But if someone really had been watching, think of what he would see: the ragged disarray of Delia’s home life. Ramsay, short and stone-faced and sullen, kicking a tire in disgust; Carroll and Susie bickering over who would get a window seat; Sam settling himself behind the wheel, pushing his glasses higher on his nose, wearing an unaccustomed knit shirt that made him look weak-armed and fussy. And at the end of their trip, the Iron Mama (as Delia called her)-sturdy, plain Eleanor Grinstead, who patched her own roof and mowed her own lawn and had reared her one son single-handed in that spotless Calvert Street row house where she waited now, lips clamped tight, to hear what new piece of tomfoolery her daughter-in-law had contrived.

No, not a one of them would bear up beneath the celestial blue gaze of Adrian Bly-Brice.

The oldest of the air-conditioning men, the one named Lysander, asked what those hay-bunch things were doing, hanging from the attic rafters. “Those are my sister’s herbs,” Delia said. She hoped to let it rest at that, but her sister happened to be right there in the kitchen with her, stringing beans for supper, and she told him, “Yes, I burn them in little pots around the house.”

“You set fire to them?” Lysander asked.

“Each one does something different,” Eliza explained. “One prevents bad dreams and another promotes a focused mind and another clears the atmosphere after interpersonal strife.”

Lysander looked over at Delia, raising his gray toothbrush eyebrows.

“So anyhow,” Delia said hastily. “Is this job about wrapped up, do you think?”

“This one here? Oh, no,” he said. He plodded toward the sink; he had come down to refill his thermos. Waiting for the water to run cold, he said, “We got several more days, at the least.”

“Several days!” Delia squawked. She cleared her throat. “But the noisy part: will that be over soon? Even the cat is getting a headache.”

“Now, how would you know that?” he asked.

“Oh, Delia can read a cat’s mind,” Eliza told him. “She’s got all of us trained in cat etiquette: what kind of voice to use with them and how to do your eyes when you look at them and-”

“Eliza, I need those beans now,” Delia broke in.

Too late, though: Lysander snorted as he set his thermos under the faucet. “Me, I’ll take a dog any day,” he said. “Cats are too sneaky for my taste.”

“Oh, well, I like dogs too, of course,” Delia said. (In fact, she was slightly afraid of dogs.) “It’s just that dogs are so… sudden. You know?”

“But honest,” Lysander said. It sounded like an accusation. “Okay if I swipe a few ice cubes?”

“Go right ahead,” Delia told him.

He stood there helplessly, clasping the neck of his thermos, until she realized that he meant for her to get them. He would be one of those men who didn’t know where their wives kept the spoons. She dried her hands on her apron and went to fetch the bin from the freezer.

“Last place we worked?” he said. “Putting in a new heat pump? Guy next door owned one of them attack dogs. Dog trained to attack. Lady we was working for warned us all about him.”

He kept a staunch grip on his thermos while Delia tried to fit an ice cube in. It wouldn’t go. She hit it with the flat of her hand (Lysander not even flinching) and, “Eek!” she cried, for the ice cube flew up in the air and then skittered across the floor. Lysander stared down at it dolefully.

“Just let me at this little devil,” Delia told him, and she snatched the thermos from him and slammed it into the sink. She ran water over a second ice cube. “Aha!” she crowed, pounding it in. She started working on a third.

Lysander said, “So we’re hauling in stuff from the truck one day, come to see the attack dog rounding the side of the house. Big old bristle-necked dog like a wolf, growling real deep in his throat. Lord, I thought I would die. Then out steps the lady we worked for like she had just been waiting for this. Says, ‘Come along,’ and takes hold of his collar, calm-natured as you please. Walks him into the yard next door and, ‘Mr. What’s-it?’ she calls. ‘I’m about to shoot your dog dead unless you come out this minute and retrieve him.’ With her voice just as clear, just as cool. That was some kind of woman, believe me.”

Why was he telling this story? Was it meant to show Delia up? She dispatched the third ice cube with as little commotion as possible. For some reason, she imagined that the woman had resembled Rosemary Bly-Brice. Maybe she was Rosemary Bly-Brice. She wore an expression of tolerant detachment; she bent in a graceful S-curve; she hooked a single finger through the dog’s spiked collar. Unexpectedly, Delia felt a rush of admiration, as if her entrancement with Adrian extended to his wife as well.

She turned off the faucet, picked up the thermos, and offered it to Lysander. “Why, looky there,” Lysander said. Water was dripping rapidly from the bottom of the thermos. “Why, you’ve gone and broke it,” he said.

Delia didn’t apologize. She went on offering the thermos, wishing he would just take it and leave. In the supermarket, she recalled at that instant, she had made some reference to Ramsay, and Adrian had assumed she meant her husband. No wonder he hadn’t come by yet! He’d been looking for Ramsay Grinstead, who wasn’t in the phone book. Sooner or later, though, he would realize his mistake. She began smiling at the thought, and she continued holding the thermos out until Eliza, clucking, rose to fetch the mop.

In the dark the phone rang twice, and Delia woke with a start. She was reviewing her children’s whereabouts even before her eyes were fully open. All three were safe in bed, she decided, but her heart went on racing anyhow.

“Hello?” Sam said. “Yes, this is Dr. Grinstead. Oh. Mr. Maxwell.”

Delia sighed and rolled over. Mr. Maxwell was married to the Dowager Queen of Hypochondria.

“How long has she been experiencing this?” Sam asked. “I see. Well, that doesn’t sound serious. Yes, I’m sure it is uncomfortable, but I doubt very much if-”

A miniature babbling sound issued from the receiver.

“Of course she does,” Sam said. “I understand. All right, Mr. Maxwell-if you think it’s that important, I’ll come take a look.”

“Oh, Sam!” Delia hissed, sitting up.

He ignored her. “See you in a few minutes, then,” he was telling Mr. Maxwell.

As soon as he had replaced the receiver, Delia said, “Sam Grinstead, you are such a patsy. You know it’s going to be nothing. Why can’t he take her to the emergency room, if she’s so sick?”

“Well, neither one of them drives anymore,” Sam said mildly. He swung his feet to the floor and reached for his trousers, which lay folded over the back of the rocker. As always, he’d worn tomorrow’s underwear to bed and placed tomorrow’s clothes conveniently at hand.

Delia pressed a palm to her heart, which was only now settling down. Was this anything like what Sam had felt with his chest pains? She kept trying to imagine. Think of him operating a car at such a time-humming along toward a meeting and then noticing his symptoms and smoothly, composedly (she pictured) turning his wheel toward Sinai Hospital. Arranging his own admission and asking a nurse to phone Delia and break the news by degrees. (“Your husband wants you to know he’ll be a tad bit later getting home than planned.”) And Delia, meanwhile, had been reading Lucinda’s Lover by the fire, without a qualm.

She switched on her lamp and climbed out of bed. Two-fifteen, the alarm clock said. Squinting against the light, Sam reached for his glasses and put them on to look at her. “Where are you off to?” he asked. The glasses made his face seem crisper, less vague around the eyes, as if they had corrected Delia’s vision rather than his.

She drew her ruffled housecoat over her nightgown and zipped the front before she answered. “I’m coming with you,” she said.