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But being alone was even harder. She had Laurel, of course, but that only made it worse in some ways, because Laurel depended on her so much, and when you got right down to it, Laurel was the whole reason for all this secrecy and hiding away and getting chased after.

Not that she resented her sister. No, not even the tiniest bit. But sometimes … like right now … Annie couldn’t help imagining how much less worrisome life would be without her.

She immediately felt a pang of guilt. God, what had she been thinking? Without Laurel, she’d be miserable, lonely. Who would she love? Who would love her?

Then she remembered Dolly and Rivka … and Joe.

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Maybe it wasn’t the same with them, but they cared about her.

Joe’s face swam up in her mind, his beautiful, uneven face. Those muddy hazel eyes. There was pain in him, too. She’d sensed it more than once. With Joe, she sometimes felt the way she had with Dearie; behind the jokes, the almost-callous offhandedness, her mother, she knew, had been struggling with herself. But unlike Dearie, Joe, she suspected, would come out okay.

Maybe that was what drew her to him, the sense that they were somehow muddling through this together, Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson creeping about the graveyard in the dark, flashlights bobbing bravely. Except whatever was plaguing Joe had nothing to do with shady characters skulking about, or policemen chasing after him.

Annie opened her eyes, and noticed the graffiti scratched into the metal: DOLORES CRISTO LOVES RAMON DE VEGA, 1964. Almost like an epitaph, she thought. Where were they now, those two? Had Dolores and Ramon married young, had a baby or two already? Or did they now pass each other at school, or on the street, and look the other way? For some reason, Annie found herself hoping they were still together. It made her sad to think that maybe the only trace left of their love was this faint scratching on a train’s wall.

When I fall in love, it’ll be for keeps, she thought.

Then Annie caught herself. How ridiculous, after being pursued by a strange man, and nearly arrested by a cop, to be mooning about love, for God’s sake. Leave that to Nancy and Ned.

But as the train roared through the tunnel, Annie again found herself thinking of Joe, imagining her name scratched on the train wall alongside his. “I’m glad you’re home, Annie. Such good news,

just wait until you hear!” Rivka beamed at Annie from the open door to her apartment.

Annie glanced about the small, cluttered living room, and saw that something was different. Sarah, who

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had just turned eighteen, was standing in the middle of the braided rug, all dressed up in a below-the-knee pleated flannel skirt and high-necked, longsleeved pink sweater, even though it was only a Thursday night, and not any Jewish holiday that Annie knew of. Sarah was also blushing wildly, and covering her red face with her hands. On one finger twinkled a small diamond.

“Sarah is getting married!” Rivka crowed, slipping an arm about Sarah’s shoulders. “Just today, it was agreed. Can you imagine? Our little Sarah, she’s going to be a bride! Such a wonderful thing, no?”

Annie stared at Sarah, amazed. Why, Sarah was hardly older than she was! A teenager! And who was the boy? No one had ever mentioned a word about him. Modest, quiet Sarah, before you knew it, she’d have a house full of kids. She and Rivka both looked so happy, but still, to Annie, it came as a shock.

She forced herself to try and look happy, too. And maybe she would feel happy in a little while, when she got used to the idea. Right now, she was still too tense.

Annie stepped forward, and hugged Sarah, thinking how much easier it was to be affectionate around Rivka’s daughters than her sons. Boys weren’t allowed to touch a woman, not even to shake hands. Rivka had explained that it was because the woman might be menstruating, and therefore ritually unclean. Annie remembered learning the hard way, that first day, sticking out her hand to shake Mr. Gruberman’s, and having him shrink back as if she had leprosy.

“Hey, that’s great!” she congratulated Sarah. “Who is he? I don’t think I’ve seen him around here.”

Sarah giggled shyly, and Rivka replied, “They only met a few weeks ago. But they hit it off right away, and Yitzak is going to Israel next month to study Talmud under a famous rabbi … so they didn’t want to wait.”

“You mean … just like that. You met, and … and now you’re getting married?”

“We’ve been seeing each other for almost a whole month,” Sarah said, as if that was enough for anybody to make up their mind. “And Yitzak is a real masmid ! He’s

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into pilpul, and his rebbeim say he’s something special.” Nothing about how cute he might be, or that he’d brought her flowers, or even how romantic he was when he proposed.

