The waterfall at "Helsinki" -- the restaurant where Bernadette was having lunch with Jim Hillyer -- splashed quietly in the background. As she nibbled on a smoked salmon-and-caper appetizer, Bernadette defended her decision to leave for three weeks.

"But Bernie, I just don't get it," Hillyer was saying. "You just took two weeks' vacation a couple of months back. And now, when we're so close to getting the Cummings business, for you to suddenly have to take off again . . . you're killing me. You're killing me!"

"Jim," Bernadette said firmly, buttering a piece of rye bread, "do not, repeat do not, guilt me out. I've worked 18-hour days for this company for ten years, and I have no problem taking the time that's due me. And if I canceled a holiday every time we had a new-business pitch, I'd never take any time off. You know that."

"I know, I know," Hillyer admitted begrudgingly. "But why this sudden interest in dude ranches in Montana?" he said. "Come on, you're a nice Italian girl from the Bronx, for heaven's sake, what do you know from horses and cattle and campfires?"

"Jim, don't make fun of me. I've discovered the out of doors late in life. And I've already made plans. Deal with it." "I'm dealing, I'm dealing. I know the real story, though -- you've fallen for some cowboy or ranch hand or cattle rustler or whatever the hell you call those guys in the blue jeans ads, right?" "Maybe I have," responded Bernadette, mysteriously, pouring herself another glass of Scandinavian mineral water. "Maybe I have."

Hated her. Some people, in fact, did hate Bernadette. The way they always hate women who succeed in business and don't make any apologies for it. It didn't bother her, though. Well, actually...yes it did. A lot. But lighten up, Bernie -- there's hope. And get over yourself! Loved him. Hey -- is Jim Hillyer really as lame as he seems? Why is he giving Bernadette all this grief about taking a few weeks vacation while the rest of the agency is going up in flames (figuratively speaking, of course -- at least so far)? Plus, who even DOES these expense-account lunches anymore? Who has the time?!! And to think it was Hillyer who rejoiced when Michael and Eliot's agency on Thirtysomething failed because "they didn't work hard enough..."

Bernadette knew that it was safer to let Jim think she was some love-starved fortysomething New York businesswoman, than to even try explaining what it really was she'd found in Montana . . . and what was pulling her, so strongly, back out West.

No way would Jim understand the appeal -- philosophically, spiritually, politically, every way -- that the Universal Cosmic Sensitivity Temple held for her.

He'd just call it what everyone else did. A cult.

Four ad-sales reps -- three from magazines and one from a television network --sat anxiously in the reception area, being kept waiting, as usual, by the twenty-three-year-old junior media planners who made their lives miserable. Agnes Ramirez told them she was ordering down for coffee -- but was sorry she'd offered them anything when one asked for mochachino, one requested an espresso half-caf, one wanted a latte -- "but only if it was Arabica" -- and the fourth, an anorectic-looking woman in black Donna Karan, said she'd like decaf tea.

Phoning to place the order at the coffee shop downstairs, Agnes began to dial -- but before she could, the freight elevator opened and two delivery persons, a man and a woman, wrestled a wooden crate into the elevator lobby. The young woman, wearing a khaki uniform with an insignia that said "On-Location Critters," proceeded to pry the lid of the crate off. Agnes stood up at her desk and peered into it, disbelieving. It was a brown-and-white baby calf. A live cow on the 20th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper?

All eyes dropped as the young woman handed Agnes a clipboard. She hung up the phone, looked at the delivery instructions, and realized that the animal was part of a commercial-shoot for Chewy-Crumbly Cookies. The spot was filming somewhere in Connecticut.

Agnes pressed the intercom button. "Sydney?" she said. "I need help out here."

Lucien Brandt ended up calling in sick to work that day. And it was no lie. He was sick to his very soul. He was sick not only at his past being resurrected -- and it was more than just his past, it was another lifetime -- but sick at who it was that was dredging it up, and threatening to reveal all: his twin brother.

