It was in the middle of her first number, "Blue Moon," that Jane da Silva realized the Fountain Room smelled heavily of fried fish. It must be coming from the clothes and skin of all these conventioneers attending the international seafood show, she thought. She hadn't noticed it earlier when she'd been working the lobby lounge. Now, however, she was in a private banquet room, doing a party for a group that had something to do with salmon. She shifted a little on her tall stool, closed her eyes, tilted her head back and began the chorus.

The fishiness was mingling with the smells of cigarette smoke and the chlorine fumes from the room's circular fountain. This pathetic structure, an apparent attempt to create an upscale atmosphere, seemed to be made of an old Jacuzzi with a mosaic of the chunky white rocks used in gas station landscaping cemented to the outside. A weak stream of water came out of a copper pipe in the middle of the thing. Jane had cranked up the mike in an attempt to drown out the persistent whoosh that sounded exactly like a running toilet.

The Fountain Room also had crushed velvet draperies with satin cord tiebacks and plastic wood tables with cigarette burns. It was in the basement of the Meade Hotel in downtown Seattle, a bland, recently renovated hotel from the fifties that catered mostly to the business traveler on a skimpy expense account.

Jane had been working at the Meade for two weeks now and had been under no illusions from the beginning. She'd known this was a tacky gig the minute she'd clapped eyes on the piano. It was white.

Still, she supposed she was lucky to get the job. The surly food and beverage manager, a young, dark, hulking man with heavy eyebrows, hadn't asked to see a promo book or hear a demo tape. He'd taken her word for it that she knew five hundred songs, which was a slight exaggeration. (Actually, she knew the opening lines to five hundred songs and relied on her fake book and her accompanist Gary's heavy chords to do the rest.)

He hadn't asked to see Gary's ID, either, which was a blessing because Jane suspected he was under twenty-one and therefore too young to work legally where booze was served. Jane, pushing forty, wondered if she and Gary looked like a mother-son act.

Gary had been here for a few months on his own, and because of dwindling business in the lobby lounge, he'd been told to come up with a female vocalist if he wanted to stay on. "Get a babe with some class," the manager had said. Now Gary had to split the take, but the tip glass -- a brandy snifter the size of a baby's head, baited every night with fives and tens -- took the edge off the low pay.

Yesterday the manager had muttered something about a beat box, a synthesizer that provided fake percussion sounds, to jazz up the act. Gary and Jane had managed to fend him off. The thought was anathema to them both, definitely sleazy, with its soulless, jangling, thumping cha-cha beats. Not to mention unsightly. The equipment sprouted ugly wires and plugs and looked like something from Radio Shack. But what else could you expect when the piano was white?

Anyway, she'd been happy to take on this party. It was an extra five hundred dollars, and she and Gary had brazenly brought in the tip glass, which was a nervy thing to do at a private gig.

Jane smiled in the direction of a nest of conventioneers with plastic name badges. A few of them were swaying and singing along to "Blue Moon." She'd watch them. All this karaoke had made mike grabbers out of people, and she wasn't about to let that happen.

One of them came across the room to make a request. She leaned down with a half smile. He was a tall thin man with fine silvery hair, slightly bloodshot blue eyes and a light brown suit that looked definitely European. In a slight Scandinavian accent, he asked for "Just One of Those Things." What a break. She actually knew all the words. Cole Porter was her strong suit.

She caught his name badge, which said he was Trygve somebody from the Norwegian Fisheries Ministry, and nodded. He patted her proprietarily on her shoulder. She felt the clammy warmth of his hand through the fabric of her beige silk dress. Still smiling, she turned slightly and executed an accidentally-on-purpose maneuver that involved flicking the microphone so that the cord snapped at his Adam's apple and he stepped back.

When she had sung his request, and done a pretty good job of it, too, she thought, the Norwegian came up and stuffed a measly two dollars into the glass. She gave him a two-dollar nod of thanks: about a quarter of an inch. She sighed and signaled to Gary that they should take their break a little early.