Rivka shrugged, and bent to pick up Shainey, who was struggling to climb out of her playpen. “It didn’t happen so fast, not the way it sounds. First, there were two others.”

“Two others?” Annie’s mind whirled, trying to digest all this. The idea of plain, shy, softspoken Sarah dating a gaggle of men… it just didn’t seem possible.

“Come, sit down, I’ll make tea and I’ll tell you how it was.” Rivka motioned her into the kitchen, in which Annie probably had spent more time these past few months than in her own tiny one upstairs.

“I’ll get the cups,” Sarah offered.

Laurel, who’d been at Rivka’s when Annie arrived, stayed in the living room to watch Shainey and to help five-year-old Yonkel spin the dreidels he’d gotten on Hanukkah. On the sewing table in the corner was a pattern pinned to a length of plum-colored fabric, a dress Rivka was helping Laurel sew.

“Here, do it this way, it’ll go faster.” Annie heard Laurel’s sweet voice raised above the babble of younger ones, patient and good, as she always was with Rivka’s children. She’ll make a good mother someday, Annie found herself thinking.

Even now, Laurel did most of the work around the apartment. Not only doing most of the cooking, but every Saturday lugging their clothes down to the laundromat on the corner of J and Sixteenth. Upstairs, she already had a pile of strips Tom from newspapers, which she would dip into a mixture of flour and starch and water, then paste over the balloons Annie had bought, layering them until the pinatas were the right thickness.

While Rivka bustled about, filling the kettle, setting out a plate of homemade rugelach, Sarah laid out cups and plates. She moved precisely, deftly, as if newly sure of herself, already thinking of herself as a wife rather than a teenaged daughter. Annie watched her closely, hoping

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to see something in her face, or in her movements, that would set her apart from other girls their age. But there was nothing, really-she could have been any middle-class girl getting ready for her first prom, or going off to college. Or—She could be me. I could be her.

The thought rattled Annie so that she almost spilled the tea Rivka had just poured into her cup. I sure don’t want to get married, she thought. Certainly not now. Maybe not even ten years from now. Or ever.

“The first two, and Yitzak as well, came to us through the shatchan,” Rivka explained, sinking heavily into the chair opposite Annie’s, while Sarah scurried off to check on the new baby, now squalling in one of the bedrooms down the hall. Rivka grinned. “I can see you never heard about a shatchan.”

Tonight, Rivka was wearing a flowered shirtwaist that showed off her newly slim figure, and instead of a scarf to cover her hair, she was wearing her shaitel, a short brown wig styled in a neat bouffant. An Orthodox girl, Rivka had explained, covered her hair with a wig once she got married, which she took off only when she was alone with her husband. So only he would see her at her loveliest. But how beautiful would your hair look, Annie had often wondered, after it had been squashed under a wig all day?

“A matchmaker,” Rivka elaborated. “Esther Greenbaum, she arranges these things, shows pictures, makes introductions. Such a fuss Sarah made over having her picture taken! You’d think she was auditioning for Miss America! As if any boy could turn down such a face, no matter how bad the picture!”

Annie couldn’t help but smile. “So what happened? She didn’t like the first two boys?”

“The first one, she took one look at his picture and burst into tears. You should have seen him-teeth out to here. Esther swore up and down that he would make a wonderful husband for any girl, but Sarah wouldn’t even look at him again. And I don’t blame her! I should have a grandson with a face like a donkey?” Rivka leaned forward for emphasis, wagging a finger in front of her face.

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“The other one, he wasn’t so bad-looking. But he never said two words to Sarah when they met. And Sarah is no big talker, either. With those two, I thought to myself, ha! I’ll be in the ground before I live to see my first grandchild!”

“What about … ?” Annie hesitated, struggling to remember his name.

“Yitzak,” Sarah put in softly.

Rivka sat back abruptly, a grin spreading across her face. “Yitzak will make Sarah a good husband. Solid and steady, and a masmid like she says, very studious. But he has a twinkle in his eye too. He’ll bring her out of herself. And you couldn’t ask for anyone more observant. His father is a rabbi, you should know. A very learned man.”

