S*E*V*E*N

Woodchuck

When the diffused brightness of direct sunlight no longer made a blue green glow through the closed draperies in front of the sliding glass that opened onto the beach-front bedroom terrace, Mr. Aldo Bellinger got up from the broad bed and padded naked across the thick tufted pile of the aqua rug and parted the draperies a few inches and looked out. The sun had slid below the Caribbean horizon, and the sea lay gentle against the broad beach of the island.

He thumbed the latch down, slid the door aside enough to step out onto the walled, second-story terrace, and closed the opening behind him, the draperies falling back into place.

A small wind came out of the west, not enough to raise surf, but enough to bring the sea scent, and the slap and sigh of the small waves, adrift on the thick moist tropic air. The darkening room behind him was all cool blue-and-green hush of ducted air from the faraway compressors and fans.

He leaned forearms on the broad top of the four-foot wall, big brown hands loosely clasped, and looked out at the coarse brown sand of the wide beach, at the shadings of the sea, green over the shallows, a deepening cobalt over the deeps. Far out, a pod of bait sparkled and thrashed, ripped from below by the savage rush of toothy predators, harassed from above by the circling, diving, squalling terns, their excited playground voices just audible over the soft sounds of small waves.

You put the package together, he thought, and it is never quite equal to the original vision. But this Club de Playa comes as close as any of them. Construction compromises, the result of haste, rising costs, availability, always degrade the concept. Such as the construction of the terrace wall on which he leaned. White pierced decorative block, a commercial pattern instead of the custom design that made the architectural rendering so handsome. And so, from now on, the Club de Playa would be graced by the tiresome vulgarity of the fleur de lis pattern in alternate blocks in all the walls of all the apartment terraces.

But if you did not ride herd, if you did not put the clamp on them and tell them to make the compromises necessary to meet the deadline and cost projection, you could lose your ass to aesthetics.

You had to heed deadlines, because you had to stay a little bit ahead of the other predators involved in resort projects. The money goes to the lead runners, in delicious abundance. The farther back you are in the pack, the less the margin, the more dangerous the risk. And the ones in the rear copy too late and lose it all.

This was the condominium concept applied to resort apartment-hotel living. Own your own vacation apartment directly on one of the world’s greatest unspoiled beaches, and let management rent it for you when you are not using it. See brochure for special tax advantages available to U.S. citizens on this friendly tropic island.

So he had scrounged for the necessary risk capital in a tight-money market and put up the hotel portion and the first two wings, forty apartments per wing, of the projected eight wings. Seventy-one apartments sold thus far. Take it far enough to prove it works, then unload it. Four days now of dickering and maneuvering with Larssen from Stockholm, who arrived backstopped by his quartet of four cool-eyed young Swedish specialists.

Good to be outnumbered, he thought. Just me and my secretary and Lee Rountree, the large young man who had styled, and followed through on, the promotion program that had sold off seventy-one of the eighty so quickly and easily to good-risk customers. Not a lawyer or an accountant on our resident team. Left them on standby in Miami. Roy can slam the Lear over there and have them back here in one hour total flying time, plus the red tape at Miami International.

He could feel the last of the residual tension going out of his neck and shoulders and jaw muscles. At ten this morning they had been one hundred thousand Jamaica dollars apart. Larssen had suggested in his sleepy voice they split the difference. Aldo Bellinger had said they had already, in effect, done that. Long silence.

Aldo had finally said, “I guess I won’t get up and walk out, because there is a good chance we might do business again some day. And the next time I might not have an alternate buyer. Phone Kinkaid in Nassau and tell him I authorize him to tell you the top and final offer his clients made. If he gets too cautious, put me on the line. It comes to... let me do some conversion here... about twelve thousand Jamaica dollars more than my final offer to you. I’ll pay that premium to do business with you, Larssen, but not a hundred and twelve.”

It had taken the usual half hour to get through to Nassau. Aldo Bellinger had gone down to the pool. One of the young Swedes had come and got him and taken him back to Larssen’s apartment. Larssen had known Kinkaid would not lie. Everybody knew that, fortunately. So Larssen had shaken hands, told his people to go to work on the papers, and told them that he and Mr. Bellinger were going to spend some welcome time on the beach.

Bellinger could feel the residual heat of the sun under the brown hide of his thick shoulders and muscular back. The light from the departed sun flared on white high clouds, turning them salmon pink, and the beach and the sea turned a golden pink under the bright glow of the clouds. He saw a woman walking slowly along the beach on the wet packed sand left by the receding tide. She was coming toward him. He realized that it was Anne Faxton, his private executive secretary. Seven years of extraordinarily efficient, discreet, and loyal professional service. And in the last four years of the association, it had expanded into an emotional-sensual dimension as well. Nothing he or she had sought.

One of those tritenesses typical of the rich years of the old movies, of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer prefabricated romance. Executive and secretary flying to important meeting. Airport closed by floods. Land at alternate airport eighty miles away. Too much in a hurry to wait for bus arranged by airline. Rent car. Have to take a detour. Heavy rains. Drive slowly through what appears to be a wide shallow torrent across highway. Front end drops into a washout. Lightning illuminates dark farmhouse behind them, on high ground. During break in rain, grab baggage and trudge through mud. Nobody home. Force porch window. Saturday. Evidence that family went to city to shop, probably cut off by rising water. No electricity. Phone out also. Fireplace. Candles. Kerosene and lantern in rear shed. Smashing rain and whistling wind and constant lightning. Secretary scared of thunderstorms all her life. Night gets colder. Sit on couch in front of fireplace. Loud crack of thunder makes her lunge, shuddering, into his arms. Extreme close-up, two shot, for kiss illuminated by dance of firelight. Storm and mood music on sound track. Camera angle on floor by couch, as one by one, sweater, blouse, skirt, bra, panties drop onto pile.

It had all seemed quite different by the bright morning light of the next day, the sky a high and cloudless blue, power and phone restored, a wrecker on the way to lift the undamaged car clear, the flood waters rapidly lowering.

Adult conversation. We shouldn’t have. It isn’t good practice. Can’t maintain efficient business relationship, employer and employee. Can’t afford to lose you, Anne. Depend on you for too many things, businesswise. Adult agreement. Go on as if it had never happened.

Would have been possible, he thought, if it had turned out to have been merely an average experience, or even a little better than average. But he had found himself tapping an entirely unexpected store of sexual energy and vitality in that narrow, brunette, small-breasted body. Wiry, limber, and demanding. Strong demands create strong responses. So it had been a lot better than very good.

