,” the woman said. It was an oddly original remark that sparked interest.

“She was a lovely lady,” Virginia had said. “Beautiful in every way.”

“Yes,” the woman said, “she is a grand lady.”

Surely, Virginia decided, she had misunderstood the tense. Often people made little slips in describing time. Her grandmother had died nearly a decade ago.

“She certainly was,” Virginia said, noting that the woman continued to observe her hands. In the brief silence, she felt a strange sense of intimacy.

Virginia studied the woman. She was impressive. Big brown eyes flecked with bright yellow that did not waver when she spoke, two intense beams, hot with the kind of observation that might make a woman press her thighs together. God knew what a man’s reaction might be.

Her face was miraculously unlined, barely a squint wrinkle to be seen and her teeth were the kind of sparkling pearl white Virginia hoped her dentist could equal through the bonding process she was undergoing. Physically impressive, yes, but just short of exquisite, Virginia had concluded with her artist’s eye. Neck too long. Lips not full enough for dynamite sensuality. On a scale of one to ten, only a solid nine. Only? she sighed, repressing a giggle.

It was the kind of judgment befitting the time and place. After all, in a beauty parlor one judged beauty.

But the woman’s real seductive power was in her voice. It seemed to come from deep inside her. No twangs or high pitches. It was perfectly modulated and rhythmical, as if the words she uttered were accompanied by background music heard only by herself.

Virginia broke the brief silence. “Do you come to Mel’s often?” she had asked.

“Occasionally,” the woman had answered.

“Mel’s is very convenient for me,” Virginia had felt compelled to explain. Living on Rising Glen in the hills above West Hollywood, she could be home in ten minutes barring traffic.

“Probably wise,” the woman said. “Not that the twins are a problem. Especially during the soccer season.”

“I’m thankful for that.” This said, Virginia paused abruptly. Had she mentioned that she had twin daughters who played soccer?

“You know them?” she had asked.

“Not exactly,” the woman had replied, offering a smile.

“Are you one of the teachers at their school?” Virginia had asked. Even in the asking, it seemed far off the mark.

The woman shook her head gently, keeping her smile.

“You’ve seen us around?” Virginia had asked.

“I suppose,” the woman had responded.

The woman’s answers had been vague and the puzzle persisted in Virginia’s mind.

“I know,” she had said, as if it were a game, “you’re a client of my husband’s.” A picture of Jack’s office flashed in her mind. On his desk was a photograph of her and the kids. Two peas in a pod, they were unmistakably identical.

The woman threw her head back in a throaty, sophisticated laugh. “I don’t buy stocks,” she said.

“So you do know he’s a stockbroker?”

“Yes.”

Virginia wondered if she might have met the woman before at Mel’s, although she could not remember even the most casual encounter. On her part, Virginia had a standing appointment at the beauty shop every Friday afternoon. For the past month she had scheduled her bonding appointment at her dentist’s earlier to dovetail with her hair appointment. Keeping up appearances, after all, was an important part of the California life-style, wasn’t it?

She had a secret agenda, as well, she assured herself. It gave the weekend a certain aura, as if she were preparing herself for some romantic interlude with Jack.

Lately, he was too distracted to participate. Their brief couplings took place on Sunday mornings and were hardly memorable. Still, the Friday ritual, if anything, kept hope alive.

Virginia felt a momentary shiver. Did this woman know about her sex life as well as everything else? She dismissed the idea. Perhaps the woman was having a joke at her expense. She searched her mind for some other explanation. “We’ve met socially.”

“No, we haven’t.”

“Ever?” Virginia had asked.

“Not even in Connecticut,” the woman had said.

“Are you from Connecticut, too?” Virginia had asked. She and Jack were rooted there. Connecticut was home. Forever home, she sighed, feeling once again waves of loss and nostalgia. It was one of the secret afflictions of her new life.

“Afraid not, but I hear it’s a pretty place.”

“It wasn’t easy to leave,” Virginia had said, her voice no louder than a whisper. Pain radiated through her psyche. The move had been a traumatic yank, but Jack’s company had made an offer impossible to refuse. “I’ll make it so special, Connecticut will fade faster than autumn flowers,” Jack had assured her. The poetic promise seemed to set the stage for the fantasy. “Wither thou goest, we goeth,” she responded finally, hiding her New England sense of terror at being tossed among strangers.

