“The whole class isn't present, Polly dear,” Noreen said. “And surely you want everyone in the picture, don't you?”

Polly looked around, then smiled and said, “Well, here's Em and Howard showing up. We've got most of the crowd.”

“But surely not the most important people,” Noreen persisted as the other two students joined them. “Don't you want to wait for Sam and Frances?”

“Not everyone needs to be in every picture,” Polly said, quite as if Noreen's question hadn't been fraught with enough undercurrents to drown a gorilla.

“All the same…”Noreen murmured, and she asked Emily Guy and Howard Breen-two San Franciscans who'd buddy-bonded on the first day of class-if they'd run into either Sam or Frances on L staircase where they all had rooms. “They didn't get much sleep last night,” Noreen said with a meaningful glance in Polly's direction. “I wonder, could they have slept right through their alarm this morning?”

“Not with Howard singing in the shower,” Emily said. “I heard him from two floors below.”

Howard said, “No day begins right without a morning tribute to Barbra.”

Noreen, not much liking this potential shift in the topic, put an end to it by saying, “And here I thought Bette Midler was the rage with all of your sort.”

At this, there was an uncomfortable little silence at the table. Polly's lips parted as she lowered her camera. Emily Guy knotted her eyebrows and did her spinster's-innocence bit of pretending she didn't quite understand what Noreen was implying. Cleve Houghton snorted, always maintaining his manly man pose. And Ralph Tucker kept spooning up corn flakes.

Howard himself was the one to break the silence. He said, “Bette Midler? Nope. I only like Bette if I'm wearing my high heels and fishnets, Noreen. And I can't get into the shower with them on. Water ruins the patent leather.”