Jane felt herself teetering on the brink of a major depression. Maybe a shot of cognac would take the edge off and get her through her next set.

She smiled nicely to the scattered applause that floated over Gary's final chords, turned off the mike, set it carefully on her stool, and went over to the bar, where she sat down and ordered her usual tapwater with a wedge of lime, then decided what the hell and changed it to a small Courvoisier.

Two men with conventioneers' name badges were sitting there. One was about forty, dark and elegant. Jane read his name badge. He was from Santiago, Chile. She took in the dark good looks, the expensive tailoring and the wedding ring. The other was younger, with sandy hair and an open, amiable sort of face and pale skin. The two men watched the Norwegian make his way back to his table. He seemed to be having a little trouble negotiating the fountain and was following its curve with his head down like a pony in a child's zoo ride.

"Poor old Trygve. He's looking a bit pathetic. He always drinks too much at these gatherings," said the Chilean with a slight accent and a disapproving click of the tongue.

The younger man answered in a strange accent she assumed was Scottish, but was thicker than any she'd ever heard. "Spirits are desperately expensive in Norway, so they sometimes tend to crog it on a bit when they leave home." He paused and went on indulgently, "He was pairfectly sober for his speech today. He doesn't generally do these fish shows. I heard he was a last minute replacement for the assistant fisheries minister. He hasn't lairned yet that you wait for a late night until the last day of the show, once you've packed up your stand and all."

Jane liked having foreigners around. A recently reformed expatriate, she felt homesick for the rest of the world.

Just then two young women came into the Fountain Room. They were wearing short, tight velvet jackets, thigh-high Royal Stuart kilts, black mesh stockings and spiked heels. They did a showy turn around the fountain, and then the blond half of the team waved at the Norwegian, who seemed delighted and gestured them over to his table.

The Chilean rolled his eyes. "I can't believe the Scots, using those prostitutes to sell their salmon."

"It's their American distributor, actually," said the other man.

"Oh!" replied the Chilean, as if that explained the lapse in taste. "I didn't mean to malign your countrymen," he added with a little smile.

"They aren't my countrymen."

The younger man sounded testy. Jane's eyes flitted down to his name badge and read the computer-generated letters. His name was Magnus Anderson. Hardly a Scottish name. The second line read "Shetland's Finest Smoked Salmon," and the last line read "Lerwick, Scotland." The word "Scotland" was crossed out in pen and replaced with block capitals that read "Shetland."

Magnus Anderson glowered. "We were stolen by the Scots. We were part of a dowry for the ugliest queen in the world."

"Yes, yes," his companion said impatiently."You explained me this. They had to give away the most beautiful islands in the world to marry her off."

"And the Orkneys, too," said Magnus, peering gloomily into his beer. "By rights, we should be part of Norway."

"Then you could have Trygve's job, and maybe we'd accomplish something at the salmon exporters meeting. Oh, excuse me, but there is a customer I must see." The dark man drifted away toward an elderly Japanese gentleman and executed a very un-Latin bow.

Anderson now turned to Jane and said, "It's grand to have you singing for us. Perhaps you'll cheer us up. We just had our yearly meeting, and there are a lot of problems in salmon farming. Things got a bit heated." He sighed. "I'll be glad to get back home."

Jane glanced at his name tag as if reading it for the first time and repeated the name of his company. "Shetland Smoked Salmon. Really! Smoked salmon is one of my favorite things."

"The very best in the world comes from Shetland," he said. "World" came out "weereld." "You've heard of Shetland, haven't you?"

"Of course," she said. "The Shetland Isles at the northern tip of Scotland. I've always wanted to go there." Jane had French friends who'd raved about the place in the romantic way the French did about mist-enshrouded northern spots.

He beamed happily at her enthusiasm. "We prefer to call it Shetland." He indicated an enamel lapel badge showing a blue flag with a white cross. "This is our flag."

"The best smoked salmon in the world?" said Jane. She was prepared to listen to any sales pitch if she could hear more of that fabulous accent. There was something so wonderfully cozy about the vowels.