“And out there in the sun, you’ll be able to paint at last,” Jack had promised, a tantalizing prospect. When she and Jack married, Virginia had postponed her one burning ambition, working instead as a commercial artist for an advertising agency. Then the twins had come.

“You’re one helluva salesman, Jack,” she had responded.

“And two fifty a year guaranteed ain’t chopped liver,” he had emphasized, a compelling argument. To Jack, upward financial mobility was an article of faith. Not that she was against it, but for him it was, after the family, the ultimate priority.

He had assured her that the move was the only way to really pile up enough money to set up on his own.

She had trouble reconciling her artistic goals with his monetary ones. But only in theory. Early on, she had accepted his single-minded drive to accumulate wealth. Wasn’t it an admired trait? A good husband and provider were a cliché of the American experience. Who was she to argue with that? Nor could she deny to herself her own pleasure in possessing creature comforts.

“I am as committed to the good life as you are,” she had reassured him.

“I certainly hope so,” he had replied.

She told herself that more money would mean more freedom and more freedom meant she would be able to give up her commercial illustration jobs and pursue her art. The reality had been somewhat different. The fantasy life cost more that they had dreamed.

“It takes time to adjust,” the woman said, as if she were reading Virginia’s thoughts.

Turning away from the woman’s face, Virginia had watched the manicurist deftly file her nails, impervious to the odd conversation going on around her.

“But I’m not sorry,” Virginia had said with a flash of belligerence.

“No, you mustn’t be.”

“Jack was transferred, the money was impossible to refuse.” Virginia had been surprised at herself. This was completely out of character. Why had she needed to explain herself to a stranger?

She resented the woman for dredging up all the pain and uncertainty of leaving Connecticut. And guilt. How was Virginia expected to know that her widowed mother would develop pancreatic cancer and suffer a painful descent to death?

Only the day before, she had received a letter from her sister Kate, pressing little guilt buttons. Kate, after all, had been left with the real burden.

“You can’t blame yourself,” the woman had said, startling her. It was as if she had thrown a dart with deadly accuracy, a bull’s-eye into Virginia’s most vulnerable target.

“Blame?”

The tightness in her stomach began, always the first sign of her tension. She was here at Mel’s to feel good about herself, for crying out loud. Then, it occurred to her that this woman might be a friend of Kate’s. How else could she have learned so much about Virginia’s innermost turmoil?

“You must be a friend of my sister Kate,” Virginia had said. She had not posed it as a question. “You’ve heard all about us from her.”

“I’ve never met your sister,” the woman had replied.

“I assumed—” Virginia began, then stopped abruptly.

“California is a remarkably fertile place,” the woman had explained, as if she sensed Virginia’s sudden anguish. “People sink roots here faster than almost anywhere.”

“I’m waiting for mine to take,” Virginia had replied with a note of frustration.

For a brief moment she considered the peculiar emotion she was feeling. Was it vulnerability? Or relief that someone understood her? She looked toward the woman again. She was inspecting her nails. Suddenly, she gazed up at Virginia and flashed a broad, perfect smile.

“They do excellent work here,” she said, “and your hair looks lovely.”

Virginia reflexively stole a glance at herself in the mirror. Actually, she had not been fully satisfied with Mel’s work that day. Too teasey. She was growing tired of the curly-mop style. No longer individual enough or was she getting too old for it? And lately she had spotted tiny sprouts of gray among the blonde. In her family, gray came early.

“Not too young for me?” she asked, wishing she hadn’t vested the woman with so much authority.

“Thirty-six isn’t old,” the woman said, locking her brown eyes onto Virginia’s. They seemed to engulf her. “Not for a Cancer.”

“A Cancer?”

“The sign, not the disease,” the woman said, her head swinging back, revealing her long swanlike neck. “Cancers persevere.”

If Virginia hadn’t been startled by the comment, she might have put her usual brand of put-down on the exchange. Astrology was, to her, like all pseudoscience, a sop for the weak-minded. Hadn’t she lectured the twins on the subject ad infinitum? Their response had always made her cringe. “We’re twins and we’re Pisces.”

“Pure coincidence,” she would counter.

“Your daddy and I got carried away on the Fourth of July.” By the time they understood it was old hat. Now all she got for the explanation was an “Oh, Mommy,” always in unison.

Astrology aside, the woman’s comments were unnerving and, worse, suspicious. Virginia’s mind groped for some logic in the exchange. Calm yourself, she urged herself, searching for an explanation for the woman’s uncanny knowledge. None came to mind. Surely she was missing something, she told herself.