So after the second violation of the pact, the tired old vow of going on as if it had never happened seemed idiotic. New agreement in order. Never never will the boss use the sporadic physical relationship as any kind of duty-hours leverage, and never never will the secretary take equivalent advantage. If it is there, and good, why waste it when the occasional opportunity presents itself? Don’t create opportunity. Let it happen in the course of business. Everybody is grown up. We’re not hurting anybody. And the usual risk was nonexistent, because his wife (now divorced) — after one experience of childbirth — had insisted he have a vasectomy. In fact, a welcome release of commercial tensions. Nothing wrong with affection. Under the circumstances, the only concession was the fifty-a-week raise which at first offended her so deeply he thought he had blown the whole ball bame. He asked Miss Faxton if she enjoyed the increased responsibilities he had given her in the operation and administration of his several corporate ventures. She said she did indeed enjoy them. He pointed out that he had given her raises commensurate with her increased duties because, enjoying the greater demands, she performed well. He pointed out that in this new area of mutual personal gratification she gave every impression of enjoying herself, and he could certify that her performance was excellent. Also, it did consume time which otherwise would be her own to use as she wished. She had stared at him, narrow-eyed, then wide-eyed, then suddenly guffawing in that genuine, open-throated, bawdy way that only the sensuous woman can properly carry off.

She came along the beach, stopping to stoop and pick up a shell from time to time. She took a deep tan readily, and she wore a navy blue bikini with narrow trim of white lace.

When she was near he waved his big arm in slow signal to her. She did not pretend not to see him. She looked up at him and then looked away, and continued her slow pace past the small sailboats pulled far above the high-tide line.

Can fix, he thought. Will have to fix, or really lose her this time. Get this over and get the banking arrangements put through, and have Cramer make the transfers and put the after-tax proceeds into high-rated municipals with a good yield. Would figure out at probably sixty-five thousand income-tax free, after paying the preference income tax. Nice liquidity while I go shopping, taking my time, because the money squeeze has to loosen up. February next year would be a good time to go to Montevideo and check out the project Perez outlined. It’s summer then. She likes summer, likes the heat and the sweat of it. Too far in the future, though.

Something real quick. Hell, I should have remembered Winkler’s sloop. Perfect. Use it any time, Aldo. Feel free. It just sits there. Crew of three. Marvelous area, the Virgins, to just cruise around aimlessly. Swim and fish and loaf.

So I can send Lee Rountree and his big wife back to Miami aboard the Lear with Roy, and Miss Faxton and I can take a little feeder flight from here to St. Thomas. She will be very cold, distant, disapproving. And one night under the right moon at the right anchorage, we’ll sit on the deck and I will tell her how, at precisely five thirty on this day, I remembered my grandfather and the woodchuck. I will tell her the story and she will understand a little more about me, maybe, that little bit more I think I understand today.

She had understood the first part of it too quickly, he remembered. He had checked over the details of the trip with her, the papers they should bring along. They were in his tower suite of offices in the new bank building in Tulsa, and the rest of the staff had gone home an hour ago.

“Can you think of anything I’ve forgotten? Larssen is a very thorough guy.”

She said, “Can’t think of a thing. Four days you think it will take?”

“Minimum three, maximum a week. Should give you some good beach time and sun time while that sleepy Swede tries to steal half my equity.”

She smiled. “I can use it, Aldo. After too many ten-hour days.”

“Know something? It might be a good chance to reward another job well done. Lee Rountree really did one hell of a promotion job on moving those units.”

She looked skeptical. “And so?”

“He could tell the Swedes the methods he used, the kind of media that got the best results. He and his wife could fly down there with us. Give you some girl-type company on the beach.”

“Aldo! God’s sake!”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t need girl-type company or girl-type talk. She’s just a kid, Aldo.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Item: You had it all set to give the Club de Playa promotion to Newcomb. In fact, I think you had started briefing him. Item: You happened to run into Lee Rountree when he was accompanied by his wife of one year at that time, of a year and eight months now. Item: Lee is a very nice big amiable diligent guy six foot four, age twenty-six. Mrs. Lee Rountree, Elizabeth, known as Liz, is at least five foot ten and a half in her bare feet. She is a big, merry, jolly, happy blonde, age twenty-two, lively and bouncy and beautifully stacked, and she assumes everybody is a perfectly wonderful human being until proven otherwise. Item: You suddenly give the Club de Play a promotion to Lee Rountree instead of to Newcomb. And with Lee, it’s such an earn-as-you-learn bit, you have to wet-nurse him personally until he gets far enough along to handle it on his own. Item: This involves dropping in on the happy couple quite often, even after he is all straightened away and doing well. Item: They have no kids. Item: You are the big kindly boss-fellow giving the young husband the big break. Item: If your ex-wife had been delivered of a daughter one year after you married her, the daughter would be the same age as Liz Rountree. Item: I have watched the same game a lot of other times. Remember? Item: All of a sudden you think I need a girl companion.”

“That’s quite a presentation there, Miss Faxton.”

“Just don’t give me injured innocence. Okay?”

“What is it? Jealousy all of a sudden?”

She had not gotten angry, as he thought she would. Instead she had frowned, looking beyond him, her lean face thoughtful. “No, Mr. Bellinger. It isn’t that. I think really it’s a problem of my own self-respect. I am involved in a relationship with you. We have no exclusive claims on each other. I guess I just want to believe that I could not willingly keep on giving myself to a man who... is not merciful.”

“Merciful!?”

She shrugged. Sad, sour little smile. “You’re a clever man, Aldo. And you are watchful, patient, and as charming as you decide to be. You understand people and what motivates them. But I wonder if you have any mercy. She loves him, you know.”

He smiled. “Then there’s no cause for alarm, is there? If she loves him, she’s invulnerable.”

“Then you are taking aim?”

“It’s just a little coincidental maneuver, Anne. No confidence at all I can swing it. But thinking about it keeps my eyes clear and my mind sharp and my waistline under control. If it looked easy, I wouldn’t be interested.”

“Know bow you can show mercy, sir?”

“How?”

“All you really want, you know, is the ego satisfaction of knowing you can lay her if you stalk her properly. But what will that do to her if you do? And to Lee? If you could create the opportunity, make sure you can, then back off from it in the name of honor and decency and all that, then it would be an act of mercy.”

“If the chance ever arises, I’ll give your suggestion some thought, Anne.”

It had been an improvisation. One makes do with the materials at hand. After Larssen had agreed to the price, Aldo had found Roy and told him that he would probably be going over to Miami the following morning and bringing Cramer, Hollister, and Keyes back. Roy said the replacement parts for the aircraft were probably in Miami by now and suggested he run it over and get the work done, stay over, and bring the three men back in the morning. He said he’d feel better about the reliability of the communication equipment when it was fixed up and checked out.

