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thing.”
    “What’s that?”
    “That you won’t say ‘I told Pam so,’ to Penny when she gets back.”
    And with a pitying smile June promised me that too.

6
    I TOOK TRISH FOR an early lunch at the cafe downstairs from the Elliott Bay Book Company. The sun had appeared like a pale granite stone in the white-gray sky, and Occidental Square looked its old-fashioned, slightly touristy self; bare trees and grill-work, surrounded by solid masonry. Trish walked carefully in her high-heeled boots by my side and was noticed by passersby in ways I’d long forgotten. In my parka and overalls, yellow-striped cap pulled down over my ears, I felt like a woodsman escorting a fairy princess who had gone astray in the forest outside the castle.
    The bookstore was crowded and so was the cafe. “This is like a library down here,” Trish whispered. The cafe was lined with books, not for sale but for show—tired old bestsellers like Forever Amber and Marjorie Morningstar and old reference works and encyclopedias: “A-Pocket Veto”; “Pockmark-Zymurgy.” I had always wondered what zymurgy meant.
    “Do you like to read?” I asked her as we got into line.
    “Oh, I love to!” Her sharp features lit up with genuine pleasure. “I love to read books that are really long and have good stories that keep you guessing. Did you ever read Shōgun ?”
    I shook my head.
    “That was a really great book! It was, like, in Japan, only early Japan. You really learned a lot from it. Like history, but it was fun.”
    “Do you read many women authors?”
    “Women authors? You mean, books by women?” She thought a minute. “Oh yeah! I read Mistral’s Daughter. That was really great too. It was about three women, from different generations, and the first two were in love with this man and the third was his daughter. He was a great Parisian artist.” She pronounced it Pareeshun very carefully. “They made a TV movie out of it. Didn’t you see it?”
    “I don’t watch much TV.” I wasn’t going to tell her, or anyone else for that matter, that this winter I’d been tuning into the late movie and the late late movie and had even found myself crying over The King and I.
    “Oh,” said Trish. She turned her attention to the food and appeared slightly alarmed at the choices: mulligatawny soup, spanakopita, plates of Greek salads and Italian antipasto. “I’ll take a roast beef sandwich on white bread,” she told the woman behind the counter. “But don’t put any lettuce or sprouts on it.” She added a slice of mocha-almond torte and a Diet Pepsi to her tray. “Oh no, I just realized I left my wallet at home,” she said nervously, looking into her bag. “How stupid!”
    “My treat,” I assured her. I had soup and blackberry tea.
    “Do you live with your boyfriend?” I asked when we had found a table. “I mean, the guy who supports you?” I had visions of some broker or bank president who’d set her up in a little love nest, complete with red velvet walls, a white shag rug and a heart-shaped bed. Probably a friend of her father’s who was married and had three children.
    Trish had removed her coat but not her hat, and she was gobbling her sandwich as if she hadn’t eaten for weeks. “Oh no,” she said. “We’re both very independent. He’s an artist and photographer and he has the most fantastic studio, you should see it. It’s in Belltown, you know, where all the artists live and it looks right out over the water. He’s built a loft in it—it’s so cool. You go up a little ladder, and there you are, way up high, and you can look out the window and see the ferries at night—they’re so pretty when they’re lit up.”
    “But you don’t usually stay there?”
    “Nooo, well of course, a lot. The thing is, he has to be alone really a lot, to do his work.”
    “So he’s a photographer. What’s his name?”
    Trish ignored the question. “He’s not just a photographer,” she said, starting on the mocha-almond