Bernadette awoke in the huge pine bed and looked around her, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Still half-asleep, she sat up and took in the surroundings, which, when she'd arrived last night, she'd been too tired to care about. It had been very late when she got into Great Falls, anyway, and dark.

The sun streamed in through the red-and-black check window curtains, and the log-cabin decor was more than simply a Ralph Lauren design statement -- Hollis's home was a real log house, with an honest-to-goodness wood stove in the corner, Adirondack-style furniture strewn about, and a huge stone fireplace dominating one whole wall. But Bernadette was alone in the bed.

Just as she began to regain full consciousness and wonder where her lover had gone, Hollis Burns emerged from the tiny bathroom, pulling a sweatshirt over his head. He was tall and lanky, and dressed already, in a pair of old jeans and cowboy boots.

Hollis Burns was a spiritual leader of the trendy sort, but he described himself as a therapist. His religious philosophy was a mixture of Tibetan Buddhism, mundane new-age maxims, and do-unto-others Christianity. He'd written a couple of best-selling books on reincarnation and past-life-regression therapy, and had appeared on "Oprah" and "Sally Jessy Raphael" a couple of times. But in reality, what he was was a charlatan who preyed on people's loneliness. And for his women readers, it didn't hurt that he was a major hunk.

Hollis's "school" in Montana -- the Universal Cosmic Sensitivity Temple -- was a complex of log-cabin buildings at which he held week-long spiritual retreats. For those that could afford it, it boasted accommodations and meals that were anything but ascetic. In a bizarre mixture of outdoor recreation and what he called "body/soul work," Hollis's retreats combined seminars on topics like self-healing with cross-country ski outings. The whole thing was too bogus to be believed -- except by needy folk like Bernadette DaCapo, from whom he'd made a fortune. Bernadette was exactly the type of person easily taken in by nonsense-purveyors like Hollis -- she was successful, curious, smart, and lonely. She'd registered for a week at Hollis's retreat after being given one of his books and reading about him in People magazine. That was nearly a year ago. And now, here she was in his bed, 12 months deep into an affair with the man.

How blind can you BE? Hollis Burns is a media star of the first magnitude -- and a manipulator of people like you wouldn't believe. But how naive can Bernadette be, getting involved with this guy? Doesn't it seem that it's always the savviest, most sophisticated people who -- under the banner of self-improvement and soul-searching -- fall victim to operators like Hollis? Don't GO there, Bernadette! (Too late. She's already gone).

"Hi," she said to Hollis as he walked toward her.

"Hi there yourself," he said sweetly.

"I got in so late last night," she said, brushing the hair back from her forehead, sitting up straight in bed, and pulling the down quilt around her waist. She was wearing one of Hollis's T-shirts, in which she had slept.

"I know. I picked you up at the airport, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," she yawned. "Sorry. Any coffee yet?"

"It's on the stove," he answered, reaching for a puffy down vest on the chair next to the bed and putting it on. "I've gotta go."

"What?" Bernadette questioned, surprised.

"I have a workshop down by the lake. I'm already late. Take care of yourself. See you tonight." He opened the heavy wooden door and a blast of cold, clear mountain air rushed into the one-room cabin -- along with a blinding ray of morning sunlight. It closed behind him with a thud.

Staring into space, Bernadette wondered to herself what this relationship with Hollis was all about, and what she'd gotten herself into. In a moment of terror which she quickly squelched, she wondered if she were a complete fool.

Back in the reception area at Hillyer, Jones in New York, Agnes clapped her hands loudly, trying to quiet the crowd.

Indispensable. Question: How could agencies get along without women like Agnes Ramirez? Answer: They couldn't. The CEO: a figurehead. The copy staff: a pain in the ass. The art department: half of them could be eighty-sixed tomorrow and no one would notice. But Agnes keeps it together. Too bad you could TRIPLE her salary and it'd still be a quarter of what she's worth. She keeps telling herself they'll make it up to her at Christmas-bonus time. Earth to Agnes . . .