Aldo Bellinger said he approved. He said he would find Lee Rountree to drive Roy out to the airfield, so he could bring the car back. And he had some notes he wanted Roy to give Cramer to study before going over the draft of the agreement. He got the notes out of his room first. He found Lee in the lobby waiting for Liz to come down. As they walked toward the car the improvisation began to take form. He waited until they had backed out of the parking slot and then decided to ride out with them.

At the airfield, he suddenly decided that Cramer and the others might have some questions not covered in his notes. He asked Lee if he would mind taking the notes to Cramer, and because Lee had followed the negotiations from the start, he could answer questions Cramer and the others might have. Lee jumped at it. Another fragment of the big chance. “Sure, Aldo. Glad to do it. Explain to Liz, huh? I can pick up a toothbrush at the Miami airport. Should have thought of it myself. See you tomorrow morning.”

As he drove away, Aldo saw Roy pull the aircraft up into its steep angle of climb, turning toward the northwest, white aircraft with a shark mouth and a high whining roar of power.

So he explained to Liz in such a way that she was grateful for the expression of confidence in her big husband. He spent some beach time with Larssen and then came back and saw Liz in the pool. He changed to swim trunks and came down and joined her. He bought two rounds of planter’s punches, and they went walking on the beach, came back and swam in the pool again, and had a light late lunch under canvas shade on the patio by the pool. He bought two more punches over her protests, picking them up at the thatched bar on the beach, making one a double. Gave her the double. Talked about her husband, about how well he would do, given the chance. Saw her adaze, aglaze with sun and rum and heat, told her there was something he wanted to show her in confidence, a plan for a future project involving Lee. Carried their drinks upstairs, down the long tiled corridor, into the muted cool green blue country of his apartment.

The transition from the innocence of public sunlight to the siesta silence of the apartment had to be made at precisely the right time. To wait too long would spoil the chance. The rum would have become a depressant instead of a stimulant, and all her sense of fun and joy and holiday would have dulled into sleepiness. Had he taken her upstairs too quickly, the privacy and shadowy intimacy of the apartment would have triggered all her warning systems, made her too conscious of all the lovely bikinied flesh exposed, made her constrained and formal and inaccessible. He felt as if he had watched her the way, in the old submarine movies, the captain would watch the depth gauge and level the vessel at the precise reading he wanted.

So when he had unlocked the apartment and taken her in, she brought with her the leggy, careless insouciance, her gigglings, music of the ice in the tall strong drink. He had closed the door and gone striding ahead through the living room into the big bedroom, taken the roll of maps and drawings out of the comer of the closet, rolled the rubber bands off, unrolled them, and carried them over to the broad bed and spread them out on the bed.

“This is going to be your husband’s project, all the way, but don’t give him a clue yet. Come here and hold this side down, Liz.”

She came from the doorway and held the left side of the drawings, one knee on the bed, drink in her right hand. “What is it, Aldo?”

“A joint venture with a Uruguayan named Roberto Perez, on one hell of a great piece of beach twenty miles up the coast from Montevideo. I shouldn’t be telling you this, Liz. Maybe you can’t keep a secret from Lee worth a damn.”

“Pooh! I can so. Gee, it looks big in the drawing.”

“Three times the size of this deal. You two will be living down there quite a while, honey. How’s your Spanish?”

“Like nada.” She laughed in excitement “Wow! It’s fantastic, Aldo.”

“Let me get this top drawing off and show you the map.” He tried to point out detail on the map but had to release his end, and it kept rolling up. As he had hoped, she said, “Here. Let me free up another hand.” She finished her drink, leaned, and put the glass on a night stand. He pushed the sheaf deeper onto the bed, so that she could then stretch out prone, braced on her elbows, and hold the sheaf of drawings and maps flat against the bedspread. He leaned close, his sun-warm flesh against hers, shoulders touching, as he reached in front of her to show her detail on the map.

He casually put his left arm across her back, big hand on her left shoulder. Slowly, slowly, during the eight months he had known her, he had conditioned her to the casual, meaningless, friendly touch, the quick kiss of greeting and parting, affectionate. He had developed the relationship of mutual liking. She was the helpmeet. She and the marvelous boss helped guide the destiny of the splendid young husband. He had deliberately created a flavor of conspiracy. Little ways she could help Lee improve his performance, suggestions that could come more easily from her than from the boss.

“Here’s the secret I don’t think you can keep, woman.”

She turned and looked at him through a tousle of hair, their faces close, her eyes happy and mocking. “You say! Come on, Mister B. Secret like what?”

“Two secrets. On the operating budget I worked out with Perez, my resident representative — the guy who will do the pushing — is in there for about five thou more than Lee gets right now. Not quite five. Forty-seven hundred.”

“Hey! Hey, now!”

“Wait. That’s only part of it. We set up the joint operating structure on a bonus-and-profit-sharing basis. Perez and I get the king-size slices, but Lee would be on the eligible list for seven percent.”

“Of what?”

“Shrewd question. If he goofs, seven percent of nothing is nothing. If he brings it in on schedule, and the payout goes the way Perez’s study indicates, it could be seven percent of three mil.”

She frowned. “Twenty-one thousand dollars!”

“You are a very pretty lady and you are a rotten mathematician. It would be two hundred and ten thousand.”

Her eyes went wide wide wide. “Holy Maloney,” she whispered. He changed the pressure of his hand on her far shoulder very very slightly. It was essential that she not notice it, yet the slight pull had to suggest to her an impulsive response. One does not as quickly terminate an act one has begun. She had to lift her right shoulder out of the way to give him the kiss of gratitude and excitement. That meant taking her right hand off the roll of drawings and maps. They rolled up into a loose cylinder, and in the kiss he settled onto his side, bringing her down too, so that they lay in each other’s arms, face to face on the bed. As soon as he felt her mouth tighten and change, rather than continuing the pressure, he broke his mouth away from hers and said, “You won’t be able to stand it, you know. You’ll tell him. You’ll hint around until he pries it out of you.”

“I won’t so!”

“You will.”

“Won’t!”

“You will, you will, you will. Shouldn’t have told you.”

So, as he had hoped, in an instinctive effort to affirm her reliability, her trustworthiness, her gratitude, she kissed him again, and he shifted quickly to hold her more strongly, to adjust his body to hers, flesh in contact from knees to lips, right arm under her neck and around her, forearm clamped across her back, left hand in the small of her back, pulling her close.

The crucial question now was whether he could move her quickly enough through the period of alarm, realization, fright. Her whole body had tautened with the sudden and surprising awareness that somehow she was in a man’s apartment, on a man’s bed, nearly naked and locked in close embrace, a mouth hungry and demanding pressing against her lips. He had to maintain the embrace long enough to get the deep engine of her healthy sensuality started, fueled by the rum and sun and swimming, primed by his cautious and indirect conditioning over eight months. Her hesitation would be caused by her guilty realization that she had initiated the first kiss, and the second also.

