The instant I could see, I checked the road ahead and behind as fast as I could swivel my head, and of course nothing was in sight in either direction or Katie wouldn't have done it; and the ditches beside us were so shallow they were almost nonexistent and entirely dry. I said, "Marvelous. Absolutely great. Let's do it again! On the parkway coming home tonight."

"Oh, God, you were funny," she said, hardly able to get out the words. "You looked so funny!" I grinned at her, very pleased with this nutty girl, and at that moment and for all that weekend Rube Prien's mystery project had no chance at all with me.

I'm not going to say everything there is to say about Kate and me. I've read such accounts, completely explicit and detailed, nothing omitted; and when they've been good I've liked them. Sometimes I've even learned something about people from them, almost like an actual experience, and that's very good indeed. But my nature is different, that's all. I don't like to and I could not reveal everything about myself. I like to read them, but I wouldn't like to write one. I'm not holding back anything all that unique, in any case. So if now and then you think you can read between the lines, you may be right; or may not. Anyway, everything I might possibly find to say about Kate and me isn't what I'm trying to get down.

During that weekend I didn't believe I was even thinking very much about Rube and his proposal. Yet at two-thirty Monday afternoon I finished the last of my "lovelier you" soap sketches, walked into Frank Dapp's office, laid them on his desk, started to turn and leave, and instead my mouth opened, and I stood listening to myself give notice. I'd saved some money, I told Frank; now, before it was too late, I was going to take some time and see if I could make it as a serious artist. It was a lie, and yet something I'd often thought of. "You want to paint?" Frank said, leaning back in his chair.

"No. Painting's pretty much all abstract and non-representational these days.''

"You anti-abstract or something?"

"No. Actually I'm kind of a Mondrian fan, though I think he painted himself into a corner. But my talent, if any, is all representational; so I'm going to draw."

Frank nodded, looking wistful. It's what he wanted to do, but he had two kids in high school who'd be expecting to go to college. He said if I was in a hurry I could leave as soon as I got rid of my current work, that he wanted to buy me a good-luck drink before I left, and I thanked him, feeling lousy about the lie, and took the elevator to the building lobby and the public phone booths. There I dialed the number Rube had given me.

It took a long time to get him on the line. I had to speak to two people, first a woman, then a man, and then wait for what must have been two full minutes; the operator came on for more money. Finally Rube spoke, and I said, "I phoned to say that if I do this I'll have to tell Katherine what's going on."

There was a longish pause. Then he said, "Well, you won't have much of anything to tell until we're sure you're a candidate. If it turns out you aren't, we'll thank you for your trouble, and in that case I don't think you'll have to tell her anything about it. Can we agree on that?"

"Yeah."

"If you reach the point of joining the project, knowing what we're doing" — he hesitated — "well, damn it, if you have to tell her, I guess you have to. We have two guys who are married, and their wives know. We swear them to secrecy, and hope, that's all."

"Okay. What would happen if she blabbed, Rube? Or if I did? Just out of curiosity."

"A man in a skintight black suit and a mask will come down your chimney and shoot you with a soundless blow dart, paralyzing you. Then we seal you in a big block of clear plastic till the year 2001. Nothing would happen, for crysake! You think the CIA murders you or something? All we can do is pick people we think we can trust. And we've seen Katherine, you know; inquired about her, very discreetly and all that. Of the two of you, I trust her the most. I take it you're joining us?"

I felt an impulse to hesitate, but didn't bother. "Yeah."

"Okay, the first day you can make it come around about nine in the morning; here's the address."

And so, three days later, on Thursday morning a little after nine, too tense to sit in a cab, I was walking through the rain, the good weather finally over apparently, looking for the address Rube had given me. I was feeling more and more puzzled; this was the upper West Side, an area of small factories, machine shops, wholesalers, binderies. Cars were solidly parked on both sides of every street, their off wheels up over the curbs. The walks were littered with wet paper, crushed orange-drink cartons, broken glass, and there were no other pedestrians. Checking addresses, I walked west, coming nearer and nearer the river. I passed BUZZ BANNISTER, neon-sign manufacturer, in a dirty white-stucco building, the windows piled with cardboard cartons. Next door was FIORE BROS., WHOLESALE NOVELTIES, a padlock on the door and a smashed wine bottle in the doorway. Across the street, silent and deserted in the rain, hundreds of rusting car bodies compacted into cubes were stacked behind a steel-mesh fence.

I was beginning to wonder if I'd been hoaxed, and Rube Prien were… what? An actor, possibly, hired to trick me in some elaborate practical joke? It didn't seem likely, yet the number he'd given me, if it existed at all, had to be in the block just ahead but I could see that the entire block was occupied by just one great building, six stories high, of soot-darkened brick, surmounted by a weathered wooden water tower, and in a wide band of faded white paint just below the roof line I read BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING STORAGE, 555-8811, and I could tell by looking at it that that sign had been there for years.

The walls were windowless except at the corner just ahead and across the street from me. There, at street level, two plate-glass windows were lettered BEEKEY BROTHERS in chipped gold-leaf. In the tiny office behind the windows a girl sat at a desk back of a counter operating a billing machine. High up on the wall facing me, a rectangular panel painted on the bricks read LOCAL AND LONG DISTANCE; STORAGE OUR SPECIALTY; AGENTS FOR ASSOCIATED VAN LINES. On the street several stories below this, a green van lettered BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVING AND STORAGE stood before a metal-slat truck door in the side of the building. Two men in white coveralls stood tossing stacks of protective blankets into the back of the van.

There was nothing to do except walk on toward the building, but I knew the number on its office door wouldn't be the one Rube had given me, and it wasn't. I kept walking. For a full block I walked through the rain beside the weathered brick wall. Between it and the sidewalk in a narrow strip of hard-packed dirt grew a scraggly, uncared-for, foot-high hedge. Cellophane fragments were trapped in its stiff little branches, dirty words were spray-painted on the walls, and I wondered if I'd have the nerve to ask Frank for my job back.

Set in the building wall at the end of the block was an ordinary wood door with a weathered brass knob and key circle. The gray paint was cracked and peeled to the bare wood in places, and the door looked locked. But stenciled on the wet bricks above it in white paint so faded you could barely make it out was the number Rube had given me. I rapped on the door panel, and there was a silence except for the sky-high roar of the Thursday-morning city and the sound of the rain on the hoods and tops of the parked cars behind me. I had no belief that my knock would be answered, or that there was anyone on the other side to hear it.

But there was. The knob rattled, turned, the door opened, and a black-haired young man in white coveralls looked out; in red stitching over a breast pocket it said Don, and he had a copy of Sports Illustrated in one hand. He said, "Hi; come on in. Boy, what a lousy day," and I walked in past him. As he closed the door I read, BEEKEY BROTHERS, MOVERS, in red block-letters across his back.