Eeryone comments on how wonderful I'm looking, how my tan makes me look younger, how I seem to be a new person. I'm not so mousy anymore, and driving on busy highways no longer makes me fearful. My children were here earlier this summer, with their California tans, and they were suspicious. Why wasn't I cringing on the curves and being the usual back-seat driver when Charlie drove us to the lake?

On the patio, facing the Nelsons' patio, I contemplate my serenity. Charlie, my lover for the past two years, was due at seven. It is now 7:16. The chicken is precooking in the oven, and the charcoal is already lighted on the barbecue grill. (I marinated the briquets in starter fluid overnight, the way some woman on TV said to. She's an expert on odd things to do at picnics, like use a little red wagon for a portable grill.) I have a bottle of wine chilling in the refrigerator, and I've made a beautiful salad with artichoke hearts, which were too expensive, but the chicken was only 99 cents a pound.

The straw-edged tray on the table has dried flowers imprisoned inside the glass bottom: pansies, asters, daisies. My drink sits on a daisy. I love the bitter taste of the gin-andtonic I'm having. Gin is made from juniper berries, which eat up your stomach, and the quinine in the tonic water has something that makes you throw up. They had to stop serving tonic to airline pilots, because it made them dizzy. But the drink agrees with me. As soon as Charlie arrives, I'll have another. I'm sure he is late because he can't bear to leave Bud and Sue. Bud is his 21-year-old son, and Sue is Bud's wife. They have a new baby and a miserable marriage, but Sue won't divorce him as long as she can get Bud to buy her new