When she tore her mouth free and craned her head back, he kissed her throat. “No,” she said. “Oh no. Please. Please don’t.” There was an edge of panic in her voice. He found her mouth again and she let it continue for two long seconds before she pulled away again. “Stop now,” she said. “Please stop, Aldo. Please don’t.” But the edges of the words were slightly blurred and softened, her voice huskier, and it was easier to find her lips again and hold them longer. She pushed at him with less emphasis, almost sleepily.

At the proper time, in proper sequence, he moved his left hand down from the small of her back, up the mounded hip and buttock, and little finger first, worked the edge of his hand under the taut upper edge of the bikini bottom. When he rolled his hand, it forced the narrow clinging band of fabric downward an inch or so.

She stiffened again and clapped her right hand onto his, hooked her fingers around his wrist, and pulled his hand away. “We can’t,” she said in a groaning voice. “Oh please don’t any more.”

He put his hand back on the small of her back. It all comes down to this, he thought. Eight months. All the processes of friendship, creating trust, taking Lee Rountree under his wing, improvising the trip to Miami, plying her with drinks, bringing her up here at the right time and working her into the right position, it all came down to whether or not a couple of ounces of coral fabric could be moved far enough to become loose, to encircle a narrower dimension of her young ripe body. After the long stalk, the prey was now in perfect range, motionless in the sights, and the task was to pull the trigger by slowly squeezing the whole hand. Because once it was done she was lost, and she knew it. And it would be done only if she wanted to lose — not in the brain, in the loyalty, or in the heart, but only in the yearning body.

When he moved his hand precisely as before, she put her right hand on his hand to hold it still but did not pull his hand away. A hungry kiss had been going on for a long time. He moved the band of fabric slightly. Her hand finned each time to stop him. Then it was down far enough for him to cup the abundant, firm, velvety buttock in his big hand and pull her closer. Her right arm lifted and slid around him, and he felt the stub and pull of her fingertips in the muscle of his back, felt rather than heard the sigh of want and resignation she made against his mouth.

The moment of mercy, he thought. Groan and shove her way and show abject remorse. Guilt. Despair. And it will take her fifteen seconds to yank that bikini bottom up and be off the bed and out in the living room, sitting in a chair, knees pressed tightly together, her breath and her body quieting quickly.

No bullet when you pull the trigger. Just a click and a beautifully exposed Ektachrome transparency to project on the screen in the little lab in the back of the mind. Specimen of employee wife, brought right to the point of inevitable copulation and then, out of charity, released to dart back into the thicket of marriage, far warier than before, never to be caught again.

But she was too sweet, too close, too promising. And there was all the roving and rambling to be done, all the newness to be explored. For a matter of perhaps fifteen minutes one portion of his attention stood aside, involved in a cold objective observation of all physiological phenomena, directing, altering, varying his actions so as to flood her sensory inputs. It was a feedback system, precisely aware of the moments when there was a dim and distant alarm within her that dropped her back to some prior degree of mounting tension, so that he could then lift her back up beyond her previous high before risking the next necessary interruption. Lost ground, carefully regained, after the small disruptive acts of tugging the band of fabric off over her feet and dropping it aside, of swiftly and deftly baring her breasts, of hitching and moving around to a head-and-foot orientation with the bed, of peeling his own trunks down and dropping them on the floor, of coupling for the first time, establishing the unmistakable finality of it with a few long heavy strokes before disengaging. Because the objective was not merely the taking of her. That was only a qualified possession, far more easily achieved than the total possession which could come only from turning her face ashen, her lips icy, her expression to agony, from making her breathe like a runner, making her body burst with a sudden sweat, making her go into her hard, deep contractions.

During the second fifteen minutes of her, because all of it took only half an hour from the moment her slow arm went around him and her fingerpads dug into his muscles to the time when she faded slowly down and down into a drugged relaxation when she had ended, the watcher part of him had slowly moved closer and finally merged with his immediate sensual identity and had stopped the weighing and measuring and planning. It was no longer necessary. There was nothing else remaining to set her back. It was all a broad delicious road from there right up to release, knowing his would be all the greater by holding back until her body made its primitive, insistent demand.

Now, leaning on the patio railing in the dying light, he turned his head and saw that Anne Faxton was so far down the beach she was a stick figure, unrecognizable, still walking slowly. I did remember about being merciful, he thought. But too late. Too late for me. Too late for her.

He straightened, slid the door open quietly, parted the draperies, and closed the door. He went to the end of the draperies and found the right cord and pulled them all the way open. All that was left of the day was an ember band across the horizon over the black sea. He turned the small desk lamp on and went over to stand by the bed and look at Mrs. Lee Rountree in her sleep. She lay on her side, facing him. Her palms, pressed flat together, were under her cheek. Her sun-harshed hair spilled across her face, some blond strands stirring with each long exhalation of deep sleep, an exhalation from lips apart. Her leg underneath lay straight toward the foot of the bed. Her left leg was hiked up, knee sharply flexed, the round of the knee braced against the crumpled terrain of the pale wrinkled sheets.

He eased gently onto the bed to sit near the foot of it, turning so that he could look at her. Certainly a great quantity of lovely lady. Close to five eleven in her bare feet, he estimated. Possibly a hundred and forty to a hundred and forty-five pounds. All the creamy tidy luxuries of her were as perfectly in scale and proportion as with some of the remembered women, the few miniatures he had known, a foot shorter, fifty pounds lighter, yet not more delicately and tenderly constructed than this resting Amazon.

And once again he remembered the woodchuck, and the obsession he and his grandfather had shared during most of one of those endless Indiana summers when he had been seven years old. There had been some kind of trouble at home that he had been too young then to understand, and they had sent him out to the small farm for the summer. His grandfather had a bald head with spots on it and a bristling white moustache and a deep scar on his forehead. His grandfather was short of breath, and his left arm stopped midway between elbow and wrist, ending there in a leather thing like a round hoof with a threaded hole in the middle of it into which he could screw different attachments to suit different kinds of work. His grandfather had been wounded and gassed in a war long ago in the history books. The government sent him money every month. There was only one milch cow in the big cobwebby barn. She was brown and her name was Hilda, and she was family. There was a chicken yard with Rhode Island Reds. His grandmother took care of those. His grandfather said they were dumb, nasty cannibals.

There was a kitchen garden, almost an acre, that was the only part of the farm his grandfather worked. The rest grew up to grass, and men came and mowed it and stacked it and carted it away.

“Show you something, Aldie,” his grandfather said the day after his father left him at the farm. They walked a long way up the dusty farm road, at least a mile, and then over to a grassy bank, and his grandfather pointed out the great big round hole with the grass-grown mound of dirt beside it, a hole slanting down on the first uprise of the bank into fearful blackness.