"Please, mothers, please. You must keep the children quiet." The reception area was jam-packed with mothers and four-year-old children, the result of an open casting call foolishingly sent out by the casting department for the upcoming Chewy-Crumbly Cookies campaign. They were casting the new Chewy-Crumbly Cookies Kid. Meanwhile, the waiting room had dissolved into chaos, and fourteen four-year-olds -- and their stage mothers, armed with portfolios of photographs -- awaited their shot at fame and fortune.

As Agnes played ringmaster to this circus -- while trying to answer the phone -- the elevator doors opened and a skinny, sixteen-year-old bicycle messenger got out. He wore neon-green spandex bicycle pants, a yellow down vest, and a red sparkly-metallic motorcycle helmet that made his head look three times its normal size. He looked like a cross between a "Road Warrior" extra and a Tour de France entrant.

"Wassup, Agnes?" he said, handing her a clipboard to sign.

"What do you think, Kareem?" she said sarcastically. "Take me away from all of this, will you?"

"One day, girlfriend," he said, hopping back into the elevator before it closed.

The mountains of Montana were 4,500 miles away from a remote beach on the Hawaiian island of Kauai -- a beach along which Cy Lefkowitz was pensively walking. It had always been Cy's dream to come to Hawaii to live, and now he had finally done it. With characteristic efficiency, Cy had cashed out of the agency, sublet his New York apartment, signed his divorce papers, and put his furniture in storage in the space of a week. He didn't know what the rest of his life held -- if it held anything. All he knew was that he was leaving the nightmares, pressures, and drudgery of the advertising business behind, and running toward the sun and the water. He felt childish and irresponsible and brave and liberated all at the same time.

Bali H'ai will call you . . . Cy Lefkowitz is caught somewhere between a mid-life crisis and a Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. The truth is, there's some important symbolism in Cy having run off to the very island that served as a set for the movie version of "South Pacific." Only this ain't musical comedy . . . and Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza are nowhere to be found. Is there an intermission?

Cy's love affair with Hawaii had begun years earlier on his honeymoon with his first wife. His marriages hadn't lasted, none of them -- but his determination to spend his life "beachside" had -- and finally, at the age of 63, here he was.

Cy had never been to Kauai, and had flown over from Oahu without staying even one night in Honolulu. He'd rented a broken-down front-wheel-drive Subaru at the airport in Lihue, and had driven straight west. The only accommodations on the far western end of the island were in a tiny, rundown cottage colony at which he'd rented a stiflingly hot, gecko-infested unit for forty-five dollars a week. And he loved it.

But he loved the beach more, and, this particular morning, he strolled along the sand in blissful solitude. A few native Hawaiian families farmed taro and sugarcane fields nearby, but the hideous encroachment of the tourist industry hadn't reached the west side of the island yet. Cy knew it was only a matter of time, though.

Solitude? I don't think so. Okay, picture this. Sixty-three-year-old bearded New Yorker in a rayon Hawaiin shirt, walking along a deserted beach. Fifteen minutes and he's already sunburned. Suffering from culture-shock up the wazoo. He'd kill for a Starbuck's Frappuccino, but knows that's not gonna happen. To a little boy on the beach who's never been farther East than Waimea town -- and only then during a tsunami scare -- Cy might as well be from Mars. Or New York. But their paths have crossed. Big time.

At this time of year, the surf here on Barking Sands would normally be pounding -- but strangely, it was calm. The tide was gently coming in, and tiny waves lapped around Cy's ankles -- which were as white and pasty as his face, with its New York City pallor. As he walked the length of the beach, Cy picked up twigs and driftwood, gathering them as if for a bonfire. To his left was the Pacific, and to his right, about 100 yards away, the seldom-traveled highway that circled the island.

Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, a small, tanned figure appeared next to Cy, and said "Hi." Cy was momentarily startled, and reached up to remove his sunglasses. He looked down and realized there was a little boy, about eight years old, walking beside him. The little boy had materialized as if by magic -- Cy hadn't heard him running up behind him.

"What are you doing?" the boy asked innocently, in seeming ignorance of the fact that Cy Lefkowitz would soon change the course of his young life.