The Paper Dragon

12

Every Thursday, Driscoll's mother would fuss and fret in the bedroom before coming out to breakfast. When she finally appeared, shawl draped over her shoulders even on the hottest summer days, she would complain bitterly about the simple fact of Thursday, letting everyone in the house know that she felt it was a mistake to get out of bed on Thursday, that the safest place to be on that hoodoo jinx of a day was under the covers with the blinds drawn and the windows closed and the doors locked. He wondered if she still complained about Thursdays to her new husband the Danish furniture man Mr. Gerald Furst. He could remember his mother making a joke only once in his life. His father had been playing the piano, and his mother was listening with her head cocked to one side, a slightly pained expression on her face. "In the old days," she said at last, "when your father played piano, the ladies used to stay home in droves." Uncle Benny immediately topped her by looking up from his drink and saying, "Even worse, Irene, the ladies often drove home in stays." He never learned why his mother so detested Thursdays. His father died on a Wednesday.

Now, as he stepped into the courtroom, he knew something of his mother's superstitious fear, and wished he were being called to testify on any day but this. He had hoped for sunshine, had listened to the forecast the night before with rising anticipation: warmer temperatures, they had said, the possibility of clear skies. The temperature had indeed climbed into the low forties during the night, and the thermometer reading had been forty-eight when he and Ebie left the Astor that morning. But the sky was heavily overcast, and he was afraid now that it would begin raining sometime during the day, turning the snow underfoot to slush, casting a pall over the city — Thursday, a hoodoo jinx of a day.

The courtroom was hardly less cheerless than the street outside. The same dull light streamed through the windows, giving the room a curiously one-dimensional appearance, negating perspective, dulling all reflecting surfaces. He led Ebie to the empty jury box, and then went to sit beside Willow at the defense table, shaking hands with him, and listening to his own words of encouragement while his eyes roamed the courtroom. Brackman was in whispered consultation with his partner at the plaintiffs table. Constantine sat at the far end of the table, reading the paperback edition of Lord of the Flies. The court clerk was waiting near the door to the judge's chambers, watching the big wall clock over the bench. The spectators' benches were empty. Even the Columbia student had abandoned the proceedings.

At ten o'clock sharp, the clerk called "All rise!" and the judge entered and went directly to the bench and then gave a peremptory nod, the signal for everyone in the courtroom to sit again. Driscoll heard Willow call his name, and then rose with the dread of Thursday looming huge within him, and walked slowly and self-consciously toward the witness stand. He felt suddenly that he had dressed wrongly, that his dark blue suit looked too much like a confirmation garment, that his simple blue tie was not bright enough, that he gave an impression of someone drab and hardly inventive, barely intelligent, certainly uncreative, "truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" the clerk said.

"I do," he answered, and sat.

Willow rose from the defense table in sections, unfolding his length, walking loosely and easily toward the witness chair, and then smiling up briefly at Driscoll, and very quietly and calmly asking, "Are you the author of The Paper Dragon?" as if that were not the prime issue before this court.

"I am," Driscoll answered.

"Did you write it independently and of your own creation, without reference to any other work of fiction?"

"I did."

"What is the date of your birth?"

"March 12, 1929."

"How old were you in October of 1947, when the play Catchpole was produced?"

"Eighteen."

"Were you a theatergoer at that time?"

"Yes, sir. I began going regularly to the theater when I was twelve years old."

"Did you attend any performances of the play Catchpole?"

"No, sir."

"Had you, before this action began, ever read the play Catchpole?"

"Never."

"Or heard of the plaintiff, Arthur Constantine?"

"No."

"What high school did you attend?"

"The High School of Music and Art."

"Which is where?"

"It's on 135th Street and Convent Avenue."

"Where were you living at that time?"

"In Manhattan. On West End Avenue."

"Did you go to Music and Art for the full four years?"

"No, sir. I began as a sophomore, coming directly from a junior high school, and I remained until graduation. Three years."

"When was this?"

"From 1944 to 1947."

"Were you graduated from Music and Art in 1947?"

"Yes, sir. January of 1947."

"Did you then continue your schooling elsewhere?"

"I won an art scholarship to the Art Students League, and I went there for approximately six months, I forget the exact length of time, the duration of the scholarship."

"To study art?"

"Yes, sir. I was studying drawing and painting — oil painting."

"Were you an art major in high school?"

"Yes, sir."

"What happened after you left the Art Students League?"

"I began studying art at Pratt Institute in the fall of that year, 1947."

"For how long?"

"Until June of 1950."

"What happened then?"

"I graduated and was drafted into the Army."

"Until you were drafted into the Army, would it be correct to say that you were training to become an artist?"

"A painter, yes, sir."

"In 1947, did you receive complimentary tickets to a preview performance of the play Catchpole?"

"I did not."

"Do you remember a distribution of free tickets?"

"I do not."

"Were you advised of such a distribution?"

"I was not."

"Did you see the play in any preview performance?"

"I never saw the play in any performance."

"You were graduated from Pratt in June of 1950?"

"That's right."

"And went directly into the Army?"

"Yes, sir, almost immediately after graduation."

"Which would be?"

"I went into the Army on June 21, 1950."

"And when were you discharged?"

"August 11, 1953."

"Honorably?"

"What?"

"Were you honorably discharged?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do after your discharge?"

"In September of 1953 I began attending New York University."

"To study art?"

"No, sir. I was an English major."

"Why did you choose this major?"

"While I was in the Army, I decided that I would like to try writing."

"Did you receive a degree from N.Y.U.?"

"Yes, sir, I did. A Bachelor of Arts in June of 1957."

"And after you were graduated, did you begin writing?"

"No, sir."

"What did you do?"

"I held a series of jobs."

"Like what? Would you list them, please?"

"I worked for the telephone company, and I worked for an import-export firm, and an advertising agency for a little while. Things like that."

"Did any of these jobs entail writing?"

"No, sir."

"Art work?"

"No, sir. For the most part, they were stopgap jobs."

"When did you begin writing The Paper Dragon?"

"In 1961."

"Do you remember exactly when in 1961?"

"October."

"In other words, you began writing The Paper Dragon eleven years after the actual events it portrays."

"Yes, sir."

"The Chinese offensive across the Ch'ongch'on River was in November of 1950, isn't that correct?"

"That's correct."

"Why did you wait eleven years?"

"I wasn't sure I would write it at all."

"Why did you write it?"

"I had to."

"Why?"

"For my own peace of mind."

"You felt you had to put the events on paper for your own peace of mind?"

"Yes."

"Your Honor," Brackman said, "I do not see where these questions…"

"Yes, Mr. Willow, where are you heading?"

"Your Honor, I am attempting to trace the creative process."

"Very well, go ahead."

"Mr. Driscoll, how tall are you?"

"I'm six feet tall."

"What color are your eyes?"

"Blue."

"Would you say that your hair is light or dark?"

"Dark."

"How old were you in 1950 when you were drafted into the Army?"

"I was just twenty-one."

"And you went into the Army directly from Pratt Institute?"

"I did."

"Did you go into basic training?"

"Yes, sir, at Fort Dix."

"Did you then go to Officer Candidate School?"

"I did. At Fort Benning."

"And were you then sent to Korea?"

"I was."

"Would you consider this a fair description of Lieutenant Cooper in your novel: he is twenty-one years old, six feet tall, with blue eyes and dark hair. He is drafted into the Army from Pratt Institute, is sent to O.C.S. and then shipped to Korea?"

"I would consider that a fair description."

"Did you once live on West End Avenue?"

"I did."

"Did your fictitious character Lieutenant Cooper live on West End Avenue?"

"Yes."

"Did he attend Music and Art High School, as you did?"

"Yes, sir."

"Was he an art major, as you were?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did he later receive a scholarship to the Art Students League, as you did?"

"Yes, sir."

"And then went on to Pratt Institute, as you did?"

"Yes, sir."

"I probably need not even ask this question, Mr. Driscoll, but would you please tell the Court upon whom you based the character Lieutenant Alex Cooper?"

"On myself, sir."

"Was he based on Lieutenant Roger Mason in Catchpole?"

"I had never heard of Lieutenant Roger Mason until last month when you showed me the play."

"Then your character was not based on him?"

"Definitely not."

"Mr. Driscoll, I show you these pages and ask you what they are."

Driscoll took the pages and studied them briefly. "They're a preliminary outline for the first several chapters of The Paper Dragon."

"I offer the outline in evidence," Willow said, and handed the pages to Brackman.

"Any objection?" the clerk asked.

"None," Brackman said.

"Mr. Genitori?"

"No."

"Defendants' Exhibit J received in evidence," the clerk said.

"Please," Willow said to the clerk, "I'd like to refer to it." He took the extended outline, glanced at it, and then turned to Driscoll again. "Is this a detailed outline, Mr. Driscoll?"

"It is."

"Does that mean you followed it precisely when you were writing the first hundred pages of your book?"

"The first ninety-eight pages," Driscoll said. "But no, I didn't follow it precisely."

"You made changes as you worked?"

"Yes."

"As you went along?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Well, I didn't want to feel too tightly restricted by the outline. I wanted to leave some surprises for myself."

"Did you expand upon his outline at any time?"

"Yes. This covers only the first portion of the book. When I sent the completed portion to Mitchell-Campbell, it was accompanied by a longer outline, a less detailed outline, but one covering the remainder of the book, the full book as I hoped to complete it."

"And you sent your completed portion together with an expanded outline to Mitchell-Campbell?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you know anyone working at Mitchell-Campbell?"

"No, sir."

"Why did you send the book to them, rather than to another publisher?"

"They seemed like good publishers."

"Upon what did you base this judgment?"

"They seemed to do a lot of advertising for the books on their list," Driscoll said, and McIntyre burst out laughing.

"I believe this is the standard writer's gauge, your Honor," Willow said, laughing with him. "Did you address the book to anyone's attention, Mr. Driscoll?"

"No, I simply sent it to the Editorial Department."

"With a return envelope?"

"Well, no, I sent the book in a box. But I accompanied it with a money order for the return postage. If it was rejected."

"Did you expect a rejection?"

"It was my first novel, I don't know what I expected."

"What happened next?"

"I received a letter from Mr. Danton, asking if I would come in to discuss the book."

"When was this?"

"I don't remember exactly. Either July or August."

"Of 1962?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you in fact meet with Mr. Danton?"

"Yes, I went up to his office."

"Can you tell us what happened at this first meeting?"

"Chester wanted to know what my plans were for finishing the book, and I expanded verbally upon the outline I'd submitted. He then told me that the feelings of himself and another editor at Mitchell-Campbell were that the squad, and particularly Colman, should be given a stronger motivation for their hatred of Lieutenant Cooper. He suggested that I use the idea of a previous commanding officer being killed in action and my hero replacing him."

"Did he suggest how this officer might have been killed?"

"Yes, he suggested that a sniper kill him from ambush."

"Did he make any other suggestions?"

"Yes, I believe he was concerned about the book's profanity even then, and he suggested that it be toned down during the writing of the remainder. He also thought we should begin thinking about another title."

"Was that the substance of your conversation at this first meeting?"

"Yes, sir."

"What did you do then?"

"I went home to finish the book."

"What procedure did you follow?"

"Well, first I outlined the next four or five chapters in greater detail. And then I began writing them."

"Was this your standard working procedure?"

"Yes. I would outline several chapters at a time and then begin work on those chapters — the actual writing of them. When I'd finished those, or was close to finishing them, I would outline the next several chapters, and so on."

"Until you completed the novel?"

"Yes."

"You used your general outline as the basis…"

"Yes…"

"… and then outlined in closer detail as you went along?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I did."

"Now here are some pages, Mr. Driscoll, with the words 'Chapter 7,' on the first page, and on the last page here, we have 'Chapter 15.' Are these pages part of your actual working outline?"

"Yes, sir, they are."

"The detailed outline?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now page 5 is torn, do you see that?"

"I see it."

"Only part of the page is here in the outline."

"That's right."

"Is this exactly how you found this page in your files?"

"It is."

"Do you know why a portion of the page is torn off?"

"I have no idea. The page following it is marked 5A so I imagine I didn't like what I had outlined and simply tore it off and put in another page called 5A. Yes, I probably tore off the bottom of this page, and then replaced it with a '5A.' "

"I offer the outline in evidence," Willow said.

"Have we seen this before, Mr. Willow?" Brackman asked.

"No, sir, you have not."

"I'm not objecting, but I would like to know why this was not previously shown to us."

"Because we only received it just before the trial began."

"Nevertheless, withholding it was in violation of the court order directing—"

"Your Honor, we have assiduously respected the court order, and have turned over to the plaintiff any papers received from Mr. Driscoll. He did not locate these until just before the trial began, and I did not have the opportunity to turn them over. May I say, however—"

"I think you might have found the opportunity, Mr. Willow," Brackman said.

"May I say that my friend has fallen prey to his own gambit. Had he chosen to serve Mr. Driscoll as a party to this case, he could have examined him before trial. He chose not to, in the hope—"

"I don't think we need go into Mr. Brackman's tactics," McIntyre said. "Are you objecting to this going into evidence?"

"No, your Honor," Brackman said. "Nor did I dream of offending Mr. Willow."

"You haven't offended me," Willow said.

"This action has been going on for a long time now," Brackman said, "and I don't think we've once raised our voices to each other, either outside the courtroom or since this trial began. I only meant to say that I wish you'd have let me see these papers before now. Perhaps you'll allow me to study them at greater length later."

"Of course."

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit K in evidence,' " the clerk said.

"Now, if you will look at this outline, Mr. Driscoll, you will see certain notations on it, such as '60,000 words, 10/12' and immediately following that, '58,500, 10/12.' On the second page here, in ink, '63,000 words, 10/19' and following it in pencil, '62,300 10/20' and it goes on in this manner throughout. Did you write these notations?"

"I did."

"What do they mean?"

"The numbers in ink, '60,000 words,' for example, '10/12' represent a goal and a target date. I hoped to have completed 60,000 words of the book by October 12th, that was probably a Friday. The penciled indication on the right shows the actual number of words I had written by that date — 58,500 words."

"You fell short of the target that week."

"Yes. But that's what these notes indicate throughout."

"The number of words you hoped to have written by a certain date?"

"Yes, sir. There was a deadline, you see. The contract called for delivery of the book by January, I think it was, and I tried to adhere to a schedule that would enable me to meet that deadline."

"And you felt it necessary to indicate what you had accomplished in addition to what you'd hoped to accomplish."

"Yes, as a guide to completion. I had to know that I would finish it one day, you see."

"What do you mean?"

"A book takes a long time to write."

"Yes?"

"Well, I can only speak for myself."

"Yes, go on."

"I'm not a professional, this was my only book. I can only tell you what I experienced when I was writing it."

"Which was what, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I thought it would never end."

"And is that why you kept your record?"

"Yes. I had started the book in October of 1961, and I… I wasn't even sure I'd ever start it, you see, but finally I did and it went very slowly. It took me eight months to finish those ninety-eight pages and the outline, and it was very difficult all the way, writing does not come easily to me. It began going a bit more smoothly after Mitchell-Campbell contracted for the book. I suppose Chester's enthusiasm for it, and his… his faith that I could complete it, this was an enormous shot in the arm. I found I was working much more quickly, that I could count on from three to five thousand words a week, that was a lot for me. But at the same time, I had to know that I wasn't writing into a void, that one day the thing would be finished. I could take the last page out of the typewriter and it would be done. That's why I kept a timetable. So that I'd know I was getting there."

"And, of course, eventually you did get there. You completed your book."

"Yes. Eventually."

"Before that time, before the book was actually finished, did you acquire an agent?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Hollis Marks. He's still my agent."

"Here are some letters to Mr. Hollis, dated November 5th and November 9th…"

"Mr. Marks."

"Mr. Marks, excuse me, and addressed 'Dear Hollis.' "

"Yes."

"November 15th, November 20th, November 23rd, December 3rd, December 7th, December 11th, December 12th, December 14th, December 20th, and December 28th. Did you send these letters to Mr. Marks?"

"I did."

"Reporting on your progress on The Paper Dragon?"

"That's right."

"If your Honor please, we can call Mr. Marks as a witness, but I know what he will tell the Court concerning these letters."

"What would that be, Mr. Willow?"

"That they were taken from his files and written by Mr. Driscoll on the dates indicated. I offer all of them in evidence as one exhibit."

"For what purpose are these being offered?" Brackman asked.

"Again, to show the creative process. Your Honor, if a book is being pirated, the thief would hardly send progress reports to his—"

"No objection," Brackman said.

"Defendants' Exhibit L received in evidence," the clerk said.

"Mr. Driscoll, when you were writing your book, did you contact anyone for information you needed?"

"Yes, sir."

"Whom did you contact?"

"Colonel Lewis Hamilton."

"He was your commanding officer…"

"The company commander, yes…" „

"… in Korea?"

"Yes, sir. He was a captain at the time."

"What was your initial contact with him?"

"I wrote a letter to him, explaining that I was working on a book, and asking for his help. I suggested that we meet one afternoon for lunch or after working hours — he was working in this area at the time, at the Army Recruiting Office on Whitehall. He called me when he received my letter, and we met later that week, on a Friday I believe it was. At the beginning of November."

"Where is Colonel Hamilton today?"

"He was called back to active duty in Vietnam. I'm sorry to say he's dead."

"I show you this, and ask you to describe it to the Court."

"It's a carbon copy of the letter I wrote to Colonel Hamilton."

"I offer it in evidence."

"Your Honor," Brackman said, rising, "as I understand it, Colonel Hamilton is dead. Now Mr. Driscoll states that this is a copy of a letter he sent to the colonel, but I know of no way of ascertaining that. I cannot question a dead man."

"Your Honor…"

"I object to it as irrelevant, and I submit that it would be impossible for me to ascertain whether it is authentic."

"Is this letter necessary to your case?" McIntyre asked.

"To my mind, your Honor, anything that clearly shows the step-by-step development of Mr. Driscoll's novel is not only necessary but essential to the case. This letter shows beyond doubt that in addition to personal experience, Mr. Driscoll sought the advice of an expert on matters that were beyond his ken. If he were copying…"

"Yes, but won't Mr. Driscoll be testifying anyway about his meeting with the colonel?"

"Yes, your Honor, but his testimony will be more persuasive when supported by this letter."

"Is this letter being offered for the truth of what it contains, or simply to establish a working procedure for Mr. Driscoll?"

"I think it even goes beyond these matters, your Honor, to clearly indicate the kind of man Mr. Driscoll is. In his letter to the colonel, for example, he modestly, almost shyly, reintroduces himself…"

"Mr. Willow, it's my opinion that this letter is not the same as those from Mr. Driscoll to his agent, sent as part of a daily working routine. I will sustain your objection, Mr. Brackman. The letter will not be admitted."

"May I offer it for identification?" Willow asked.

"Of course."

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit M for identification,' " the clerk said.

"You said earlier, Mr. Driscoll, that you met with Colonel Hamilton…"

"Yes."

"… sometime after you wrote to him. Where did you meet?"

"In a restaurant down here someplace. I don't remember the name of it."

"Can you tell us what happened at this meeting?"

"I asked Colonel Hamilton a great many questions, and he answered them for me."

"I show you these four sheets of paper, and ask you if they are the notes you took at the meeting you just described."

"They are the notes I jotted down during the meeting."

"I offer the notes in evidence."

"Well, I must object to that, Mr. Willow," Brackman said, rising again. "You're showing here a collection of answers the witness supposedly got from a dead man. There is no possible way of questioning the dead man as to whether he really did give those answers."

"Is this being offered to show the truth of what it contains?" McIntyre asked.

"No, your Honor."

"I will admit it if its limited purpose is to show the witness's working procedure on his novel."

"To show the evolution of the book, your Honor."

"I will admit it."

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit N in evidence.' "

"Mr. Driscoll, I show you another sheet of paper that lists the steps in the disassembly of an M-1. Did you use this information in your book?"

"Yes, sir. I had the lieutenant ask the men to strip their rifles, as an exercise."

"I am referring now to the so-called 'female rifle' scene."

"Yes, sir, I'm familiar with that scene."

"Was it based upon information you received from the colonel?"

"Well… yes and no. I did receive the information from the colonel, but what actually happened was that I told him what I needed when I spoke to him on the phone, and he brought a book called Military Science and Tactics with him, in which he had marked the section on stripping the M-1. I copied the information directly from the book."

"Onto this sheet of paper?"

"Yes, sir."

"I offer it in evidence."

"I object," Brackman said.

"On what grounds, Mr. Brackman?"

"The witness has testified that his scene was based on information in a book and not on what is now before this Court. I do not see the relevance."

"He has testified," Willow said, "that his notes were taken from a book given to him by the colonel…"

"I did not hear him say the colonel gave him the book."

"Mr. Driscoll, could you…"

"He didn't actually give me the book. He brought it with him to the meeting, and I copied these notes from it."

"We have only the witness's word, your Honor, that the colonel brought the book with him. The alleged exchange involves a dead man who purportedly—"

"Section 4519 does not apply here," Willow said. "In no way can this be considered a transaction with a deceased…"

"I understand that," Brackman said, "and this is not my objection."

"Now just a minute, just a minute," McIntyre said. "It seems to me that the offer is being made only to show that Mr. Driscoll had in his possession material which could have formed the basis of the scene in his novel. Isn't that so, Mr. Willow?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"I will admit it. I think your objection is unfounded, Mr. Brackman."

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit O in evidence.' "

"Mr. Driscoll, when you were writing your book, did you prepare a map upon which were written certain numbers and notes?"

"Your Honor, it pains me to have to object so continuously, especially when I know how interested we all are in having this trial proceed smoothly and rapidly," Brackman said v "But during the pretrial examinations, I can clearly remember Mr. Willow objecting at one point because the witness was my own and I was leading him."

"I'm sure you can also clearly remember, Mr. Brackman, that at the time I also stated I was not objecting to ninety per cent of your questions because we had agreed to be informal about the entire matter."

"That was the pretrial, Mr. Willow, and this is the trial, and I must object now to these leading questions."

"Mr. Driscoll, I show you a drawing of a map, and on this drawing there are certain numbers and notes. Who prepared this map?"

"I did."

"You drew the map?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is this the original drawing?"

"Yes, sir."

"What is it a map of?"

"It's a map of Korea, an enlargement of the Ch'ongch'on River area."

"Do you recognize the handwriting on it?"

"Yes, sir. It is my own."

"What do these notes and numbers signify?"

"They purport to be a patrol route and a timetable."

"Was this map used in your novel?"

"Yes, sir. That's the map that was reproduced in the book. It depicts the area between the Ch'ongch'on and the Yalu, and the map was put there for the reader's convenience so that he could follow what was happening, the trap being set for Lieutenant Cooper."

"The path of the patrol is indicated on this map, is it not?"

"It is."

"And the times at which the squad expects to reach certain marked areas on the map?"

"Yes, sir, the checkpoints."

"In other words, the notations on this map indicate goals and expected times of arrival, do they not?"

"They do."

"Similar to the goals and target dates you made for the writing of your book."

"Objection," Brackman said.

"Sustained. Really, Mr. Willow."

"Is this patrol an important incident in your book?"

"It is."

"A climactic incident?"

"It is."

"I offer the map in evidence."

"No objection."

"I'm grateful Mr. Brackman has no objection," McIntyre said, "but I must admit, Mr. Willow, that my own curiosity is somewhat piqued. For what purpose is this map being offered?"

"Again, your Honor, to show the evolutionary development of this novel. To show how it was written and rewritten, to show the research that went into each scene, to show the devotion to detail, the combination of personal knowledge and imagination that resulted in a unique creation which could not conceivably have been plagiarized from any existing work. This scene in particular, your Honor, this patrol, is one that plaintiff claims is based on the escape of his psychopathic officer and the subsequent accidental killing of a sergeant. When we see how carefully this patrol was conceived and detailed, when we recognize how everything in Mr. Driscoll's novel leads to this patrol and to the subsequent sacrifice his lieutenant makes, we can clearly see…"

"But doesn't this map appear in the novel?"

"A reproduction does, yes, your Honor."

"And has not the novel itself already been admitted in evidence?"

"It has, your Honor."