“Right down in there lives the biggest son of a bitch of a woodchuck in creation, boy. Now don’t you say son of a bitch in front of your grandma, you hear?”

“I won’t.”

“We’re going to get him, Aldie. We’re going to by God get that smart old son of a bitch.”

His grandfather planned the campaign carefully. He found the only place where they could lie in wait, a shady little ridge where there were alder and witchhopple and the smell of dampness under big beech trees. It had a clear view of the rich green grassy flat where the woodchuck would come out and graze in the early morning or at last light.

“He’s old and he’s big because he’s so damn smart, Aldie.”

They made precise measurement of the distance from the ridge to the grass flat. It was a hundred and forty yards. Back near the farm, his grandfather found a place where there was exactly the same distance to shoot at exactly the same downward angle. They tacked white paper to a pine board and painted a target on it and staked it on the range. His grandfather rested his Springfield .30 on a feed sack half full of sand, lay prone, and squeezed off ten slow shots. The gun oil and Fourth of July smells, and the wicked crack and distant echo, were all very exciting.

He ran out and pulled the paper target off the board and came running back. His grandfather studied it and spat. “Throwing low and left,” he said. “Pretty good group, but low and left.” So he adjusted the sights, and the second group was even with the middle of the target but still a little bit left. The third group was off to the right. The last group was centered.

The next day his grandfather painted a crude picture of the woodchuck life-size on white paper, lifted up on his back end, muzzle high, front legs in the air.

Aldo squatted near the old man, who took a long time before he squeezed off the first shot. Aldo waited for the next one but his grandfather said to go get the target and bring it back, because there was going to be time for just one shot. The hole was centered right in the head of the painted woodchuck.

“Now we’ll get him for sure, boy. He stays so close to that hole of his, I got to get him perfect or he’ll go deep on us. And you haven’t got enough size yet and I haven’t got enough arms or wind to dig him out.”

So they began the vigil. They would get up at the first gray of false dawn and trudge up the road in the morning chill, go around behind the ridge, and sneak up to the prepared place, and his grandfather would rest the rifle on the sandbag, the muzzle sticking out through the leaves.

Twice, as the sun was coming up, there was a clear shot, but the wind was blowing hard from left to right, and his grandfather explained that so much wind could move the slug a couple or three inches off. Once Aldo had seen him first and had whispered, “There he is, Grampa!” And the old chuck had lumbered quickly to the burrow and disappeared.

“Boy, he’s got ears like a bat and eyesight like a buzzard. He heard you just as good as I did.”

Another time his grandfather forgot to work the bolt action beforehand to jack the bullet into the chamber. At the cautious snickety-clicking sound, the chuck disappeared, and his grandfather said bad words for a long time.

Aldo began to be afraid, in late August, that they would take him back to the city to start the second grade, and he would never be there to see his grandfather get the old son of a bitch.

One night it rained and the road was damp, and they were in position when the first pale gold of the sun began to shine through the misty morning sky. Aldo saw the old woodchuck come out and stop eight feet from his hole. He held his breath. The chuck sat upright, sniffing at the morning air. The crack of the rifle made Aldo jump, and he saw the chuck moving toward his hole. His grandfather jumped up faster than Aldo had ever seen him move, and Aldo had to run hard to catch up with him. The woodchuck was half in and half out of his burrow, back legs sprawled. His grandfather, wheezing and gasping, grabbed a rear leg and yanked the old woodchuck back out, let go quickly, and moved back.

“Right... through the head,” his grandfather said. “Even so, the old son of a bitch nearly got underground.”

“Right through the head,” Aldo said.

His grandfather rested the rifle against the slope and looked quietly down at the dead animal. He was getting his breath back. Finally he said, “Sheee-yit!”

“What’s the matter, Grampa?”

“Nothing, Aldie. Nothing.”

“Why are you acting so cross?”

“I’m not cross, boy.”

“Are... you sorry for him?”

“Sorry? No. I’m not sorry.” His grandfather looked down at him, frowning. “What I’m thinking about, the old son of a bitch is no longer up here to come git. No reason anymore to think about how I’m going to get him because... it’s all done and over.”

Mr. Aldo Bellinger looked at the sleeping wife of Mr. Rountree and knew that sometime within the next week, aboard Winkler’s sloop, he would tell Anne Faxton how, as he saw Liz sprawled beside him, fading down into sleep, that same wistful regret had come into his mind with the remembered weary sound of Grampa’s voice saying “Sheee-yit!”

He looked down at himself, torpid between the thick tough thighs with the hard weave of muscle under the curly sun-scalded hair, aware of the beginning now of the first thickening of new tumescence. Twenty-five visits a year to Marburg for the tests and measurements, and the sophisticated changes in the level of the dosages of steroids, cortisones, supplementary testosterone. Five thousand a year to Marburg to keep the sexual clock set back a dozen years. So get full value, Bellinger.

He eased himself carefully close, moved a pillow to the right place for his head, then gently slid his left arm under her, under her neck and around, to place the flat of his hand against her back. With the fingers of his right hand he tenderly combed the blond hair back away from her face, feeling the slight sweat-dampness that still remained near the roots.

She opened unfocused eyes, befuddled, uncomprehending. He moved his right hand down to the steep soft cleft of her waist. He saw her pale blue eyes come into a sharp focus of recognition. He saw the memory and awareness hit her, a savage impact. Pam, guilt, shock, shame. She tried to twist away from him, pushing at his chest with her hands, straining to free herself and roll away from him.

“No, Liz,” he said gently. He held her firmly.

Her effort weakened and faded away. She covered her face with her hands and made a snorting noise.

“Don’t cry. Please, honey.”

“Just let me go. Let me go.”

“We have to talk about this.”

“I’ve got to get out of here.”

“And go where?”

“Back to my room.”

“In a bikini, back to the other wing?”

She spread her fingers, and a damp miserable eye stared at him. She lifted up and looked over him toward the glass doors, then fell back limply. “What time is it?”

“A little after eight. We both fell asleep.”

“Oh God. What’ll I do?”

“Is your room key in that canvas bag, or down at the desk?”

“In... that bag of mine, I think. Yes.”

“Good. I can wander over there and pick up what you need in my dispatch case and bring it back here.”

“Then that makes everything all right? Oh God, Mr. Bellinger, I wish I was dead. I really do.”

He felt such a great warmth and affection and sympathy for her that it made his eyes sting. Not an Amazon at all. Just a scared, heart-sick, troubled young girl, looking unexpectedly small beside him. It pleased him to think of how he would and could raise her spirits. It had worked before and would work every time, whenever there was enough guilt and enough shame.

“Can you ever forgive me, darling?” he asked.

“Forgive you!”