"We start out with the best fish," he intoned, like someone telling a child a much loved bedtime story. "In the voes of Shetland, the water temperature is perfect, and the wave action is strong, so the fish swim against the current and develop proper muscle tone. And then, of course, we prepare it properly. Cold smoked. Very slow."

"And I imagine you've been doing it for centuries," said Jane, prompting helpfully.

"Well, not exactly," he said. "In actual fact, we've only had salmon for the last fifteen years or so. We've no rivers. But now it's all farmed, you see. In pains in the sea." It took Jane a minute to figure out what he was getting at. He meant "pens," not "pains."

"Smoked salmon," she murmured, and closed her eyes, imagining it sliced thinly on buttered toast with some onion and caper and a lemon wedge as a garnish, with a cool glass of wine.

"Come by the seafood show and I'll give you some," said Anderson. "After the show ends, and I take down the stand" -- an operation that became "tack doon" when he said it-- "I'll give you what's left. We canna ship it all back." He handed her his card. "But there's just one condition."

"What's that?" said Jane.

"Sing my favorite song," he said.

"And what might that be?" She was alarmed because, as was her habit, she seemed to be absorbing the cadence and accent of whomever it was she was speaking to and selling it back to them. He didn't seem to notice. Despite his almost American friendliness, there was something feathery and otherworldly about him. His skin looked translucent, and his voice was soft. She could imagine his favorite song being some keening old ballad from a few centuries back.

" 'Walkin' after Midnight,' " he said. "You know, the Patsy Cline thing?" He clearly sensed that she didn't expect him to be a Patsy Cline fan. "Country music's very big in Shetland," he said. He tapped at his card. "If you ever come, look me up. We're always happy to see visitors."

She drank the last delicious sip of the cognac and slid off the stool. "I'll be glad to sing that," she said, thanking God for her fake book.

Before she started again, she went to the ladies' room, tastefully done up in pink Formica with some bouquets of dried roses in baskets. She examined the skin under her eyes for mascara smudges.

The two young women in Highland attire, one blond and one brunette, stood in front of the mirror.

"Jesus, Marcia," said the one with brown hair in a squeaky voice that sounded as if she were on helium, "my feet are fucking killing me."

Jane could well believe it. The spikes were at least four inches high, enough to jam her toes painfully down into the point of the shoe and throw out her back. It was one of life's major ironies, thought Jane, that something that made your legs look so good made your feet feel so bad.

"I know," said Marcia. She had taffy-colored hair and too much makeup around her small, wary blue eyes. "And these mesh stockings sort of cut into the soles of your feet, don't they?"

Jane, who had dismissed these girls as mindless twits because of their tacky outfits, felt sorry for them. They seemed suddenly young and vulnerable. After all, who was she to sneer? She was strutting her stuff, too, in her own middle-aged, subtle way. Hadn't she chosen the beige silk dress she was wearing for the way it curved over her hip, made her waist look small and revealed just a tasteful slice of leg?

"Plus, my hair smells like fish," said the brunette lass thoughtfully. She took the end of a strand of her hair between her fingers, brought it to her nose and sniffed. "Yuck," she said, then examined the hair sample visually in the time-honored split-end-inspection gesture. "So do you think those guys who said they'd meet us here will show?"

"Probably," Marcia said in a flat voice. She was rubbing a line of blusher along her cheekbone. "We can wait for them with that guy from Norway. He's really friendly."

The brunette dropped her hair and watched Marcia rub color into her face in the mirror. "You put on makeup weird," she said with the air of having reached a great insight. Jane, who was now brushing her hair, cast a curious glance at Marcia's reflection.

"People usually make a special face when they put on makeup," explained the brunette. "Like opening their eyes big and kind of smiling a little, maybe. Checking out how it would look when you were talking to people."

Marcia was just rubbing that old blusher on there like someone slamming paint on a fence. Jane gave her another look while she took out her own lipstick, realizing the squeaky brunette was right. There was such a thing as a putting-on-makeup expression, and Marcia didn't have one.

