Besides, I had no reason to think I could crack the security of one of the neighboring buildings, either. They’d have security-conscious doormen and concierges of their own.

Flowers wouldn’t work, not for Leona Tremaine, not for anyone else. Other things get delivered to buildings-liquor, ice, anchovy pizza-but I’d used the deliveryman number and I was sure I couldn’t get by with it again. I thought of various disguises. I could be a blind man. I already had the dark glasses; all I’d need would be a white cane. Or I could be a priest or a doctor. Priests and doctors can get in anywhere. A stethoscope or a Roman collar will get you in places you can’t even crack with a clipboard.

But not here. They’d phone upstairs, whoever I said I was, whoever I was presumably visiting.

A blue-and-white patrol car cruised slowly down the avenue. I turned a little to the side, putting my face in shadow. The car coasted through a red light and kept going.

I couldn’t just stand there, could I? And I’d be more comfortable inside than out, sitting than standing. And, since there didn’t seem to be any way I could work that night, there was no real reason to abstain from strong drink.

I crossed the street and went around the corner to Big Charlie’s.

It was a much more opulent establishment than the name would have led you to expect. Deep carpet, recessed lighting, banquette tables in dark corners, a piano bar with well-padded and backed barstools. Waitresses in starched black-and-white uniforms and a bartender in a tuxedo. I was glad I was wearing a suit and I felt deeply ashamed of the sneakers and the fedora.

I doffed the latter and tucked the former beneath one of the banquettes. I ordered a single-malt Scotch with a splash of soda and a twist of lemon peel, and it came in a man-sized cut glass tumbler that looked and felt like Waterford. And perhaps it was. Stores sold a whole pint of whiskey for what this place charged for a drink, so Big Charlie ought to be able to spend a fair amount on glassware.

Not that I begrudged him a cent. I sipped and thought and sipped and thought, and a pianist with a touch like a masseuse and a voice like melted butter worked her way through Cole Porter, and I sent my mind around the corner to the Charlemagne and looked for a way in.

There’s always a way in. Somewhere in the course of my second drink I thought of phoning in a bomb scare. Let ’em evacuate the building. Then I could just mingle with the crowd and wander back in. If I was wearing pajamas and a robe at the time of mingling, who’d think for a moment that I didn’t belong there?

Now where was I going to get pajamas and a robe?

I found some interesting answers to that question, the most fanciful of which involved a daring burglary of Brooks Brothers, and I was just finishing my third drink when a woman came over to my table and said, “Well, which are you? Lost or stolen or strayed?”

“A. A. Milne,” I remembered.

“Right!”

“Somebody’s mother. James James Morrison Morrison-”

“Weatherby George Dupree,” she finished for me. “Now how did I know that you would know? Perhaps it’s because you look so soulful. And so lonely. It’s said that loneliness cries out to loneliness. I don’t know who said that, but I don’t believe it was Milne.”

“Probably not,” and there was a silence, and I should have invited her to join me. I didn’t.

No matter. She sat down beside me anyhow, a supremely confident woman. She was wearing a low-cut black dress and a string of pearls and she smelled of costly perfume and expensive whiskey, but then that last was the only kind Big Charlie sold.

“I’m Eve,” she said. “Eve DeGrasse. And you are-”

I very nearly said Adam. “Donald Brown,” I said.

“What’s your sign, Donald?”

“Gemini. What’s yours?”

“I have several,” she said. She took my hand, turned it, traced the lines in my palm with a scarlet-tipped index finger. “‘Yield’ is one of them. ‘Slippery When Wet’ is another.”

“Oh.”

The waitress, unbidden, brought us both fresh drinks. I wondered how many it would take before this woman looked good to me. It wasn’t that she was unattractive, exactly, but that she was a sufficient number of years older than I to be out of bounds. She was well built and well coiffed, and I suppose her face had been lifted and her tummy tucked, but she was old enough to be-well, not my mother, maybe, but perhaps my mother’s younger sister. Not that my own mother actually had a younger sister, but-

“Do you live near here, Donald?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re from out of town, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“Sometimes one can sense these things.” Her hand dropped to my thigh, gave a little squeeze. “You’re all alone in the big city.”

“That’s right.”

“Staying in some soulless hotel. Oh, a comfortable room, I’m sure of that, but lifeless and anonymous. And so lonely.”

“So lonely,” I echoed, and drank some of my Scotch. One or two more drinks, I thought, and it wouldn’t much matter where I was or who I was with. If this woman had a bed, any sort of a bed, I could pass out in it until daybreak. I might not win any points for gallantry that way, but I’d at least be safe, and God knew I was in no condition to wander the streets of New York with half the NYPD looking for me.

“You don’t have to stay in that hotel room,” she purred.

“You live near here?”

“Indeed I do. I live at Big Charlie’s.”

“At Big Charlie’s?”

“That’s right.”

“Here?” I said stupidly. “You live here in this saloon?”

“Not here, silly.” She gave my leg another companionable squeeze. “I live at the real Big Charlie’s. The big Big Charlie’s. Oh, but you’re from out of town, Donald. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Charlemagne equals Charles the Great equals Big Charlie. That’s how they named this place, because the owner’s a couple of fags named Les and Maurie, and they could have called it More or Less, only they didn’t. But you’re from out of town so you don’t know there’s an apartment building around the corner called the Charlemagne.”

“The Charlemagne,” I said.

“Right.”

“An apartment house.”

“Right.”

“Around the corner. And you live there.”

“Right you are, Donald Brown.”

“Well,” I said, setting my glass down unfinished. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

I recognized the doorman and the concierge and Eduardo, the kindly elevator operator. None of them recognized me. They didn’t even take a second glance at me, perhaps because they didn’t take a first glance at me, either. I could have been wearing a gorilla suit and they’d have been just as careful to avert their eyes. Ms. DeGrasse was, after all, a tenant, and I don’t suppose I was the first young man she’d ever pulled out of Big Charlie’s and brought on home, and the staff was no doubt well tipped to keep their eyes in their sockets where they belonged.

We rode the elevator clear to the fifteenth floor. I’d gulped air furiously as we walked from the bar to the building, but it takes more than a few lungfuls of New York ’s polluted atmosphere to counteract the effects of three and a half large whiskeys, and I felt a little woozy in the elevator. The light in there, unkind as it was to my companion, didn’t help either. We walked to her door, and she had more trouble opening it with the key than I generally have without one, but I let her do the honors and she got it open.

Inside, she said, “Oh, Donald!” and swept me in her arms. She was almost my height, and there was quite a bit of her. She wasn’t fat or blowsy or anything. There was just a lot of her, that’s all.

I said, “You know what? I think we could both use a drink.”

We used three. She drank hers and I dumped mine in an areca palm that looked as though it was going to die soon anyway.