"Then why on earth do we need the original drawing?"

"Only to call attention to the fact that Mr. Driscoll thought the patrol important enough to make his own drawing illustrating it. That is all, your Honor."

"I do feel, Mr. Willow, that it might have been a simpler matter to have shown him the reproduction in an exhibit already admitted, and then asked whether or not he had drawn the original."

"If your Honor please," Brackman said, "I quite agree with you, even though I have been exceedingly reluctant to interrupt Mr. Willow. I remind him again that there was a court order we may be violating here, the one stating that all documents be delivered to us. I assume Mr. Willow is not deliberately sidestepping that order, and that several of these documents which I'm hearing of for the first time today were truly received just before the trial began. Nonetheless, the offer of so many of them is cluttering the record unnecessarily."

"How many more will there be, Mr. Willow?" McIntyre asked.

"I've tried to limit them, your Honor…"

"Yes, but how many more will there be?"

"… to those concerning specific alleged similarities. But we will be brief."

"How many more?"

"Two or three, your Honor."

"I hope so, Mr. Willow. I will admit the map."

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit P in evidence,' " the clerk said.

"Mr. Driscoll, when did you complete the first draft of your novel?"

"In January of 1963."

"Do you remember the exact date?"

"Yes, it was January 26, 1963."

"How do you happen to remember this date?"

"I remember it because I wrote a note to Hollis the next day, just before I delivered the book."

"I show you this and ask if it is the note to which you just now referred."

"It is," Driscoll said.

"I offer it in evidence, your Honor."

"No objection," Brackman said wearily.

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit Q,' " the clerk said.

"What did you do with this note, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I put it in the box containing the completed manuscript, and I delivered the note and the manuscript to Hollis Marks."

"When?"

"That Monday. January 28th."

"May I ask how you happen to recall this date?"

"I marked it on my desk calendar."

"I show you this page torn from a desk calendar for January 1963, and ask if this is the notation to which you just now referred."

"It is."

"I offer the calendar page in evidence, your Honor."

"No objection," Brackman said.

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit R in evidence.' "

"Mr. Driscoll, would you please read the notation to the Court?"

"It just says 'Deliver PD,' that's all. And the date is circled, January 28th."

"Is this your handwriting?"

"It is."

"And by PD, did you mean The Paper Dragon?"

"Yes, that's what is was called by that time. That was the new title."

"Mr. Driscoll, when did you receive galley proofs of your book?"

"At the end of May sometime."

"What did you do with them?"

"I corrected them and sent them back to Mitchell-Campbell."

"Did you request a set of corrected galleys from them?"

"I did."

"For what purpose?"

"I wanted my uncle to read the book before it was published."

"Did you subsequently send those corrected galleys to your uncle?"

"I did."

"I show you this and ask you to describe it," Willow said.

"It's the carbon copy of a letter I wrote to my uncle in June of 1963, telling him the galleys were on their way, and asking him for his opinion of the book."

"I offer it in evidence," Willow said.

"Your Honor, I cannot see its relevance."

"If a man has stolen another man's work, your Honor, he does not send galley proofs to his uncle for an opinion. I am merely trying to establish a logical order of events, culminating in the finished product which Mr. Driscoll showed to his uncle, a man he loved and respected, for his approval."

"I will admit the letter," McIntyre said.

"Mark it 'Defendants' Exhibit S in evidence.' "

"Your Honor," Brackman said, "we had Mr. Willow's promise to watch his P's and Q's, but we have come beyond those and now seem to be up to our S's in documents."

McIntyre burst out laughing. Brackman chuckled quietly, pleased by his own wit. Even Willow and his assistant began laughing. The laughter continued for perhaps a minute. Driscoll, observing the others, did not crack a smile. He noticed that Arthur Constantine, sitting at the plaintiff's table, was not smiling either.

At last Willow said, "There will be no further documents, your Honor."

"I guess that answers your doubts, Mr. Brackman," McIntyre said.

"Yes, and I'm greatly relieved, your Honor."

"Mr. Driscoll," Willow said, still smiling, "when your book was completed and delivered to Mitchell-Campbell, did your agent request a second copy of the manuscript?"

"He did."

"For what purpose?"

"For serial rights submission."

"Do you mean for submission to the magazines?"

"Yes."

"Did you sell first serial rights to the book?"

"Yes, sir."

"Which magazine bought the rights?"

"The Saturday Evening Post — and not McCall's or Redbook, as Mr. Knowles surmised yesterday."

"When did it appear in the Post?"

"In September of '63."

"And when was it published as a book?"

"In October of '63."

"Was the book successful?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, would you know how many copies it sold in its hardcover edition?"

"Chester Danton would be able to tell you that more accurately. I believe it was something like fifty or sixty."

"Fifty or sixty?" McIntyre asked.

"Thousand, I mean."

"Fifty or sixty thousand copies of a first novel, your Honor — and the figure may be a shade higher than that — is considered phenomenal. And this was exclusive of the book club edition, was it not, Mr. Driscoll?"

"Yes."

"It was a book club selection?"

"Your Honor, what is the purpose of all this?" Brackman asked.

"Mr. Willow?"

"If your Honor please, I wish to demonstrate for Mr. Driscoll only what Mr. Brackman earlier attempted to demonstrate regarding the plaintiff: that he is a man of recognized talents."

"How would this be any more relevant than plaintiff's—"

"If your Honor please, the Court permitted Mr. Con-stantine to go on and on about his screenplays, most of which were obscure and frankly mediocre works. It would seem to me that Mr. Driscoll should in all fairness be permitted to enumerate the very real honors bestowed upon his novel."

"Your Honor, I don't see how playing the numbers game, telling us how many copies were sold and all that, is going to indicate anything about Mr. Driscoll's talents."

"We did permit Mr. Constantine, however, to list his credits. All right, I will allow it. Go ahead, Mr. Driscoll."

"May I answer the question?"

"Yes, go on."

"It was a book club section. Book-of-the-Month took it."

"Was a paperback edition sold?" Willow asked.

"Yes, to Camelot Books."

"Would you happen to know how many copies were sold in that edition?"

"We sold a quarter of a million copies in the first eight days of sale."

"And afterwards?"

"It went on to sell something more than two and a half million copies."

"May I say, your Honor, that this constitutes a wildly successful sale in paperback."

"What time is it?" McIntyre asked the clerk.

"Eleven-fifteen, your Honor."

"Let's take a ten-minute recess."

The little Egyptian had obviously dressed for the occasion, and looked considerably more formal than he had on the night of the accident. Uncomfortable and a trifle embarrassed, he informed Sally that his name was Ibrahim Hadad, and then took a cigarette tin from his pocket and nervously opened it. He was wearing a rumpled brown suit and white shirt, a striped brown and yellow tie hanging down the shirt front and tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He wore yellow socks and brown shoes, and his heavy brown overcoat and brown fedora rested on his lap as he fumbled inside the tin, spilling a half dozen cigarettes onto his lap, retrieving them with fingers caked with the grime of his trade, impregnated in every wrinkle and pore. He smiled up at her palely, white teeth appearing in a sickly grin below his long hooked nose, his face the color of dust, the thin smile doing little to add a semblance of cheer to the solemn purpose of his visit. He put one of the cigarettes between his lips and then belatedly offered the tin to Sally, who shook her head.

"Very good cigarettes," he said. "Turkish."

"Thank you, I don't smoke," she said.

Hadad shrugged, closed the tin with a suggestion of finality, adjusted his coat and hat on his lap, put a lighted match to the cigarette tip, shook out the match, exhaled a giant cloud of smoke, and then nervously smiled again at Sally, who tented her fingers and waited for him to resume.

"Criminal assault," he said. "That is what." He shrugged. He puffed again on the cigarette. "When was it, the accident? Monday night?"

"Yes."

"The hospital, everything, I go home to my wife and children, she almost breaks my head for me all over again." He smiled. Sally kept watching him. He had a fascinating way of holding his cigarette between thumb and forefinger, the wrist bent outwards, so that he seemed rather effete as he puffed on it, rather like Peter Lorre playing a spy on the Orient Express, completely unlike a bricklayer.

"Tuesday is okay," he said. "Yesterday all day is okay too," he said, "but last night, ah! Six o'clock, yes? I come home from work, and who is waiting there? A detective."

"A police detective?"

"Correct," he said, and gave a small nod of his bullet-shaped head, and then cupped the cigarette in his reversed manner, and took a long obviously satisfying drag on it, and again exhaled a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke. My mother should be here, Sally thought, she would die from the smell alone. What is he smoking, Sally darling — pot? Mother, I'm sure it's not pot, what do you know about pot? I read the New York Post, Gertie would reply.

"Is it bothering you, the cigarette?" Hadad asked.

"No," she lied. "What about this detective?"

"It comes around that your friend, the lawyer, he has called his friend, the judge. His name is Santesson, the circus judge."

"Circuit," Sally said.

"Correct," Hadad said, and puffed again on his cigarette. "This detective, he comes from the judge's suggestion, he is investigating the big accident!" Hadad waved the hand with the cigarette in a grand sweeping gesture, smoke trailing behind it. "Criminal assault, he says."

"Who?"

"Me, who else?"

"This detective was investigating a charge of criminal assault against you?"

"Correct."

"Yes, go on."

"A year in prison, he says. Is this true?"

"I'm not sure."

"Or pay five hundred dollars?" Hadad said, looking at her expectantly, as though hoping she would deny it.

"Perhaps," Sally said.

"I can't afford neither," Hadad said, and sighed deeply. He looked at the cigarette in his cupped palm, sighed again when he discovered it had almost burned down, and then took the tin from his inside jacket pocket again and began going through the same complicated and fumbling maneuver of extricating a fresh cigarette from the sliding, tumbling, willful cigarettes in the box, the task made more difficult because he was now holding a lighted cigarette in one trembling hand. Watching him, Sally felt a sudden empathy, as though this shoddy, nervous man in his Sunday clothes accurately reflected the shabbiness of her Fourteenth Street walkup legal firm, sidewalk law at discount prices. He sat before the huge plate-glass window overlooking the street, the goldleaf letters S. KIRSCH, ATTORNEY AT LAW inverted so that they read correctly from the street, and below that the WORD ABOGADO, and in the corner of the window, also backwards so that the street trade could read it and perhaps be tempted by it, NOTARY PUBLIC, and the red seal below that, and further down the word translated into Spanish for the benefit of the myriad Puerto Ricans in the city who" were constantly being asked to have legal documents of all sorts notarized. She sat down behind an old wooden desk which she had bought at one of the secondhand furniture places on 23rd Street, in a revolving chair her mother jokingly said had once belonged to Oliver Wendell Holmes or Sherlock Holmes, she forgot which one, and looked across as Hadad finally extricated a cigarette from the tin and then shakingly began plucking loose cigarettes from his lap as though they were scattered daisy petals, the dark green filing cabinets behind him, the ancient inoperative air conditioner built into one window panel, the sky beyond as gray as death. This is what I have, she thought. I'm thirty-three years old, and I was graduated from N.Y.U. Law in the summer of 1963 (a late bloomer, Gertie called me) and here I am in a shabby office on a shabby street, watching an Arab pluck cigarettes from his lap. Sally Kirsch, Attorney at Law.

Sally Kirsch, attorney at law, had moved out of her mother's apartment the week after she passed the bar exams. Her mother Gertrude, a stout blond lady of dubious German-Austrian-Serbian extraction, when informed that Sally's new apartment was in the Village, immediately asked, "What will you do now? Start sleeping with all those beatniks down there?" Sally informed her that she had not yet slept with anyone (a lie), beatnik or otherwise, although the opportunity had certainly presented itself on many an occasion even while living here in the sanctified atmosphere of this fine home on Third Avenue and 85th Street. She did not expect to begin now, she said (another lie necessitated by the first lie), unless she choose to, which is exactly what she would have done no matter where she lived. "A fine girl," Gertie said. "You wouldn't be so smart if your father was alive."

Unfortunately, her father was not alive, had in fact been dead since Sally was six, at which time he was struck down by a bus on Second Avenue while crossing the street from his dry goods store. Sally had always suspected he was drunk at the time. Her sharpest memory of her father was of a tall, thin man with her identical green eyes and sandy hair, stooping to kiss her on the cheek, his breath smelling of something she only later could identify as wine. She was sure he'd been drunk. A man didn't get hit by something as big as a bus unless he was too drunk to see the damn thing. Her mother (significantly, she felt) never drank. She sometimes wondered if her mother had ever made love, evidence of conception and birth to the contrary.

In some of her more lurid fantasies, Sally reconstructed an image of her own first bed partner, an N.Y.U. undergraduate, now married and teaching English somewhere in Schenectady, unable to forget that hot sophomore maniac who had almost eaten him alive. In soberer moments, she thought of herself as essentially healthy, but hardly very passionate, a girl who understood the biological needs of her body and periodically set out to gratify them. Her three affairs had been of short duration, the most recent having been with an internal revenue agent, of all things, and having ended in April when he asked her (after a particularly passionate session) whether she had remembered to file her W-2. He also happened to be married, which may have partially accounted for her sudden decision, although she did not normally consider this an excluding factor. She did not, in fact, know what specific rules governed her morality or lack of it, except a basic rule of survival which advised her never to get pregnant.

Getting pregnant, according to Gertie, was one of the most horrible misfortunes that could ever befall a woman. "You were such a cranky baby, Sally darling, kept me up half the night, my milk wouldn't flow, my breasts were always hurting, and besides your father wanted a boy" — which translated from the dubious German-Austrian-Serbian meant "I, Gertie, wanted a boy." In any case, the advice had struck. It was bad to get pregnant under the best of circumstances, but tragic to get pregnant if you did not happen to have a husband. Since Sally did not happen to have a husband, nor particularly want one, she had immediately after her encounter with the budding Schenectady English teacher, and without any fuss or bother, rushed off to buy herself a diaphragm. (In later years, upon reading Mary McCarthy's precious "peccary" anecdote, she had said aloud, "Oh, how cutesy-cute!") Seven months ago, when she first took up with the internal revenue agent recently dispossessed, she abandoned the diaphragm in favor of birth control tablets, which she still religiously swallowed each morning. In one of her customary fishing expeditions, Gertie had asked what she thought of these new birth control pills, and Sally had replied, lying with a gracious blush, that she possessed no knowledge whatever of them. Her mother stuffed a dried apricot into her mouth, nodded her head sagely, and said, "They grow beards on women," and Sally almost brought her hand unconsciously to her chin.

She suddenly remembered, there was a time, she remembered, she could see, there was, it was the basement of a department store somewhere in Manhattan, a twelve-year-old girl trying on coats while her mother sat and watched, Gertrude Kirsch with her hands folded over her pocketbook, Sally trying on garment after garment for her approval. There was a time, it overlapped this silent shabby Fourteenth Street office, the pink coat suddenly and magically appearing on the rack, how had she missed it before? She touched the cloth, she lifted the coat from its hanger and held it tentatively for just a moment before putting it on. Gertrude Kirsch sat in silent expectation, her hands folded on her pocketbook. Sally came toward her hesitantly and executed a brief model's turn, elbows against her sides, arms up, fingers spread in delicate supplication. Quietly, she asked, "How do I look, Mama? Make believe I'm a person."

Hadad lighted the fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one, and then looked for an ash tray. Sally pushed one across the desk.

"Why?" Hadad asked.

"Why what?" she said, but of course she knew what he meant and had wondered the same thing the moment he came into the office and began telling his tale.

"Why does he pick on me, your boy friend?"

"He's not my boy friend," Sally said, and then wondered about that, too.

"He is a big man."

"Yes."

"A big lawyer."

"Yes."

"Why me, a bricklayer? Was someone killed in this big accident, no," he said, and again waved the skywriting cigarette. "Was someone serious injured, no. Is there enormous damage to the vehicles, no. Anyhow, I have insurance, the insurance will pay."

"Yes, Mr. Hadad, but…"

"Why does he make a stink?"

"I have no idea."

"Your own boy friend, you have no idea?"

"I only know Mr. Willow casually," Sally said, and felt immediately foolish. "I really don't know why he's… he's bringing this pressure to bear."

"Persecution," Hadad said. "Is he a Jew?"

"No," Sally answered.

Hadad shrugged. "You will help me?"

"How?"

"You will talk to him?"

"About what?"

"About he will leave me alone," Hadad said. "I do not wish to go to prison. I do not wish to pay five hundred dollars. I do not wish trouble of any kind. It was a dark night, it was anyone could have an accident, why does he pick on me? I am small beans. What does he want? My license, my living, my life? What does he want from me, this man?"

"I don't know," Sally said.

"Is there even a case?" Hadad asked. "Can there be criminal business here? Is it possible I can go to prison?"

"I don't know that, either. I'd have to read the law."

"I will pay you."

"For what?"

"For help, for advice, for salvation."

"I don't want your money, Mr. Hadad," Sally said.

"I am not a rich man, but I have some aside. I can pay."

"There's nothing to pay me for."

"You will talk to him?"

"I'll try."

"Ask him to stop," Hadad said, and then curiously added, "This is America."

They came back into the courtroom, both sides, plaintiff and defendants, considerably refreshed by their brief recess. They had exchanged words of reassurance, each to each, the plaintiff certain that Jonah Willow had extended himself beyond reasonable limits, introducing a plethora of documents that had only confused and bored the judge; the defendants convinced that Sidney Brackman had objected far too often and far too strenuously, irritating McIntyre and jeopardizing the case for the plaintiff. Brackman had told his client that he could read with fair accuracy the reactions of any judge, and he was certain McIntyre was beginning to lean more and more in their favor. Willow, on the other hand, assured his witness that he was coming over with dignity and calm, impressing the judge with his quiet integrity and his innate honesty.

So they all came back ready to engage each other in combat once again, seemingly forgetting that the real battle had been fought a long time ago, fought when Constantine committed his play to paper, fought when Driscoll later wrote his book. There was the scent of victory in the air, and both sides sniffed of it, and confidently surmised it was intended for their nostrils alone. Driscoll, after Jonah's peptalk in the corridor outside, felt certain that the trial was going their way, and that if no one involved in the defense brought up the matter of the 105th Division, why then no one on the plaintiff's side would mention it either. There was a curious holiday air in that courtroom when the trial resumed at 11:25 a.m. It belied the lowering clouds outside the long windows, it belied the fact that for every victor there is a loser, it belied the possibility that perhaps for every loser there is yet another loser or even a score of losers.

"Mr. Driscoll," Willow said, "before our recess, I was about to go into certain specific alleged similarities as listed on Plaintiff's Exhibit 6, which is titled Character Similarities. For the time being, I am going to bypass the character of Lieutenant Alex Cooper, who you have already testified is based on yourself. Instead, I am going to ask you about Private Colman, the troublemaker, who is certainly the second most important character in the novel, would you agree?"

"I would."

"Is Private Colman a homosexual?"

"He has had homosexual experiences."

"With whom?"

"With the major who had been commanding officer of the platoon."

"The plaintiff alleges, Mr. Driscoll, that your Private Colman is based on two characters in the play Catchpole. One of these characters is Corporal Janus, who is depicted as a troublemaker, and the other is Colonel Peterson, who is said to be a homosexual. Have you read Mr. Constantine's play?"

"I have."

"When did you read it?"

"Last month, when you gave it to me."

"Where was this, Mr. Driscoll?"

"You gave me the manuscript at your office in New York, and I took it home with me* and read it there. In Vermont."

"Did you read it carefully?"

"I spent an entire weekend with it."

"Are you familiar with these two characters in the play? Corporal Janus and Colonel Peterson?"

"I am."

"Well now, wouldn't you consider it a remarkable coincidence that there are a troublemaker and a homosexual in Mr. Constantine's play, and there is a homosexual troublemaker in your book?"

"No, sir."

"Why not?"

"Because whereas Corporal Janus is a troublemaker, I could find no indication in the play that Colonel Peterson is a homosexual."

"He is not, in your estimation, a homosexual?"

"I do not think he could be considered homosexual in anybody's estimation."

"Has he not had homosexual experiences?"

"He has not."

"Does he not make homosexual references and allusions?"

"He does not."

"Does he not use endearing terms when talking to other men?"

"He does not."

"Did you find any character in the play who could be considered homosexual?"

"I did not."

"Your Honor," Brackman said, rising, "I am fully aware of Mr. Driscoll's reputation as a novelist, but I was not aware that he holds a degree in psychology. May I point out that what he considers homosexual or heterosexual may not, in the opinion of experts, actually be the case."

"If your Honor please," Willow said, "I believe Mr. Driscoll's testimony can be considered as competent as was Mr. Constantine's."

"Not when we are dealing with psychological matters, your Honor," Brackman insisted.

"Your Honor, we have allowed Mr. Constantine to testify that his colonel was a homosexual. I do not see the difference…"

"He created the character," Brackman said. "He ought to know whether or not he intended a homosexual."

"We have already agreed, Mr. Brackman, that intent is not on trial here," Willow said.

"I will allow the testimony," McIntyre said. "Mr. Driscoll is not offering a psychological analysis, nor does the Court consider it such. He is discussing a literary matter in literary terms. I believe even a layman can discern the difference between a homosexual and a heterosexual in a work of fiction, and I must certainly accept Mr. Driscoll as being someone considerably more advised than a layman. I will admit the testimony. Please go on."

"In other words, Mr. Driscoll, your character Colman could not have been based in part upon a homosexual colonel in Catchpole because no such homosexual colonel exists."

"That is correct."

"And the charge that Mr. Knowles later reverted to the original…"

"There was no original to which he could have reverted."

"While we are on Private Colman, we have had a great deal of testimony here about his wearing eyeglasses in the motion picture whereas he does not wear eyeglasses in your book. Colonel Janus in the play does wear glasses, of course, as I'm sure you noticed in your reading of Catchpole."

"Yes."

"How do you explain this appearance and disappearance of eyeglasses?"

"There's nothing to explain. Private Colman does wear glasses in my book."

"He does?" Willow asked, and turned to look at Brackman in mock surprise. "Where do you find any evidence of this, Mr. Driscoll?"

"There's a scene in which Lieutenant Cooper pulls up in a jeep, and just before he steps out, Colman takes a pair of glasses from the pocket of his blouse and puts them on to get a better look at him."

"What page does this occur on, Mr. Driscoll?"

"Page 37."

"May I add, your Honor, that there are eleven people in this courtroom at the moment, and five of us are wearing eyeglasses — almost half of the people present. In fact, Mr. Brackman's partner is one of those people."

"I wear glasses myself when I'm reading," McIntyre said, "so we can raise the number to six."

"Out of eleven, your Honor."

"I assume this is privileged, is it, Mr. Willow?" Brackman asked, and smiled.

"Merely an observation, Mr. Brackman, merely an observation."

"I do not see its relevancy."

"All right, all right, let's continue," McIntyre said.

"We have heard testimony here, Mr. Driscoll, to the effect that you named your private Peter Colman after Colonel Peterson in Catchpole. Is this in fact so?"

"It is not."

"How did you in fact come upon the name Peter Colman?"

"Peter is a phallic reference."

"Why would you use a phallic reference for a character who is clearly homosexual?"

"As a personal joke."

"And Colman? What is the significance of this surname?"

"It's a literary pun."

"In what way?"

"It refers to The Iceman Cometh."

"How?"

"The iceman in Mr. O'Neill's play means death. The character Colman in my book also means death — for the lieutenant."

"I still do not see either the connection or the pun."

"When I was a child, my mother used to tell me stories about buying ice for the icebox. She would take a wagon each morning and walk over to 96th Street, where there was a coal station. She used to buy the cake of ice there and then wheel it home. In my mind, 'iceman' and 'coal man' are identical and interchangeable. The name Colman is simply an elision of 'coal man,' which is in turn a pun on 'iceman.' "

"That's a rather complicated reference, isn't it?"

"All fictional references are complicated."

"Did you intend to—"

"Objection," Brackman said immediately.

"Sustained."

"Was this written for the reader to grasp?"

"No, sir. It was entirely personal. I did it for my own amusement."

"It was not, then, a reversal of Colonel Petersons' name."

"I had never heard of Colonel Peterson until last month when I read the play."

"You were present in this courtroom yesterday, were you not, when Chester Danton testified concerning several editorial reports made at Mitchell-Campbell?"