Jane touched up her own face, keeping half an eye on the two women. While the brunette looked about twenty-two, it was hard to tell how old Marcia, the blonde, was. There was a solemnness about her that made her sleazy outfit look even more grotesque.

Marcia went over to the sink and scrubbed her hands like an obsessive compulsive. "I smell like dead fish," she said. She sounded angry.

Back in the Fountain Room, Jane noticed that the mood of the gathering had changed. The rowdier element in the corner seemed to have cleared out. The place was now full of knots of gloomy, dark-suited men, not mixing and looking far from festive.

Still, why should she care if the party was dying just as it had begun? Her job in the lobby lounge was to sell drinks by keeping the customers in their chairs. Here, all she had to do was sing. She'd get paid whether or not this grim little party ever took off.

But what should she sing to these dismal-looking men? "Gloomy Sunday," the infamous Hungarian suicide song, might be just the ticket. She certainly wasn't going to do anything bouncy. The only dignified way to deal with a dead crowd was to reflect their mood and pretend everything was just fine. She decided "Autumn Leaves" might be a good choice. As soon as she played her request for that nice man from Shetland.

After her next set, she stepped off the dais and Magnus Anderson came up and thanked her. "Lovely," he said. "Do you know anything else by Patsy Cline?"

Before she could answer, he glanced over Jane's shoulder, clicked his tongue and snapped, "Here's that annoyin' lass, come to torment me."

The woman who came up to them was about thirty, with pale skin, light brown hair and large greenish eyes like peeled grapes. She wore silver drop earrings in the shape of fish, and a big fish pin fastened the matronly-looking scarf that she had draped over a stiff, boxy brown suit. Way too much shoulder pad, thought Jane. It made her look artificially squared off, as if she were a fish out of water, soft and squishy, wearing a not entirely successful human disguise.

"Hi, Magnus," she said in a grating but perky voice. "Remember me? Carla Elroy from Seafood Now magazine?"

"Oh, yes," he said without enthusiasm.

Carla looked over at Jane with just a flicker of curiosity and turned back to Anderson, who was scowling. "So how did the salmon meeting go?" she demanded. "They wouldn't let me in."

He shrugged noncommittally.

"Listen," she said, "there's rumors."

"Oh?" Anderson narrowed his eyes a little.

"That's right. Something funny's going on in farmed salmon. All over the world. Strange rumors about pigmentation problems. Did you guys talk about that?" She gave him a little smirk of triumph.

Jane watched Anderson's own pigmentation change from pale to florid. He blinked hard a few times and looked furious, but in his soft, feathery voice, he just said, "I don't know a thing about it." Then he nodded to Jane and walked away.

Carla turned to Jane. "Are you a member of the Women's Seafood Network?" she said eagerly, apparently unaware that she had driven Magnus Anderson away in a choler. Jane expected this woman to give her the secret handshake of this organization. A dead-fish handshake, no doubt.

"I'm here to sing. I'm afraid I'm not in the fish business." Actually, she was glad she wasn't in the fish business, but it seemed tactless to say so.

Carla's green eyes grew even bulgier and her expression more earnest. "It's a fascinating industry. Really global and dynamic. But there aren't a lot of women in it. That's why we have the Women's Seafood Network. So we can help each other deal with these old boys." She wrinkled up her nose. "A lot of these guys are totally macho."

Jane reflected that while overbearing jerks were undoubtedly the downside, there were plenty of single women who would be only too glad to find themselves in an industry full of men. She checked Carla's ring finger -- naked -- and stopped herself from congratulating Carla on the great odds she should be enjoying. Maybe she wasn't interested in men.

"So do you eat a lot of fish?" she said to Carla. "It's supposed to be very good for you."

"Full of Omega-3. It fights cholesterol," Carla said solemnly. "The only problem is, I want to know all about it first. Where it was caught, how it was processed, how it's been handled. It all starts with proper on-board bleeding techniques." She was getting quite animated now.