And why was the woman still here? Virginia wondered. Her nails had long since dried. Virginia forced herself not to allow the mystery to deepen into bafflement. She opted, instead, for an aggressive counterattack.

“How did you happen on Mel’s?” she asked pleasantly.

“A client recommended me.”

A lawyer, perhaps, Virginia thought, or maybe she was an investigator of sorts. Stockbrokers and their families were always being investigated. She waited for a further explanation. None came. The woman certainly kept a lid on herself.

“Are you married?” she asked the woman.

“No.”

She was attractive and stylish enough to interest men. Indeed, most men would find her looks exceptional. In a brief inspection, Virginia’s eyes wandered to the woman’s figure, which, under her smock, looked curvaceous and well-proportioned. Her legs, which were crossed, seemed particularly lovely and graceful.

“Are men that blind?” Virginia asked, offering the compliment with some calculation.

“I’ve often wondered,” the woman said. “Perhaps the single state is my destiny.”

The remark seemed to open a small chink in the woman’s protective armor. Yet, Virginia could not bring herself to exploit it.

She speculated that the woman must be deeply discontented. Or did she not require the blandishments and comfort of a man? The thought triggered a flash of anxiety in Virginia. California was changing her marriage. Was it mere financial overextension or something more? The fact was that something seemed to be happening beneath the surface of her relationship with Jack.

In his effort to give the move an aura of high adventure, Jack had insisted on purchasing a house that made a personal statement. They were on the way up and why not tell the world? Unfortunately, the cost of California real estate raised the ante on such a statement. The house had cost just over a million. Then had come taxes, furnishings, the works.

“My income can only get better,” he had assured her. “In two years it will seem like peanuts.” A brave prediction, but it did not completely hide his anxiety.

She, of course, had also agonized, but the house on Rising Glen, with its breath-stopping view of Los Angeles, did have all the earmarks of a dream house. At night it was like riding on a cloud in the sky, exhilarating and romantic. In the end, money be hanged, she, too, had been swept up with the idea.

“And I’ll go back to work,” she had promised. “This town is a mecca for free-lance commercial artists, especially good illustrators.” It was an enterprise not without its own special deadline pressures, but better that than feeling the guilt of not contributing to what in her heart she knew was an obscene pleasure, very much against her New England grain.

“You don’t have to,” he had told her, but she knew he was pleased. And the money had come in handy. Her work was in demand and already they could count on an additional fifty thousand a year from it. They had agreed that whatever she earned would be used to cover the household expenses, freeing his salary for the bigger items.

It was comforting to blame her little stab of anxiety on what they both jokingly referred to as the “Yuppie factor,” but marriage, after all, does not live on bread alone. Once, their marriage had been highly physical. The old wheeze about poverty making love fly out the window had an ironic twist to it. Living too high off the hog might be having exactly the same effect on them. Suddenly, she did not like the way her thoughts were heading She brought herself back to the present.

“I assume that you’re a workingwoman?” Virginia had asked the woman.

“Yes, I am.”

Virginia was not a natural solicitor of information, an old throwback to her New England reserve. As part of her upbringing she had been taught that prying was a violation of another’s privacy. She felt embarrassed by her questioning.

“Do you enjoy what you do?” the woman asked, as if she needed to deflect Virginia’s interrogation.

“I do, as a matter of fact.”

“You should get on with your painting,” the woman said sweetly.

“Someday,” Virginia whispered. Now, how could she possibly know that? The idea made Virginia’s lips tremble. She stilled them with her teeth.

“Creative talent is a gift. It was given to you for a reason.”

“Perhaps when the children grow up,” she muttered after recovering from this new surprise.

“It could go dry,” the woman said. “I’ve seen it happen.”

The woman had exposed most of the fears that Virginia, by a superhuman exercise in mental gymnastics, usually avoided. Who needed this?

“I have other priorities,” she said, suppressed anger rising to the surface. The skin on her face grew hot.

“A true Cancer,” the woman said, “always sensitive to the needs of others.” Virginia had no chance to reply, for the woman rose and, standing over her, extended her hand.

“It was wonderful meeting you, Virginia,” she said. As a reflex Virginia took the woman’s hand which was firm and warm. Looking up, she again experienced the power of those penetrating brown eyes. “Perhaps we can see each other again. I’ll give you my card before I leave.”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

Virginia’s anger dissipated, thawed by the woman’s obvious solicitation of her friendship. It felt good to be wanted in that way, Virginia thought. She hadn’t made many friends in California. At the same time, she would not lower her guard. Perhaps the woman, out of loneliness, had made a conscious effort to befriend her, had picked her out of the pack, so to speak. What harm would there be in taking her card?

