I think so, too, though it’s not something I tend to dwell on. Carolyn Kaiser is a couple of inches shorter than the five-two she claims to be, which leaves her not much taller than some of the dogs she grooms at the Poodle Factory just two doors down the street (or up the street, depending which way you’re headed) from Barnegat Books. We lunch together during the week, at her place or mine, and we unwind after work at the Bum Rap, and she is my best friend and occasional henchperson. If she didn’t happen to be a lesbian (or, by the same token, if I didn’t happen to be a guy) we’d probably have a romance, as people do, and it would run its course, as romances do, and that would be that. But this way we can be best friends forever, and I honestly think we will. (It got a little complicated once when we were both sleeping with the same girl, but we got over that with no damage done.)

So yes, she’s pretty, with dark hair and a round face and big eyes, and sometimes I’ll compliment her on what she’s wearing, the way I might say something nice about a male friend’s necktie. But it doesn’t happen very often, because I don’t notice very often.

“She’s right,” I said now. “In fact, there’s something different about you. You’re letting your hair grow, aren’t you?”

“Everybody does, Bern. Between haircuts. It’s not like shaving. You don’t have to do it every day.”

“It looks longer than usual,” I said. As long as I’ve known Carolyn she’s worn her hair Dutch-boy style, perhaps in unconscious tribute to the resourceful lad who saved Holland from flooding by putting his finger where it would do the most good. “The bangs are the same as always, but it’s longer in back.”

“So I’m trying something a little different,” she said, “just to see how it looks.”

“Well, it looks nice.”

“That’s what Erica said. In fact it was her idea.”

“It’s becoming,” I said. “It’s sort of…”