"I was."

"Do you recall the report made by Miss Anita Lang, the one containing suggestions about Private Colman's civilian life?"

"I do."

"And the flashbacks about his civilian life?"

"I do."

"She suggested, did she not, that there was too much emphasis on his civilian background?"

"Yes, she did."

"Did you change Colman's character in accordance with Miss Lang's suggestions?"

"I only met Miss Lang once before the book was published. I didn't know at the time that the suggestions were hers. I thought they came from Chester Danton, who was my editor at Mitchell-Campbell."

"But you did make the changes?"

"Yes, I deleted the flashbacks. There were two scenes showing his civilian life. I can recall them both very clearly, if you want me to take the Court's time to describe them."

"Very briefly, if you will."

"One of the scenes finally discarded from the novel described Colman's experience in a television studio during a rehearsal — all the hectic background, the setting of lights and cameras, the cueing-in of music, makeup men, costume people — Colman had been an actor in civilian life, you see, and this was supposed to be a rehearsal for a live drama series."

"Was this scene based on an actual experience of your own?"

"A friend of mine from Music and Art later became a set designer for television, and I once attended such a rehearsal with him, yes."

"And the other scene?"

"The second scene was between Colman and his mother, and tried to show the beginnings of his homosexuality. He's appearing in a high school play, and his mother is attending the performance, and after the play there is a short and very bitter… well… anti-mother scene, I guess you'd call it, while Colman is taking off his makeup in the dressing room. It was a good scene, and I'm sorry they asked me to cut it."

"But you did cut it."

"Yes, for the sake of the narrative flow."

"Were there any changes made in Colman's character aside from the deletion of these scenes?"

"No. Once I hit upon the concept of him as a homosexual, the character remained more or less constant. And even after I cut those two flashbacks, his motivation was clearly understood by me, because the scenes were still there at the back of my mind."

"In other words, the flashbacks that were cut remained as a sort of underpainting?"

"Exactly."

"Referring again to Plaintiff's Exhibit 6, there is said to be a similarity between Sergeant Morley in your novel and Sergeant D'Agostino in Catchpole. Is Morley, in fact, based upon D'Agostino?"

"No, sir. Morley is an original creation."

"Is he based upon any real person?"

"Yes, he is based on a boy I knew at school."

"What was his name?"

"Andrew Christopher."

"Does this real name in any way account for the fictitious name you used?"

"Yes. Christopher Morley was a favorite author of mine.

The name Christopher automatically suggested Morley, and so I named the sergeant in my book Morley."

"Is Andrew Christopher still alive?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since we were in school together."

"Is Andrew Christopher a Negro?"

"Yes."

"Is the character Morley a Negro?"

"Yes."

"And a sergeant?"

"Yes."

"D'Agostino is also a sergeant, and a member of a minority group. How do you explain this similarity?"

"Sergeant D'Agostino is only accidentally a member of a minority group. Sergeant Morely is deliberately a Negro, for valid plot and character purposes."

"What are these valid plot and character purposes?"

"To further the conflict between the squad and the lieutenant."

"In what way?"

"By having Morley suspect the lieutenant of bigotry."

"Mr. Constantine has testified that there is a recurring thread of suspected prejudice in his play as well. Did you find this so?"

"No, sir."

"You did not find a recurring thread of suspected prejudice?"

"I did not."

"But there are references to D'Agostino being Italian, the lieutenant being white Protestant?"

"Yes, there are. But these are oblique and tangential and could not have been intended as development in a—"

"Objection, your Honor."

"Mr. Brackman?"

"We are getting into intent here, are we not?"

"Well, I won't know until I've heard the rest of his sentence," McIntyre said.

"If your Honor please, the witness has already used the word 'intended.' "

"Well, let's hear the rest of the sentence."

"I was only going to say that Mr. Constantine knows how to write a play, and there is ample evidence throughout that he knows how to sustain a thought and build it to a dramatic payoff. But he has not done this with D'Agostino's Italian background. The oblique references there seem intended only as incidental information."

"That's what I mean, your Honor," Brackman said. "I do not see how Mr. Driscoll can possibly know or even surmise what Mr. Constantine's intentions were."

"Yes," McIntyre said. "Well." He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I think we will have to strike both the question and the answer, Mr. Willow."

Willow sighed and then said, "Mr. Driscoll, it has been alleged that the character called Kenworthy in your novel is based upon the character called Franklin in Catchpole? Is this in fact so?"

"No, sir."

"Both these men are addicted to the use of obscene language, are they not?"

"No. Again, we come to intent." Driscoll paused. "I really don't know how I can explain this without talking about why these characters are in the separate works."

"Your Honor?"

"Yes, Mr. Willow."

"May the witness proceed?"

"I have heard no objection."

"I most strenuously will object, your Honor, if he plans to analyze the thought processes of another man."

"He only plans to compare the characters, your Honor."

"That's not what he said."

"Mr. Driscoll?"

"I would have to go into intent."

"In that case, I would object," Brackman said.

"Well now," McIntyre said, and again was silent. "Will this take the same form as the testimony you just gave concerning bigotry and so on?"

"I would imagine so."

"It does seem to me, Mr. Brackman, that we allowed your witness a similar latitude in his testimony."

"We did not permit him to testify as to intent, your Honor."

"Not in the strictest meaning of the word, perhaps. But was he not, for example, when discussing the reversal of Colonel Peterson's name to form Peter Colman's name, was he not then really analyzing Mr. Driscoll's intent?"

"He was basing his analysis on the actual works, your Honor, and not on what was intended."

"He may not have used the word 'intent,' but surely he was telling us that Mr. Driscoll intended an anagram."

"If your Honor please, I feel we are beginning to confuse execution with intent. We are here to compare the two works. In that manner alone can we determine whether or not an act of piracy was committed."

"But wouldn't it be helpful if we knew the intent as well?"

"Your Honor, it seems to me that a man can state in print that white is white, and then later claim he really intended to state that black is white, and the intent and the execution would be in direct contradiction."

"But isn't it important for us to know what both these men were trying to accomplish?"

"Not in a court of law, if your Honor please. We are not, after all, professional book or play reviewers."

"I think we are reviewing these works, nonetheless, Mr. Brackman."

"Only in an attempt to prove or disprove similarities. I know your Honor recognizes the gravity of this contest, and I'm certain the Court would not wish to compare these proceedings to something as trivial as the reviewing of books and plays."

"On the contrary, Mr. Brackman, we may be getting very close to the heart of the matter here."

"Which is what, if your Honor please?"

"What both these men were trying to do."

"It is our contention, your Honor, that James Driscoll was trying to do nothing more nor less than steal Mr. Constantine's play."

"And what was Mr. Constantine trying to do?"

"He was trying to write a wholly original work. Your Honor, in all frankness, I must say that anyone's comments — mine included — concerning this matter can only confuse the issue beyond understanding."

"You mean the matter of author's intent?"

"Yes, your Honor. It seems to me that it is the author's burden to make his intent clear in the execution."

"And it is the judge's burden to try for an understanding of both execution and intent."

"If that is your ruling…"

"That is my ruling."

"Will the record note my exception?"

"It will be noted. Proceed, Mr. Driscoll."

"I've forgotten the question," Driscoll said.

"Are both Franklin in the play and Kenworthy in your novel addicted to the use of obscene language?"

"No, sir, they are not."

"Do you accept the use of the word bug or its variations as a substitute for an obscenity?"

"I do."

"And you still maintain that Franklin in the play does not use obscenity?"

"He does use obscenity, but not excessively."

"On what do you base this?"

"On an actual count of the number of times the words bug or bugging are used in the play."

"How many times are they used?"

"The play runs one hundred and twenty pages, and is divided into three acts. Throughout the length of the play, Private Franklin uses this word a total of seven times. Compare this to The Eve of Saint Mark, where the word ruttin' is used a total of twenty-eight times during the course of the play…"

"Objection, your Honor," Brackman said. "We are not here to compare Catchpole with The Eve of Saint Mark."

"Overruled, Mr. Brackman. The comparison is being made only to clarify this matter of excessive obscenity."

"How often does your character Kenworthy use obscene language in The Paper Dragon?"

"Every time he speaks."

"Did you count the times?"

"No."

"Moving to Plaintiff's Exhibit 5, Plot Similarities, it is alleged that in both your novel and the play the lieutenant falls in love with an Army nurse. Is this so?"

"Yes, it is."

"How do you explain the similarity?"

"I wanted to tell a love story. In order to tell a love story, I needed a woman. In a combat situation, the only possible female characters would be either a native woman or a woman connected with the services. I chose a nurse."

"Why couldn't you just as naturally have chosen a Korean girl?"

"Because this would have brought up the racial matter again, and I wanted to explore that in terms of Sergeant Morley."

"Does the nurse in Catchpole outrank the lieutenant?"

"Yes."

"Does the nurse in your book outrank Lieutenant Cooper?"

"Yes."

"How do you explain this?"

"The nurses in Korea were in a combat situation, and most of them were experienced officers."

"Did you meet any nurses in Korea who had been recently commissioned?"

"No."

"What was the lowest rank you came across?"

"A nurse's rank, do you mean? In Korea?"

"Yes."

"First lieutenant."

"What rank does Jan Reardon in your novel hold?"

"First lieutenant."

"Has she been in the service longer than Lieutenant Cooper?"

"Yes, a full year longer."

"And does this explain her higher rank?"

"Yes."

"It has been alleged in this same Exhibit 5 that the men in the respective squads hate their new commanding officer because someone they liked and respected had been killed by a sniper. Is this so?"

"Yes, but the sniper wasn't my idea. It was Chester Danton's."

"What was the plot development in your original version?"

"The struggle originated with Private Colman. It was strictly a personal struggle between Colman and the lieutenant. Only later did it assume larger proportions that led to the lieutenant's death."

"There had been no previous commanding officer killed by a sniper?"

"No. Besides, in the play the lieutenant is really responsible for the death of one of his men, and the squad's resentment is somewhat justified. In my novel, the major is killed a full month before Cooper even arrives in Korea. The resentment is solely Colman's, the struggle is strictly between the two."

"A struggle for what?"

"For…" Driscoll hesitated. "Survival," he said.

"Which the lieutenant loses?"

"Yes. The lieutenant is killed. What Colman finally does is to kill the lieutenant."

"Is this his plan?"

"Unconsciously, yes."

"Is this not also the plan of Corporal Janus in the play?"

"Yes."

"To murder the lieutenant?"

"Yes."

"How do they differ?"

"One is a melodrama."

"Which one?"

"The play. It is really a play about a murder conspiracy, and the events leading up to that murder and the eventual foiling of it through a series of further related events."

"Do you agree that the theme of Catchpole is 'The Idiocy and Foolish Waste of War'?"

"No, sir."

"What is the theme of Catchpole?"

" 'Crime Does Not Pay.' "

"And what is the theme of The Paper Dragon?"

"It would be difficult to express simply."

"How would you express it?"

"I suppose the theme is that people are capable of… of hurting each other beyond endurance by… by thoughtless and… ill-conceived actions."

"Like war, do you mean?"

"The war is inconsequential, it's only the background. I tried to… you see… the lieutenant knows a deep and very real love for this woman… the nurse… and this is wrecked… their love is destroyed by a single thoughtless act."

"But isn't it true that more than just their love is destroyed?"

"Yes, the… the future they might have had together."

"I'm referring, though, to the actual death of the lieutenant."

"Oh. Yes. But I saw that as symbolic."

"You did not see the nurse's deprivation as symbolic, did you?"

"No, that's real enough. She's lost him."

"Forever," Willow said.

"Yes." Driscoll paused. "Forever."

"But then, there are no winners in your novel, Mr. Driscoll, isn't that so?"

"Yes."

"The whole series of events, in fact, seem pointless by the end of the book."

"Yes."

"Everyone has been involved in a bitter struggle that solves nothing, a paper dragon. Moving on to Plaintiff's Exhibit 7, we are told that the 'female rifle' scene in your novel is based on the pig scene in Mr. Constantine's play. Is it?"

"No, it's not."

"It is alleged that these scenes are similar."

"I don't see how."

"They are both said to be sexual."

"Mr. Constantine's scene is about capturing a pig. My scene is about a woman."

"It's about stripping a rifle, isn't it?"

"No, it's about stripping a woman and taking her to bed."

"It purports to be about a rifle."

"The scene is transparently about a woman, whereas Mr. Constantine's pig scene is clearly a scene about food. There are no sexual allusions in it at all."

"Thank you, Mr. Driscoll," Willow said. "That is all for this witness, your Honor."

He nodded at Driscoll, smiled briefly, turned his back and walked to the defense table. Brackman took his time assembling his notes. Driscoll watched him warily. Constantine whispered something to him just before he rose from the table, and Brackman nodded and then walked toward the front of the courtroom. He pursed his lips, swallowed, looked up at Driscoll, and said, "Mr. Driscoll, if I understand your earlier testimony correctly, you said that you were an art major at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute. When did you enter Pratt?"

"In September of 1947."

"And you went into the Army in June of 1950?"

"Yes."

"Still intending to be an artist?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Did you plan on continuing with your art work when you got out of the service?"

"Yes."

"When did you change your mind?"

"I don't know when. I suppose it was a gradual process."

"Starting when?"

"Starting when I was at Pratt, I would imagine."

"And you entered Pratt in September of 1947?"

"Yes."

"A month before Mr. Constantine's play opened on Broadway."

"Yes."

"And that was when you began changing your mind about becoming an artist?"

"Not exactly then."

"Exactly when?"

"I said it was a gradual process."

"Starting in September of 1947?"

"It was a matter of beginning to gauge my own talents. There were a lot of talented people at Pratt. I began looking at my own work in terms of theirs."

"And decided to become a writer?"

"Not until much later."

"Not until when?"

"Sometime before I was discharged from the Army."

"So that when you returned to civilian life, you abandoned your study of art, and decided instead to take courses in writing?"

"Yes."

"You became an English major at N.Y.U.?"

"Yes."

"And I assume you took whatever creative writing courses the school had to offer."

"Yes."

"And that's where you learned to write."

"I don't know where a person learns to write."

"That is, nonetheless, where you had your formal training as a writer?"

"Yes."

"Did you begin writing for gain or profit immediately after you were graduated from N.Y.U.?"

"No."

"When did you begin writing?"

"Not until 1961."

"Four years after you were graduated."

"Yes."

"Even though you had been so splendidly prepared for a career in writing?"

"I don't know how splendidly I was prepared. I certainly didn't expect to step out of college and be acclaimed a new Hemingway."

"So you postponed writing your novel, is that correct?"

"Yes."

"Until you felt certain you would be acclaimed a Hemingway?"

"No, until I felt I could write the book I wanted to write. My own book. Not a Hemingway book, or anyone else's book."

"Had you written anything before you started your novel?"

"In college, yes."

"Was any work of yours published?"

"No."

"What sort of writing did you do in college?"

"Short stories mostly."

"Never a novel?"

"No."

"The Paper Dragon was your first novel."

"Yes."

"Your only novel."

"Yes."

"Did you submit any of your stories for publication while you were in college?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They weren't good enough."

"Did you feel The Paper Dragon was good enough for publication?"

"Obviously, I did. I wouldn't have sent it out if I hadn't."

"Suddenly, out of the blue, you wrote a novel — never having written one before — and it was good enough for publication. In fact, according to Chester Danton's testimony yesterday, 'the remarkable thing about the book was that it was so good and so fully realized that there were very few suggestions an editor could make.' Do you agree with Mr. Danton?"

"In what way?"

"That the book was remarkable in its quality and in its realization."

"I would have no way of judging my own work."

"You seem perfectly capable of judging Mr. Constantine's work."

"But not my own."

"Do you think many first novels come to a publisher 'so good and so fully realized'?"

"I don't know."

"What would you guess?"

"Your Honor, the witness has already stated that he does not know."

"Sustained."

"Did you take any courses at N.Y.U. on the writing of a novel?"

"No."

"You just sat down to write one."

"Most novels are written by people who just sit down to write them."

"And they come out of the typewriter 'so good and so fully realized,' is that correct?"

"I don't know how anyone else's novel comes out of the typewriter."

"Were you satisfied with the way yours came out of the typewriter?"

"Not wholly. But it was the best I could do at the time."

"Can you do better now?"

"I don't know."

"The fact is, you haven't written anything since The Paper Dragon, have you?"

"No, I haven't."

"No other novels, no short stories?"

"Nothing," Driscoll said.

"Do you plan to write anything else?"

"No."

"But you're a writer, aren't you?"

"I'm a Vermont farmer."

"I thought you were a writer."

"You've been misinformed."

"Apparently," Brackman said, and smiled. "Mr. Driscoll, you have testified that Lieutenant Alex Driscoll»»

"Lieutenant Alex Cooper."

"Yes, forgive me, Lieutenant Cooper is an idealized version of yourself, is that true?"

"Yes."

"He is not entirely yourself?"

"Not entirely."

"Because, for example, Lieutenant Cooper is killed in the next to last chapter of your novel, and you, sir, are obviously not dead."

"Obviously not."

"So he is only partially based on yourself?"

"Yes."

"Would it be fair to say that somewhere along the line he ceases to be you?"

"Yes, it would be fair to say that."

"Mr. Brackman, I'm sorry I must interrupt you at this point," McIntyre said, "but it's exactly noon, and I think we should recess for lunch."

13

The two men had hot dogs and orange drinks at the Nedick's on Duane, and then walked up Centre Street, past the County Court House and the Criminal Courts Building, and then onto Baxter and Bayard and into Chinatown. The weather was not mild — there was in fact a strong wind blowing — but it seemed almost balmy in contrast to yesterday's bitter fierceness. As they turned into Mott Street, Arthur felt for the moment as though he were entering an actual Chinese street in a Chinese city — Shanghai or Tientsin, Canton or Soochow — the undecipherable Chinese calligraphs, the quiet watchful men in doorways, hands tucked into their armpits, exotic women rushing by in abbreviated coats and slit skirts, pushing shopping carts or carrying baskets, the snug, tight, intimate landscape of winter in a foreign place, where the language is strange and the faces are alien and the only link with past experience is the weather. The sudden appearance of a grinning cardboard Santa Claus in a window brimming with ivory and jade shattered the illusion, brought once more into focus the strictly Anglo-Saxon proceedings downtown and the presence of Kent Mercer at his side, walking briskly and prattling on about the horror of the ghetto and these poor underprivileged Orientals. Did Arthur know there was no juvenile delinquency among the Chinese? The women pushed their shopping carts. Somewhere, he could smell roasting pork. He thought suddenly of Lamb's Dissertation, and then heard Kent's voice again, the slightly lilting monotony of it, the strident note that told Arthur he was about to get to the point, at last.

"… in the middle of a trial and everything, but I thought I should see you before this thing came to a head. That's why I called you this morning, Arthur."

"Um-huh," Arthur said.

"I understand they've made some suggestions concerning the play," Kent said.

"That's right."

"At least, that's what Oscar told me."

"Yes, they made some suggestions."

"What do you plan to do?" Kent asked.

"I don't know."

"Well, I don't like to press this, Arthur, nor do I wish to risk that terrible look you get in your eyes whenever…"

"I don't get a terrible look, Kent."

"… whenever you're angry," Kent said, and smiled. "Oh, you know you do, Arthur. You're a completely menacing person when you're crossed."

"Well," Arthur said, and sighed.

"But I would like to know what your plans are because — I might as well be frank, Arthur — I've got to know where we're going with this-play."

"Why?"

"I've got to know whether it's going to be done."

"It'll be done," Arthur said.

"Do you mean you've decided to make the changes?"

"Well, no, not yet."

"Did the changes sound reasonable to you?"

"No."

"Not at all?"

"Well, some of them maybe."

"Which ones?"

"I don't remember."

"Arthur, I'm going to be frank with you," Kent said, and stopped in front of a candy store, and turned to face Arthur, and put one hand on his arm. "I've always been frank with you, you've got to admit that."

"Yes, you have."

"Arthur, you must make those changes."

"Why?"

"Because Hester won't take the part unless you do. And if Hester doesn't take the part, the play will not be produced. I'm being frank with you."

"All right."

"All right what?"

"All right, you're being frank with me."

"Will you make the changes?"

"Was this Oscar's idea?" Arthur asked suddenly.

"What?"

"This. Your calling me, this little talk."

Inside the candy store, an old Chinese woman with her hair pulled back tightly into a knot, was handing a coin across the counter and smiling at the proprietor. Again, the feeling of strangeness came over Arthur; he had never seen a woman like this one before, her clothes had been stitched in Singapore, her hair had been greased with hummingbird fat by a hairdresser who traveled from province to province, he knew she had just consumed a rare exotic drink and was now paying for it in foreign coin. Probably an egg cream, he thought, and smiled, and saw that Kent thought the smile was directed at him and was offended by it.

"You needn't look so smugly superior," Kent said, "because this was definitely not Oscar's idea. This was my own idea. I've got to think of myself, too, Arthur, I can't continually think of everyone else involved in this project."

"I understand that."

"I've been offered certain other things and, I'm being frank, some of them look very attractive to me. I've got to give people a yes or no answer, Arthur, I'm sure you can understand that."

"Of course."

"And this has nothing to do with your play, believe me. I love your play, you know that. But I've got my own career to think of, you know how it is with these things. If you don't say yes or no, people think you're not interested and begin looking elsewhere. There are only so many jobs, Arthur, and I don't have to tell you how many directors."

"I see."

"So what do you plan to do?"

"I don't know."

"How well do you know Hester Miers?"

"Only casually," Arthur said.

"You mean she hasn't yet made a grab for your jewels?" Kent said, and laughed. "I'm surprised, really."

"What about her?" Arthur said.

"I'm told she's very good in bed," Kent went on, unmindful of Arthur's tone. "She gives magnificent head," he said, and laughed again.

Arthur stared at Kent for a moment, and then abruptly began walking away from him. Kent stood rooted to the sidewalk. The door behind him opened, and the Chinese woman came out, shuffling past Kent, who rolled his eyes heavenward in a gesture to despair that Arthur missed, and then quickened his pace to catch up with him.

"She's a very good actress, Arthur," he said solemnly.

"I know."

"And I think she could be right for Carol."

"Sure, if we make her twenty-three instead of nineteen, and change her to a social worker instead of a college girl, and make her father the head of General Motors, and…"

"Well, I think you're exaggerating…"

"… make her a whore besides."

"What?"

"Instead of a virgin."

"No one suggested she be made a whore."

"No, not exactly."

"Not in any respect, Arthur."

"Okay, not in any respect."

"I love the faces on these Chinese children, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"One affair was what they suggested, actually," Kent said.

"I know."

"Everybody's had at least one affair," Kent said, and shrugged.

"But not Carol."

"Art need not imitate life quite so closely, need it?" Kent asked.

"I see they told you she's based on my sister."

"Yes. There's nothing wrong with that."

"I should hope not."

"But at the same time…"

"At the same time, let's make all the changes."

"I'm being frank with you, Arthur."

"Sure you are. You want a job."

"Not any job, Arthur. I want this job. But I'll tell you frankly, if I thought this job was in danger of evaporating, I would most certainly take another one."

"If I win this case…"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Let's not talk about personal matters right now, Arthur."

"My play is a personal matter. To me."

"I'm sure it is. And to me, too. Which is why I hate to see it scuttled."

"There are other actresses."

Kent sighed. The sigh encompassed a lifetime of talking to writers and producers and actors, the sigh was one of sorrow and wisdom, sorrow because he had to give this same speech again to a writer intent on suicide, wisdom because he knew without doubt that what he was going to say was incontrovertible and stark and absolutely valid. The sigh was a tired one; Arthur heard something in it that compelled him to listen to Kent for perhaps the first time during their walk.