Lucien -- formerly Allan Bagley -- had been born a twin. Allan and his brother Artemis Bagley had been inseparable as young children. Growing up the only offspring of a Sunday-school-teacher mother and a janitor-father in rural South Carolina in the fifties, they'd only had each other as friends. It wasn't until high school that they drifted apart, slowly at first, and then permanently.

When Allan excelled at school, Artemis dropped out. When Allan won a scholarship to art school in San Francisco, Artemis drifted in and out of meaningless jobs, and was usually unemployed. When their parents died, a year apart, Allan went back to South Carolina to arrange the funerals. Alone.

But when Allan had begun to make a life for himself in San Francisco, he'd lost touch completely with Artemis, and condemned his childhood to the far reaches of his memory. He never expected to see, or hear from, his twin again. It was better that way, he'd rationalized. They had no relationship anyway.

Evil lurks. And that jacket! Let's get this straight (you should pardon the expression). Artemis Bagley is Lucien Brandt's brother. Only Lucien used to be "Allan." They're sort of like evil twins. And who knows exactly which one of them is evil? Patience, dear reader! In the world of cyberseries plot-development, it's a virtue.

Now, here Lucien sat, in the corner booth of a seedy open-all-night diner just off the West Side Highway. It was raining lightly, but looking out to the Highway, the Hudson River, and the lights of New Jersey beyond, all Lucien could see were droplets of water outside on the blackened window. He stared out for what seemed like hours -- though in reality he'd only been waiting fifteen minutes -- when he jumped in his seat, startled. A reflection appeared in the darkened window in front of him, of the man standing next to the booth. For all the world, the stranger, dressed in a brown leather bomber jacket and blue jeans, looked like Lucien himself. Lucien looked up at him.

"Art?" he said tentatively

"Allan?" responded Artemis. "Is that you?"

Cy Lefkowitz felt the depression lifting. It was just after ten o'clock at night, and uptown at 475 Madison Avenue, the rain beat against his 20th-floor window. But judging by his mood, the sun might have been shining and a southerly breeze blowing in through the window. Cy was beginning to feel . . . lighter. Liberated.

Maybe things would be all right after all. He'd never felt so free in all his life. And the sense of optimism and relief that had overtaken him since his talk with Jim Hillyer this morning were so alien to him as to make him feel giddy.

Giving Jim his resignation -- telling his longtime partner that he wanted out of the company, out of the business, out of the whole damn industry -- had lifted the weight of the world from Cy's shoulders. Maybe this was the time to make a break. To try on a new life.

Or to get his life back.

Cy absently filled a soft-sided leather briefcase with items from his top desk drawer, and from the surface of the credenza against the wall -- small, wood-framed photographs of his two grown kids, Mike and Amy; a twenty-year-old ashtray of hardened Play-Doh that Amy had made in camp, and that had followed him from office to office; a small leather address book that listed the birthdays of his grandchildren, dates he seemed never to be able to remember.

Jim had agreed to the split, and to buy out Cy's part of the business. The lawyers could manage the details -- Cy didn't have to worry about money, anyway. The agency had been so successful the past few years that he could live comfortably for the rest of his life off the last five years' bonuses anyway.

What was important, Cy knew, was that if he didn't have a change, he would lose his mind.

He buckled the briefcase shut, grabbed his balled-up trench coat off the sofa, switched off the light, and walked out into the reception area, headed toward the elevator lobby. He stopped briefly to pat the breast-pocket of his suit jacket, to make sure he had the ticket his travel agent has messengered over that afternoon. It was there. Cy was beginning a long journey, in more ways than one. The elevator "dinged," and opened. A cleaning lady got out carrying an upright vacuum cleaner. She nodded hello. Cy stepped in onto the plush red carpeting and pushed "1." The doors slid shut silently, and the elevator whisked Cy down to the street level.

What a guy. A mensch, really. You've gotta love Cy -- having the guts to pack it in. Take off. Check out. Run screaming. But to what? And to whom?

The office was empty now, except for Sydney Chen, scrawling on her legal pad, who observed Cy's poignant departure from her desk.

He didn't even say goodbye, she thought, sadly.