“For a long time I lay just like this, with my arms around you, watching you sleep, trying to understand how it could have happened. I had no idea of anything like this happening when I asked you to come up here. I just wanted to... see your eyes sparkle and see your smile when I told you about my plans for Lee. And then I... oh God, Liz, I’m so sorry. I just didn’t realize the sun and booze and... It was all my fault.”

She rubbed her tears away with her thumb knuckles, snuffed hard. “Oh boy. Sure. All your fault, Aldo. I stretch out on your bed in a bikini and start kissing you. What the hell did I expect you to do? I was asking for it. And I got it. I really got it. I was going to go through my whole life never cheating on Lee, and it wasn’t going to be any kind of big character thing either. I never had any reason to cheat. I never thought I even could. I thought I’d vomit if a man other than Lee put his hands on me even.”

“We were both smashed, Liz. Drinks and sunshine and fun and jokes. We’ve always enjoyed each other, liked each other. But I’ve always... been aware of you in a sexual way. I’ve wanted you and been absolutely certain I’d never have you.”

She gave a little nod. “I know. But I guess if it wasn’t like that, there’d be something wrong with both of us.”

“What kept bothering me before I woke you up, dear, was wondering if I really had sort of planned this, sort of trapped you. After all, I did spread the drawings and maps out on the bed.”

“No. Even smashed I’d have known right off if you were trying to set me up. I mean I can’t help the way I look, and ever since I was thirteen men have been trying to set me up, and I know the smell of it. No, honey, you were so anxious to show me the project, and if that roll of stuff had been in the living room, you’d have spread them out on the coffee table. But they were in here and the bed was closest and handiest. Anyway, what the hell difference does it make? I felt so damned happy about everything. And I felt very grateful to a very wonderful guy. So I started kissing him, damned near naked, on his bed, hugging him. I could have stopped you.” She frowned. “You know, there’s a funny way a person lies to themself. In my mind I had this little voice going on and on, saying it wasn’t really going to happen because it just couldn’t possibly happen. Then, like it happened all of a sudden, I thought it was your hand touching me, but you slipped into me all the way and that crazy little voice in my head started screaming, ‘It’s happened already! It really happened! It’s too late!’ Then no little voice any more. What am I going to do? I just can’t hide it from Lee. He’ll know right away. What’ll I do?”

He shook her so roughly it startled her.

“You are going to stop trying to punish yourself, Liz!”

“You hurt me then, damn it! Leaving black and blue marks isn’t going to help a bit.”

“When I bring you your clothes and cosmetics and such, I am going down to the dining room and you are going to come join me.”

“No. I can’t.”

“Too many people may have noticed we both disappeared for too many hours. You have to be strong. You have to be strong enough to be perfectly casual, normal, relaxed. We have to be seen together acting just the way we always have.”

“There’s no point. I can’t hide it from Lee. So there’s no point in playing games.”

“You have every reason in the world not to trust me, Elizabeth. But I wish you would. I wish you would trust me and believe in me, because I think I can tell you something about yourself. Let’s talk about Lee.”

“Lee? Oh, he was that dandy husband I used to have.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass child, please. I have been looking for a Lee Rountree for several years. I damn near didn’t realize I’d found him. Know why?”

“Not really.”

“He hangs back, Liz. He doesn’t push. I narrowly missed finding out just how very damn good he is.”

“I know what you mean now.”

“Liz, if he leaves me and goes to work somewhere else, nobody may ever again see his true potential. He will spend the rest of his life in the small time, way down the list in the minor leagues. Liz, I need that guy! Badly.”

“You are not alone,” she said bitterly.

“But out of childishness, selfishness, total self-involvement, you are perfectly willing to destroy him. Yet you claim you love him.”

“Mr. Bellinger, you goddamn fool, I have destroyed him, and myself, and one very good marriage.”

“Only because you want to.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Let me ask you something. You must answer honestly.”

“Go ahead.”

“You have an image of yourself as a certain type of person, capable of certain acts, incapable of others. You believe that Lee shares that image of you. Now, don’t you have the little feeling in the back of your mind that if you explained very carefully, in complete detail, exactly what led up to your getting screwed—”

“Jesus!”

“Shut up. You have the feeling that if he could really comprehend every part of it, then your mutual love is strong enough so that he could eventually forgive, really forgive, and even forget. Isn’t that true?”

“He couldn’t ever—”

“He’s too small? Too intolerant? Has no understanding, and damned little genuine love?”

“No!”

“Then you do have the little suspicion he might forgive you?”

“I... I guess so.”

“And you want to be forgiven, don’t you?”

“It would be the most wonderful thing—”

“Liz, you were absolutely confident you could keep our secret about his big chance in Uruguay.”

“Yes. I know I could have. But this other thing is—”

“Listen to me. You are so anxious to be forgiven, to be understood, you are going to clue him some way, somehow, just enough so that he’ll pry and pry until he gets the whole story. Confession to not only lessen guilt, dear girl, but to create such a terrible series of scenes, you will be punished for your transgression, and then, finally, after many acts of contrition, there will be the forgiveness. Sell it to daytime television, kid.”

“Damn you!”

“I want you to act like a grown-up in a grown-up world, dear.”

“And how do I do that?”

“By measuring and weighing alternatives. Do you think that after he knows what we did in this bed, he’d go on working for me?”

“On no! Never. He just couldn’t.”

“But you have to let him know about us, just because you want punishment and forgiveness?”

“I won’t be able to hide it from him! I told you that!”

“You won’t be able to hide it because you are sure that the act is forgivable because there were so many extenuating circumstances. Liz, my darling, the only way to show your love for your man is to make sure you don’t ever dare give him the slightest clue.”

“How do I make sure of that?”

“You have to do something you know he couldn’t ever forgive and forget. That is a safety device. Then you can’t ever reveal any part of this. It will keep you from cutting him down to the point where he can’t ever know or reach his real potential in the world.”

Her stare was very puzzled, thoughtful. As she started to speak, he moved his right hand with rough, shocking, brutal directness into the most intimate of caresses. She gasped, started violently, pried his hand away. “What the hell are you doing, Aldo?”

He pitched his voice high. “Lee, darling, I’ve got to tell you a terrible, terrible thing. Somehow I got a little drunk and I got reckless and affectionate and I got laid by Mr. Bellinger. Well, darling, I slept and then I woke up in his bed and we decided as long as the harm was done already, we might as well have an instant replay.”

“Aldo! For the love of God!”

“If we do, honey, then you can’t ever tell him any part of it.” He tugged against her resistance, tucked her head into the hollow of his shoulder. “It’s the only insurance you can take out, Elizabeth. Believe me. It’s the only way to protect your marriage and his future from your subconscious wish to have him make you confess. You have to make the whole situation so unforgivable and unconfessable you’ll fight like a tiger to rid his mind of any little suspicion he might get.”

