“Jesus Christ.”

“Indeed. I was summoned from my bed and told the circumstances. The actress was still sleeping peacefully, and Van Fleet, as you might imagine, was distressed at having been caught in the act. While they were waiting for me to arrive, he threatened the nursing supervisor if she reported him. She did, of course, and I made short work of young Dr. Van Fleet.”

“I can imagine.”

“The nursing supervisor cleaned up the patient and put her clothing in order, and no more was said about it. I should have called the police, I suppose, and had him charged with rape, but you see the position I was in: the papers would have had an absolute field day, the actress would have sued us – and won – and this hospital would have been done irreparable harm as a result.”

“And the actress never knew?”

Garfield shook his head. “I lived in fear for months that she would turn up pregnant – she didn’t, thank God. I’m not sure what I would have done if that had happened.” Garfield sighed. “You see why I’m concerned that this go no further.”

“I do, and I promise you it won’t.”

Garfield stood up and slipped out of his white coat. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to run now.” He got into his suit jacket. “I hope this story might somehow help you.”

“It might, Dr. Garfield, and I thank you for confiding in me.” He shook the doctor’s hand and turned to go.

“Mr. Barrington,” Garfield said, “whatever became of Van Fleet? What’s he doing now?”

“He’s a mortician,” Stone said.

Garfield gave a little shudder. “How very appropriate,” he said.

Chapter 47

When Stone woke on Thursday morning, his first thought was that only three days remained until Sasha’s dinner party. His second thought was that there was someone in his bathroom.

It could be only one person, he knew; she had a key, and she knew the code for the security system. He was flabbergasted and revolted that she should be in his house only days after her marriage, but his revulsion vanished when she came out of the bathroom.

She was naked, and the sight of her body had always had a powerful effect on him. It came to him at that moment that he was lost; that she could, if she wished, lead him around by the cock for the rest of his life. So this is obsession, he thought, as she silently slid under the sheets and drew close to him. He gave himself to it.

“You know this was a completely disgusting and immoral thing to do, don’t you?” he asked when they had finished and lay panting in each other’s arms. He was not joking.

“Of course, my darling,” she replied. “That’s why it’s so much fun.”

“Has anyone ever completely satisfied you?”

“You satisfy me, for a time, but to answer your question honestly, no. At least, no man ever has. I knew a girl in college who could satisfy me longer than anyone. She was only twenty, but she knew everything about pleasing a woman, because she was a woman, I suppose.”

“Do you still see her?”

“No. She committed suicide our senior year, shot herself with a pistol borrowed from a boy we knew. She left a note saying she had done it for me, because she knew she could never have me, and she wanted to prove she really loved me. The housemother in the dorm found the note and showed it to me, then destroyed it.”

“How did you react to that?”

“I was elated. It did wonders for my self-esteem, that someone could love me so much. I never loved her, of course, I just liked having her make love to me.”

“You don’t make love, Cary. You merely fuck.”

Cary raised herself on an elbow and looked at him. “Do you really think so?” she asked wonderingly.

“Yes.”

She nodded. “You’re right, I think, but I do fuck surpassingly well, don’t I?”

“You do,” Stone said; then he fucked her again.

When they had exhausted each other, she lay on her back, her breasts pointing at the ceiling. “You think it’s terrible that I’m still fucking you, now that I’m married,” she said.

“Yes. And it’s just as bad that I’m still fucking you.”

“You wait. One of these days, perhaps before very long, you’ll get married, but you’ll still want to fuck me. And believe me, my darling, you will. Because I’ll never let go of you.”

“Yes,” he said, “I will.” Whenever she wanted him, for as long as she wanted him.

On Thursday nights at Elaine’s, the big table across from the bar was kept for the guys – the regulars who had been coming for years, whom Elaine had fed when they were broke, the starving writers who might not have made it in New York without the nurturing and bonding that went on in an uptown neighborhood saloon. They wandered in and out during the evening, bitching about their agents and the promotion budgets for their most recent books, moaning about the pitiful advance sales and the huge reserve for returns on their royalty statements.

There were guys who were getting a million dollars a book now – sometimes more – and others who were getting twenty-five thousand and pretending it was two hundred. There were guys who had given up on writing fiction and were churning out screenplays for the movies and television, and there were guys who were doing it all – books, magazines, television series – the works. They were bonded by the common knowledge that nobody – not their wives, sweet-hearts, or publishers – believed they really worked for a living, and, sometimes, they weren’t too sure of that themselves.

Stone often sat with the bunch these days, and he liked them. He wasn’t exactly sure he was working for a living either, so they had something in common. Most Thursday nights, somebody would bring a girl, and they were always smart and pretty. Stone envied them their girls.

This Thursday night, drained of desire by Cary, relaxed, and depressed, Stone got drunk. He had three Wild Turkeys before dinner – which was, in itself, a big mistake – drank most of a bottle of wine with his pasta, and, when Elaine said she was buying, couldn’t resist a Sambuca or two. He switched to mineral water for a while, until he felt steadier, then started on cognac. By the time he and a couple of other guys closed the place at 4:00 A.M., he was ambulatory, but only just.

He walked carefully from the place, uncharacteristically gave the burn on duty a buck, and thought for a minute about whether he should walk. He usually walked; it was good for the knee and for the gut, but tonight walking seemed out of the question. He flagged a cab, gave the driver the exact address, explaining that he wished to be driven to the door, not to the corner, then hunkered way down in the backseat and tried to keep from passing out. That was what he was doing when the shooting started.

They had pulled up to the light, and the cabbie had decided he felt like talking. “You follow baseball?” he asked, half-turning toward the backseat.

Stone was trying to answer him when there was a sound like a watermelon being dropped from a great height, and the driver’s face exploded, leaving a huge hole spouting blood. As Stone hit the floor of the backseat, the screech of rubber on pavement told him the shooter was on his way.

Stone scrambled out of the cab, and, operating instinctively, yanked the left side door open, shoved the dead driver aside, and got the cab in gear. A block and a half ahead, a van was roaring away. Stone stood on it. He switched the blinking caution lights on, leaned on the horn, and streaked off down Second Avenue after the van.

There was almost no traffic on the avenue at 4:00 A.M. “Where the fuck are the blue-and-whites?” he demanded aloud, suddenly aware that he was now cold sober. “Where are you, you sons of bitches?” The cab was new, and he gained on the van for a minute, until the driver realized he was being pursued. Still, Stone was keeping pace a block behind. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get any closer, since he wasn’t armed; all he wanted to do was to attract a blue-and-white or two. He tried to make out the license plate on the van and failed.