The woman moved gracefully to the dressing room and reappeared again in a tight-fitting yellow slacks outfit that flattered her tall, well-proportioned figure. Virginia’s artist’s eye marveled at the elegance of her movements. Perhaps she had once been a model. She came back to the table and placed a card on it.

“I hope we can get together,” she said pleasantly. “Really.”

“I’m afraid my cards are in my purse,” Virginia said apologetically.

“Well, then, I’ll await your call. Perhaps lunch.”

“Yes, that would be very nice,” Virginia had replied, with some surprise at the eagerness of her own response.

It was then that the woman had made her eerie pronouncement. She had hesitated in the doorway, her tall, slender figure framed in a halo of afternoon light, her jet black hair softly curling. Her figure, in a soft S, seemed to sway, as if it were a willow branch gentled by the wind.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come home,” she had said.

When the woman was gone, her farewell image, in the full glory of its dramatic pose, was, unavoidably, permanently engraved on Virginia’s mind.

But wasn’t that the objective? Virginia asked herself, with a note of cynicism. This Southern California compulsion to be memorable. Yet, considering the extent of the woman’s revelations, Virginia still felt some discomfort. Who would come home? Who was supposed to be missing?

Jack had rolled out of bed that morning at five, one of the penalties of brokering stocks on the West Coast. The New York market bell sounded at seven Pacific time and his sense of responsibility demanded that he prepare for his impending frenetic day in the quiet time before the avalanche of activity began.

He never left without a parting kiss on her forehead and a whispered “Bye, sweetheart.”

Always, this farewell triggered in her a brief stab of guilt. Poor Jack, busting his chops to make the West Coast move right for her and the twins. The pressure to support their life-style was taking its toll.

Remembering, she sighed, then rebuked herself. No gloom and doom, Ginny baby, she cajoled, telling herself for the trillionth time: You’re living in paradise in a smashing house with a drop-dead view and your kids are taking to it like little piglets in swill. So stop bitching and moaning, woman.

As for Basil, she had heard his pathetic goodbye yap less than an hour before as the electronic gate closed in front of him. She always waited until the door completed its full cycle. No, her men weren’t missing, she concluded.

Her nails dry, Virginia proceeded to the dressing room, put on her blouse, retrieved her pocketbook and paid her bill. She did not completely dismiss the exchange with the strange woman from her thoughts, but she was already contemplating her next chore which was to finish an illustration for an important advertising client. It was still on her drawing board and was due in the morning.

“Ma’am, you forgot.”

The manicurist had followed her to the parking lot holding a card in her birdlike hand. Virginia took it and thrust it into her pocketbook.

In less than ten minutes she had angled through the traffic on Sunset and rolled up Rising Glen Road to their house. It was of traditional design which suited her Connecticut upbringing. Except for the electronic gate, it might have fit just as well into the New England landscape. Indeed, nothing in California seemed indigenous, as if its destiny was to make do with the jetsam and flotsam of other states and other cultures.

The house sat on a high knoll in the Hollywood Hills, and both her studio and their master bedroom had a commanding view of the city. Lying in bed at night gave her the sensation of floating in space in the midst of the star-studded sky.

With a cozy crackling fire in the bedroom fire-place, and the sensational view beyond the windows, she and Jack had, at least during their first few months in the house, spent a great deal of time in bed, savoring the romance of their new surroundings. Sometimes in the wee hours, when the twins had long since gone to bed, they had skinny-dipped in the pool which was set behind the house in such a way that it, too, had a spectacular view of the city.

Making love frequently had been an integral part of their marriage. It was, as Jack put it, “the whipped cream of life.” At the moment, a lot of the whip had gone out of the cream.

Yet, she could not bring herself to confront Jack on the subject. Nor herself. No need to increase the tension in either of them. Surely marriage, like most things, had its peaks and valleys. Besides, as Jack had assured her, the market was booming. Soon, they would be able to put financial pressures behind them.

Still it wasn’t easy to watch Jack crawl out of bed in the darkness of dawn and slip quietly out of the house.

“It’s the reality of the time zone, had explained. “If I’m not on tap at the bell, then I’m not doing my job. In this business, fortunes can be lost in the first minute of trading.”