Jane felt slightly queasy and was relieved to see that Gary was waving to her. She was afraid Carla would move on to evisceration any moment now. "I'm so glad you enjoy your work," she said. "Now I'm going to have to do mine."

From the dais at the end of the room, Gary played in his own moody, introspective way, and Jane sang and watched the party fizzle. Throughout the next hour she observed Carla buzz at the knots of suited men, trotting over to them in her sensible pumps, turning her white face up to them eagerly, occasionally whipping out a notebook and standing there, pencil poised. Everyone seemed to make short work of deflecting her.

Jane doubted that with her gauche interview technique she'd ever advance beyond Seafood Now magazine. It was so simple, really. All she needed to have done was look sympathetic instead of delighted when confronting Anderson with the suggestion there was some problem with salmon. Jane would have got the whole story out of him in five minutes by making it clear she was on his side.

Carla finally left the room. She looked satisfied despite having been universally rejected. Perhaps she thought she was being fended off because she was a woman trying to penetrate the old boy network. She was wrong. Jane could tell from Carla's assertive, overeager mingling technique, not unlike a dive-bombing insect at a barbecue, that the rejection was personal rather than gender based.

Jane sang "Somebody Loves Me" and began to think about her love life, mulling over in her mind how she could dump Jack Lawson, a singing rancher she'd met in the eastern part of the state last summer and with whom she had been carrying on a long-distance romance for some time. He was expecting to meet her after work tonight. Maybe she'd sleep with him just once more-- for old times' sake and because she knew realistically she wouldn't be able to resist his physical charms anyway. Then she'd dump him. Nicely, of course.

These basically recreational affairs, no matter how they were dressed up, worked only to a point. Jane was determined to end it while it was still fun. She'd never expected the thing to go on as long as it had.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of another woman. Maybe the Women's Seafood Network took turns sending in its members in shifts to make sure the old boys weren't conspiring against them, and this amiable-looking tubby blonde was here to replace Carla.

The new arrival wore a bright blue crepe dress draped artfully over firm and ample flesh. She had the good legs that often went with a big torso, especially on women who drank a lot, and she strode confidently around the room on a pair of very expensive Italian shoes with high heels that showed off those legs.

Unlike the tired tartan tarts Jane had observed earlier, and who now seemed to be gone, this woman was used to dressing for success, and the muscles in her calves had adapted.

She seemed more welcome than poor Carla. Jane watched her purposefully knocking back what looked like a gin and tonic and beaming and bubbling around the room, shaking hands and exchanging air kisses like a politician. At one point she even thwacked the elegant Chilean on his elegant back in a hearty, one-of-the-boys manner. He blinked his Bambi-like eyes and smiled nervously.

She exchanged some words with the men around him, and when Jane stopped singing in one of her dramatic pauses, she heard the woman's deep laugh and voice. She was English. "We'll jolly soon set things right," she said in the booming, assured tones of the captain of a girls' hockey team.

She left soon after, and Jane started to think about Jack again, then decided it was all too boring, just as boring as this gig.

Maybe she should move to Prague. Jane had been to Prague in the bad old days and had felt a Mitteleuropisch Ernst Lubitsch charm under the oppressive surface. She'd heard they liked American jazz singers, and it was cheap and lively right now, full of expatriates. The Left Bank for the nineties and all that. Of course, all those buzzy people were probably a lot younger than she was -- young and eager and looking for a buzz instead of creating one.

The hours crept by. The partygoers drifted in and out. At one point, Magnus Anderson left with a group of men and gave her a friendly wave. Jane kept on singing, although her repertoire was getting thin and her voice was tired. She reminded herself that the extra five hundred would come in handy. She was in the middle of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and wondering if Budapest had a shot at being the next Prague, when Carla Elroy of Seafood Now magazine reappeared in the banquet room.

This time she was harder to ignore. She was wearing pajamas with tropical fish all over them, and she was screaming. She rushed to the front of the room and said, "My God, my God!"

The cuff on the sleeve of her pajama top was dark red and wet, and there was another paler red stain on her outer thigh, probably where the cuff had touched it. It looked very much like fresh blood.