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it were my first. She saw through what was on the paper to what was in my heart, and she would not rest until she had cajoled and bullied me into producing the best work I had in me. And then she sold the hell out of it.” Beside her, Larry shrugged in rueful acknowledgment. Rowena raised her glass in our direction. “To have had two such agents in a lifetime is a blessing indeed.”
    Molly blew her a kiss and I bowed my head in thanks. I knew perfectly well that before Molly’s chair had even cooled, Rowena’s phone had been ringing off the hook with suitors. That this woman, who could have had any agent she wanted, should have felt nervous about showing me her work spoke again to the appalling insecurity of fiction writers. Tightrope walkers, Hugo once called them, crossing chasms on strings of words. I couldn’t do it. Give me the business end of publishing any day.
    I assured myself that Molly had a ride home, then said good-bye before she could start in on me again. Rowena was surrounded by people, but a lane opened for me. We hugged. She smelled of something expensively exotic.
    â€œNice entrance,” I said.
    â€œI wanted a horse-drawn chariot, but the restaurant wouldn’t go along. Some stupidity about the health code.”
    â€œThis was better.”
    She grinned. “It was, wasn’t it?”
    â€œThank you for those lovely words. Molly was touched too.”
    â€œI meant every word, my dear.” She squeezed my hand. Then the crowd exerted its pressure and I was rotated out. I made for the exit before anyone else could jump me and was waiting for my tote at the hatcheck counter when Molly appeared, leaning on the arm of one of Rowena’s tunic-clad litter bearers.
    â€œBit young for you, isn’t he?” I asked.
    She veered toward me and rapped my knuckles with her umbrella. “This is Manny, Rowena’s driver. He’s taking me home.”
    I looked him over. “Like that?”
    â€œIt’s New Yawk,” Manny said. “Who’s gonna notice?”

Chapter 3
    I t was too early to check into La Posada, so I left my bags and slipped out for a walk through downtown Santa Fe. Once the writers’ conference began, the world would shrink to the size of the hotel, and between workshops, panels, pitch sessions, luncheons, and dinners, I would have no time to indulge myself. Blazing sun glanced off the adobe buildings and flooded the streets; the air tasted of pine and dust. It was just past noon and very hot. Island-dweller that I was, I felt the altitude as a lessening of gravity, as if a single strong gust would send me soaring, Chagall-like, over the adobe walls into the deep-blue distant sky.
    Over the course of a year, I, like most agents, receive a dozen or more invitations to attend writers’ conferences. Most I turn down, because it’s rare to find a publishable writer among the attendees, much less one whose work I loved enough to take on. But this Santa Fe conference held two big attractions. The first was that one of my favorite clients, Max Messinger, was among the presenters; the second was Santa Fe itself. I’d been there with Hugo, a year into our marriage, and if I kept my eyes straight ahead, I could imagine him striding beside me, hear his voice in my ear.
    I found my way to the plaza, which looked exactly as I’d remembered it and probably not very different from the way it had looked two hundred years ago. In the portal of the Palace of the Governors, Native American women sat on low stools behind blankets covered with crafts: jewelry for the most part—silver and turquoise and coral—but also woven blankets and rugs, baskets, pottery. The women did not hawk their wares but rather sat in dignified silence, speaking only when addressed. On the last day of our visit, Hugo bought me a silver pendant set with turquoise and coral from a woman who mistook me for his daughter. I wondered if she was still