“Depends on whether you’re willing to lose it or not,” Peter said. “High return means high risk. You’re talking commodities trading-currency, fuel oil, wheat. If sugar goes down a penny a pound, you lose your nest egg. Very risky. You could end up worse off than you are now.”

“I supposed…Yes.” And then she was horrified to hear herself go on. “I don’t care. Tell me what I have to do.”

Peter explained the basics, and she began spending every spare minute with her head buried in the books and articles he recommended on commodities trading. She read the Journal of Commerce on the subway, and she fell asleep with Barron’s propped on her pillow. All her classes in business and economics helped her grasp the basics, but did she really have the guts to do this? No. But she was going to do it anyway.

Following Peter’s advice, she invested two thousand in soybeans, bought a contract for liquefied propane, and, after studying weather forecasts, spent the rest on orange juice. Florida had a killer freeze, the soybeans rotted from too much rain, but liquefied propane went through the roof. She ended up with seven thousand. This time she divided it between copper, durum wheat, and more soybeans. Copper and wheat tanked, but soybeans pulled through to the tune of nine thousand dollars.

She reinvested every penny.

On April Fool’s Day, Kissy landed the plum role of Maggie in a workshop production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. She danced around their apartment as she broke the news to Fleur. “I’d given up! Then this girl who was in a couple of my acting classes called. She remembered this scene I’d done…I can’t believe it! We start rehearsals next week. There’s no money, and it’s not a big enough production to attract anybody important, but at least I’ll be acting again.”

Once rehearsals began, Fleur didn’t see Kissy for days at a time, and when she did, Kissy was distracted. Not a single hunk passed through their apartment, and Fleur finally accused her of celibacy.

“I’m storing up my sexual energy,” Kissy replied.

The day of the production, Fleur was so nervous she couldn’t eat. She didn’t want to see Kissy humiliated, and there was no way her little fluff ball of a roommate could take command of a heavyweight part like Maggie. Kissy belonged in sitcoms, exactly where she didn’t want to be.

A freight elevator took Fleur up to a chilly Soho loft with clanging pipes and peeling paint. The small stage at one end held nothing except a big brass bed. Fleur tried to convince herself the bed was a good omen where Kissy was concerned.

The audience was made up of other unemployed actors and starving artists, without a casting agent in sight. A bearded guy who smelled like linseed oil leaned forward from the row of chairs behind her. “So, are you a friend of the bride or the groom?”

“Uh-the bride,” she replied.

“Yeah, I thought so. Hey, I dig your hair.”

“Thanks.” Her hair brushed her shoulders now and attracted more attention than she liked, but cutting it felt like a weakness.

“You want to go out sometime?”

“No, thanks.”

“That’s cool.”

Fortunately the play started right then. Fleur took a deep breath and mentally crossed her fingers. The audience heard the sound of a shower running offstage, and Kissy made her entrance in an antique lace dress. Her accent was as thick as summer jasmine. She stripped off the dress and stretched. Her fingers formed tiny claws in the air. The man sitting next to Fleur shifted in his seat.

For two hours the audience sat spellbound as Kissy prowled and hissed and scratched her way across the stage. With dark, desperate eroticism and a voice like dime-store talcum powder, she radiated Maggie the Cat’s sexual frustration. It was one of the most riveting performances Fleur had ever seen, and it came straight from the soul of Kissy Sue Christie.

By the time the play was over, Fleur was drained. Now she understood Kissy’s problem in a way she couldn’t have before. If Fleur, Kissy’s best friend, hadn’t believed she could be a serious dramatic actress, how could Kissy hope to convince a director?

Fleur pushed her way through the crowd. “You were incredible!” she exclaimed, when she reached Kissy’s side. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“I know,” Kissy replied with a giggle. “Come tell me how wonderful I was while I change out of costume.”

Fleur followed her to the makeshift dressing room where Kissy introduced her to the other female cast members. She chatted with all of them, then perched on a chair next to Kissy’s dressing table and told her another dozen times how wonderful she’d been.

“Everybody decent?” a masculine voice inquired from the other side of the door. “I need to pick up the costumes.”

“I’m the only one left, Michael,” Kissy called out. “Come on in. I have somebody I want you to meet.”

The door opened. Fleur turned.

