One Coffee With

of the exotic djellabas or caftans that Anne kept sending from all over the world. Tonight's was a deep wine red with sleeves and hem widely banded by rich embroidery interspersed with crystal beads and tiny mirrors no larger than a thumbnail.

When it arrived last Christmas Sigrid had sighed at her mother's frivolous taste, and she'd scowled at her reflection upon trying it on-peacock feathers on a crow, she'd thought-but by now habit and familiarity had made it as unremarkable as gray flannel. Only gray flannel didn't complement her skin as did the robe. She was a barbaric splash of color as she curled up on her white linen couch to read the old Life article, and the lamp-light did interesting things to the hollows of her cheeks and eyes as she concentrated on the magazine.

The article on modern American artists had been her mother's first important assignment with a major magazine, and her success with it had led to other plums. Perhaps anyone could have photographed the artworks as cleanly, but the Anne Harald touch lay in the way her camera caught each artist's personality and philosophy more openly than usual as the subjects responded to the woman behind the lens.

Seven lesser luminaries shared one double spread, but Oscar Nauman had been one of five artists who had double pages to themselves. There he was in what Sigrid now recognized as a characteristic pose: his lean frame carelessly sprawled in a chair, but both hands gesturing in an inward curve as he strove to make his point. One could almost feel the energy and intensity contained in that gesture.

The straightforward captions beneath each picture served mainly to identify the subject; but in the accompanying four-page essay Riley Quinn's prose was lucid and his positions were well-argued. Sigrid had never been able to get past what she regarded as the paradoxes and put-ons of modern art, but Quinn's style was vivid and easy to follow. Although aggressively opinionated, he had made his points confidently and logically and had marshaled excellent concrete examples to back up his statements.

One would need a strong ego and an even stronger grounding in modernism to refute him or beat him in his own area, and Sigrid began to understand how an artist might fear for his reputation if Riley Quinn turned thumbs down on his work.

As Quinn had planned to do to Piers Leyden? With relish, if one could believe all accounts.

One small dose of innocent-looking orange crystals, and Leyden could subvert Quinn's book and take possession of Quinn's beautiful wife.

Nauman had made it sound as if the affair with Leyden were of no importance, yet even drunk and passed out, Doris Quinn had been stunning. Or wasn't Oscar Nauman impressed by bosomy blondes?

Sigrid turned back to his photograph and idly wondered what type of woman he did prefer. Silver hair notwithstanding, she rather doubted if there had been a lessening of his vitality in that particular area any more than in his art. Those hands, for instance… sturdy, square-shaped workman's hands, powerful enough to shape and mold yet capable of delicacy and precision. Of gentle, lyrical touch…

Sigrid sat bolt upright and slammed the folder shut, her cheeks suddenly stained by a blush more crimson than her exotic robe. Oscar Nauman was old enough to be her father!

Dismayed at herself, she went into the kitchen to make a cup of hot chocolate; and while the milk heated, she spilled the little squares of red paper onto her white counter top and began sorting the tones. The milk boiled over, was turned off and grew cold as she struggled with the problem of arranging the squares in nine equal steps. The girl student had been right: twelve steps were rather easy. But nine evaded her.

She poured the curdled milk down the drain and washed the pan, then switched off all the lights and went to bed.

And found herself right back at square one, wondering if Oscar Nauman slept alone tonight.

What the devil had got into her?

She buried her head under a pillow, blocked out every undisciplined thought and put herself firmly to sleep by a concentrated listing of all fifty states in alphabetical order.

12

ALTHOUGH not a morning person, Sigrid usually awoke before her alarm went off, so when a ringing penetrated her sleep next morning, her first response as she fumbled for the cutoff button was a drowsy surprise that she'd overslept.

The ringing continued. Was cataloged as doorbell, not clock.

Sigrid groped for her robe and stumbled bare-footed through her apartment to the door, then after a startled glance through the peephole, undid the latch.

Upon her threshold stood Oscar Nauman, indecently wide awake and as bright as the dawn sunlight edging in through her east windows. Thick white hair still damp from his morning shower, freshly shaven and smelling of good German cologne, he wore dark chinos and pale blue turtleneck shirt; he also looked disgustingly like a man who's just played two vigorous sets of tennis or jogged five miles. Sigrid's first impulse was to close the door again and go back to bed.

'Do you know what time it is?' she asked crossly.

He consulted a thin gold watch. 'Five-thirty-eight. I assume you have to be at work by seven, so that leaves us an hour for a nice leisurely breakfast.' He waved a small grocery bag. 'I brought jam and eggs for a strawberry omelet.'

The idea of eggs that early in the morning-to say nothing of eggs with jam on them-was so repulsive that Sigrid stepped back involuntarily.

Nauman interpreted that as an invitation and breezed past her toward the kitchen. Sigrid followed, protesting, 'I don't have to check in till eight, and I never eat breakfast.'

'That I can believe,' he said, rummaging in her refrigerator. He'd never seen one so bare in a woman's kitchen. The top shelf held orange juice, a pound can of coffee and a quart of milk that would be sour by tomorrow. There were a couple of cheeses, a stick of butter, a loaf of whole-wheat bread, peanut butter, mayonnaise, three brown bananas and a head of wilted lettuce turning brown at the stalk. Nothing more.

Incredulously he opened cupboard doors and found a toaster, two saucepans, one skillet, a half-dozen cans of soup, cocoa mix, three cans of tuna and a box of crackers. Salt, pepper and sugar completed her staples.

'Soup's all you ever cook?'

'And grilled cheese. That's a balanced enough meal. I suppose you fix yourself a four course dinner every night?'

'What happens when someone drops in for a meal?' he asked, genuinely curious.

'No one with any manners 'drops in,'' Sigrid said acidly. 'They wait for an invitation, and then I take them to a proper restaurant.' She picked up a percolator from the counter behind him, rinsed it and filled it with cold water, then measured coffee into the basket. Morning sunlight caught the shiny beads and mirrors of her robe so that with every movement of her slender arms and hands, tiny rainbows of prismed sunlight flashed and coruscated on the surfaces all around her.

Nauman was enchanted. His artist's eyes moved from the fugitive, darting colors to their source, then widened as he really saw her: narrow feet bare on the tile floor, the boy-slim body made graceful by the clinging red robe, the tilt of her head that sent long dark hair swinging as she plugged in the percolator.

In an exuberance of delight at the picture she made, he turned her to him, lifted her chin with his strong fingers and placed an impromptu kiss on her startled lips.

He'd meant nothing more serious than his usual homage to unexpected beauty; but as she tried to pull away, something made him tighten his hold and kiss her again. She wrenched herself from his arms, gray eyes blazing with anger as she searched for the cutting insult.

'You- You must be at least sixty!'

'Which still makes me thirty years younger than you!' he retorted. The thought made him grin unrepentantly. 'Never kissed an older woman before, but it's experience worth repeating.'

She glared at him, speechless as he moved toward her purposefully, then fled from the sunlit kitchen, taking all the rainbows with her. A moment later and her bedroom door banged shut. Thoughtfully Nauman broke eggs into a