Annie wanted to ask Sarah what she’d thought when she saw his picture, but it might seem rude. Fortunately, Rivka volunteered it for her.

Leaning forward again, she whispered, “And between you and me … Yitzak, he’s not bad-looking, either. A real catch. But then, my Sarah is nothing to sneeze at either.” Rivka popped a rugeleh in her mouth, and sat back, casting a proud look at Sarah, who now stood in the doorway, holding the blanket-wrapped bundle that was Rivka’s youngest child. When she’d stopped chewing, she asked, “What about you, Annie? You ought to be thinking of getting married, too. It’s no good, a girl running around with no family, no husband.”

Annie laughed. “Without a matchmaker, I don’t think I’d find anyone so fast. And, besides, I’m not ready to get married.”

“What about that young man? The one who comes by to see you and Laurel? What is he, chopped liver?”

“Joe?” Afnnie’s voice squeaked a little as she said it, betraying her. She felt herself blushing. “Oh, he’s just a … a friend, sort of. He comes around mostly to see Laurey. Sort of like a big brother.”

Rivka was looking at her, head tilted back. Rivka might lead a narrow existence, but she knew about the world of men and women, and she knew that Annie’s words didn’t tell the whole story.

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Once Annie realized she could trust Rivka, she’d confided in her about Val, so that if he ever showed up here, Rivka would be able to cover for her. Now Annie found herself longing to tell Rivka what had happened tonight, on her way home from work. About the man in the raincoat. But she didn’t want to scare Laurel, or cast a shadow over Rivka’s happiness. Better if she kept it to herself for now.

“Listen to me,” Rivka laughed. “Sticking my nose in like a regular yenta. You want more tea? I’ll pour you another cup. Here, have one of these, I just took them out of the oven.”

Then Annie heard Mr. Gruberman, back from shul, letting himself in the front door. Rivka rushed off to greet him, Annie, sipping her tea in Rivka’s big warm kitchen, listening to the excited voices in the next room, felt safe and warm.

Probably the man in khaki had only been hurrying to catch the train, and the disappointment she’d seen in his face was only because he’d missed it. She probably imagined the whole thing, she told herself.

And she believed it too.

Almost.

Sitting in the darkened East Village revival theatre, Dolly felt her stomach knot with tension. Her hands were clenched so tightly her nails were digging into her palms.

She peered at her watch. It was getting close to midnight, the movie almost over.

Was he sitting somewhere nearby, she wondered, or up in one of the front rows? She had failed to spot him when she came in, but he’d probably slipped in after the movie started.

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Meet him afterwards, in the lobby, he’d said. Weird, his wanting to meet her here of all places. What was he on, some kind of nostalgia kick?

Craning her neck, she saw that the theatre wasn’t crowded. Dolly, not wanting to be recognized as the now aging star of the picture up on the screen, had chosen a seat in the back row near the exit, where she wouldn’t be noticed. But why was she so antsy? The kids here, most of them had been in diapers when she was making Dames in Chains. And the way she looked now, she could pass for the mama of that cute wide-eyed thing up on the screen.

Hell of a thing, to call a picture a cult classic. Meant it was so bad that with time it became sort of a joke. At first, Dolly had felt the joke was on her, listening to them all laughing at the lines that she’d poured her heart into all those years ago. But, after a while, she’d begun to see the humor in it, and even found herself chuckling every now and then. Some of those clinkers were pretty funny.

Right now she was watching a tightly corseted tenfoot image of herself lean over, practically spilling her tits into her lawyer’s lap, and sob, “How did I get myself into this?”

She was laughing, and it felt-good. Hell, she had about as much in common with that woman up on the screen as a green tomato to a grackle. Sure, her acting might be a joke, but she’d come a long way since then.

Her thoughts flew to the work that lay ahead-Valentine’s Day coming up, and next month alone, two weddings and that Metropolitan Museum fund-raiser. And just yesterday, a cousin of Mrs. Levy who had been at the Levy boy’s bar mitzvah last week-some kind of big-time Long Island caterer-had called. He was so impressed by Laurel’s pinatas, hVd given Dolly the go-ahead to supply the chocolates for all his functions.

Now the credits were rolling, the lights coming on. People were shuffling to their feet, stuffing their arms into coats, filing toward the exit.