She lay quietly, making no attempt to pull away from him. “You’ve sort of got me confused.”

“Then just think it all out, darling. Think it through. And be honest with yourself.”

“Don’t... touch me or anything, huh?”

“I never will again, unless you give me permission. While you are thinking, dear, you know that there is one question, if you do confess, that he is going to have to ask you.”

“I know.”

“Did you plan to tell the truth about that too?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’d lie a little. Either say I didn’t at all, or it was a real little one.”

“You and I know better than that.”

“God, yes!”

“So the confession itself would be a little dishonest.”

“I guess so.”

“Then you’d make it just to gratify yourself. At his expense and mine.”

“Don’t talk any more. Let me think. I’ve got to figure it all out. It’s so important.”

After a long time she said, “It’s pretty cold-blooded.”

“It has to be, to be unconfessable.”

A minute or so later she sighed and he felt the warmth of her breath against his chest and throat. “I guess technically it doesn’t make a hell of a big difference. Done is done, whatever number of times. I mean faithless is faithless.” Mirthless laugh. “Screwed is screwed.” She sat up slowly, sighed again. “I just don’t know. Be right back.”

She hitched to the edge of the bed and got up. She looked down at him. Her smile was sad and sardonic. “Don’t go away.”

She was in the bathroom about ten minutes. He heard the toilet flush, heard water running. She came back and knee-walked near him and folded down into the same position as before. She had the faint aroma of his special bath soap from Neiman-Marcus.

“Well... don’t expect any reaction this time, Aldo. I feel all tired and dead and dumpy. It’ll be just going through the motions. But I guess that will count. He could forgive once, I think. Not twice. I guess it’s probably better if I’m real dead this time.”

“Permission to go ahead.”

“Yes. I guess so.”

“This is a deliberate infidelity, remember. You have decided, all things considered, that you want me to make love to you again.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up. Please. Just do it.”

He soon confirmed his suspicion that she had decided that she would not let herself feel any pleasure. But she was a strong and healthy young woman. Her nap had rested her. He had given her a rationalization and justification for making love. She made just a few whining complaints, and then she began to let herself be carried along. After a time she began to move ahead on her own momentum, and when he recognized the plateau condition, he began holding her back to give all her tensions time to build to a good peak. When finally she began to pull at him with frantic strength, arching impossibly wider for him, he moved her into it.

When they were both ended, and he lay still between the slack, sprawled bounty of her long handsome legs, and when his head had drowsed heavily downward to within the range of all her soft little blurred kissings, her voice saying a word in half whisper, “Darlee, darlee, darlee, darlee,” he had another memory of that day his grandfather had shot the woodchuck. His grandfather had cut a short sturdy length of branch, and they had tied the back feet of the giant groundhog together and then inserted the stick between his legs. They picked him up that way and carried him back down the road to the farm. Aldo had carried the rifle, and they had each held one end of the stick.

The morning sun had, by then, turned the early dampness of the dirt road back to pale fine talcum dust. As they walked, Aldo saw thick drops of blood fall from the muzzle of the dead beast. They would strike the dust and roll into strange dark little dusty balls, almost perfectly round.

It was on that walk that he suddenly knew, with terrifying finality, that everything and everybody had to die, without exception.

Both these parts of the woodchuck story would have to be told to Anne Faxton, so that she would understand. And there was that final part, of trying to eat the woodchuck stew that evening, then suddenly running out through the pantry into the back yard, bending over in the sunset light under the apple tree and vomiting, then suddenly feeling his grandfather’s only hand on his back, and hearing him say softly, “There, boy. There, now.”

He had managed to so intensify the big girl’s release that she was a long time in softening and fading into her total relaxation and lethargy. He thought of the terrible swiftness of himself, when every bit of consciousness, awareness, identity had turned and folded inward toward the deep hot ecstasy of sensation, demand, and spending. Too swift, too much like the cracking flight of the rifle slug. He lay, awaiting the thong around his ankles, the insertion of the lift stick, the long swaying, head-down journey down the long dusty road for the dead beast.

He gradually became aware of the way her breathing had changed. It had deepened into the unmistakable cadence of sleep. He had known a few others who reacted the same way. They would come tumbling off the edge of climax and fall all the way down into total sleep, automatic and inevitable.

Bellinger carefully disengaged himself, edged over to the side of the bed, swung his legs out, and stood up slowly, yawning, scratching the sweat-moist hair of chest and belly. Liz Rountree lay sprawled in deep sleep, on her back, head lolled to the side, toward him, hair thatched partially over her eyes. Her hands were slack fists, the left resting on her belly, moving to each breath, the right on the inside of her out-turned right thigh. In the glow of the distant desk light every softened convexity of her body had a highlight sheen of exertive moisture.

He picked up the blue-gray spread from the carpeting at the foot of the bed and floated it out, drifted it carefully down to cover her. Each inhalation began with a small rattling sound, and each exhalation made a small puhhh sound as pressure forced her swollen lips apart. He smiled sadly down at her. Sweet wistful affection and gratitude. A large lovely troubled child, and just as wonderfully orgasmic as he had guessed she might be. They were a fine couple, Lee and Liz. He would take gentle and understanding care of both of them. It was the least he could do.

He took a quick shower, noting once again the slightly unpleasant chemical odor of the water and the hardness that inhibited proper sudsing. But now it was Larssen’s problem. He turned out the bright fluorescence before opening the bathroom door.

He dressed, putting on oyster-white slacks, a pale blue juayabera, his Mexican sandals. In her sleep she had rolled onto her right side, pulled her knees up. He took her small canvas beach bag over to the desk and found the key to 18-B. He emptied his dispatch case of reports and documents and hung the do not disturb sign on the outer latch when he left the room.

He had to go down and cross the bright area between the pool and the long window wall beyond which was the shadowy, busy bar and lounge. He went into B wing to the far end, let himself into 18, and turned on the lights, pulled the draperies across, and then made a careful selection of what she would wear. Fresh, fragile underthings, white sandals, a crisp-looking shift in broad horizontal awning stripes of blue, green, and white.

He packed the cosmetics, lotions, sprays he thought she might need. He found her hairbrush in the bathroom, and it reminded him to put in her toothbrush and toothpaste. The two toothbrushes hung side by side on little porcelain clips inside the medicine cabinet. Symbol of sweet and homely domesticity. He felt another warm flow of affection for both of them. A fine young couple. Gentle people. The one with the ivory-colored handle and the black bristles was masculine gender. The one with the transparent pink handle was feminine. Eye makeup kit. Yes. Anything else? Inventory in order, sir. All necessities accounted for.