“Fleurinda, you’ve heard me talk about our brilliant costume designer and the future dressmaker to the Beautiful People. Fleur Savagar meet Michael Anton.”

Everything stopped like a damaged frame of film frozen in a movie projector. He wore an antique purple satin bowling shirt and a pair of loosely cut wool trousers held up by suspenders. At twenty-three, he wasn’t much taller than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, maybe five feet, seven inches. He had shiny blond hair that fell in long waves level with his chin, a set of narrow shoulders, a small chest, and delicately carved features.

Gradually Kissy realized that something was wrong. “Do you two know each other?”

Michael Anton nodded. Fleur reached deep inside her. “This is one of your better moments, Kissy,” she said, as lightly as she could manage. “Michael is my brother Michel.”

“Oh boy.” Kissy’s gaze flicked from one to the other. “Should I play some organ music or something?”

Michel shoved one hand into the pocket of his trousers and leaned against the door. “How about a few notes on the kazoo?”

He carried himself with the languid grace of old money and the assurance of someone born with an aristocratic bloodline. Just like Alexi. But as he gazed at her, she saw eyes as blue as spring hyacinths.

She curled stiff fingers around her purse. “Did you know I was in New York?”

“I knew.”

She couldn’t stand there with him any longer. “I have to go.” She gave Kissy a quick peck on the cheek and left the dressing room without so much as a nod in his direction.

Kissy caught up with her on the street. “Fleur! Wait! I had no idea.”

She faked a smile. “Don’t worry about it. It was just a shock, that’s all.”

“Michael is…He’s really a terrific guy.”

“That’s…great.” She spotted a cab and stepped out from the curb to hail it. “Go to your cast party, Magnolia, and make them all bow when you come in the room.”

“I think I’d better go home with you.”

“Not on your life. This is your big night, and you’re going to enjoy every minute.” She climbed into the cab, waved, and shut the door. As the taxi pulled away, she sagged back into the seat and let the old bitterness swamp her.

In the weeks that followed, Fleur tried to forget about Michel, but one evening she found herself walking along West Fifty-fifth Street studying the numbers painted above the shop doors, now closed for the night. She found the address she was looking for. The location was good, but the unimposing storefront had badly lit windows…and the most beautiful garments she’d ever seen.

Michel had bucked the tide of current fashion trends where women were dressing up in evening tuxedos and neckties so they could look like men. The small window held a quartet of outrageously feminine dresses that conjured up lavish Renaissance paintings. As she gazed at the silks, jerseys, and gracefully draped crepe de chine, she couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d spent money on decent clothes. These exquisite garments rebuked her.

Spring drifted into summer and then into fall. Kissy’s theater company folded, so she joined another group that performed almost exclusively in New Jersey. Fleur celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday by making Parker give her another raise. She bought cocoa beans with it.

She lost more often than she won, but when the wins came, they came big. She studied hard to learn from her mistakes, and her initial five thousand quadrupled, then quadrupled again. The more money she made, the harder it became for her to sink it back into risky speculations, but she forced herself to keep writing out the checks. Forty thousand dollars was as useless to her as five thousand had been.

Winter settled in. She developed an enchantment with copper and made almost thirty thousand dollars in six weeks, but the stress was giving her stomach pains. Beef went up, pork fell. She kept going-investing, reinvesting, and biting her fingernails to the quick.

By the first day of June, a year and a half after she’d jumped on her financial roller-coaster, she stared at her balance sheets, hardly able to believe what she saw. She’d done it. With nothing more than sheer nerve, she’d accumulated enough to start her business. The next day, she put everything into nice, safe, thirty-day certificates of deposit at Chase Manhattan.

A few evenings later as she was letting herself into the apartment, she heard the phone ring. She stepped over a pair of Kissy’s heels, crossed the room, and picked up the receiver.

“Hello, enfant.”

It had been more than five years since she’d heard that familiar endearment. She tightened her grip on the telephone and made herself take a slow, steadying breath. “What do you want, Alexi?”

“No social amenities?”

“You have exactly one minute, and then I’m hanging up.”

He sighed, as if she’d wounded him. “Very well, chérie. I called to congratulate you on your recent financial gains. Rather foolhardy, but then one doesn’t argue with success. I understand you started looking for office space today.”