"Can't I kiss you on the mouth?"

"No," Pris said, "that's too intimate."

"You can shut your eyes."

"Instead, you turn off the lights." She drew her hands away, rose and went to the wall switch. "I'll do it."

"Stop," I said. "I have an overwhelming sense of foreboding."

At the wall switch she stood hesitating. "It's not like me to be indecisive. You're undermining me, Louis. I'm sorry. I have to go on." She switched off the light, the room disappeared into darkness. I could see nothing at all.

"Pris," I said, "I'm going to drive to Portland, Oregon, and get the kosher corned beef."

"Where can I put my skirt?" Pris said from the darkness. "So it won't get wrinkled."

"This is all some crazed dream."

"No," Pris said, "it's bliss. Don't you know bliss when it runs into you and butts you in the face? Help me hang up my clothes. I have to go in fifteen minutes. Can you talk and make love at the same time or do you devolve to animal gruntings?" I could hear her rustling around in the darkness, disposing of her clothes, groping about for the bed.

"There is no bed," I said.

"Then the floor."

"It scrapes your knees."

"Not my knees; yours."

"I have a phobia," I said. "I have to have the lights on or I get the fear I'm having intercourse with a thing made out of strings and piano wire and my grandmother's old orange quilt."

Pris laughed. "That's me," she said from close by. "That perfectly describes my essence. I almost have you," she said, banging against something. "You won't escape."

"Stop it," I said. "I'm turning on the light." I managed to find the switch; I pressed it and the room burst back into being, blinding me, and there stood a fully-dressed girl. She had not taken off her clothes at all, and I stared at her in astonishment while she laughed silently to see my expression.

"It's an illusion," she said. "I was going to defeat you at the final moment, I just wanted to drive you to a pitch of sexual desire and then--" She snapped her fingers. "Gooooodnight."

I tried to smile.

"Don't take me seriously," Pris said. "Don't become emotionally involved with me. I'll break your heart."

"So who's involved?" I said hearing my voice choke. "It's a game people play in the dark. I just wanted to tear off a piece, as they say."

"I don't know that phrase." She was no longer laughing; her eyes were no longer bright. She regarded me coolly. "But I get the idea."

"I'll tell you something else. Get ready. They do have kosher corned beef in Boise. I could have picked it up any time with no trouble."

"You bastard," she said. Seating herself she picked up her shoes and put them on.

"There's sand coming in the door."

"What?" She glanced around. "What are you talking about?"

"We're trapped down here. Somebody's got a mound going above us, we'll never get out."

Sharply she said, "Stop it."

"You never should have confided in me."

"Yes, you'll use it against me to torment me." She went to the closet for her coat.

"Wasn't I tormented?" I said, following after her.

"Just now, you mean? Oh heck, I might not have run out, I might have stayed."

"If I had done just right."

"I hadn't made up my mind. It depended on you, on your ability. I expect a lot. I'm very idealistic." Having found her coat she began putting it on; reflexively I assisted her.

"We're putting clothes back on," I said, "without having taken them off."

"Now you regret," Pris said. "Regrets--that's all you're good for." She gave me a look of such loathing that I shrank back.

"I could say a few mean things about you," I said.

"You won't, though, because you know if you do I'll come back so hard with a reply that you'll drop dead on the spot."

I shrugged, unable to speak.

"It was fear," Pris said. She walked slowly down the path, toward her parked car.

"Fear, right," I said accompanying her. "Fear based on the knowledge that a thing like that has to come out of the mutual understanding and agreement of two people. It can't be forced on one by the other."

"Fear of jail, you mean." She opened the car door and got in, to sit behind the wheel. "What you ought to have done, what a real man would have done, would be to grab me by the wrist, carry me to the bed and without paying any attention to what I had to say--"

"If I had done that, you would never have stopped complaining, first to me, then to Maury, then to a lawyer, then to the police, then in a court of law to the world at large."

We were both silent, then.

"Anyhow," I said, "I got to kiss you."

"Only on the cheek."

"On the mouth," I said.

"That's a lie."

"I remember it as on the mouth," I said, and shut the car door after her.

Rolling down her window she said, "So that's going to be your story, that you got to take liberties with me."

"I'll remember it and treasure it, too," I said. "In my heart." I put my hand to my chest.

Pris started up the motor, switched on the lights and drove away.

I stood for a moment and then I walked back down the path to my motel room. We're cracking up, I said to myself. We're so tired, so demoralized, that we're at the end. Tomorrow we've got to get rid of Barrows. Pris--poor Pris is getting it the worst. And it was shutting off the Lincoln that did it. The turning point came there.

Hands in my pockets I stumbled back to my open door.

The next morning there was plenty of warm sunlight, and I felt a good deal better without even getting up from my bed. And then, after I had gotten up and shaved, had breakfast at the motel cafe of hotcakes and bacon and coffee and orange juice and had read the newspaper, I felt as good as new. Really recovered.

It shows what breakfast does, I said to myself. Healed, maybe? I'm back in there a whole, well man again?

No. We're better but not healed. Because we weren't well in the first place, and you can't restore health where there wasn't any health to begin with. _What is this sickness?_

Pris has had it almost to the point of death. And it has touched me, moved into me and lodged there. And Maury and Barrows and after him all the rest of us until my father; my father has it the least.

Dad! I had forgotten; he was coming over.

Hurrying outside, I hailed a taxi.

I was the first to reach the office of MASA ASSOCIATES. A moment later, from the office window, I saw my Chevrolet Magic Fire parking. Out stepped Pris. Today she wore a blue cotton dress and a long-sleeved blouse; her hair was tied up and her face was scrubbed and shiny.

As she entered the office she smiled at me. "I'm sorry I used the wrong word last night. Maybe next time. No harm done."

"No harm done," I said.

"Do you mean that, Louis?"

"No," I said, returning her smile.

The office door opened and Maury entered. "I got a good night's rest. By god, buddy boy, we'll take this nogoodnik Barrows for every last cent he's got."

Behind him came my dad, in his dark, striped, trainconductur's suit. He greeted Pris gravely, then turned to Maury and me. "Is he here, yet?"

"No, Dad," I said. "Any time now."

Pris said, "I think we should turn the Lincoln back on. We shouldn't be afraid of Barrows."

"I agree," I said.

"No," Maury said, "and I'll tell you why. It whets Barrows' appetite. Isn't that so? Think about it."

After a time I said, "Maury's right. We'll leave it off. Barrows can kick it and pound it, but let's not turn it back on. It's greed that motivates him." And, I thought, it's fear that motivates us; so much of what we've done of late has been inspired by fear, not by common sense .

There was a knock at the door.

"He's here," Maury said, and cast a flickering glance at me.