He turned out the lights, let himself out, started down the corridor, and saw Anne Faxton coming toward him, wearing a yellow canvas beach coat over her bikini. She was walking oddly, carefully.

She stopped, bare feet planted wide apart, fists deep in the big pockets of the beach coat. She looked at him, at the dispatch case. “Well, by God, whaddaya know! The old marksman himself.”

“Are you tight?”

“Possible, fella. Possible. I stopped off down there at the bar and I had two double Gibsons. Pow, pow. Celebration.” She swayed and he reached to support her. She yanked her arm away, tottered back, and half fell against the corridor wall, with a solid impact. She was dazed for a moment, shook her head, then stood there, well braced. She gave him a crooked grin. “Have yourself a nice romp with that big sweet kid, boss?”

“Settle down, Anne. Look. I want us to get away from the whole bit for a while. Fly down to St. Thomas and cruise around for a week or so on Winkler’s sloop.”

“Too late. You tore it. Din have any mercy, did you?” “We said from the beginning, honey, no exclusive claims.”

“You set her up pretty good, huh? Took your time. No sloop, sweetie. No soft talk. No sympathy. No special private overpaid personal ’xecutive secretary anymore either. Resignation in effect.”

“Anne, believe me, she doesn’t mean that much.”

“Aldo, baby, no hard feelings. Nobody means much. That’s the point. What I am celebrating is freedom. No. Celebrating a narrow escape. You know, I damned near fell in love with you? Awful close, sweetie. Wow! Real close. My mind was clouded. I nearly mixed up two different things. Screwing and love. Took me four wonderful years to find out I don’t get along so good on the first without the second, no matter how big you turn me on. It’s like... the beautiful color pictures of food in the magazines.”

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You already have. Face it.”

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“We’ll never really talk again, you and me. This is the last of it. I had a great idea for you when I was walking on the beach. Know those life masks? What you do, after you score and before you cool off... How long will it take with big ol’ Liz? That Lee is going to see a lot of the world, the way you’ll be sending him off looking at stuff and making reports. Where was I? Oh, before you cool off, you get the gal of the month to sort of sit into a kind of shallow pan you got full of plaster stuff. Then after it sets she gets up and then what you do is pour that kind of rubber plastic into the impression. Follow me? Then you take it out after it sets and you fasten it to a big kind of walnut plaque and color it with the right kind of flesh tint, and put a little brass plate under it that’ll have the initials and the dates, and then you hang it up with all the others in a nice paneled study. Now mine would be kinda scrawny and not very impressive, so you can hang mine in a dark corner.”

“Anne, for God’s sake! Don’t. I need you.”

She pulled herself together with an effort, pushed herself away from the wall, and gave him a truly tender and loving smile. She patted his arm and kissed him on the mouth. “Good-bye, my dear Aldo. Parts of it were nice. There were some sweet times. Good luck. Good hunting.”

She brushed by him and went on along the corridor, walking carefully, humming a timeless little song of freedom.

He went back to his apartment and let himself in. She still slept. He unpacked her things, laid out her clothing, put the toilet articles in the bathroom.

Before he woke her, he stood and looked at her for a long time. He knew that they would have a late supper together, and he knew that by then he would want her again. He knew she would make token objection to coming back up here with him, but she would succumb to the same argument he had used on her before, because now she was conditioned to an expectation of pleasure which made her willing to grasp at this handy new rationalization.

He could even hear the sound of his own voice saying the words that would work.

He put one knee on the bed and shook her awake, saying, “Liz? Liz, honey.”

She rolled over and looked at him, her sleep-blurred face firming up as she came awake. “Hi,” she said.

“I brought your things, dear. Your clothes are over there and the rest of the stuff is in the bathroom.”

She pushed herself into a sitting position, yawned widely, then stretched, fists near her breasts, elbows out to the side, lifted high. She looked over at the shift he had laid over the back of a chair.

“That’s fine,” she said. “Thanks.” She worked her way to the edge of the bed and swung her legs out. She tossed her hair back and gave him a rueful smile. “You sure know how to put me to sleep, darling.”

“My pleasure.”

“What time is it now?”

“Almost ten thirty.”

“Gee, isn’t it too late to get anything to eat?”

“I checked. We serve steak sandwiches in the cocktail lounge from ten until midnight.”

“Hmmm. Will you serve me like about seven of them?”

“Growing girl.”

She stood up. “Growing older, Mr. B. Growing wiser, maybe.” She stood in front of him, close to him, hooked her two index fingers around his belt. Her eyes were almost on a level with his, not more than half an inch lower. She looked into his eyes, one and then the other, her pupils making a little back and forth motion, swift and searching. “Who are we, my darling?” she asked softly. “Tell me who we are. Please.”

“Aldo and Liz. Friends. Lovers.”

“I know. Lovers. Can a person love two people very much, for different reasons, at the same time?”

“It can happen. Can you handle the situation with Lee when he comes back tomorrow morning?”

“Yes. Because I know it’s important to you. We weren’t trying to hurt anybody. Not the first time. We gave and took pleasure. The second time was to keep from hurting somebody else. You were right.”

“I’m glad.”

“I would have thought... if I thought about it at all... you’d be too old for me, way too old. But you’re not at all. You’re so awfully damned good about making love to me it scares me. Both times it was so much it scares me. It makes me love you. Is that what you want?”

“As long as we can handle it, honey. Without hurting anybody.”

“Stay near me. It will sort of help.”

“Will do.”

“I want to sort of trust you, Aldo. You know?”

“I know.”

She tugged, kissed him lightly on the lips, released him and said, “You will be the man sitting at the bar and I will be the girl who comes in and says, ‘Why hello there, Mr. Bellinger! Gee, what a surprise!’ ”

“And how are you this evening, Mrs. Bellinger?” “Confused, sir. Confused all to hell.”

She walked over to the chair and picked up her underthings, and turned slowly and walked toward the bathroom. She passed close to the desk lamp and turned and smiled at him. She was on conscious display for him, her figure smooth and rich and lovely. She disappeared into the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her.

The pattern as expected. The pattern as before. Submissive, dubious, troubled, curious. They always wanted the reassurances. They always had to label it and justify it and ask the question with their pretty eyes, and wonder if it would be the same if it happened again, when it happened again. They had to be provocative to make certain it would happen again. The familiar syndromes of the married mistress, not yet knowing how soon she will feel contempt for the man she has chosen to lie to.

He felt such a wrench of regret when he thought of Anne Faxton that it was like physical pain. He opened the corridor door and paused before shutting it behind him and looked through the living room and bedroom, at the closed door to the bathroom.

Aldo wished with all his heart that he would never have to look at her again, kiss her again, fondle her again, mount her again. But he knew he would, many times. Because she was of trophy caliber, deserving of plaques and awards, and of a secure place high on the list of all the memories.