"But I didn't lie to do it, Lester."

"All right, Maxine, don't get your blood pressure up. I'm merely pointing out that this is America. We live and die by the rule of Mammon." He drew a deep breath; put on his most rational tone. "Maxine, ask yourself whether taking this guy to court over some book that'll be off the shelves in two, three months is worth your time and temper. You may end up giving him more publicity by suing him than he would ever have got if you hadn't. You'll make an issue of it and suddenly everybody's buying his damn book. I've seen it happen so many times ... "

"So you're saying I should let him do it?" Maxine said. "Let him write some shit about Todd -- "

"Wait, wait," Lester said. "In the first place, you don't know he's going to write shit. Maybe he'll be respectful. Todd was a very popular actor. An American icon for a while."

"So was Elvis," Maxine pointed out. "It doesn't mean some sonofabitch didn't write about every dirty little secret Elvis ever had. I know, because I read the book."

"So what are you afraid of?"

"That the same will happen to Todd. People will write bullshit, and in the end it'll be the bullshit that's remembered, not the work."

Lester was usually quick with an answer, but this silenced him. Finally, he said: "Okay, let me ask you something. Do you think there's anything Rooney knows-as a matter of fact-which could be really destructive to Todd's long-term reputation?"

"Yes. I do. I think -- "

"Don't," Lester said. "Please. Don't tell me. Right now, I think it might be simpler for everyone if I didn't know."

"All right."

"Let's all go away and think about this, Maxine. And you do the same thing. I can see your concern. You've got a legacy here you want to protect. I think the question is-do you do that best by drawing attention to Rooney with a lawsuit, or by letting him publish and be damned?"

The phrase caught Maxine's attention. She'd heard it before, of course. But now it had new gravity, new meaning. She pictured Rooney publishing his book, and then having his soul dragged away to the Devil's Country for his troubles.

"Publish and be damned?" she said. "You know, that I could maybe live with."

Tammy hadn't seen a human face, real or televised, in four days; not even heard a voice. The Jacksons, her next-door neighbours, had gone off for a long weekend the previous Thursday, noisily departing with the kids yelling and car doors being slammed. Now it was Sunday. The street was always quiet on Sunday, but today it was particularly quiet. She couldn't even hear the buzzing of a lawn-mower. It was as though the outside world had disappeared.

She sat in the darkness, and let the images that had been haunting her for so long tumble over and over in her head, like filthy clothes in a washing machine, over and over, in a gruel of grey-grimy water; the madness she'd seen and heard and smelled; over and over. The trouble was, the more she turned it all over, the dirtier the washing became, as if the water had steadily turned from gray to black, and now when she got up to go to the bathroom, or to climb the stairs, she could hear it sloshing around between her ears, the muck of these terrible memories, darkening with repetition.

So this was what it was like to be crazy, she thought. Sitting in the darkness, listening to the silence while you turned things over in your mind, going to the kitchen sometimes and staring into the fridge until she'd seen everything that was in there, the rotted things and the unrotted things, then closing it again without cleaning it out; and going upstairs and washing the bathroom floor then going to lie down and sleeping ten, twelve, fourteen hours straight through, not even waking to empty your bladder. This is what it was. And if it didn't go away soon, she was going to be a permanent part of the madness; just another rag turning in the darkness, indistinguishable from the things she'd worn.

Over and over and --

The telephone rang. Its noise was so loud she jumped up from the chair in which she was sitting and tears sprang into her eyes. Absurd, to be made to weep by the sudden sound of a telephone! But the tears came pouring down, whether she thought she was ridiculous for shedding them or not.

She had unplugged the answering machine a while ago (there'd been too many messages, mostly from journalists) so now the phone just kept on ringing. Eventually she picked it up, more to stop the din than because she really wanted to speak to anyone. She didn't. In fact she was perfectly ready to pick up the receiver and just put it straight down again, but she caught the sound of the woman at the other end of the line, saying her name. She hesitated. Put the receiver up to her ear, a little tentatively.

"Tammy, are you there?" a voice said. Still Tammy didn't break her silence. "I know there's somebody on the line," the woman went on. "Will you just tell me, is this Tammy Lauper's house?"

"No," Tammy said, surprised the sound her own voice made when it finally came out. Then she put the receiver down.

It would ring again, she knew. It was Maxine Frizelle, and Maxine wasn't the kind of woman who gave up easily.

Tammy stared at the phone, trying to will the damn thing from ringing. For a few seconds she thought she'd succeeded. Then the ringing started again.

"Go away," Tammy said, without picking up the receiver. The syllables sounded like gravel being shaken in a coarse sieve. The telephone continued to ring. "Please go away," she said.

She closed her eyes and tried to think of the order in which she would need to put the words if she were to pick up the receiver and speak to Maxine, but her mind was too much of a mess. It was better not to even risk the conversation, if all Maxine was going to hear in Tammy's replies was the darkness churning around in her washing-machine of a head.

All she had to do was to wait a while, for God's sake. The telephone would stop its din eventually. Maybe five more rings. Maybe four. Maybe three-

At the last moment some deep-seated instinct for self-preservation made her reach down and pick up the receiver.

"Hello," she said.

"Tammy! That is you, isn't it?"

"Maxine. Yes. It's me."

"Good God. You sound terrible. Are you sick?"

"I've had the flu. Really badly. I still haven't got rid of it."

"Was that you when I called two minutes ago? I called two minutes ago. It was you, wasn't it?"

"Yes it was. I'm sorry. I'd just woken up and as I say, I've been so sick ... "

"Well you sound it," Maxine said, in her matter-of-fact manner. "Look. I need to talk to you urgently."

"Not today. I can't. I'm sorry, Maxine."

"This really can't wait, Tammy. All you have to do is listen. The flu didn't make you deaf, did it?"

This drew a silent smile from Tammy; her first in days. Same old Maxine: subtle as a sledgehammer. "Okay," Tammy said, "I'm listening." She was surprised at how much easier it was to talk once you got started. And she had the comfort that she was talking to Maxine. All she'd have to do, as Maxine had said, was listen. "Do you remember that asshole, Rooney?"

"Vaguely."

"You don't sound very sure. He was the Detective we talked to when we first went to the police. You remember him now? Round face, no hair. Wore too much cologne."

For some peculiar reason it was the memory of the cologne, which had been sickly-sweet, which brought Rooney to mind. "Now I remember," she said.

"Well he's been on to me. Did he call you?"

"No."

"Sonofabitch."

"Why's he a sonofabitch?"

"Because the fuckhead's got me all stirred up, just when I was beginning to put my thoughts in order."

Much to Tammy's surprise, she heard a measure of desperation in Maxine's voice. She knew what it was because it was an echo of the very thing she heard in herself, night and day, awake and dreaming. Could it be that she actually, had something in common with this woman, whom she'd despised for so many years? That was a surprise to say the least.