"Arthur, I know a little more about this business than you do," Kent said. "I've been in it for close to forty years now, as actor and director both, and I can tell you frankly that there's a time to stop thinking about a project, and a time to begin moving on it. At this moment, your play and the people involved in it are ready to move, the whole project has a feel to it, a sense of growing power, a certainty that all the planets are finally in conjunction and that we are about to move, Arthur, we are about to get moving. All you have to do is make those changes, agree to make those changes, and the thing will start humming and ticking, they'll spring Hester out of that actor's graveyard, she'll sign a contract, the backers will be fighting to get a piece of the action, and your play will be done. That's the feeling I get, that's what forty years of theater experience is telling me right now, It's telling me to move. Arthur, to get this thing on its feet and moving. Because if we don't, Arthur, if we allow Hester to get away, your play will not be produced by Selig and Stern. They've exhausted their people, Arthur, they cannot raise the money, they will let the option expire."

"There are other producers."

"Arthur, I've been in this business too long, really. Oh, yes, there are the success stories about the plays that have made the rounds of four hundred producers, and lo and behold the four-hundred-and-first snaps it up and it becomes a smash hit and runs for fourteen years and makes everyone involved a millionaire. I have heard all those stories, Arthur, because I've been around a long long time, I was born in the proverbial trunk. But I can tell you that if you don't move when everything is right for moving, things may never be right again, things may never come to that exact spot in time and space again."

"Maybe I'm willing to take that chance."

"You'd be smarter to compromise a little, Arthur."

"I've been compromising a little all my life," Arthur said.

"Then do it one more time. Make the changes. There'll be God knows how many revisions during rehearsal, anyway. The thing may get changed right back to what it was originally."

"Come on, Kent."

"All right, it won't, but will that be such a great loss? No one's trying to corrupt your play, Arthur. They're only trying to improve it."

"They're trying to change it, Kent."

"But only to improve it."

"No, only to change it. Only to make it theirs and not mine. Goddamn it, Kent, this is still my play."

"I've got news for you, Arthur. Without an actress, it isn't a play at all, yours or anybody's."

"No? Then what is it?"

"A manuscript."

"There are plenty of actresses around. We can always get—"

"No, Arthur."

They stopped on the sidewalk and silently turned to face each other. In the window behind Kent, a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary knelt beside a cradle bearing the infant Jesus. To the left of the manger, a large Chinese calendar hung, a slant-eyed girl in a bathing suit looking back over her left shoulder. To the right of the manager, alternating green and red cardboard letters spelled out the words MERRY XMAS, dangling from a string.

"This is the time," Kent said. "Now! Either make the changes, Arthur, or resign yourself to the fact that your play will never be done."

"I don't know," Arthur said.

"I'm being frank with you."

It's because I'm a Negro from Harlem, Norman Sheppard thought, and looked again at Ebie Driscoll and could not shake his feeling of discomfort. It's because I know the lady is from the Deep South, suh, and I am merely projecting her own discomfort onto myself. She is not used to dining with Nigras, suh, and this is why she constantly brushes that strand of blond hair away from her cheek, a gesture I have seen her perform a hundred times since this trial began, a nervous mannerism, that's all. And quite naturally, her nervousness has leaped across the table and I, being a sensitive person with a lot of natural rhythm, am reacting to it. I'll have to report this to Dr. Maloney on Monday, he'll find it very interesting. "What do you think about it, Mr. Sheppard?" he will ask, and I will then try to separate this extraordinary feeling of déjà vu from the very ordinary complicated feelings surrounding it, such as why I might feel uncomfortable in the presence of any beautiful, blond, white woman from Alabama even if I didn't think we'd met someplace before (a likely possibility, to be sure) even if I didn't think I knew her. Or, to be more exact, since Dr. Maloney insists on exactitude, not only do I feel I know Mrs. James Driscoll, but I further feel I know her exceptionally well. Or to be precise, Dr. Maloney, I feel the young lady and I have been intimate, yes, how about that for a clue to the Negro Revolution? I will bet you any amount of money, Dr. Maloney, that she has a small crescent-shaped scar on her thigh, and that she got it from a piece of broken glass at the base of a statue or something in her home town, what do you make of that, Dr. Maloney? "Well," he will reply, "what do you make of it, Mr. Sheppard?"

"You came over very well," he said to Driscoll. "I think McIntyre was impressed."

"I hope so," Driscoll answered.

Now how would I know about a crescent-shaped scar on the lady's thigh when I have never seen the lady's thigh? How did I know she was going to be left-handed even before I saw her pick up her utensils at lunch the other day, tell me that, Dr. Maloney. It is true, yes, Doctor, that I myself am left-handed and therefore am constantly on the alert for members of the race, human, who are similarly endowed, they being acknowledged leaders whatever their color or religion. Michelangelo was left-handed, did you know that? Kim Novak, as it happens, is left-handed. Mrs. James Driscoll is also left-handed, which fact I knew before I knew it, that's exactly what I mean about this déjà vu phenomenon, doctor. Am I making myself clear, or is it possible that all I want to do is lay Ebie Driscoll? "Well, let's examine that, Mr. Sheppard," he will say.

Ebie Driscoll brushed the same strand of hair away from her cheek. There it is again, Norman thought, and I knew she would do it even before she did it the first time we met, felt I had seen her do it a thousand times before that. Or the way she tilts her head, look, just before she's going to say something, look, telegraphing her words, here it comes, she is about to speak, "May I have the salt, please?" Ebie asked. Norman handed her the salt and pepper shakers together, and intuitively knew she would say exactly what she said next, "No, just the salt, please." He frowned and turned his attention back to Driscoll, convinced that he was possessed of extrasensory powers and determined to put them to better use, like perhaps opening his own numbers bank in Harlem and taking bets only on numbers he knew would lose, not a bad thought.

"I think Jonah's approach was the proper one," he said. "Tracing the creative process."

"Mmmm," Driscoll said.

"That's really his forte, you know, hitting on the right approach. That's not as easy as it may sound. A lot of lawyers commit themselves to the wrong strategy from the beginning. Jonah's never done that to my recollection, and he's certainly had some difficult cases over the years."

"Has he?"

"Oh, sure," Norman said. "I didn't join the firm until after the San Quentin case, of course, but even since…"

"What San Quentin case?"

"The one with the guard. Didn't you follow it?"

"No."

"It was in all the papers."

"I must have missed it somehow."

"Well," Norman said, plunging on despite a detected note of sarcasm in Driscoll's voice, "a prisoner there was serving a life term — an ax murderer no less, you can imagine the kind of sympathy he aroused — and one of the guards kept bothering him, so he picked up a fork in the dining room one day and stuck it in the guard's throat."

"He killed him?" Ebie asked.

"Yes."

"Illlfffff," she said, and pulled a face, and the expression and the grimace were both familiar, he knew them from somewhere, but where? How come I pay you thirty dollars an hour, Dr. Maloney, and all you can tell me is that I must adjust as a Negro in a hostile society? Why can't you explain all these inscrutable things that keep happening to me?

"It was a mess," Norman said, "horrible case, but Jonah took it on. He's had a lot of tough ones. Listen, this one isn't such a cream puff, either." On impulse, he turned to Ebie and said, "Have you ever been up to Harlem, Mrs. Driscoll?"

"Never," she replied.

"Well," he said, and cocked his head to one side, and thought She's never been to Harlem, Dr. Maloney, so it isn't even possible we met in Small's Paradise or any of those other quaint places. "You ought to take her up to Harlem sometime, Jimmy," he said, and smiled.

"Invite us," Ebie said.

"I will."

"Do."

"If you mean it, I will invite you."

"I mean it," Ebie said.

"Ebie always means what she says, isn't that true?" Driscoll said.

His wife did not answer. She busied herself with her plate instead, cutting another piece of steak, and then meticulously and carefully placed her knife at the rear of the plate, as if this simple act required all her concentration.

"She's straightforward and honest," Driscoll said, staring at her with a cold, pained smile on his face. "It would hurt Ebie to lie, wouldn't it, Ebie?"

"Shut up, Dris," she said flatly, without looking at him, and the table went silent. Norman saw the anger that flared in Driscoll's eyes, and suddenly wondered whether he had misinterpreted the Harlem invitation. Here we are at the crux again, Dr. Maloney, here we are getting right down to the heart of the old matter, which is: Can a Negro Boy from Harlem Find Happiness with a White Woman in a Small Mining Town? And the answer is No, not if Whitey thinks you are eventually going to corral all of his women, leaving him nary a soul to set his table or warm his bed. Understand, Jimmy, understand Mr. Driscoll, sun, that I did not intend my invitation for your wife alone, I intended it to include yourself, suh. "Well, let us examine that," Dr. Maloney will say, "especially in the light of your feeling that you and this woman have been intimate. Tell me again about this small scar on her thigh, crescent-shaped, did you say?"

Casually, and without looking at either Driscoll or his wife, Norman said, "In any case, Jonah's approach is the right one, and it's plain to both of us that you're holding your own with Brackman."

"It didn't feel that way," Driscoll said. He addressed the words to Norman, but he was still staring at his wife.

"Don't let him scare you," Norman said. "All you have to remember is that McIntyre isn't an idiot. He'll see this as clearly as the rest of us do."

"Mmm," Driscoll said.

"I'll tell you how I know you didn't steal that play."

"How?"

"The patterns."

"Meaning?"

"The play and the book have entirely different patterns," Norman said, completely aware that neither of them were the least bit interested in what he was saying, but convinced he had to say something, anything, to avert a homicide right here at the table, and then perversely deciding he would ask Mrs. Driscoll whether she still had that cute little crescent-shaped scar on her thigh, and then deciding against it. I know, Dr. Maloney, I'm chicken, I'm afraid of the white man. Has it ever occurred to you, Dr. Maloney, that you are a white man and that I am paying you for the privilege of informing you about how a Negro feels about white men like yourself? I know, I know, I'm paying you because I'm afraid of you too, man, you can't win. He sighed and said, "The patterns are obvious to anyone who's read both works carefully."

"Have you read them carefully, Mr. Sheppard?" Ebie asked.

"I read them both twice."

"And they're both about war, aren't they?" she asked, and looked up at her husband.

"Yes," Norman said, "but that's only the superficial pattern. I'm talking about something else. Look, there's a pattern to a bullfight, too. It never changes, it's always the same, it's timeless. But the bulls are different, and the men are different, and what happens each time is different from what happened the time before, even though the sequence of events may be identical. Or take a trial, for that matter, take any court case. Nothing changes there, does it? All rise, and the judge comes in, and the clerk tells us who the plaintiff is and who's defending, and the witnesses come up, and are sworn in and examined and cross-examined, all prescribed and tight, all according to strict rules and regulations — a pattern conceived and executed by men. It's my personal theory that all the civilized structures men create have to be patterened because life itself is so formless."

"I don't agree with that," Driscoll said.

"You don't think life is formless? Coincidental? Even inconclusive?"

"It's certainly not inconclusive. It ends."

"Who says an end is a conclusion?"

"Webster."

"What the hell did he know? All he did ws give us a formal pattern for our language, which is exactly what I'm talking about. We have to have these patterns. Life would be unendurable otherwise. Look, the logical conclusion for life is death, isn't it — formless, mysterious, inexplicable? But do we accept it? No. We invent another pattern, an afterlife, a complex of heaven and hell, thereby extending life, and creating a concept we can hope to understand. We set up rules and regulations for everything, the same way you did when you were writing your novel, the same way Constantine did when he was writing his play. A pattern. A logical structure. You even went a step further by laying out a timetable for yourself, target dates and word goals, superimposing a second pattern upon the pattern already established for your novel. You had to know that at least the task would be conclusive."

"What do you mean?"

"The pattern you'd established for your book was inconclusive, Jimmy. You know that. The novel simply ends."

"It's conclusive, all right," Ebie said. "Perhaps you didn't understand it."

"I think I understood it."

"Perhaps not," she said. "In many respects, you see, The Paper Dragon is a mystery."

"What do you mean?"

"Just that it's a mystery," she said, and shrugged, and glanced at her husband.

"Any good novel is a mystery," Norman said.

"I don't mean a mystery story," Ebie answered.

"What do you mean?" Driscoll asked sharply.

"A book with a key."

"Like a diary?" Norman asked, and smiled.

"Yes," Ebie answered unsmilingly. "Like a diary."

"I wish my diary could earn as much money for me," Norman said.

"I think my wife is trying to say that all fiction is personalized fantasy. In that respect…"

"No, that's not what I'm trying to say."

"But that's it precisely," Norman said, leaning forward. "That's why the two works are so very different, because one is exclusively Constantine's fantasy, and the other is exclusively yours. The patterns are as different as your fingerprints."

"What about the 105th?" Ebie asked, and the table went silent again.

"Patterns are created by humans," Norman said at last. "The 105th is a human coincidence, pure and simple."

Ebie's eyes met her husband's, but she said nothing.

Sidney Brackman ate quickly and alone, and then went out into the street to rehearse his plan, deciding again to go ahead with it, and then deciding almost immediately that he was behaving foolishly again and in a manner that could only incur Chickie's wrath. She had said it last night, of course, and she'd been absolutely right, was he going to distrust her even after they were married? What kind of foundation was that, how could two people live and grow together if they did not trust each other?

He supposed there was a Jerome Courtlandt, and he supposed the agency really was planning a trip for him, but it seemed very coincidental to him, well, what the hell, life was full of coincidences, still it seemed very coincidental to him that Jerome Courtlandt in his tan Cadillac just happened to be on the way to the agency at closing time, just happened to pick up the two girls and, according to Chickie's testimony, drop them off at a restaurant. Well, why not? It had been a bitter night, thank God the temperature was a little milder today, it looked like rain, and how was Courtlandt to know what time the agency closed? Still, it was rather late to be heading there, well no, not if he thought the agency was open. And she had, after all, told Sidney about this Courtlandt fellow, she wouldn't have mentioned his name if there were anything funny about it, would she? Of course not. So why had he conceived his ridiculous plan, and why was he intent now on putting it into action? He either believed the girl or he didn't, trusted her or didn't. And why would she jeopardize their very good relationship, that could only get better once he won the case, once he came into his share of what the Court awarded Arthur, once they were married, he would have to call.

No, don't, he thought. Don't ask for trouble. Leave well enough alone. You're going to marry this girl, leave well enough alone.

He found a telephone booth in the drugstore on the next corner. He lingered outside the booth while a woman chattered interminably with someone she kept calling "Boondy," and then went to the Manhattan directory only after the woman had vacated the booth. He hesitated before opening the book, turned to the C's and hesitated again, closed the book and walked directly out of the drugstore and into the street, it still looked like rain.

I'm doing the best thing, he thought. Why would I want to check up on her, for God's sake, she told me what it was all about, didn't she, she even told me the mans' name, Jerome Courtlandt, would she have given me his name if there'd been anything to hide? He spotted a bar in the middle of Murray Street, quickly turned right, and went into it. There were a lot of colored girls scattered at the tables, eating lunch and drinking beer, girls who worked in the various municipal offices in the area, he supposed — what would New York City do without its colored civil service employees, sink into the ocean, that's what. The juke box was playing a lovely melody, he could not place it, one of the new things. He had stopped remembering the tunes or words to songs when he was eighteen, and had always considered it a loss. The phone booth was at the end of the bar. A lighted sign above it advertised Miller's High Life. By the light of the sign, he searched the Manhattan directory and found a listing for Courtlandt, Jerome, on East 36th Street, well, he exists, he thought, and closed the book. He stood undecided for a moment. The bartender was watching him. He opened the book again, found the listing again, memorized the number, and went into the booth to dial it.

He dialed the first two numbers, and then hung up.

His dime clattered into the return chute.

He retrieved the coin, put it into his pocket, sat in the booth a moment longer, rose, opened the door, closed the door again, sat, took the dime from his pocket, lifted the receiver from its cradle, inserted the dime into the coin slot, heard the dial tone humming against his ear, and quickly dialed the number. He could hear the phone on the other end ringing once, twice, three times.

"Hello?" a man's voice said.

"May I speak to Mr. Courtlandt, please?" Sidney asked.

"This is he."

"Mr. Courtlandt, this is Mr. Simmons of Trans World Airlines."

"Yes?"

"About your European trip," Sidney said. His heart was pounding. He was certain his lie had already been detected, certain Courtlandt would instantly call his bluff.

"Yes?" Courlandt said. There was a pause. "Trans World Airlines, did you say?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand. I thought we were flying Pan Am."

"Well, there seems to be some confusion about the booking," Sidney said.

"Why don't you call the agency?" Courtlandt suggested. "I'm sure they can straighten it out."

"What agency would that be?"

"Travel Time on Madison Avenue."

"Thank you, sir."

"I'm sure they said Pan Am. How'd this happen, anyway?"

"Probably a duplicate booking. We'll straighten it out, sir, don't worry about it."

"Okay."

"Thank you, sir."

"Thank you for calling," Courtlandt said, and hung up.

Sidney immediately replaced the receiver on its cradle and sat with his eyes squeezed shut, trying to catch his breath. All right, it was true. He was their client, he was taking a trip, it was true, it was true. He would call Chickie and apologize immediately, tell her he loved her, tell her he trusted her. Well, he couldn't apologize, he didn't want her to know he'd called Courtlandt. But he'd tell her he loved her and trusted her, that was what he'd do. He found another dime in his pocket, put it into the slot, and quickly dialed the agency. Ruth McCutcheon answered the phone.

"Travel Time," she said, "good afternoon."

"Good afternoon," he said, "may I speak to Miss Brown, please?"

"She's out to lunch right now," Ruth said. "May I help you?"

"Well, no, I don't think so," he said, and was about to hang up.

"Would you like to leave a message?" she asked. "May I say who called?"

"Yes, this is…" He hesitated. She had not recognized his voice; she did not know who he was. In the three seconds it took him to make up his mind, he did not even consider the fact that he was intuitively behaving like a lawyer, putting to practical use the years of experience he had had in courtrooms, covering ground already covered, stating and restating the same point, examining and re-examining, driving for the complete truth where only the partial truth was known. He knew only that he possessed information now, he had received information from Mr. Jerome Courtlandt, and that he could use this information to learn the whole truth, three seconds to make a decision, nothing but the truth, three seconds in which to conceive a strategy.

"This is Pan American Airlines," he said.

"Yes, well, this is Miss Brown's partner," Ruth said, accepting the lie.

"I see." He hesitated again. Let it go, he thought. Leave well enough alone. "I'm calling to verify a flight," he said.

"Yes?"

"For Mr. Jerome Courtlandt."

"That's been verified already," Ruth said.

"Not according to my information."

"I handled it myself," Ruth said.

"I'm sorry, but there's obviously been an error."

Ruth sighed. "I don't know why everything always has to be done six times," she said. "All right, let's get it over with."

"Which flight is that?" Sidney asked.

"Saturday morning. I haven't got the number right before me. Don't you have the number?"

"To London, is that?" Sidney said.

"No, to Rome. Oh, boy" Ruth said. "It's four seats to Rome on Saturday morning, the nine forty-five flight. Just a minute, I'll get the flight number for you. Oh, boy."

He heard the clatter of the receiver on the desk, heard the clicking of high heels across a hard floor, heard another phone ringing somewhere in the distance, "Travel Time, good afternoon." He waited a moment longer. He could hear her indistinctly in the background. He did not know what further information he needed or required. Courtlandt was obviously leaving for Italy, they were obviously handling the trip for him, there was nothing more to know.

He hung up abruptly and came out of the booth, oddly unsatisfied.

They talked about Christmas gifts during lunch, exchanging ideas about the people on their lists, but she had the feeling Jonah's mind was elsewhere, and her own thoughts were about the little Egyptian who had come to her office that morning. They walked up Broadway afterwards, stopping now and then to inspect the wares displayed in each holiday window. There were decorated Christmas trees everywhere, and on each corner a Santa Claus despondently shook his bell at the passing crowd. On Park Place, a Salvation Army band was playing "Adeste Fidelis." The snow underfoot had turned to slush, and the weather was milder than it had been all week. It did not seem as though Christmas was only ten days away.

They walked back toward the courthouse slowly. It was only one-thirty and the trial would not resume until two. They discussed the change in the weather, and the possibility of more snow in time for Christmas — had she ever seen that movie with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, yes, Holiday Inn, wasn't it, yes, who was the girl in that film? They sat on a bench facing Centre Street on the smallest of the Foley Square islands. A sharp wind swept around the corner of Duane off the river beyond. Gray pigeons echoed the gray slush on the curb, nibbling for peanuts around the benches. Jonah was quiet, hands thrust deep into his coat pockets, legs stretched, head bent, dark hair moving with each fresh gust of river wind. His glasses reflected the gray pavement and the parading pigeons, hiding his eyes from view. She wondered suddenly if anyone had ever looked directly into the eyes of Jonah Willow, and just as suddenly wondered what he looked like in bed, without his glasses. There were no more Christmas gifts to discuss, and all the talk about the weather had been exhausted. They had both seen Holiday Inn and could not remember the name of the girl in it, and now they sat in silence while he thought God knew what, and she thought of the Egyptian. She took a deep breath.

"Hadad came to see me this morning," She said.

"Who?"

"Ibrahim Hadad. The man we ran into Monday night."

"The man who ran into us," Jonah corrected, and then suddenly sat erect and turned to face her. "What do you mean he came to see you? Hadad?"

"That's right."

"What'd he want?"

"He told me he'd been visited by a detective. He said you'd called Santesson of the Circuit Court…"

"Yes, so…?"

"… and that Santesson assigned a detective to investigate."

"Yes, that's what I asked him to do."

"Investigate what, Jonah?"

"Third-degree assault."

"You're kidding."

"No, I'm not."

"Are we talking about the same accident?"

"I think so."

"There was no assault, and you know it."

"Sally, with all due respect, I hardly think you're familiar enough with the penal law to give an opinion on…"

"I read Section 24 this morning, after Hadad left. How do you figure there was culpable negligence?"

"He went through a full-stop sign."

"He didn't."

"Sally, you were asleep. I saw him."

"I was not asleep. He stopped the car just before he came onto the highway."

"He may have hesitated, but he didn't come to a full stop."

"Jonah, the district attorney would still have to prove disregard of the consequences and an indifference to—"

"Please don't throw precedent at me. Hadad went through a stop sign on a very dark night, driving his vehicle in a culpably negligent manner, and causing bodily injury to two other people. That's third-degree assault."

In the silence, she heard the wind sweeping around the corner of the courthouse. Crossing over from Centre Street, two obvious prostitutes ducked their heads against the sudden gust, one taking the other's arm as they stepped gingerly over the slush against the curb and then ran across Duane, probably on their way to the Criminal Courts Building. Behind them, a sailor looked up as he lighted his cigarette, decided to follow them, then decided against it, and turned and headed downtown toward City Hall. Sally put her hands in her pockets and looked at the tips of her shoes.

"Jonah, I don't see why you're doing this," she said.

"He violated the law."

"He's a poor slob who was coming home late from a—"

"I don't care what he is. He could have killed us both on that goddamn highway."

"But he didn't."

"He could have. He's guilty, Sally."

"I thought people were innocent until…"

"Now cut it out, will you!"

"Jonah, there's something behind this."

"There's nothing…"

"There's more than just…"

"There's nothing, I said!"

They fell silent again. The pigeons cooed around the bench. In the distance, they could hear the sound of heavy trucks rumbling toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

"We don't know each other well enough for this," Jonah said.

"No, we don't."

He rose suddenly, startling the pigeons, into frantic flapping flight. He stood before the bench for a moment, as though about to say something, staring down at her, his glasses reflecting the pavement — you can never see his eyes, she thought again — and then abruptly seemed to change his mind. He held out his hand. "Come," he said.

"Where?"

"I've got to get back."

They crossed over to the courthouse in silence.

"Will I still see you tonight?" he asked.

"Do you want to?"

"I want to."

"All right."

They stood on the courthouse steps without speaking. At last Jonah said, "He's guilty, Sally."

"The Egyptian?"

"No. James Driscoll."

He turned and walked up the steps.

"Mr. Driscoll," Brackman asked, "would it be fair to say that Lieutenant Alex Cooper is an idealistic afficer?"

"It would be."

"Were you an idealistic officer?"

"No, I was not."

"So on that score at least, Alex Cooper is not James Driscoll."

"That's right."

"Alex Cooper is single, is he not?"

"Yes."

"Were you single when you went into the Army?"

"No, I was married."

"Mr. Driscoll, did you have a love affair with an Army nurse while you were in Korea?"

"No, sir, I did not."

"But Lieutenant Cooper did?"

"Yes."

