"What's happening with your Navaho project?" Binky said.

"Quincy keeps jamming up the works. I'm going to talk to Weede and see if I can get to work on it alone. But don't mention it to anybody."

"David," she said.

"What?"

"They may drop 'Soliloquy.' '

"Are you sure?"

"The person who told me said the crappy sponsor wasn't interested in renewing."

"Why not?"

"The person didn't say."

"There's always the Navahos," I said.

"David, I think it's the third or fourth best show on TV."

"Soliloquy" was a series I had worked out on my own. It was the first major thing I had done since joining Weede's group-a small, elite and experimental unit put together for the purpose of developing new concepts and techniques. The rest of the network despised us because of our relative freedom and because of the industry prizes we had won for our warcasts, which were done independently of the news division. "Soliloquy" had won nothing. Each show consisted, very simply, of an individual appearing before the camera for an hour and telling his life story. I wanted to ask her what else Weede had said about the series. But that wouldn't have been fair. She had already taken a chance in telling me as much as she had. Just then Weede went by my office, moving swiftly, head down, body tilted forward as if on skis. He always came back to the office at least half an hour after Binky on Thursday afternoons; this maneuver, obviously, was an attempt to avoid suspicion. I liked to think that he walked around the block five times during that half-hour, or stood in a phone booth in the lobby and pretended he was talking to someone, moving his lips over the mouthpiece, perhaps actually speaking, carrying on a normal businesslike conversation with the dial tone. And he always walked by my office very quickly, then tried to avoid me for the rest of the day. He must have possessed an extraordinarily complex sense of guilt. I think he was afraid of me on those Thursdays. But on Friday morning he would come looking for me, breathing smoke and vengeance, as if I were the engineer of his guilt.

Binky went back to her desk. I loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. I had managed to deceive myself into believing that people would be deceived into believing that a man so untidy (in an atmosphere so methodically spruce) must be driving himself mercilessly. The phone rang. It was Wendy Judd, a girl I had dated in college. She was living in New York now, having traveled for a year right after she divorced her husband, one of the top production people at either Paramount or Metro.

"I'm dying, David."

"Don't generalize, Wendy."

"New York is vicious. Listen, before I forget, can you come to a dinner party tomorrow night? Come alone. You're the only one who can save me."

"You know I go bowling with the fellas on Friday night, Wendy."

"David, please. This is no time for jokes."

"Our team is called the Steamrollers. We play the Silver Jets for the all-league title tomorrow. Winner gets a cup with a naked Greek bowling ace embossed on the side."

"Come early," she said. "You can help me toss the salad. We'll talk over old times."

"There are no old times, Wendy. The tapes have been accidentally destroyed."

"Eightish," she said, and hung up.

Outside, the girls were hammering at their little oval keys.

I went for a walk. Everybody was busy. All the phones seemed to be ringing. Some of the girls talked to themselves while typing, muttering shit whenever they made a mistake. I went around to the supply area. The cabinets were the same color as troops in the field. Hallie Lewin was in there, leaning over a bottom drawer. There is no place in the world more sexually exciting than a large office. It is like a fantasy of some elaborate woman-maze; wherever you go, around corners, into cubicles, up or down the stairwells, you are greeted by an almost lewd tableau. There are women standing, sitting, kneeling, crouching, all in attitudes that seem designed to stun you. It is like a dream of jubilant gardens in which every tree contains a milky nymph. Hallie saw me and smiled.

"I heard Reeves Chubb got canned," I said.

"Really? I had no idea he was in trouble."

"Don't breathe a word."

"Of course not."

"Hallie, you've got the sweetest little ass I've ever seen."

"Why thank you."

"Not a word about Reeves now."

"I promise," she said.

I went around toward Weede Denney's office. On the way I saw Dickie Slater, the sixty-five-year-old mailboy, standing behind Jody Moore's desk rubbing his groin. When he saw me he grinned, man to man, and kept rubbing. Jody was on the phone, speaking Portuguese for some reason. I turned a corner and saw James T. Rice running down a hallway at top speed. I had no idea what I wanted to say to Weede. I was upset about the series being dropped and I felt venomous. In similar situations I usually reacted as a child might react after he has been disappointed or rebuked, with a child's petty genius for reprisal. I told bizarre and pointless lies. I broke my typewriter. I stole things from the office. I wrote snake-hissing memos to my subordinates. Once, after an idea of mine had been criticized by a senior vice-president named Livingston, I went back to my office, blew my nose several times, and that night sneaked up to Livingston's office and put the soiled handkerchief in the top drawer of his desk.

Weede was standing in the middle of his office, deep in thought, one hand absently grooming his bald head. He looked at me carefully.

"Can't talk to you now, Dave; wires are burning up; see you first thing in the morning."

On the way back to my office I stopped at Binky's desk to talk some more but she looked busy. I went inside and dialed Sullivan's number again. She was there.

"Utah," I said.

"Hello, David."

"Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona."

"I didn't see you leave last night. You abandoned me to all those keening necrophiles."

"Steamboat Springs, the Sawtooth Mountains, Big Timber, Aztec, Durango, Spanish Fork, Monument Valley."

"I hear America singing," she said, but not as if she meant it.

"I know a guy with a camp trailer. He's living in Maine somewhere. We can pick him up and then all head west in the camper.

"All I need is an hour's notice."

"Blasting through New Mexico in the velvet dawn."

"I'm late for an appointment," Sullivan said.

I tried to get some work done. It was dark now and I went to the window. Looking south, from as high as we were, I could see the stacked lights extending almost the entire length of Manhattan, and that delicate gridiron tracery in the streets. I opened the window slightly. The whole city was roaring. In winter, when the darkness always comes before you expect it and all those lights begin to pinch through the stale mist, New York becomes a gigantic wedding cake. You board the singing elevator and drop an eighth of a mile in ten seconds flat. Your ears hum as you are decompressed. It is an almost frighteningly impersonal process and yet something of this kind seems necessary to translate you from the image to what is actually impaled on that dainty fork.

I strolled around to Carter Hemmings' office. He was at his desk, smelling the nicotine on his fingers. When he saw me he tried to neutralize the flow of panic by standing up, absurdly, and spreading his arms wide, an Argentinian beef baron welcoming a generalissimo to his villa.

"Hey Dave," he said. "What's happening, buddy?"

"I understand Mars Tyler got the sack," I said.

"No kidding. No kidding. Jesus."

"There's a big purge on. The tumbrels are clattering through the streets."

"Sit down," he said. "I'll get Penny to order some coffee."

"Can't spare the time, Carter. All the circuits are overloaded. How's that laser beam project shaping up? They're starting to put pressure."