Yet you couldn’t say he didn’t finish what he began. He finished his book. As a writer, Michael knew the importance of that; for every completed book there are a thousand beginnings. He had finished teaching his course and he had apparently taught it well, even brilliantly-damn that word! He had not abandoned tennis or swimming until he had mastered both skills, and his retirement from politics had followed a series of almost uncontested victories.

He mastered a skill, and then he stopped. Was it because he found all of them too easy? No challenge? Or was it because, under the façade of competence, he was somehow unsure of his ability? That wasn’t as ridiculous as it sounded. The severest critic was internal. If a man couldn’t satisfy that, paeans of praise from the outer world couldn’t convince him of his worth. He had to keep on trying, fighting, accomplishing, and never succeeding, because the inner critic was insatiable. So-eventually, suicide, alcoholism, drugs. It had happened before.

But not, Michael thought, to Gordon Randolph. His life had not followed that pattern. If he had quit competing, it was not in the spirit of defeat. He had not retreated into any of the standard forms of suicide. He seemed-yes, damn it, he was-a happy man, except for one thing, the one thing in which he had not succeeded. The one thing for which he cared most desperately. And none of the pat phrases on that sheet of paper gave any clue to his successes, or to his one great failure.

Michael reached for another sheet of paper and inserted it into the typewriter. At the top of the page he wrote:

His wife tried to kill him.

Was that why he couldn’t make any sense out of the man who was Gordon Randolph? Because, like so many of the others who had known her, he was becoming obsessed by Randolph ’s wife?

In her way, Linda was an even greater enigma than Gordon. Not because the coalescing picture was incoherent. A beautiful human being-they all agreed on the content of that, if not in the exact words, including Randolph himself. He had groped for words and so had Buchsbaum, but poor old Kwame had caught it. Then what had turned her from a saint into a devil, from a beautiful human being into an alcoholic, a haunted psychotic?

If I were writing a novel, Michael thought, they would have a common cause-Gordon’s incompleteness, his wife’s madness. But life is rarely so tidy or so simple. Or, if it is, the connections are too complex for us to see.

The light bulb flickered again. Napoleon muttered. The rain poured down harder. Michael got up and went into the kitchen. He stubbed his toe-the same toe.

A moving streak shot past him, into the sink and out through the slit in the window, its passage marked by a crash of breaking crockery, which was Michael’s last saucer. Nursing his throbbing toe, Michael restrained his curses and listened. He knew what Napoleon’s abrupt departure heralded. After a moment it came. A knock on the door; simple and ordinary. There was no reason why the sound should have made an anticipatory shiver run down his spine.

II

Linda watched the rain ripple against the window of the bus. The downpour was so heavy, it didn’t look like rain, but rather like a solid wall of water against the window of a submarine. The warm, stuffy bus was a self-contained, miniature universe; and the dark on the other side of the window might have been the vacuum of outer space. A few scattered lights, blurred by the rain, were as remote as distant suns.

The bus was not crowded. Not many people would come into the city in such weather and at such an hour, too late for the theaters or for dinner. The seat next to hers was occupied by a young sailor. He had come straight to it, like an arrow into a target. When he tried to strike up a conversation, she looked at him-just once. He hadn’t tried again. He hadn’t changed seats, though; maybe he didn’t want to seem rude.

Linda didn’t care whether he moved or not. She was aware of his presence only as a physical bulk; nothing else about him could penetrate the shell of her basic need. Even her physical discomfort was barely felt. Her shoes were still soaking wet and muddy. She had squelched through the ooze of Andrea’s unpaved lane, hoping against hope, even though she knew she would have seen lights from the road if anyone had been at home. She had even pounded on the door, hearing nothing except the yowl of Andrea’s pride of cats. Linda knew she could get into the house without any trouble; but with Andrea gone, there was no safety there. It was the first place they would look. Only a senseless desperation had taken her to Andrea in the first place. She wasn’t running to anything or anybody; she was running away.

The impulse which had got her onto the bus was equally senseless. She had a little money, not much, and no luggage. If she paid in advance, she could get a room in a hotel; but how long would it be before Gordon found her? If he didn’t want to call the police in, there were other, more discreet, ways of tracking her down. Anna would know what clothes she was wearing. There were hundreds of hotels; but Gordon could afford to hire hundreds of searchers. She wished the bus would go on and on forever, without stopping. Then she wouldn’t have to decide what to do next.

When the bus reached the terminal, she sat unmoving until all the other passengers had got off, until the driver turned and yelled. She squeezed her feet back into the sodden leather of her shoes. Another stupid move; the driver would remember her, now that she had lingered and made herself conspicuous. He wanted to clear the bus and go home; he stood by the door, tapping his fingers irritably on the back of the seat.

Linda walked through the terminal and out onto the street. It was still raining. She walked. She walked a long way. In her mind was the vague idea of confusing the trail by not taking a taxi directly from the bus station. Not that it mattered; he would find her sooner or later. But she had to keep trying.

Finally she came to a brightly lighted street where there were many people. Cars, too, on the pavement. Taxis…Yes, this might be a good place from which to take a cab. She stood by the curb and lifted her hand. Cars rushed by, splashing water. Some had little lights on top. None of them stopped. Linda blinked vacantly as the water ran down off her hair into her eyes. Rain. That meant taxis would be hard to find. She remembered that fact from some obliterated past.

A taxi skidded to a stop a few feet beyond her and she walked toward it, but before she could reach it a man darted out, opened the door, and jumped in. The taxi started up, splashing her feet and calves with water. She stood staring after it. Another car stopped, almost at her elbow. The driver leaned out and flung the door open.

“Okay, okay, lady; if you want it, grab it. Hop in.”

She got in, sat down.

“Where to?”

The address was written down on a slip of paper inside her purse, but she didn’t need to look at it. She had known, all along, that she meant to go there.

“Must be from out of town,” the driver said, pulling out into the street. “Figured you were, that’s why I stopped right by you so nobody could beat you to it. Chivalry’s been dead for a long time, lady. You gotta move fast if you wanta survive.”

“It was nice of you,” Linda said politely. “Thank you.”

She didn’t have to talk, he talked all the rest of the way. She remembered to tip him; it was an obvious thing, but tonight nothing was obvious, every movement and every idea was a long, arduous effort. What she did not remember until it was too late was that she had meant to leave the taxi at some indeterminate corner and walk the rest of the way. Too late now…

The street was dimly lighted, lined with buildings. In the rain and the dark, everything looked black-sky, buildings, windows. She dragged herself up the flight of steps, her shoes squelching.