"You're familiar with Catchpole, I know, and I'd like to ask you now if you recall that Lieutenant Mason in that play is an idealistic officer. Do you recall that?"

"Yes."

"That he is an idealist? The same as your Lieutenant Cooper."

"He is an idealist, yes. He is not the same as Cooper."

"In what respect do they differ?"

"In many respects."

"They physically resemble each other, do they not?"

"Yes."

"They're both single."

"Yes."

"They both have an affair with a nurse."

"Yes."

"And they are both targets in a murder plot."

"Yes."

"In those respects they are similar, are they not?"

"Yes."

"Point of fact, in those respects they are identical."

"No. They are not identical. They are two separate men. I don't know who Constantine's hero is based on, but Lieutenant Cooper is based on me."

"Even though you possess none of these characteristics which can be attributed to him?"

"I possess most of the characteristics that can be attributed to Lieutenant Cooper."

"Like his idealism?"

"No, not that."

"Or his single state?"

"No."

"Or his love affair with an Army nurse?"

"Those are three isolated aspects of his character. For the most part, Cooper's mental processes are identical to my own, and he behaves as I might have behaved in the circumstances."

"But you were in identical circumstances, were you not?"

"I was in Korea, if that's what you mean."

"In a combat situation."

"Yes."

"As the officer in charge of an infantry platoon."

"Yes."

"Just as Lieutenant Cooper is in your book."

"Yes."

"And as Lieutenant Mason is in the play Catchpole."

"Is that a question?"

"It is a question."

"Lieutenant Mason is an officer on Eniwetok during World War II."

"But similar in all other respects."

"If you mean that he's in command of a combat infantry platoon, yes."

"A great many things happen to Lieutenant Cooper in the course of your novel. Did all of these things happen to you while you were in Korea?"

"No."

"You invented some of them, is that it?"

"Yes."

"Which of the events did happen to you, Mr. Driscoll?"

"Many of them."

"Well, let's just go over them one at a time, shall we? Let's try to find out which were based on your own experience and which were invented. To begin with, you've testified that you did not have an affair with an Army nurse, so I think we can safely conclude you invented that particular character and that particular event. Did you invent Private Colman as well?"

"Partly."

"You mean there was someone like Colman in your platoon?"

"No. But I'd met people like him before I went into the Army."

"But not in Korea, not in a combat situation?"

"No."

"Was there a troublemaker in your platoon?"

"No."

"Was there a homosexual?"

"No."

"Yet Colman is a homosexual troublemaker."

"Yes."

"You testified earlier that Sergeant Morley was based on a Negro who did in fact exist."

"Yes."

"A boy you knew in school…"

"Yes."

"… and whom you have not seen since."

"Yes."

"Did this real person ever fall under the influence of someone like Colman, as Morley does in your book?"

"No."

"Then this situation was invented?"

"Yes."

"Did this real man ever become instrumental in a murder scheme?"

"No."

"This, too, was invented?"

"Yes."

"Were you ever the target in a planned murder, Mr. Driscoll?"

"No."

"You do agree that the men in your novel actively plot the murder of Lieutenant Cooper?"

"His death."

"They plan to lead him into a trap, do they not?"

"They deliberately lead him into a concentration of Chinese troops."

"Which they know exists."

"Yes."

"This would be cold-blooded murder, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"But your men never planned such a murder, did they?"

"No."

"Nor did they ever lead you toward a strong concentration of Chinese soldiers…"

"No."

"… as the men in the book do?"

"That's right."

"You invented this."

"Yes, I invented it."

"Did you similarly invent the 'female rifle' scene, as it has been called?"

"No, that actually happened to me."

"The men made sexual allusions to a rifle while they were disassembling it?"

"Yes, sir. I changed the emphasis in the book, though. This really happened at Fort Dix, and it was a very comi* cal thing. In the book, I've made it a malicious episode inspired by Private Colman."

"Who is named after your mother's iceman, is that correct?"

"I never said that."

"Perhaps I misunderstood you."

"I'm sure you did."

"I thought you said your mother's iceman was named Colman."

"No, I didn't."

"Well, the record will show what you said."

"Yes, shall we go back over it right this minute?" Driscoll asked.

"I'm sure there's no need for that, Mr. Driscoll."

"Just to clarify exactly what I did say."

"It was a pun, isn't that what you said?"

"Yes. But I didn't say he was named after my mother's iceman."

"Forgive me. You mentioned The Iceman Cometh, though, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did."

"You said this was some form of literary joke, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"Are you fond of puns and jokes?"

"Yes."

"And of course you're familiar with plays? You said you've been a theatergoer since you were twelve."

"That's right."

"Did you see The Iceman Cometh?"

"I did."

"And felt it was perfectly all right to make a literary allusion to it?"

"Yes."

"Saw nothing wrong with that?"

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"I'm asking you, Mr. Driscoll."

"No, there was nothing wrong with the allusion."

"Did you see the play The Eve of Saint Mark?"

"No."

"Did you see the movie?"

"Yes."

"And you read the play, of course."

"Yes."

"Before this trial began?"

"Yes, I read it many years ago, and again recently."

"Therefore, you were familiar with Sergeant Ruby long before you began writing your book."

"That's right."

"And before you created your character Kenworthy, the one who swears a lot."

"That's right."

"By the way, was he based on any actual person? Kenworthy?"

"He was a composite."

"An invention?"

"In that he was not any one person."

"Was his similarity to Sergeant Ruby another literary joke?"

"He is not similar to Sergeant Ruby."

"They both swear a lot, don't they? By actual count, the word ruttin' is used a total of twenty-eight times in The Eve of Saint Mark, isn't that what you said?"

"That's right."

"Did you make the count recently?"

"Yes, last week."

"You didn't count all those ruttin's before you began writing your book, did you?"

"No."

"And you see no similarity between Ruby and your character?"

"They both swear a lot. That's the only similarity."

"Yet you do not feel that Private Franklin in Catchpole swears a lot?"

"He does not."

"You have heard the old adage, have you not, to the effect that if a man takes one drink on the stage, he's a social drinker; two drinks, he's an imbiber; three drinks, he's an alcoholic."

"I've heard something similar to that."

"Expressive of the shorthand used in the theater."

"Yes."

"Do you think the same shorthand might apply to a character who swears?"

"It might."

"So that if Franklin swore once, he might be considered normally agitated, whereas twice would make him somewhat salty, and seven times would indicate he was addicted to the use of obscenity."

"Absolutely not."

"You do not feel this would apply to Franklin, who swears seven times during the course of Catchpole?"

"Certainly not. Especially when much stronger swear words are used by other characters in the play. Words like 'bastard' and 'whore' and—"

"I don't think we need catalogue them, Mr. Driscoll, though you do seem very familiar with the play."

"I am."

"You read it one weekend a month or so ago, is that right?"

"That's right."

"You must have read it very carefully."

"I did."

"Did you intend Colman to be a homosexual?"

"Obviously."

"This idea did not come from Chester Danton, did it?"

"No."

"The dead major came from him, however?"

"Yes."

"But not the idea of Colman as a homosexual. You invented that all by yourself."

"Yes."

"You testified earlier that you did not believe Colonel Peterson in the play Catchpole is a homosexual."

"That's right."

"Do you know a great many homosexuals, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I know some."

"Personally."

"Yes, personally."

"Would you say that homosexuals are as different one from the other as are heterosexuals?"

"I would say so."

"Would you also agree that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether or not a man is a homosexual?"

"Sometimes."

"Do you think it would be possible to know whether or not a man were a homosexual, for example, if he did not utter a word, if he never spoke?"

"It might be difficult."

"Might it be similarly difficult to determine homosexuality in a letter written from one person to another? The words themselves, the words in the letter, might seem absolutely noncommittal, might they not?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"I'm asking, Mr. Driscoll, whether words in a letter written from one person to another might not seem entirely heterosexual in character when unaccompanied by either mannerisms of gesture or voice. That is what I am asking."

"A letter from a homosexual, do you mean?"

"If you will."

"I suppose."

"Do you also agree that the words in a play, the words in a mimeographed copy of a play, such as the one you perused one weekend last month, could seem equally noncommittal?"

"If a writer intended a homosexual character…"

"Let us not for the moment go into Mr. Constantine's intent. He has already testified that he did intend a homosexual. I'm asking whether—"

"If that's what he intended, it did not come across in the play I read."

"Did it come across in the play you saw?"

"Objection!" Willow shouted.

"Sustained. I'll have no more of that, Mr. Brackman."

"Will you accept my word, Mr. Driscoll, if I tell you that Colonel Peterson as played on the New York stage definitely came across as a man with homosexual tendencies?"

"I found no evidence of that in the mimeographed play."

"If I tell you it was in the play as staged, will you accept it?"

"Not unless you also tell me the part was played by a homosexual actor."

"You would not accept it otherwise?"

"I would not."

"Because you found no lines or scenes in the play that indicated Peterson was homosexual."

"I found none."

"Would you take this please, Mr. Driscoll, and turn to page 2–6, the middle of the page, Colonel Peterson speaking. Do you have the place?"

"Yes."

"The colonel is in the field, he is standing in the midst of carnage left by a Japanese counterattack, and he is with Corporal Janus and Sergeant D'Agostino, two of our principal characters. Are we clear as to the background?"

"Yes."

"May I read this to the Court then? And would you please follow it in the copy I've given you."

Brackman cleared his throat. The courtroom was silent. From the corner of his eye, Driscoll could see his wife sitting erect and attentive in the otherwise empty jury box. At the defense table, Jonah Willow was idly toying with a pencil.

"This is the scene," Brackman said, and began reading:

"That's the end of the scene," Brackman said. "Were you able to follow it, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I was."

"Since you seem to be an expert on matters homosexual…"

"I never said I was an expert."

"… perhaps you can tell me what this scene is all about, if not homosexuality?"

"This scene is all about a man on the edge of a mental breakdown."

"And nothing more?"

"On the next page, they take him to the field hospital, and he's raving about death and blood and—"

"We're concerned with this scene, Mr. Driscoll, and not with what follows it or proceeds it."

"You're taking it out of context," Driscoll said flatly.

"I have read nothing in this particular scene out of context, and I would like to address my questions to this scene and to what is in this scene. Does the colonel touch the dead boy's hair in this scene?"

"He does."

"Do you consider that normal?"

"I've just told you that the colonel is about to crack up. Whatever he does—"

"Please answer the question."

"In the context of what is about to happen, this is a natural gesture."

"Do either of the other men touch the boy's hair?"

"No. But neither of them are about to suffer a mental breakdown."

"You find nothing homosexual about one man touching the hair of another man?"

"Not in this scene. The colonel is obviously losing control, he's just noticed blood in the dead man's hair…"

"Losing control in what way?"

"Losing control of his mental faculties."

"Not of his inhibitions?"

"Certainly not."

"Do you feel it is natural to touch hair that is covered with blood?"

"In this scene, in a combat situation, where a man suffering from battle fatigue…"

"Please answer the question."

"Yes, I think it's a natural gesture."

"What about rocking him in his arms?"

"I accept it in this scene."

"You do not feel there is anything homosexual about one man rocking another man in his arms?"

"The author did not indicate anything homosexual."

"He says in the stage direction that Peterson takes the dead boy in his arms and slowly rocks him."

"Read the rest of the sentence," Driscoll said.

"What?"

"Read the rest of the sentence. It says 'slowly rocks him as he would a child.' "

"Yes, well?"

"What's homosexual about that?"

"About a man rocking another man in his arms? That would seem clearly homosexual to me."

"It would seem only paternal to me, especially when the author indicates he's rocking him as he would a child. He does not say as he would a woman, or as he would a lover, he specifically says a child."

"And you find nothing homosexual in that?"

"Nothing."

"I will accept your answer."

"What?"

"I said I will accept your answer. Do you recall the rank of your nurse, Jan Reardon, in The Paper Dragon?"

"She is a first lieutenant."

"Do you recall the rank of Mr. Constantine's nurse, Diane Foster, in Catchpole?"

"I think she's a first lieutenant."

"She is in fact so. How do you explain this similarity, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I've already said that the only nurses I met in Korea were—"

"Did you meet any nurses who were captains?"

"I did."

"Or majors?"

"Yes."

"Yet you chose to make your nurse a first lieutenant. Why?"

"A first lieutenant sounds more feminine somehow than either a captain or a major. Besides, she has only been in the service a year longer than Cooper, and a higher rank than first lieutenant would have sounded implausible."

"Mr. Driscoll, you wrote the book, did you not?"

"Yes."

"Therefore her length of time in the service was not prescribed. You chose the exact amount of time, you chose one year rather than two or three or four."

"Yes."

"And it was this length of time that determined her rank?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure it was not her rank that determined the length of her service? Which came first, Mr. Driscoll?"

"Her being a year… her being in the service a year longer."

"Are you certain?"

"I'm certain."

"And this is the only explanation you have of their identical ranks, the two nurses?"

"It's the only explanation."

"Or the identical line 'I outrank you'?"

"This line is not in Mr. Constantine's play."

"But his nurse does joke with the lieutenant about rank."

"Only superficially. A point is not made of it."

"I see. Mr. Driscoll, what do Alex Cooper's fellow officers call him?"

"Coop."

"What do Roger Mason's fellow officers call him?"

"Mase."

"You have stated that the character Alex Cooper is based upon himself."

"Yes."

"What does Jonah Willow call you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Familiarly."

"He calls me Jimmy."

"What does Chester Danton call you?"

"Jimmy."

"What does your agent, Hollis Marks, call you?"

"Jimmy."

"Do any of your friends call you anything but Jimmy?"

"No."

"In Catchpole, Lieutenant Mason is called 'Mase,' and in The Paper Dragon, Lieutenant Cooper is called 'Coop.' Was your name ever shortened to 'Dris' while you were in the service?"

"No, it was not."

"Mr. Driscoll, in your novel there is a long discussion between the enlisted men about big-name bands, and especially about Glenn Miller. Do you recall the scene to which I'm referring?"

"Yes, but it was not especially about Glenn Miller."

"Glenn Miller is mentioned prominently in that scene, is he not?"

"Only in conjunction with the names of other band leaders. The men are playing a sort of guessing game, trying to remember the theme songs of the big-name bands."

"Yes, and isn't it true that an argument develops between two of the men as to whether Glenn Miller's theme song was 'Moonlight Serenade' or 'Sunrise Serenade,' and it is Sergeant Morley who correctly identifies the theme."

"That's true."

"A scene which was later carried over into the film. Your novel is set in Korea during the months of October and November in the year 1950, isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"The soldiers in this scene are all young men, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Some in their late teens, some in their early twenties, is that right?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Do you know when Glenn Miller is presumed to have died?"

"Yes, I do."

"When was it?" Brackman asked.

"It was December of 1944."

"December 15th, to be exact," Brackman said. "Now, do you think it likely that people — especially very young people — would in 1950 still be discussing a band leader who reached the height of his popularity in the late thirties and early forties?"

"I grew up with the music of Glenn Miller and all the other big-name bands mentioned in that scene. When he was reported missing, I must have been fifteen years old, and I can remember being deeply affected."

"And you find nothing odd about men discussing him in the middle of Korea six years after his death?"

"I do not."

"Are you aware that in Catchpole, there is a scene where a group of men are discussing the death of Glenn Miller?"

"I am aware of that."

"How do you explain the similarity?"

"There is no similarity. The men in Catchpole are discussing Glenn Miller's death. The men in The Paper Dragon are discussing the theme songs of the big-name bands, and Glenn Miller's name is only incidentally mentioned."

"Is there not an argument about his theme song?"

"A difference of opinion, not an argument."

"And doesn't this difference of opinion, as you call it, focus attention on his name?"

"Momentarily."

"In much the same way that attention is focused on it in Catchpole."

"We seem to be speaking two different languages," Driscoll said.

"I think we are speaking the same language, Mr. Driscoll, and I would like an answer to my question."

"I have already answered your question. I have already told you that the scenes are about two different things. One is about the death of Glenn Miller and the other is about the theme songs of the big-name bands. So when you ask me if attention is focused on the name in the same way, I can't add anything to what I've already said, which is that attention is focused in entirely different ways."

"And you find nothing unusual or odd about the similarity?"

"I've already testified that there is no similarity. But I did find something odd, yes."

"Are you now saying…"

"In Catchpole."

"Yes, are you now reversing…"

"I found it odd that in February of 1944 those men were discussing the death of Glenn Miller, which did not take place until December of 1944. Don't you find that odd?"

"I'm not b-b-being examined, Mr. Driscoll."

"I just thought you might find it odd."

"I w-w-would imagine that was nothing more than d-d-dramatic license."

Hearing the stammer, seeing the sudden pink color rising in Brackman's cheeks, Driscoll realized with a feeling bordering on wild exultation that he had flustered him, and knew in the same instant that he was cleverer and brighter and infinitely more agile than the lawyer was. He glanced toward the defense table to see if Willow had noticed and appreciated his entangling maneuver, and saw only that Willow was frowning. Willow's displeasure, however, did nothing to quell the rising sense of triumph, the reckless knowledge that he could parry anything Brackman put to him, and then thrust with deadly accuracy to leave the inept little lawyer helpless and forlorn, bereft of any weapon. Come on, he thought. Let's go, Mr. Brackman. Come on.

"This m-m…" Brackman started, and then cleared his throat and consulted his notes, and Driscoll had all he could do to keep from laughing out loud. "This matter of the eyeglasses," Brackman finally managed to say. "When you say that Private Coleman does wear glasses in your book, are you referring to this passage on page…" He turned to his partner. "What page is that, C–C-Carl?" he asked.

"37," his partner replied.

"Page 37," Brackman said. "Is this the p-p-p-passage you mean?"

"Which passage is that?" Driscoll asked, knowing full well which passage Brackman meant."

"I am about to read it to you," Brackman said.

"I'm waiting," Driscoll answered, and again glanced at Willow to find that he was still frowning. Imperceptibly, Willow shook his head. Brackman had already begun reading, but Driscoll missed the first few words of the paragraph, so startled was he by Willow's unmistakable warning.

" '… mud spattering from the wheels, as the jeep swerved into the compound and ground to a stop. Colman saw two officers on the front seat of the jeep, one of whom he recognized as Captain Benjamin. The other man was tall and lean, wearing his hair cropped close to his head in a boyish crewcut. Colman reached into his blouse and took out his glasses, which he perched on his nose. Peering through them owlishly, he studied the new officer with a deliberate scrutiny.' And following that," Brackman said, "there's a detailed description of Lieutenant Cooper. Is that the passage?"

"That's the passage," Driscoll said.

"What sort of glasses does Coleman take out of his pocket?"

"I don't think I understand you," Driscoll said.

"Are they the sort of glasses, for example, that Mr. Willow has been wearing in this courtroom every day this week?"

"No."

"Are they reading glasses?"

"I never specifically labeled them. If anything, they would be reading glasses, yes. Coleman only wears them occasionally."

"Does he in fact wear them anywhere else in the book?"

"I don't think so."

"This is the only place in the book where you specifically describe Colman as wearing eyeglasses?"

"Yes."

"In just this one paragraph which is… let me see… eight lines long. That's the only mention in the entire book."

"Yes."

"Mr. Driscoll, do you recall a character in your book called Major Catharine Astor?"

"I do."

"And who is also called Major Catastrophe by Lieutenant Cooper and Jan Reardon?"

"Yes."

"Is this another of your literary puns?"

"Yes, an affectionate one."

"How would you describe Major Astor, or Major Catastrophe as she is affectionately called?"

"She's a woman in her late fifties, and she's been a nurse for perhaps fifteen years or so. Irish background, rather tall and big-boned, ample-breasted, and… big feet, she has big feet. She's constantly predicting doom, which is how she earns her nickname. She carries a note from the lieutenant to Jan in one scene."

"I ask you now if you remember a character in Catchpole called Captain Sykes?"

"I do."

"Do you remember that she is an Army nurse?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember how old she is supposed to be?"

"No."

"Will you turn to the page immediately following the title page of Mr. Constantine's play, the page title 'Cast in Order of Appearance,' and will you look down that page to the description of Captain Sykes? Have you got it?"

"Yes, I have."

"Do you see her age there?"

"I do."

"What is the age?"

"Fifty-two."

"Do you recall why Captain Sykes joined the Medical Corp?"

"Yes."

"Would you tell us, please?"

"She enlisted after the death of her husband."

"Let's get back to your character, shall we? Major Catastrophe. How does she happen to be in Korea?"

"She is sent there."

"Is it not true that she becomes a nurse after her husband dies?"

"Oh, boy," Driscoll said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you going to claim…"

"Please answer the question, Mr. Driscoll."

"Yes, I'll be very happy to answer the question," Driscoll said angrily, "if I may be permitted briefly to go into the backgrounds of these two characters."

"Briefly, but not with as much volume, I hope," McIntyre said.

"I'm sorry."

"We're none of us deaf," McIntyre said, "Go on, go on."

"The senior nurse in my book, Major Astor, has been in the Army since 1935. She joins several years after her husband passes away, of natural causes, in his own bed. There is no indication that she enlists for patriotic reasons or for any reason other than to give herself a worthwhile occupation. The nurse in the play Catchpole is a woman who left nursing to get married. Her husband is a doctor who is killed in action in a bombing attack on a London airfield. To avenge his death, she joins the Medical Corps and is ironically sent to the Pacific where the enemy are the Japanese rather than the Germans. She is pictured as a rather bitter woman who strongly resents the developing love affair between Mr. Constantine's principal characters. I don't see any similarity between these two women, aside from the fact that they are both nurses in the same general age bracket."

"Is it not true," Brackman asked, "that Captain Sykes in Catchpole helps Diane Foster to arrange a rendezvous with Lieutenant Mason?"

"No, it is not true. She makes it extremely difficult for the pair to meet."

"Does she not deliberately leave them alone together one night?"

"She does not do it deliberately. One of Mason's friends gets her drunk and puts her to sleep in a weapons carrier. It's a comic scene in the play."

"Where is this scene, Mr. Driscoll?"

"In the second act someplace."

"Do you recall whether or not Captain Sykes has a nickname?"

"Yes, I think she does. They call her 'Big Red.' "

"Why do they call her that?"

"Because she has flaming-red hair."

"Is this fact ever mentioned?"

"Yes, when Mason's friend dumps her into the weapons carrier, he puts his Eisenhower jacket over her head because he's afraid someone will spot the red hair."

"What color hair does your nurse have?"

"Brown."

"You're talking about Major Astor now?"

"Yes."

"Does Major Astor deliver a note to Jan Reardon in your novel?"

"Yes, she does. Arranging a meeting with the lieutenant."

"Doesn't Captain Sykes in Catchpole also deliver a note to someone?"

"No."

"Isn't there a scene with the colonel where…"

"That isn't a note."

"What is it?"

"She shows him his medical record."

"Your Honor," Willow said, rising, "I do not see where this is going."

There was a peculiar note of warning in his voice, and whereas he had addressed the words to McIntyre, Driscoll had the certain feeling he was trying to communicate something, was objecting not to Brackman's questions but rather to his own answers. Confused, aware of the warning but unable to ascertain what he was doing wrong, he stared at Willow in puzzlement, and suddenly his hands began to shake.

"We are attempting to explore the similarities, your Honor," Brackman said. "That is all."

Brackman's explanation sounded reasonable enough, and yet Driscoll detected a note of confidence that had not been there several moments ago when he could barely stutter his way through a sentence. He tried to understand what had happened between then and now, but he could find no clue, and McIntyre's next words left him with a curiously unsettled feeling, as though he were on treacherous ground that was giving away beneath his feet, inch by crumbling inch.

"I find this all to the point," McIntyre said. "Proceed, Mr. Brackman."

"Mr. Driscoll, you have testified that you met with your erstwhile commanding officer, Colonel Hamilton, in order to get some information from him about specific scenes in your book."

"Yes."

"Some of this information was about dissembling a rifle, is that right?"

"Yes, I wanted the exact language describing the operation."

"You did not possess any books that might have given you this information?"

"No."

"Weren't you issued any such books when you were in the service?"

"Yes."

"Did you later discard them?"

"I must have."

"So you had to go to Colonel Hamilton for the information."