Of course, she accepted that and everything that went with it, including his having to go to bed a couple of hours before she did. Invariably, that meant he was asleep before she got to bed and she was barely conscious when he awoke. In purely practical terms, it was not an arrangement conducive to making love.

She was barely inside the courtyard. The electronic door had completed its closing cycle. Something was not quite right. It took her only a few seconds to realize what was amiss. No yapping from Basil.

“Basil,” she called.

No answer.

She inspected the grounds. Tight shrubs made the periphery secure. It was one of the reasons that they had taken the house. Basil could be safely imprisoned behind the shrubs which were too high for him to jump. The electronic fence completed the closure. Perhaps, she speculated, he had somehow gotten inside the house.

She dashed through every room looking into all his special bunks: behind chairs, in closets, under beds. No Basil.

She went out onto the patio and called his name, imagining she could hear an echo as it bounced back from the city. No Basil.

Just because she could not find a point of exit didn’t mean that Basil hadn’t found it. He was a clever little bastard. Half sheepdog, half poodle, he had a natural wanderlust. He was also sneaky. If there was a way out, he would find it. It was ironic, too, that he had chosen to escape on Friday, which was the maid Maria’s day off. Maria was far more solicitous of Basil’s welfare and would never have let him out of her sight.

“Where the hell are you, you little beast?” she cried out as she rummaged through the house again. Her mind vacillated between anger and worry.

She conjured up an image of him splattered on the asphalt of Sunset Boulevard, all but obliterated by the mass of rolling rubber. She was suddenly assailed by guilt. Had it been her fault? Had she left the gate ajar? Whatever, the blame still fell on her. She was the last to leave the house.

In desperation, she hopped into her car and drove to the top of Rising Glen Road, periodically calling his name. Those few neighbors who were outside at that hour contemplated her with some puzzlement, then turned away. Occasionally she stopped to confront a rare pedestrian, running or walking purposefully in jogging clothes.

“Have you seen a lost dog? Looks a little like that movie dog, Benji,” she would ask. Invariably the response was sympathy but little information. Finally, after searching for nearly two hours, she returned home. There was a message on the telephone answering machine. “Soccer practice late, Mommy.” It was Bobbie’s voice. “We’ll be home for dinner. Love and kishes from your two little fishes.”

A surge of sentiment brought tears to her eyes, blurring the words. Then came another pang of guilt. The girls had wanted two dogs, a natural wish since everything they owned invariably came in twos. It was she who had objected. Jack, who was no dog lover, had maintained a stoic neutrality, which convinced the twins that he was an ally.

“I’m the one who’s home all day,” Virginia protested. “I don’t need the responsibility of yet another life to worry about.”

She had been adamant and, after a hard-fought struggle, they had finally surrendered.

“When she gets like this, there’s no moving her,” Jack had sighed in resignation, as if he was an ally in defeat as well. Actually, he detested the idea of one dog, no less two, and he and Basil had developed a healthy mutual antagonism.

And now there were none, she thought sadly, contemplating the twins’ impending reaction to the news.

She made herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen counter trying to think up a next course of action. It was essential, she knew, to call the public animal shelter and give them Basil’s description. And there was hope in the fact that he wore a name tag on his collar with their telephone number engraved on it.

When she had come into the house, she had casually thrown her pocketbook on the kitchen counter. Now it loomed large in her thoughts, reminding her of the encounter a few hours before at Mel’s.

Opening her pocketbook, she fished in it for the woman’s card. She found it among the clutter.

“Madeline Curran Boswell,” she read. And under the name, in script, the word, “Psychic.” There was a telephone number but no address.

“Damn,” she said aloud, angrily. “Hustled by a quack psychic.” So that’s how they pick up business. She laughed and shook her head, appalled by her naïveté. Jack’s response to the incident would be sarcastically snide, setting off ridicule that would be good for a year’s run. Stupido. Stupido, she repeated to herself.

When the flush of humiliation receded, she remembered the missing Basil and called the animal shelter. No. No sign of Basil. She gave her name and address and hung up.

She sat for a long time at the kitchen counter, the coffee cooling in front of her. She could not get the woman out of her mind. Her come-on was certainly compelling. The clever bitch. But where on earth had she gotten the information? Then Virginia remembered the woman’s parting words.

“Don’t worry. He’ll come home.”

Despite herself, Virginia felt oddly relieved.