"I went to the library first, but I couldn't find it there. Nor could I find a breakdown of the Chinese troop concentrations, or some of the other information I needed."

"Like what?"

"Like some of the actual code names used in the Ch'ongch'on River operations."

"Which Colonel Hamilton supplied."

"Yes. This was no longer classified material."

"I understand that, nor am I intending to impugn a dead man's loyalty. In Officer Candidate School, Mr. Driscoll, you took a great many courses, did you not?"

"I did."

"And I assume you took notes in these courses."

"In most of them. In some courses, for security reasons, we were not permitted—"

"Yes, I understand that. But you did take notes in most of the courses?"

"Yes."

"Do you still have those notes?"

"No, of course not."

"When you were released from the Army, Mr. Driscoll, you attended N.Y.U., I believe you said, and you took some courses in creative writing."

"I took most of the writing courses the school had to offer."

"Did you take notes in those courses?"

"Yes."

"Do you still have those notes?"

"No."

"Your Honor," Willow said, "again I must ask…"

"It will become clear, Mr. Willow," Brackman answered.

"I hope so," McIntyre said.

"You have testified that you wrote several short stories while you were a student at N.Y.U. Did you make carbon copies of those stories?"

"Yes."

"Do you still have those carbons?"

"No."

"Do you generally save things?"

"Important things."

"You did not save any of your Army notes, or your college notes, or carbon copies of your short-story attempts."

"I did not think they were good enough."

"The stories?"

"Yes."

"So you discarded the carbons?"

"And the stories, too."

"So it would seem that there are some things you do not consider important enough to save."

"Yes."

"Yet you did feel it important to save every bit of material, every letter, every note you ever made concerning the novel The Paper Dragon."

"Not all the material."

"The last document this court admitted was marked 'Exhibit S in evidence,' which means nineteen documents were submitted to this Court — letters to your agent, and letters to Mitchell-Campbell, and a letter to Colonel Hamilton, and notes you took at your meeting with him, and outlines, and the original drawing of your map, you saved all these things pertaining to The Paper Dragon, all of these things that purport to show the independent creation of the novel, isn't that so, Mr. Driscoll?"

"That was my working procedure."

"What was your working procedure?"

"I had a box full of typing paper. I took the cover off that box and put it on one side of my typewriter, and whenever I pulled a completed page out of the machine, I put it into the empty lid of the box."

"What does this have to do with your letters and notes?"

"When the book was completed, I put all the research material and information in the same box containing the carbon copy."

"Your letters as well?"

"No, I kept those in a separate file."

"Do you keep carbon copies of all your letters?"

"Yes. Would you like me to bring them in?"

"I don't think that will be necessary. Do you have a good memory, Mr. Driscoll?"

"I think so."

"Why did you meet with Colonel Hamilton?"

"To check certain factual aspects of the novel."

"Such as the disassembling of a rifle?"

"Yes."

"How many times, offhand, would you say you stripped a rifle while you were in the Army?"

"I don't recall."

"Did you perform the operation many times, or just a few times?"

"Many, I would say."

"Yet you could not remember the steps, and you had to—"

"I didn't say I couldn't remember them. I wanted the exact language because the success of the scene depended on the language in it."

"You would not trust your memory."

"That's right."

"So you went to Colonel Hamilton for the sake of authenticity."

"Yes."

"Even though you have a very good memory."

"I think I do. But I could not be expected to remember the technical language describing—"

"Yes, yes, I understand that. How many times would you say you stripped a rifle? Ten times perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

"Twenty?"

"Perhaps."

"More than twenty?"

"Yes, many times more."

"You stripped a rifle more than twenty times, many times more, but you could not remember the steps in detail when it came time to write about them."

"I could not remember the language."

"Yet you read the play Catchpole only once last month, and you can remember in detail and with absolute accuracy some of the more obscure aspects of the play."

"I read the play more than once."

"How many times did you read it?"

"Five or six times."

"Not more than twenty times?"

"No."

"You could not remember an operation you performed more than twenty times, but you could remember details of a play you read only five or six times."

"I could not remember the language. How many times must I repeat that?"

"You thought this rifle scene was important enough to seek information about, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you thought it important enough to keep the notes you made on it."

"Yes. But only as part of all the other material I kept. Material pertaining to the book."

"Why did you keep this material?"

"I don't know. I save some things, and others I throw away."

"What else have you saved?"

"Scraps of everything."

"What kind of scraps?"

"Anything I think is important."

"Did you save your notebooks from your student days at Pratt Institute?"

"Some of them."

"Why? Were they important?"

"Yes. Some of them."

"And obviously the complicated process of writing your novel was also important, so important that we have a detailed step-by-step record of its creation. Do you have any notes concerning the 105th Division, Mr. Driscoll?"

"No."

"Did you ask Colonel Hamilton about the 105th Division?"

"No."

"You asked him about the Chinese divisions involved in the Ch'ongch'on River offensive, did you not?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"For the sake of accuracy."

"You wanted the exact designations for those divisions?"

"Yes."

"Yet you designated your American division the 105th, and did not think of checking its authenticity with the colonel."

"There was no need to do that. I knew the division was fictitious."

"How did you know?"

"Because I knew which American divisions were involved in the battle."

"You trusted your memory concerning those divisions?"

"Yes."

"But you did not trust your memory concerning the stripping of a rifle."

"For the last time, the scene was built on a juxtaposition of sexual allusions to absolutely technical language. Its effectiveness was based on the accuracy of the technical detail. Which is why I consulted Colonel Hamilton."

"And the battle scenes? Was their effectiveness based on accuracy of detail?"

"Yes."

"So that it was essential to give the Chinese armies their proper designations?"

"And their strength. The climactic chapter in the book is the one in which the patrol moves up on an overwhelming force of Chinese."

"Did you use an actual division number for the Chinese force in that scene?"

"Yes, I did."

"And you checked this number with Colonel Hamilton?"

"He gave me the division designation, and also its estimated strength."

"Information from Army files?"

"Yes."

"You did not check the 105th Division with him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I told you. I knew it was fictitious. I knew I had invented it."

"How did you invent it?"

"I don't know."

"Well now, Mr. Driscoll, you seem to have a detailed record of every other piece of information that went into your novel, you have chapter-by-chapter breakdowns, and you have expanded outlines, and you have target dates and notes to yourself, and yet you can't remember how you happened to invent the 105th Division. Did it simply come to you out of the blue?"

"I don't know."

"Try to remember, Mr. Driscoll. Was the 105th a sudden inspiration?"

"Nothing about the book was a sudden inspiration."

"In that case, you must have pondered the designation for a long time before you decided on its use."

"No."

"Did you ponder it for a short time?"

"I didn't ponder it at all. I simply used it."

"But where did it come from?"

"It did not come from Mr. Constantine's play."

"I am not asking you where it did not come from. I am asking you exactly where it did come from, Mr. Driscoll, and I would like an answer."

"I don't know."

"Is that your answer?"

"That is my answer."

"I have no further questions, your Honor."

"Mr. Willow?"

"No questions."

"Thank you, Mr. Driscoll."

"Thank you," Driscoll said, and rose from the stand. He looked out over the courtroom for a moment, and then went to take a seat in the jury box alongside his wife.

"Is there any further evidence?" McIntyre asked.

"No, your Honor," Willow said. "That is all for the defendant Mitchell-Campbell."

"Your Honor," Genitori said, rising, "the contract between API and James Driscoll, dated August 16, 1963, contains the indemnity clause favoring API, and is annexed as Exhibit A to our answer and crossclaim. May it be deemed to have been submitted in evidence?"

"No objection," Willow said.

"Fine," McIntyre said. "Is there any further evidence to be offered by either side?"

"The plaintiff rests," Brackman said.

"Your Honor, may I at this time renew our motion to dismiss on the ground that no cause has been made?"

"I assume, Mr. Willow, that you will want to argue this motion as well as the merits of the alleged similarities, won't you?"

"Yes, your Honor."

"I hope, too, that both sides will be submitting proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law."

"Yes, sir."

"We will, sir."

"Well, it's almost four o'clock now, gentlemen, but perhaps we can be ready to do that tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'll reserve any further comments and rulings until then."

"May we consider the case closed for all other purposes, your Honor?" Brackman asked.

"Yes," McIntyre said. "The case is closed for all purposes other than the submission of conclusions of law, findings of fact, and argument."

14

They take you back, Driscoll thought, they force you to go back to a time and place forgotten or at least deliberately obscured. It is instant therapy, it is crash analysis, this confrontation with yourself, an odd meeting with a seeming stranger who moves steadily closer until you recognize him with a start — he is you, but he is no longer you. Comparisons are odious, the man said, I forget which man. But what were they doing to me today if not forcing me to resurrect my youth (upon whom was Sergeant Morley based?) and then moving by logical if tedious progression into my so-called maturity (when exactly did you begin writing your book, Mr. Driscoll?) until they had brought the biography to date, into my dotage, my slow if clinging expiration (you are a novelist, are you not, Mr. Driscoll? No, I am a Vermont farmer).

The farm in Vermont is the here and now, the present. It was purchased for eight thousand dollars, a portion of my share of the movie money on The Paper Dragon. The farmhouse is red, you approach it over a rutted, ice-covered road in the winter; in the spring, the road is running and wet, soggy and mired. There is a falling stone wall bordering the property, said to have been built by colonial settlers, which theory I personally buy since there are still enough boulders firmly enbedded in the two acres of arable land to construct yet another wall from there to Boston and back. I pretend to grow forage crops there, alfalfa and hay and oats.

It is interesting, don't you think, that were I a novelist, were I truly a working novelist, my daily routine would be concerned primarily with seeking truth in terms of fabrication, the enlargement of fantasy, the exercise of imagination, a pretense hardly less energetic than that of being a Vermont farmer, which I am not, but which I purport to be.

I do not know what I am.

I have not known what or who I am for a very long time now, I thank you for that, darling.

We go to bed early in Vermont because a farmer, I am informed, must rise to take care of this and that, sowing, reaping, harvesting, breathing deep of clear Vermont air, ahhh, the outdoor life, rise and shine at five-thirty a.m., walk with springing step to the barn where Ebie begins her chores with the chickens. Yes, we have chickens, did I neglect to tell you that, Mr. Brackman? We have seventy-two chickens. We bought those with the movie money, too. So it is early to bed in Vermont, and since the bed part is never very good or very interesting anyway, it's really not too terribly difficult to throw back the covers before dawn and touch the cold wooden floor, scarcely colder than the bed in which Mr. and Mrs. James Driscoll lie, though we do sometimes make love. We he in love, so to speak.

Stay, she used to say, why must you go home? But go I would. I still don't know why. Perhaps there was in me, at eighteen, more of my mother than I imagined there was, the humorless woman wearing her black shawl. How could I explain to flfer that I was deliriously in love with a girl in Brooklyn and that all I wanted to do was hold her and touch her and look at her and love her day and night? How could I explain with the sound of Holy Mary, Mother of God coming from her bedroom each night, as if she were doing penance for God knew what mortal sin, every night, Holy Mary, Mother of God. While I thought of Ebie lying alone in that large bed on Myrtle Avenue, waiting for the next afternoon when I would taste her once again — that is the distant past, that is the far distant past. The present is Vermont, and a love-making that is only necessary, a biological release for both of us. We have not spoken the words "I love you" in so long I think if I heard them said or uttered them myself, I would begin to weep. We perform mechanically, we lie in love, my Southern flower and myself, remembering a past when all was fire and death, "the little death" the ancients called it, was that Hemingway? Did you feel the earth move? Yes, guapa. Truly? Yes, truly. You old bewitcher, you seduced a generation.

The distant past. Long before the red Vermont farmhouse I insisted on buying, half hoping she would refuse to come with me, half hoping she would pull out at last, abandon the marriage, end the loveless grappling, but no. Not Ebie, not that determined Southern flower. She had made the vows, oh my yes, and she would honor them, come crumbling wall or overflowing spring, rutted roads or bone-chilling winter. And how are you today, Mrs. Driscoll? the Vermont ladies all say, and she answers with a pert nod of her head and tells them about the pies she has baked, or asks their opinion on how to rid the house of flies. There are a dreadful number of flies in the house all the time, she says to Mrs. Dimmity, who is our next-door neighbor in the gray farmhouse across the road. Mrs. Dimmity does part-time housework for the skiers who rent the old Kruger place. They are a noisy lot, college boys and girls who speed along the black road at midnight every winter Friday, racing over the dangerous ice. I visualize them booming mountains in the daytime, shagging themselves into exhaustion each night. They bring the past into our fake present. I saw one of them one cold forbidding morning, she was blond and tall, so young, she wore a black parka and black stretch pants, she raised her mittened hand to greet me in the frosty dawn as I came out of the barn. I returned the wave, my heart was pounding.

The exterminator has visited us some five times already, but he cannot rid the house of mice. I cannot bear the thought of them scurrying in the night, scarcely secret sharers of our roof. They are the final insult, the final invasion of a marriage that certainly needs no further intruders. I visualize them nibbling at the wallboard, or licking the wallpaper paste, undermining the rotting original timbers of the old house until one day it will fall down upon our ears and a great cloud of mice dirt will rise on the air, and they will run, they will scatter away from the crumbling ruin, chattering and squeaking in triumph, having destroyed it at last, having destroyed even the meager shaky structure that has managed to survive until now.

It seemed so strong, it seemed so indestructible.

In the past, the distant past — and this goes back, my child, to a time when ships were made of wood and men were made of iron, all the way back at least to 1948, do you remember the blizzard that January? It was centuries ago. It was the time of the Great Brooklyn Renaissance, perhaps you may recall the legend of the Uncertain Knight who rode out of West End Avenue carrying a black tin watercolor box under his arm, coming into the Valley of Pratt where he met the Lady Edna Belle. My Ebie's hair is like a golden helmet/Poured molten, shaped to fit/Haphazardly/And yet despite — the ode ended there, because there were no words. Not then. Not as yet. No words to express what I felt for Ebie, the incredible awakening I knew in her arms and, yes, between her legs. Yes, that was a very real part of it, it had to be, I had known only one other girl before Ebie — Liz McPherson, known to every young and budding Studs Lonigan along 96th Street. She lived near Lexington Avenue, but the crosstown walk never fazed any of us, through the park's transverse path and over the hill to grandmother's house we went, grandmother being Liz who shared a room with her baby sister. The infant would lie asleep in her crib beside Liz's narrow bed where we made fitfully inexperienced love, with sometimes two or more other young bucks waiting outside the closed door in the tenement kitchen. Poor Liz, I wonder what ever became of her; Liz the Whore, we ungallantly called her.

When Ebie told me about the boy who limped, I was furious at first. I conjured the image of a Brooklyn Liz, far removed from 96th Street, but sisters under the skin, a long line of cock-in-hand suitors outside her apartment door. Donald was his name, had been his name; apparently the affair had run its course several months before we met in Bertie's, l'affaire de sa jeunesse: emblazon the motto on a field argent, two bronze balls pendant beneath a sinister hand couped at the wrist, holding erect a cane. I went to church the day she told me, I had not been inside a confessional since I was fifteen, and I was there to confess not my own sin, but the sin of a girl I deeply loved, or thought I loved, a girl who had become in six short months — this was May of 1948, I can still remember the day, bright with spring sunshine, a bird chirping incessantly in the budding tree just outside the stained glass window above the confession box, Bless me, Father, for I have sinned — a girl who had become in half a year my only reason for existence.

The priest spoke with a faint Italian accent, there was in his voice the echo of an ancient race, but in his words there was no wisdom. I left the church unsatisfied, the bird still chirping its inane song, the sun bright in an opaque sky, I could not understand why she had not waited for me to come along, why she had foolishly given herself to this boy who limped. I tried to tell Uncle Benny about it that night, the telephone beckoning, knowing that Ebie was waiting for my call in her Myrtle Avenue apartment, or at least hoping she was waiting. But I couldn't tell him. I sat there in the living room with him, we were both sitting on the piano bench, side by side, our hands separately clasped and hanging between our respective knees, like two old men in the park, staring solemnly at pigeons. But I could not tell him that the girl I loved had been living with some goddamn cripple for five months, how could I tell this to Uncle Benny or to anyone, for that matter? So we talked about my studies, Uncle Benny was always fascinated by the theory of art, and I told him I was having trouble with one of my instructors, I was sure the man disliked me, and Uncle Benny told me there would be instructors all through my life who took a dim view of me, or vice versa, and the thing to do with them was simply face the fact that it would be difficult, but to do my best, do my work the best way I knew how, and get through it somehow, that was the important thing. And we sat there on the piano bench with the question of Ebie hanging on the air, unresolved, unspoken. I nodded and said, Yeah, but Uncle Benny this guy is a real son of a bitch, and Uncle Benny said, That only means you've got to work harder, Jimbo, you've got to get what you can out of the course, despite the way he feels about you, you've got to rely on what's inside yourself, Jimbo, there's lots of good stuff inside you. Yeah, I said, and nodded. Sure, Uncle Benny said, and nodded. After a while, I got up and thanked him, and went into my room. I could hear my mother in her bedroom next door, already beginning the litany of Hello Mary, Mother of God. I threw myself down on the bed, and tried to figure out what I should do. I decided two things. First, I decided I could never let go of Ebie Dearborn because I loved her too much, and second, I decided I would extract from her a promise that Donald Who Limped was to be the last of her little adventures, that James Randolph Driscoll was now on the scene having ridden long and hard from West End Avenue, and he was on the scene to stay, and she had better get that through her golden-helmet head. I was still furious when I told it to her in the curtain-rustling stillness of her bedroom later that night. She sat in a straight-backed chair near the window, the curtains stirring behind her with each fresh spring breeze, unsmiling, sitting as straight-backed as the chair. When I was through, she started to say something but the goddamn elevated express roared by and we were caught in a moment of mechanical suspense, waiting for the train to pass, waiting for the room to be still again.

In a sense, that day in 1948 was the beginning. Oh yes, Norman Sheppard said only this afternoon that there are no endings in life, and perhaps he was right, perhaps there are no beginnings as well — but for me, it was a beginning, and I think it was for Ebie, too. For me, for us, it was the start of a gradual loss of identity. If the love we made was a little death, then the love we knew was a littler death still, this loss of self, this certain overlapping of person upon person, blending, merging, no longer Ebie and no longer me, a single unit responding and reacting in rare empathy, osmotically perhaps, or perhaps symbiotically because, yes, we surely fed upon each other and sustained each other and became each other, inseparable, indistinguishable, one.

Who can remember, can I remember, any of my own responses as apart from Ebie's? Reconstruct all of the events that led to our marriage in 1950, arrange them in sequence and what can I remember that does not include Ebie? Once I walked alone in the shadow of the Queensboro Bridge and wrote in my head a suspense story for Alfred Hitchcock, spies chasing counterspies over wet cobblestones and under dripping metal cross-supports, but the heroine of that movie (running through the rain, blond hair stringy and wet, head snapping back over her shoulder to steal a quick glance at God knew what awful pursuer) was Ebie Dearborn, all was Ebie Dearborn. And once I sat alone in the living room of the West End Avenue apartment, the winter afternoon waning, and tapped out a melody on the old Chickering, note by faltering note, using only one hand, but the symphony was Ebie Dearborn, all was Ebie Dearborn. You were wrong, Norman Sheppard; there are beginnings, and there are endings as well, and I have known them both. I can remember the day our Fainting in Coils instructor (Lewis Carroll's chapter was big with the students at Pratt, who quite rightfully thought of themselves as very inside concerning art and the art world and things artistic) took us to see the bona fide studio of a bona fide artist named Bernardo Casamorte, whose name we later learned meant "house of the dead," hilariously inappropriate after what we had seen. Casamorte lived on West 18th Street in a skylighted loft that had once been a hat factory. Hat molds, some of which he had decorated with grinning faces, most of which he had left unadorned, still rested on every flat surface in the place, cluttering the room. In order to stand or sit, the class — there were thirty of us — had to move molds, or easels, or finished and unfinished canvases, or palettes, or pots of paint and glue, or soiled clothing draped or tossed or hanging, or the remains of breakfast. There were seven cats in the place, and a large boxer who had dipped his snout in vermilion, and who gave the appearance of a comic strip drunk with illuminated nose. There was also a mistress-model who slunk around the loft in an electric-blue silk dressing gown while Casamorte gave us his lecture on what it was like to earn a living as a painter, a premise we seriously doubted on the evidence presented. We kept hoping the mistress-model would do a little posing for him while we were there; she was a dark brunette with enormous breasts swelling the gown; she held the gown closed with her folded arms, its sash having been misplaced in the general disorder of the joint. We decided afterwards, Ebie and I, that the loft was in reality a stage set designed and built by Pratt, and that Casamorte, his busty model-mistress, his seven cats, and his drunken boxer were all actors hired by the school for this special outing each year. This was the only class Ebie and I shared together, by dispensation, since she was a full year ahead of me. She was much better in oils than I was, I never could get the hang of oils. She had a fine sure touch with pigment, she really might have become a good artist if she'd stuck with it. In Vermont now, even in Vermont where she has all the time in the world, she never paints anymore. Never. It is as if everything in her has gone dead as well.

Casamorte was alive though, and real I suppose, certainly more genuine an artist than I was at the time. Oh, I loved the role of being an artist, I played the role a bit more amateurishly perhaps than Casamorte, but I played it nonetheless. I would sit on subway trains or buses, incessantly sketching, not because I really itched to draw — or perhaps I did, who the hell knows anymore? — but only because I wanted everyone sitting opposite me to see that I was an artist, to understand that I was an extremely talented and serious person who was sketching, sketching, sketching all the time, oh boy, was I serious! Sometimes I would walk into a luncheonette still wearing my paint-smeared workshirt, knowing that everyone at the counter would turn and stare at me and think again Oh lookie, there's an artist, especially if Ebie was with me in her dirty green smock, her cheek smeared with pigment, she was a good painter but a sloppy one. Or I would sometimes stop dead in the middle of the sidewalk, and raise both hands in front of my face, palms flat, thumbs touching, to form a fleshy picture frame around a tree or a bench or a building in the distance, once again courting appreciation from the people in the street, the onlookers, the outsiders, those poor, untalented, uncreative souls. I think I knew even then I would never become a painter. I have since seen music students practicing scales on subway trains, their fingers running over imaginary keyboards in their laps; I have watched architectural students describe with soaring hands the engineering feat of the Guggenheim; I have overheard playwrights discussing the interminable and incomplete second acts of their works in progress; and I have learned without question that those who play the part never live it. I was only playing at being an artist. I knew it, and Ebie knew it, but neither of us ever mentioned it.

And yet there were times when, visual evidence to the contrary, talented people surrounding me day and night, doing work I could see, work I could compare against my own, there were nonetheless times when I felt I really had it in me. Laboring late into the night in Ebie's apartment (stay, she would constantly plead, must you go?), I would feel a solitary isolation (never truly solitary because I knew she was there across the room) a total absorption with the drawing pad before me, the charcoal or pencil moving in my hand as though directed by someone, something, other than myself, the line clean and sure and unfaltering. That was real. That, at least, was real. That, and Ebie.

Ebie was everything; everything paled beside her.

I can recall the first time we saw El Greco's Cardinal at the Metropolitan, standing before the painting — silken scarlet robes stiffly parted over intricately detailed lace, beringed left hand tensely gripping the arm of the chair, eyes covertly regarding something beyond the frame — my own eyes were on Ebie alone, watching her reaction, thrilling to her response. She caught her breath in wonder, a radiant awestruck look crossed her face, and I watched her in soaring delight; El Greco, for all his magnificance, could have been for me that day a Greenwich Village hack exhibiting seascapes on a Sixth Avenue sidewalk.

I loved her so much.

So very much.

There were daffodils blooming in the courtyard of the church on the day we were married. A stone baptismal font, fallen into neglectful disrepair, stood lopsidedly in one corner of the garden against a stone wall covered with English ivy. Beyond the wall and behind it, the city's buildings rose against an April sky stretched in taut blue brilliance. We stopped in the garden after the ceremony. The wedding party was on the sidewalk in front of the church, the photographer wondering how he had managed to lose us in the blizzard of tossed confetti and rice, the rented limousines at the curb, relatives and friends shaking hands in greeting, exclaiming no doubt on the beauty of the bride and the nervousness of the groom, anxious to get on with the reception, all waiting for the newly married Mr. and Mrs. James Driscoll to join them. But we had seen the garden earlier, separately, and now we were drawn to it together, neither of us uttering a word, as we ran down the church steps through the flying rice and paper, Ebie's hand in mine, and then raced along the stone wall to the low iron entrance gate. The gate was painted green, chipped in spots to reveal the rusting iron beneath. I opened it, it squeaked into the silence. We went into the small cloistered garden, treading softly over the slate walk to where the daffodils ringed the fallen stone font.

The ceremony had already taken place, but it was there in the garden we were really wed.

With her hand in mine and her eyes wet, Ebie looked up at me and said, "Forever."

And I whispered "Forever" to her.

Louis Brackman lived in a garden apartment in Queens, a complex of six buildings set around a grassy court in which there were concrete benches and a lily pond. In the summertime, the benches were invariably occupied by young housewives taking a late afternoon breather before the dinner hour, which was just when Sidney arrived each time. In the winter, as now, the benches were empty, the lily pond was a dark amoeba reflecting the starless sky above. It was six o'clock. The lights in the buildings surrounding the court were aglow and cooking smells wafted on the evening air. Sidney quickened his step and moved along the shoveled concrete walk to his father's ground-floor apartment. Through the kitchen window, he could see Louis wrapping something at the table, why did he always wrap the stuff, Sidney wondered. Why not simply say "Here, Sidney, here's some worthless crap for you" instead of going through this idiotic ritual each time? Sidney sighed and rang the bell.

His father did not ask who it was because he knew this was Thursday, and he knew that Sidney arrived every Thursday at close to six o'clock. Sidney did not expect him to call out, nor did he expect anything less than a five-minute wait on the doorstep since that was usually how long it took his father to get from the kitchen to the front hallway, give or take a few thousand years. He did not ring the bell again, nor did he exhibit any signs of impatience. He leaned against the brick wall' of the building instead and looked up at the sky, wishing there were stars, and smelling rain in the air, and beneath that the aroma of borscht, his father was cooking borscht again. When Louis finally opened the door, the two men embraced silently, and then walked slowly into the kitchen, where Sidney would spend most of the visit. Sidney supported his father as they walked, one arm around the old man's waist, deploring his smell and the smell of the beets boiling in the kitchen, permeating the entire apartment until Sidney thought he would suffocate.

Louis was eighty-two years old, and Sidney could not remember a time when the old man had not been a burden, even when his mother was still alive. Dimly, only dimly, he perceived in this shell of a man someone who had once punched a Bowery wino, who was strong, who had black hair and dark shining eyes. That person was a stranger to Sidney, as was the old man he helped down the hallway and into the kitchen.

"I'm making borscht," Louis said.

"That's good."

"You like borscht, don't you?"

"Mmm."

"Your mother, may she rest in peace, made the best borscht."

"Mmm."

"Look what's on the table, Sidney," he said.

"Sit down, Pop."

"I can stand, I'm not a cripple, thank God. Look what I found for you."

There were three pacakages on the kitchen table, each wrapped in brown paper and tied with white string. "Well, sit down, Pop," Sidney said, and looked wearily at the packages and thought, Here we go again. His father took a seat at the table, and then put his hands before him on the table top, palms down, and smiled and looked at the packages. Sidney nodded and looked at the packages too.

"Your cousin Marvin called this morning," Louis said. "Don't you want to open the packages, Sidney?"

"Sure, Pop. What'd he want?"

"Who? Oh, Marvin. Nothing, nothing, he was complaining about his wife again, who knows?" Louis waved the problem aside with his bony hand and again looked at the packages. Sidney lifted one of them, shook it, and said, "This isn't a time bomb, is it, Pop?"

"Sure, sure, a time bomb. Open it."

"It won't blow up the whole apartment, will it?' '

"Sure, blow up the apartment," Louis said, watching as Sidney fumbled with the knots on the package. Sidney loosened the string, and then pulled back the folds of wrapping paper. He recognized the bank at once, a small wooden box made of bamboo, with sliding panels that were pushed back one at a time and in sequence to reveal the keyhole. His father had given it to him as a present when he was ten years old. He had never kept more than a few dollars in coins in it at any time, but the knowledge that he was the only one who knew the secret of the sliding panels was a source of comfort and security at a time when he needed assurance most.

"Do you remember it?" his father asked.

"Yes, I do. Where'd you find it?"

"Oh, with the stuff in the closet. There's lots of stuff in the closet."

"Mmm," Sidney said. Automatically, his fingers moved to the first sliding panel, and then the second. He could not remember the sequence after that. He put the bamboo box down on the table, a faint pained smile on his face.

"Will you take it with you?" his father asked.

"Sure." He would take it with him and then throw it in the garbage when he got home, the same as he did with almost everything his father gave him.

"Open the others," Louis said, pleased.

The second package was long and flat. Sidney knew it was a book even before he loosened the string. He nodded as he pulled back the brown wrapping paper.

"From "Harvard," his father said.

"Yes, I see."

It was a notebook he had kept for an Ethics class at Harvard when he was still an undergraduate. He had no interest whatever in it, but his father was watching him, so he leafed through some of the pages and pretended amazement at what he had written.

"I thought you could use it," Louis said.

"Yes," Sidney said, and nodded.

"Can you use it?"

"I'll find some use for it," Sidney said.

"I found it in the closet," his father said, and seemed to want to say more, but let the sentence trail instead.

"All this stuff," Sidney said, and let his sentence trail as well. He broke the string on the third package. The brown wrapping paper rattled open to reveal a wooden inkstand he had made in a shop class in elementary school. There were two holes for ink bottles, drilled into a solid block of wood that was affixed to a larger, flatter piece of wood. A scalloped bar in front of the inkwells was designed to hold pens. The inkstand was stained walnut. Sidney turned it upside down to its raw, unstained bottom where he had gouged out his name with a knife, S. BRACKMAN, and then filled in the letters with black ink. The date beneath his name was 2/7/25. February 7, 1925. He tried to remember the boy who had made this inkstand, but the image was vague. He turned the stand over in his hands again. Something else to throw in the garbage he thought.

"You brought that.home to your mother," Louis said.

"Yes, I remember."

"It was in the closet."

"I'll take it home with me."

"Sure, I have no use for it," Louis said. "I thought you might like it."

"Sure, I'll take it home."

"Well, how is the trial going?" Louis asked.

"Fine."

"I told all my friends you're in a new trial."

"That's good."

"Is it a murder case?"

"No. Plagiarism."

"What's that?"

"When somebody steals from something that's copyrighted."

"Books?"

"Yes. Or plays. Pop, do you have anything to drink in the house?"

"In the living room, there's something," Louis said. "Don't drink too much."

"No, I won't," Sidney said, and went out of the kitchen and into the darkness of the living room. He snapped on the light and searched in the low cabinet for his father's whiskey supply. There was a partially filled bottle of scotch, and a bottle of banana cordial someone had brought to Louis from Puerto Rico. Eventually, Louis would wrap the cordial in brown paper and present it to Sidney, who would throw it in the garbage the moment he got home. He poured two fingers of scotch into one of the glasses, and then turned off the light and went back into the kitchen.

"You ought to get some bourbon," he said, and went to the refrigerator.

"Isn't there bourbon?"

"No, you've only got a little scotch."

"Well," Louis said, and tilted his head.

Sidney put two ice cubes into his glass, sat at the table with his father, and sipped at the whiskey.

"So what's new?" Louis said.

"I'm getting married," Sidney said. "I think I'm getting married."

"Oh?"

"It's about time, huh?" Sidney said, and smiled at his father, and then took another sip of his scotch. "Forty-eight years old, that's a long time to be single."

"Sure, it's about time," his father said. "Who is the girl?"

"Her name is Charlotte Brown."

"Is she Jewish?"

"No."

His father was silent for a moment. Sidney sipped his drink.

"What is she, then?" his father asked.

"Irish, I think. Or English."

"You don't know?"

"I think she's Irish."

"Charlotte Brown?" his father said. "This doesn't sound Irish to me."

"I think it is."

"She's a nice girl?"

"Yes."

"An older woman?"

"Well, she's twenty-seven."

"That's very young, Sidney."

"I know."

"She's pretty?"

"Yes."

"Well," Louis said, and again tilted his head skeptically.

"I'll bring her around someday."

"Yes," his father said, and nodded.

The men were silent. On the stove, the beets were boiling. Sidney finished his drink and went back into the living room for a refill. His father said, "Don't drink too much, Sidney."

"I won't," he answered, and came back into the kitchen. He would take home his father's presents and dump them in the garbage, the inkstand he had made when he was seven, the Chinese bank he had received as a gift when he was ten, and the Harvard notebook from his undergraduate days. He would dump them in the garbage.

"Pop," he said, "why haven't you ever…" and stopped.

"Yes?" his father said.

"… gone back to that doctor on Park Avenue?" Sidney improvised.

"I went."

"You did?"

"Sure. He says it's nothing to worry. It's arthritis, I'll keep taking the cortisone, it isn't God forbid anything worse."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that," Sidney said. "Does the cortisone help?"

"A little."

"Well, that's good."

"Sure."

"Her nickname is Ch-Chickie," Sidney said suddenly.

"What?"

"My f-f-fiancee. Her nickname is Chickie."

"That's a funny name," his father said, and smiled. "Chickie."

"Yeah."

"Your mother, when she was a girl, they used to call her Sarale."

"I know."

"May she rest in peace."

"Mmm," Sidney said. He had finished the second scotch, and he wanted another drink, but he knew his father would frown upon a third. He sat at the kitchen table, jiggling his foot and looking up at the wall clock. It was only six-thirty.

"Do you remember your Aunt Hannah?" Louis asked.

"Yes." He was always asking Sidney if he remembered people he couldn't possibly ever forget. His Aunt Hannah had lived in the apartment next door on Houston Street when he was a boy. He'd spent half his childhood in her kitchen, and now his father asked if he remembered her. How the hell could he possibly ever forget Aunt Hannah?

"Her daughter is going to have a baby," Louis said.

"Another one."

"This is only three."

"I guess it is."

"You should go see your Aunt Hannah every now and then."

"I always mean to."

"Your mother, may she rest in peace, would have liked it."

"Maybe when the trial is finished," Sidney said. "Maybe I'll stop by one day."

"Well, I know you're busy. What did you call it? The trial?"

"Plagiarism."

"That's important?"

"I guess so."

"I'll have to tell my friends."

Yes, you tell them, he thought. Tell them your very important lawyer son is arguing a very important plagiarism case downtown. "There's ten million dollars involved," Sidney said.

Louis whistled softly.

"If we win the case, Carl and I will share four million dollars."

"That's plenty," Louis said.

"Tell your friends," Sidney answered.

He sat in his father's beet-smelling kitchen, and he longed to tell him about Chickie, about the love he felt for her, longed desperately to discuss something important with his father for once in his life, not cousin Marvin's idiotic troubles, or Aunt Hannah's third grandchild, but something important to him, to Sidney, to your son, Pop, to me. And he knew in that moment that winning the case would mean nothing to him if he did not also win Chickie. He almost made a bargain with God on the spot. Look, he thought, visualizing himself once again as a sunset-stained rabbi raising his eyes to heaven, Look, God, let me lose the case even, I don't care, really I don't care, just so long as you permit me to win Chickie. The offer startled him, and he revoked it at once because he didn't want God to take him too seriously. And yet, what difference would it make, win or lose, except for the money involved? And was even that important if he could not share the future with Chickie? Would it really matter, win or lose, if…

If there was no one there to…

Without realizing why, he suddenly said, "Why don't you ever…" and hesitated.

"Why don't I ever what?"

"I thought you might like…"

"Yes, what?"

Ask him, Sidney thought. At least give him the opportunity.

"Would you like to come down?"

"What?"

"Downtown."

"What do you mean, downtown?"

"The courthouse. The court. Tomorrow."

"What's tomorrow?"

"Friday. I'll be giving my summation. I thought…"

"I have to be home to light the shabiss candles."

"That's not until sundown. I'll get you home by then."

"How would I get there?"

"By cab. Or I can pick you up, if you like."

"Where is this?"

"Foley Square. Downtown."

"In New York?"

"Yes. I could pick you up in the morning, if you like."

"I have my medicine here," his father said.

"Well, you can take—"

"What time does it start?"

"Ten in the morning."

"The super's coming in tomorrow. To fix the radiator there in the bedroom. It leaks all over the floor."

"I just thought you might like to see…"

"Yes?"

"… a… a court case," Sidney said. "Me," he said.

"I saw a court case when Harry Bergner was sued that time."

"I just thought…"

"They're all the same, no?"

"Yes, they're all the same," Sidney said. He paused. "I'd like another drink."

"Don't drink too much, Sidney," his father said.

It began raining at half-past seven, and the pressure call to Arthur came not ten minutes after the storm started. He knew at once that it was going to be a pressure call because when he answered, two voices came back at him with "Hello Arthur," one from Stuart Selig and the other from Oscar Stern on the extension.

"Some storm, huh?" Stuart said.

"Yeah," Arthur said.

"We aren't interrupting anything, are we?" Oscar asked.

"No, I was reading."

"Anything good?" Stuart asked.

"Anything that might make a play?" Oscar asked.

"I don't think so. What's on your mind?"

"We might as well come straight to the point," Stuart said.

"That's right," Oscar asked.

"Kent Mercer was up here just a little while ago. He told us he met you for lunch today."

"Yes, we had a long talk," Arthur said.

"According to Kent, you've got some doubts about making these changes Hester wants."

"I'm still thinking it over."

"Well, when do you think you'll know, Arthur? This is Thursday night."

"I know what it is."

"Tomorrow's Friday, Arthur."

"We promised Mitzi we'd let her know by Friday, Arthur."

"We don't want to pressure you…"

"That's right."

"… but you haven't got all the time in the world to make your decision, you know. Maybe you don't have a clear picture of the situation."

"I think Kent gave me a pretty clear picture."

"Did he tell you he's dropping out if you don't make the changes?"

"He hinted it."

"Well, he did more than hint it when he was up here. He's the man for your play, Arthur, you realize that, don't you?"

"Yes, but if we have to lose him…"

"We don't have to lose him," Stuart said.

"That's right," Oscar said.

"We don't have to lose anybody. If you agree to make the changes, we'll have one of the best directors in the business and one of the brightest young actresses around, and we'll also get our financing — which is the most important thing."

"You know how much money I'll get if I win this case?" Arthur asked.

"Meantime," Oscar said, "you haven't won it."

"I could produce the play myself, six times over. A hundred times over."

"I don't bet on horse races or on trials," Stuart said. "Will you make the changes, or won't you?"

"The Dramatists Guild contract…"

"Screw the Dramatists Guild and their contract," Stuart said. "Nobody can force you to make the changes, that's true, you're protected. But is the Dramatists Guild going to raise the money for your play?"

"Are you?"

"If we sign Hester, yes."

"Guaranteed?"

"Guaranteed. I've been on the phone all day. I've got more than enough promises already."

"That's right."

"Promises aren't cash," Arthur said.

"I can guarantee these promises, Arthur. I'm not exactly new in this business, these are people who've invested with me before. They'll come in if we get Hester."

"She's very hot, Arthur."

"Arthur, we have to know what you plan to do."

"I don't know yet."

"Will you call me later tonight?"

"I may have to sleep on it."

"Do me a favor, don't sleep on it. I want to be able to call Mitzi first thing in the morning and tell her you're eager to get to work on the revisions."

"I'm not."

"Fake a little enthusiasm."

"Stuart, I don't like this kind of pressure. I really don't."

"That's right, this is pressure," Oscar said. "We're all under pressure, Arthur, not just you."

"I don't like to make important decisions under pressure."

"Nobody does. But that's the way most important decisions are made."

"We may know about the trial early next week. Can't we—"

"And you may not know for six months."

"It never takes that long."

"It could."

"Anyway, even next week is too late. Arthur, maybe you still don't understand the situation. Hester's going to sign for that Osborne play unless you go along with these changes. Now which is it going to be? Everybody rich and happy, or everybody behaving in a highly unprofessional manner?"

"What's unprofessional about wanting to preserve what I wrote?"

"This is the theater, Arthur. Don't talk like a hick."

"Any play is a collaborative effort, you know that," Oscar said.

"I don't like collaborating with pants pressers."

"What are you talking about?"

"Mitzi Starke is a pants presser. What the hell does she know about playwriting?"

"She doesn't have to know anything about playwriting," Stuart said, "as long as she's got clients like Hester Miers."

"If you'd raised the goddamn money, we wouldn't be in this situation," Arthur said angrily.

"We tried our best. And we can still raise it, if you'll compromise a little."

"A little, sure," Arthur said.

"A little, yes. Will you call me later tonight?"

"If I've decided."

"Decide, Arthur," Stuart said.

"Good night, Arthur," Oscar said.

Arthur almost slammed the receiver onto the cradle, but something restrained him. He put it down gently, and then turned from the phone and walked to the rain-streaked window and looked down at the gleaming wet street outside. He went to the closet then, and put on his raincoat and an old rain hat, a battered corduroy he had bought six years ago and perhaps worn as many times since. He looked at the room unseeingly for a moment before turning off the lights, and then went out of the apartment and into the street.

The rain was cold. It fell from the sky in slanting sheets that swept sidewalk and gutter, driven by a sharp wind. He almost changed his mind, and then decided the hell with it and kept walking, the collar of his coat high on the back of his neck, his hat pulled down over his forehead, his hands thrust into his pockets. He did not know where he was going, or why he felt he could think better in the rain than in his apartment, but he continued walking nonetheless, heading west toward Lexington Avenue, and then continuing westward, turning downtown whenever he was stopped by a corner traffic light.

It seemed to him that his decision hinged entirely on the outcome of the trial. If he knew he were positively going to win the case, he could tell them all to go to hell, he would not need anyone's money to produce the play, he could produce the damn thing himself. On the other hand, if he knew for certain that the case was lost, there would be no hope for production unless he were willing to make the changes. Yes, he could take the play around again, but he knew Kent was right on that score, too, a dead duck was a dead duck. He had circulated the play for six months before Selig and Stern optioned it, showing it to most of the theatrical producers in town. It was highly unlikely that anyone would suddenly become interested in it again, not after word went around that they'd had trouble raising the money. Word had a way of getting around in this town, faster than the speed of light. He was willing to bet that Lincoln Center already knew Hester was planning to leave, and exactly why — to star in Arthur Constantine's new play.

If he made the changes.

All you have to do, he thought, is make the changes. It'll be easy to make the changes. God knows you made enough changes when you were working for the Hollywood pants pressers. Out there, anyone was entitled to a suggestion, including the studio typists. He would never forget the day Charlie Mandell asked the barber what he thought of a scene they were discussing, right there in Charlie's office, Charlie sitting in his big stuffed green leather chair with the barber's cloth around his neck. And the barber very seriously offered his advice on what he thought would be a better approach to the scene, and Charlie took the suggestion and said, "I think we ought to work it out along those lines. After all, Arthur, these are the people who go to see the movies. I'll never sell the little man short." If he made the changes now, he would indeed be selling the little man short because his play was about the little man, not about a barber of course, nor even about the little man Charlie Mandell had in mind perhaps, but certainly about a simple ordinary man who happened to be his father. It was an honest play. It was the first honest thing he'd written in a long long while, and now they were asking him to change it, make changes that might not damage its honesty but, yes, he thought, yes. The changes will damage the honesty. It will not be the play I wrote anymore.

He had let Freddie Gerard do that to Catchpole, well, wait a minute, it wasn't fair to turn on Freddie, if it hadn't been for Freddie the play would never have been produced at all. And yet he had allowed Freddie and the director, a man named Fielder Crowell, to turn the play upside down, to rearrange scenes, to emphasize here and to excise there, "This isn't working, Arthur, can you change it to…?" Of course, you can change it to. You can change it to anything. You can bring six hundred pink elephants on stage at any given point, and if you are a skillful enough writer, you can make those elephants seem plausible and reasonable and in fact necessary to plot and theme and character. Yes, you can change it to. You can change a whore to a nun, and a doctor to an Indian chief, you can put this scene at the beginning and that scene at the end, you can change words and lines and speeches, you can rewrite the entire second act in New Haven, and after you've changed everything to, you can change it back to again. You can juggle all these bits and pieces in the air like a circus performer and forget exactly what you intended in the first place. You can allow them to march right through the play with mud on their feet, tracking it up while you scurry along behind them trying to wipe up the footprints. Yes, I can change Carol to a social worker who has had one affair, I can change the father to a small business man or a minor executive, I can change the play, I can make it their play, the way I made Catchpole their play and therefore nobody's play. And then, maybe years from now, a James Driscoll will step in and really finish the job, just the way he did with Catchpole, step in and make it not my play, and not their play, but his play, steal it right from under my nose, and it'll serve me right because I didn't have the guts to stand behind what I'd written. You want to change it? Fine. Go write your own play. This is my play, and it's going to stay my play.

It's going to stay your manuscript, you mean.

Oh sure, very clever, Kent. Go to work on the frightened writer, give me a few good ones right now while I'm up against the ropes. I'm worried about this trial, you see, I really am. I don't know what's happening down there, I haven't heard anyone in these past four days mention the fact that Catchpole is worthless so long as The Paper Dragon is credited to James Driscoll; that anyone reading my play will say, "Why this was stolen from that novel, what was the name of it, it's a direct steal," instead of the other way around. I've heard a lot of arguments in these past four days about diminishing the value and so on, and I've learned all about Driscoll's creative process, but no one has brought up my creative process, the months of hard work I put into that play, the pain each time they asked me for another change, the gradual metamorphosis to what the play became, and the hope, the constant hope that someday someone would recognize what I'd done, but no, not even there, not even in that court of law. It's been Driscoll, Driscoll, Driscoll, The Paper Dragon is the glittering success, and Catchpole is the shabby little beggar hanging around the fringes of the trial. So get in here, Kent. Get in here with your fag-got wrist hanging and tighten your hand into a fist for just a few good ones, a few short sharp ones to the gut. This is a good time to take Constantine. He doesn't know whether he's coming or going, he doesn't know whether to dig one grave or two, let's finish him off once and for all, pow, pow, it's going to stay your manuscript, kid, pow, that's the way, it's now or never, kid, wham, again, again, we can't force you to make the changes, zap, whack, bam, but you can't force us to produce it, either, you get it, kid? wise up, kid, make the changes, kid, pow.

I don't know, he thought. I just don't know.

If I could climb inside McIntyre's head for just a minute, listen to his thoughts and get some sort of inkling, just a clue is all I need, how can I plan on anything if nothing's sure, if it all depends on the opinion of one man?

Ten million dollars.

Look, Oscar, ten million dollars.

Look, Stuart, the book really was stolen from me.

Look, everybody! Look!

He was suddenly chilled to the bone. His face was cold and wet, and his shoes squished water with each step he took. He ran across Sixth Avenue, hurdled the slush against the curb, and spotted a bar in the middle of the block. He walked toward it hastily, glanced through the plate-glass window, and then went inside. Taking a booth near the juke box, he pumped a handful of coins into the machine, and ordered a double scotch.

The city's buildings thrust their broken illumination upward into a sky black with rainclouds, reflected themselves downward again against shining black asphalt. Each brilliant red and green traffic light, each glowing amber street lamp, each twisted tube of orange neon found its echo on the sleek wet surface of the street, so that the city seemed to reverberate with light, seemed to shimmer with light pierced by slanting silver needles of rain. The rain fell remorselessly. It beat noisily upon rooftops and skylights, rattled in gutters and drains, raged in windswept fury across the avenues, hurled its light-smashed slivers against pavement and street. Crumbling pieces of snow splashed away from the banked slush, twisted and whirled like paper boats in the dark curbside torrent, tumbled toward sewer grates, plunged underground in cascades of paper scraps and broken sticks.

They stood in the teeming rain under Jonah's big black umbrella, trying to get a taxi, listening to the irregular beat of the falling drops. There was an insular quality to their corner haven, the secrecy of an attic hiding place. Sally leaned against him, her arm looped through his as they watched the oncoming traffic, Jonah signaling now and again to cabs he thought were free, only to discover they were either carrying passengers or showing their Off Duty signs. But there was no sense of urgency to Jonah's attempts, and Sally exhibited no impatience when, after ten minutes, he still had not succeeded in getting a cab. They began walking idly up Sixth Avenue, looking at the rows of diamond rings in lighted pawnshop windows, stopping to study an old gold locket in one of the smaller antique places, window-shopping cameras and books and phonographs and hardware and records and sewing machines and paint and practical jokes, pausing to study menus taped to restaurant windows, strolling up the avenue as though it were springtime and they were visiting a bazaar.

He had told her at dinner that he'd contacted Santesson late that afternoon and asked him to call off the dogs. He had no doubt now that this was what accounted for the success of the evening, the pleased and somehow flattered smile Sally wore all during the meal, the way she held his arm in easy intimacy now as they walked up the avenue. He could remember walking through the rain with Christie, her hands thrust into the pockets of her white raincoat, a yellow kerchief on her head, the black bangs fringing her brow, her eyes dancing with delight. They had gone to see four movies that day, one at the Roxy, another at the Capitol, a third at the Strand, and the last in a fleabag on 42nd Street, necking furiously in each one. And then they were out in the rain again, and he held her elbow and helped her to pick her delicate way through the puddles, and she said to him quite suddenly, "Jonah, I will never love anyone but you."

And then, one thought linked to the other, one image repeating the other the way the Dunseath looks repeated themselves generation after generation, fading, he thought of Amy. Last week, he had seen a ring in a jewelry shop window on East 61st, a beautiful tiny cameo set with a single diamond. He had known immediately that it would make a perfect Christmas gift for Amy, and would have purchased it on the spot had the shop been open. He had written down the name of the place, and then tucked the card into his wallet, intending to return at the earliest opportunity. But something had always intruded, the ring (he hoped) still sat in the jeweler's window, and Amy would be home tomorrow. He wanted to present it to her when he picked her up at the station, a harbinger of the holidays, welcome home, Amy, Merry Christmas, my darling. He would have to pick it up tomorrow, after court broke, there'd still be time. If only life weren't so goddamn cluttered, he thought, if only everything didn't scream at you from a hundred different directions, all the cheap merchandise in these store windows, a thousand shabby Santa Clauses shaking their bells, a million late shoppers rushing past, a lifetime rushing past. He would have to pick up the ring tomorrow, yes, after court broke. They would undoubtedly be out early; the summations would not take long.

"There's one!" Sally said suddenly.

"Where?"

"There! Quick!"

He saw the cab, and began running for it just as a little man in a dark green trenchcoat leaped off the curb and began signaling wildly to the driver. There was no doubt in Jonah's mind that Sally had seen it first, but even if there had been a question of priority, he did not intend losing the cab. He ran past the little man just as the cab pulled to a stop. Clamping his fingers around the door handle, he said "Sorry," without looking at the man, and then signaled to Sally, who immediately came off the curb to join him.

"This is my taxi," the man said.

"It's my taxi," Jonah said flatly, and held open the door for Sally. The man, he now saw, was perhaps sixty-five years old, and he was drenched to the skin. He stared up at Jonah without rancor, a pleading, frightened look on his wet, red face. He wore rimless glasses, and they were speckled with raindrops. The brim of his hat kept dripping water.

"My wife is waiting there on the sidewalk," the man said lamely.

Jonah did not answer. He hurried Sally into the taxi, slammed the door shut as soon as he was inside, and then gave the driver Sally's address.

"Did you see a woman on the sidewalk?" he asked her.

"No."

"I didn't either."

"I did," the driver said.

"What?" Jonah said.

"Forgive me for living," the driver said, "but there was a little old lady huddled in the doorway there near Stern's, that was probably the guy's wife."

"Well, I didn't see her," Jonah said.

"It's none of my business," the driver said, "and I don't like to get into arguments with passengers, but by rights, this was that guy's cab. If a man signals to you, that's his cab. He gives you a signal, and you give h i m a signal back. You either wave your hand out the window, or dip your lights, anything to let him know you seen him. That's your contract, mister, that means you ain't gonna pick nobody else up, and he ain't gonna jump in no other cab before you get to him. That's the way it works in this city. You from New York?"

"I'm from New York," Jonah said.

"Then you should know that's the way it works here."

"A new slant on contract law," Jonah said to Sally.

"What was that?" the driver said, glancing over his shoulder.

"Don't you think you ought to watch the road?" Jonah said.

"I'm watching the road fine, thanks. I been driving a taxi for seventeen years, and I never had an accident yet, thank God. Don't worry about my watching the road. That guy signaled to me, and I signaled back, and by rights this was his cab, not that it's any of my business. Also, there was a little old lady huddled in the doorway there near Stern's, dripping wet, no matter what you say."

"Look, just drive, will you?" Jonah said, annoyed.

"Forgive me for breathing," the driver said.

Sally cleared her throat.

"But if you think it's fun driving a cab on a rainy night, you ought to try it sometime."

Jonah did not answer. Sally squeezed his hand, and he nodded to her in the darkness of the back seat. The driver was silent for the remainder of the trip downtown. When they reached Sally's building, the fare on the meter was a dollar and ten cents. Jonah tipped the driver a quarter, and got out of the cab to follow Sally, who had taken the umbrella.

"Hey, just a minute, buddy," the driver said.

Jonah hesitated. He ran back to the taxi, stooped to peer through the open front window, and said, "What is it?" The rain was beating down on his head and back. It splashed noisily in the curbside puddles, drummed on the roof of the taxi.

The driver had his hand extended, the dollar bill resting under the dime and the quarter. "You sure you don't need this more than I do?" he asked.

Jonah looked at him steadily.

"Yes, I do," he answered and gingerly picked the quarter from his palm. "Good night," he said politely. He turned away from the cab, and ran through the rain and up the steps to where Sally was wrestling with the umbrella, simultaneously trying to unlock the vestibule door. Behind him, the driver shouted, "What're you, a wise guy?" and gunned the taxi away from the curb.

They climbed the four flights to her apartment. Jonah's trouser legs were sticking to him. The shoulders of his raincoat were soaked through to his suit jacket. Sally quickly unlocked the door and said, "You must be drenched," which he acknowledged with a surly nod as they entered the apartment. He took off the dripping raincoat at once, and then removed his jacket and draped it over the living room radiator. His shirt was wet too, clinging to his shoulders and chest. He took off his glasses and dried them briefly on his handkerchief.

"Here," Sally said, "try some of this."

"What is it?"

"Spanish brandy."

Jonah took the extended glass. "Let's drink to the little old lady huddled in the doorway of Stern's," he said.

"It bothers you, doesn't it?" Sally said.

"Yes."

"Then admit it."

"I admit it."

"No, you're joking about it."

"All right, I won't joke about it. It bothers me. It bothers the hell out of me. I don't like the idea of having beat an old lady out of a taxicab. All right? I may be a son of a bitch, but I'm not that ruthless."

"Who says you're a son of a bitch, Jonah?"

"I don't know," he said. He could hear a radio playing somewhere in the building. In the bathroom, the rain drummed noisily on the skylight. "Listen," he said.

"I hear it."

Her head was studiously bent as she poured brandy into her own glass, her light brown hair hanging over one cheek, her eyes intent on the glass and the lip of the bottle. Watching her, he felt curiously relaxed, as though this tiny apartment, the sound of the rain and the distant radio, the feeling of contained heat, this tall and slender girl gracefully putting the cork back into the bottle, all evoked a memory for him that was both comforting and secure. And then, as she turned from the coffee table, head rising, soft brown hair settling gently into place beside the curve of her cheek as though in slow motion, her eyes meeting his, her mouth slowly widening into a smile, everything so slow and easy and tirelessly simple, he remembered the alcohol ring on the bedroom dresser, where Christie's glass of sherry had rested through the night, and the morning had dawned bleakly on the dead and floating fruit flies of their marriage. Without realizing he was about to say it, without recognizing his need to tell her about it, he said "Have you ever been to San Francisco?"

"No," she said. "Whatever made you think of San Francisco?"

"It rained the whole weekend we were there," he said, and shrugged.

She waited. She looked at him expectantly, and waited.

"My partner," he said.

"What?"

"We went to San Francisco together. Have you ever been inside a prison?"

"No."

"You wouldn't like it."

"I guess not."

Silence again, the rain unceasing, the distant radio carrying snatches of melody on the night air, unrecognizable, and still she waited and he thought, What the hell do you want from me? and realized, of course, that she had asked for nothing.

"What is it?" she said.

"What?"

"A… a strange look just came over your face."

"No," he said. "Nothing."

"Tell me."

"Nothing," he said.

She nodded, a curious nod that was more like a shrug, and then she sat and crossed her legs, still waiting, knowing he would tell her when he was ready, and wondering if she wanted him to tell her, and remembering the way Hadad had kept referring to him as her boy friend. The internal revenue agent's name had been Ronny, and she'd been very fond of him. Even Gertie had liked him, but of course Gertie didn't know he was married and lived in Scarsdale with his wife and small son. She had not been to bed with a man since she and Ronny ended it in April. She felt no desire now, and yet she knew without question that she would go to bed with Jonah Willow tonight, and she wondered why.

"We were asked to defend a prisoner out there, that's all," Jonah said. "At San Quentin."

"I see."

"He'd killed one of the guards. Said the man had been harassing him."

"Had he?" she asked.

"Who knows? The guard was dead, so we certainly couldn't ask him. Smith maintained — that was his name, Orville Smith — said the guard had made things impossible for him from the moment he arrived. He was serving a life term, you see. He'd murdered his wife and daughter. Killed them with an axe." Jonah paused. "A California firm was handling the case, they called us in to see if we'd be interested. We… our firm… Raymond's and mine… had built a reputation by then and… there was a mandatory death penalty involved, you see, if Smith got convicted, that was the law."

"Did you take the case?"

"Well… it seemed to me, it seemed to me there had been provocation. After all, Smith was pretty much at this fellow's mercy, you know, and had to take his abuse and listen to his remarks. What finally caused him to crack, in fact, was a simple remark, that's all. Smith said the guard called him 'Lizzie' one day, after Lizzie Borden, and that was it. They were in the dining hall, and Smith grabbed his fork and went for the guard's throat and didn't quit until the man was dead. It took four other guards to pull him away, he was a powerful man, six-four, with arms like this."

"Did you take the case, Jonah?"

"I didn't even like the man, I couldn't possibly bring myself to like him and yet… I… I did feel he had been abused. I tried to explain this to Raymond, why I thought we should take the case. We were sitting on the porch of the guest cottage, Raymond and I, looking out at the rain and high illuminated walls of the prison, and Raymond very quietly suggested that maybe I was confusing my private life with my professional life. When I asked him what he meant, he said maybe I was equating the actual murder of a wife and child with what was only the symbolic murder of a wife and child. Now what's that supposed to mean, I said, and he said I'm talking about the divorce, and… and about Christie drinking he said, Your divorce. I'd been divorced that August, you see. Just two months before Raymond and I went to San Quentin together."

"I see."

"He'd always been very fond of Christie. My wife. My former wife."

"I see."

"So… so I could understand why he was disturbed about the divorce, and… and about Christie drinking and… and the things she was doing. He'd known her from… from when we were first married you see, when things were very different. But I couldn't understand what any of this had to do with defending Smith, so I… I tried to be very calm because Raymond was my closest friend and my partner… I… I very calmly explained that I didn't feel any guilt about the failure of my marriage, that Christie had made it virtually impossible to go on living with her, and that we'd both agreed divorce would be best for all parties concerned, including Amy. My daughter. I have a twelve-year-old daughter."

Sally nodded.

"Raymond just said, Sure, Jonah, sure, and then, all of a sudden, he said, I don't want to defend this man. So I… I asked him why he didn't want to defend him and he said because Smith is repulsive and rotten and obviously guilty, and I said, Wait a minute, and he said, No, you wait a minute, Jonah, defending that bastard would be contrary to everything I believe about law and justice.

"The rain was coming down, we sat on the porch in those big wicker chairs painted white by the prisoners, and I said, Raymond, you know this man's rights are in danger of being violated, and he said, Don't give me any more of that shit, Jonah, all you want is another newspaper headline. And… and then he… he told me I… was nothing but a self-seeking son of a bitch who had never really understood Christie, who had forced her to become what she was by totally ignoring her needs in my ruthless… he used that word, ruthless, he said… in my ruthless ambition to become the biggest and best-known lawyer in the history of the goddamn profession, that… that I was responsible for the divorce and for… for ruining a… a damn sweet lady."

Jonah's glass was empty.

He put it to his lips, discovered the brandy was gone, and then put the glass down on the table.

"I guess Smith was guilty, Sally, but… even if he had stabbed that officer in full view of God knows how many men, the thing wasn't premeditated, it wasn't malicious, it couldn't have been, it was a spur-of-the-moment act provoked by the guard. Raymond had… Raymond had no right to… to say the things he said to me.

"But they were said. They were out. And when people pass that certain line, wherever it may be…" His voice trailed. "There… there are things people say to each other that can never be retracted. Christie and I had said those things, we had hurled all the goddamn filthy words we could think of, we had accused, we had condemned, and it ended." He closed his eyes and sighed. "And then Raymond and I said all there was to say. And there was no going back." He looked up suddenly. "I keep losing partners."

"Maybe you don't need a partner, Jonah."

"Maybe not."

"Did you take the case?"

"Yes. I argued it with everything that was in me, just to prove, just to show Raymond that he was wrong, just to win it, and to show him. Mitigating circumstances, I said, provocation, your Honor, here was a man in bondage being tormented by his jailer. We could say, your Honor, we could almost say this security officer was a man seeking his own death, tormenting a convicted murderer. We could in a sense, your Honor, say this man was intent on committing suicide, your Honor, we could say he took his own life. And must we now take yet another life to justify the vagaries of this troubled mind, the labyrinthine motivation of a man intent on suicide? Must we do that, your Honor, to satisfy whatever primitive clamor for blood we recognize within ourselves? When it was all over, they sent him to the gas chamber. Period. I lost."

She suddenly knew why she would allow him to make love to her, knew it even before he said what he said next.

"I'm going to lose this one too, Sally."

"How do you know?"

"Driscoll is guilty."

"That doesn't mean you'll lose."

"Maybe I want to lose."

"Will that help?"

"He's guilty," Jonah said. "He sat in that courtroom today and constructed a totally plausible network of deceit, attempting to trace the workings of the mind, something Brackman couldn't hope to contradict. Iceman is coal man, and coal man is Colman, and Colman is death, and death is the iceman in The Iceman Cometh, expecting us to swallow a literary association test delivered with a straight face. Peter is a phallic reference, and Morley is a Negro he knew as a boy, renamed Christopher in honor of the novelist, and Major Catharine Astor is definitely not Constantine's major, and yet Driscoll knew the color of her hair and the minor incident of showing the colonel his medical record, but no this is not the basis for the letter-carrying scene. Nor was the 105th Division based on Constantine's. Then where did it come from? How in hell could he have hit upon those identical three digits, and why didn't he have a psychological explanation for them, too, the way he had for every other alleged similarity? He slipped the other day when we were having drinks together, he said, 'I won't explain that number,' and then he changed it to 'I can't explain it,' but he meant 'I won't,' goddamn it. And the reason he wouldn't is because the number stuck in his head, it remained in his head after he saw Constantine's play — he's been a theatergoer from the time he was twelve, he's probably seen every piece of garbage ever presented on the Broadway stage, he practically admitted as much to me in private. So how could he tell us where he got that number, when telling us would have sent the case straight up the chimney?

"He's a lying bastard, and a thief, and I'm defending him."

Sally put down her glass, rose, and walked to where he was standing. Very gently, she put her hands on his shoulders and lifted her face to be kissed. She thought how odd it was that men could talk about losing partners and losing cases and even losing wives, and never once realize what they had really lost. She kissed him and hoped that when he lost this case as well (because he was defending a guilty man he thought was James Driscoll and not himself) perhaps he would remember he had been to bed with her, the way the English teacher in Schenectady would always remember he had been to bed with her.

She knew suddenly that she would not be seeing much of Jonah Willow once the trial ended.

She knew this with certainty, and with sadness, and relief. There were far too many things he was still trying to forget, far too many ghosts in his life; she had no desire to become yet another one of them. She hoped only that he would remember her.

Once she had asked her mother to make believe she was a person, and her mother had said, No, Sally, that coat isn't right for you, take it off.

The rain stopped at midnight, just as they came out of the movie theater and into the street. They walked up Broadway together, Ebie's arm through his, watching the after-theater crowd, relishing the noise and the clamor of New York City, so unlike what they knew in Vermont. Under the marquee of the Astor, a crowd of people in formal wear stood laughing and chatting, trying to get taxis, boisterous and loud, obviously enjoying themselves. The women wore mink coats over flowing gowns of pale blue and lucid pink, corsages pinned to bodice or waist or — as with one pretty brunette in a lustrous dark fur — pinned to her hair, just above the ear. There was a holiday mood outside the hotel and in the lobby as well, where men in dinner jackets told dirty jokes to each other and women laughed raucously with them, and then remembered to blush. A man dressed as Santa Claus, drunk as a lord, came staggering toward the revolving doors, snapping his fingers in time to the music that came from some hidden ballroom. Ebie's face suddenly broke into a grin.

"Listen," she said.

"What is it?"

"Listen."

He could not place the tune. Violins carried it on the noisy lobby air, evoking a mood, frustratingly elusive.

"Come," she said, and suddenly took his hand.

They went through the lobby, searching out the source of the music, following the strains of the orchestra until at last they stood just outside the Rose Room, and nodded to each other like conspirators. She raised her arms, and Driscoll automatically took her hand and cradled her waist, and they began dancing silently in the corridor outside the ballroom.

He felt again the way he'd felt when they were young together, in love together, possessed of a confidence that was now alien to him. She was light in his arms, her feet skimmed over the polished floor. They danced past two old ladies in gloves and hats, who looked at them in wonder. The old ladies delighted him, their looks of astonishment, the way the one in the purple hat opened her eyes wide to express shock, outrage, surprise, wonder, bemusement, even a little touch of wickedness. He wanted to scoop up both old ladies, catch them both in his arms along with Ebie, and dance them down the corridor and out the side door and onto 44th Street and over to Sardi's and maybe clear to the Hudson River and across to Jersey and points west, all the way back to their homes in Albuquerque or Des Moines, and then on past California and across the Pacific to exotic Oriental places that would cause the lady in the purple hat to open her eyes wide again and drop her jaw in shock, outrage, surprise, wonder, bemusement, and wicked glee. He felt, when things were right, as they were now, the same happiness he had known in those years before he left for the Army.

Their feet no longer touched the ground, they seemed to float on air an inch above the floor of the corridor. One of the old ladies was laughing now, all the world loves a lover, a bellhop carrying a wreath of flowers danced out of their way as though he were part of a consuming ballet, the world would soon be dancing with them, people would come out into the streets dancing and singing and shouting their fool heads off because James Randolph Driscoll and Edna Belle Dearborn were in love.

Had been in love, he thought.

As suddenly as they had begun dancing, they stopped.

October, he thought.

Out of breath, Ebie laughed and squeezed his hand.

1950, he thought.

He looked down at her and tried to remember what it had been like before then, and wondered how it could ever be that way again. They walked to the elevators in silence.

I got a medal in October of 1950, he thought, it was pinned right between my eyes, I've been wearing it ever since.

"Oh, my, that was fun," Ebie said.

They entered the waiting car. The doors closed. The elevator streaked up the shaft, cables whining and groaning.

I got my medal for being a nice guy and a fool, he thought, that's what they gave medals for back in those days.

I wrote all about my medal in a book called The Paper Dragon, perhaps you've read it, madam. It's about the Korean War, yes, and about this nice young man who is victimized by these horrible people who eventually cause his death, a symbolic death, madam, Oh yes, an actual death in the book, but really symbolic — I testified to that effect before the learned and honorable judge today. It is now a matter of record that the death of Lieutenant Alex Cooper, according to his creator (although such status is still in serious doubt), was intended as a symbolic death. If you're ever haggling over that one at a literary tea, just look up the trial record and you'll know the death was supposed to be symbolic. Yes, madam, my medal was delivered in the crisp October, it was a nice medal to receive. I wore it into battle when they came charging across the river, it gave me courage because I didn't give a damn anymore, you see. That's why medals are awarded, to give you courage.

They are all looking for medals in that courtroom, all except me. I got my medal, and I described my medal, and it took every ounce of strength I had, and there's nothing more inside me, nothing left to say or do. I wanted only to die quietly on that farm I bought in Vermont, so why did you have to come along, Mr. Constantine? Why did you have to start this ridiculous suit, opening all the old wounds again, why did you have to do this, Mr. Constantine?

Oh, sure, I can understand. You want a chestful of medals, right? You want all those millions API made on the film, and you want credit for the book as well because you think the book was the medal when it was really only the catalogue description of the medal. The real medal is pinned right here between my eyes, and I'm sure you wouldn't want that, Mr. Constantine, because it has hurt like hell ever since 1950, can't you see the scars, yes, quite painful when it rains. What'll they do if you win this case? Will they have to tell everybody you really wrote The Paper Dragon? Will they pull back all the copies and cross out my name, so sorry, put yours in its place? Is that what they do when someone has made a terrible mistake, oh my goodness, we've credited the wrong man with authorship. We gave the medal to the right man, however, and if The Paper Dragon is a fairly accurate description of the events leading up to that singular decoration, how then is it possible that the chronicle was stolen? Strange, passing strange indeed.

Do you know what I managed to do in court today?

Under oath?

I managed to tell the truth, and yet not tell the truth.

It was quite simple. I could do it with a completely straight face and hardly any increase in my pulse rate. I wouldn't be surprised if I could beat a lie detector test, I'm getting very expert at telling only partial truth. Maybe I'll suggest to his Honorable McIntyre that they give me a lie detector test and ask me if I wrote The Paper Dragon, and I will say, Yes, I wrote it, and then they'll ask me if I stole it from Constantine's play, and I'll say, No, I did not steal it from anybody's play, I stole it from in here, and in here, that's where I stole it. It's a secret I stole from a dying man who has been suffering from a rare incurable malady since October of 1950, that is who I stole it from, whom.

Then how do you account for this, sir, and how do you account for that, sir, and how do you account for the fact, sir, and tell us, sir, tell us, and I'll partial-truth that infernal machine until it short circuits itself and goes completely out of business, I can beat any machine in the house.

I've already told you once, I told the world once, isn't once enough? You know about my medal, what the hell more do you need? Shall I spell it out for you syllable by painful syllable, go over it one more time for the slow ones, cater to the lip readers, spare me, please. Make what you will of it, it's over and done with, the trial is over, the case is closed. I don't even want credit for the book, give the damn book to Constantine, let him go tell his mother he wrote it, I don't care.

The elevator doors opened. They stepped out into the corridor and walked to their room. At the door, she hesitated and put her hand on his arm.

"Dris," she said, "there's still a chance."

"For what? The case is closed. Tomorrow they'll make their set speeches, and that'll be that."

"There's something to save," she whispered.

"What's there to save, Ebie?"

"Us."

"Don't make me laugh."

"You thought so once."

"I never thought so."

"When you were discharged, when you came home, you tried to understand."

"I tried to understand for eleven goddamn years. I never could, Ebie. So forget it. I have."

"You haven't forgotten it, you've only exorcised it."

"That's the same thing."

"No. You can't erase something by writing a book about it."

"I wrote a book about the Army in Korea."

"Dris, if you won't tell them the truth, I will." She looked up at him, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes: "I'll tell them about the 105th," she said.

He did not answer her. He stared at her and tried to fathom whether or not there was substance to her threat, but he did not speak.

"I know," she said. "I know it's not a hundred and five."

He kept staring at her.

"I know it's two numbers, Dris. I know it's a ten and a five, and I know why and I'll tell them why."

"And kill me twice," he said.

"No. And save you once."

He turned away from her and unlocked the door. He hesitated in the doorway, seemed about to say something, and then went into the room instead.

Ebie followed him in soundlessly.