She looked out the window.

"You didn't take part directly. Enough fun just watching from the sidelines. But you've matured, haven't you? Terror isn't the erotic commodity it used to be. We know too much. We've seen. We've taken up organic gardening."

"You think I've matured, do you?"

"Somewhat," he said. "To a certain extent. Enough so that you've drawn a line."

The smile. The head tilting right.

"What you think is taking place, I'm flat-out telling you it's not that way. To the extent I straightened out the alliances for you once before, that's the way it still stands. There you go now. Putting me on the defensive again."

"In the flesh you have your convincing moments. I'm the first to admit."

"We have this tension. The air's a little crackly. Maybe I shouldn't let it bother me. Maybe it's auspicious. It might be I'm misreading the thing completely. Sometimes tension's to be encouraged. Sure, tension's a bitch of a stimulant sometimes. See, down home everything's so smooth, so mellow, a man can be put off by the little mocking noises he hears in a place like New York. Sure, these little whipcracks, these hard edges. Personal relations work like machinery. The air is taut. People know what they want. There's a rasp, a little machinelike whine you hear in conversations in restaurants and shops. Women walk around with little numbers clicking behind their eyeballs. I wonder what they're seeing in there. My impression, New York women, they're always keeping something in reserve, holding it back, saving the little extras. Who for, who for? Their analysts. That's why bald-headed Jews always look so happy. Nobody keeps a secret from a bald-headed Jew. They get all the leftovers, the most interesting parts, the greasiest and wettest and sweetest and best. Let me figure out how to decipher this suspense between us. I want to see if I can find out what it is people enjoy about these uneasy codes they keep sending into the air, all this nervous strain. Tension's an edge, that must be it, a goading force, a heightener. It betokens something good. Maybe there's a wild time in the works. What do you think? Who knows? Some all-out supersonics."

He started edging toward her again. Twilight. The cab moving uptown now. Fifth Avenue 's taupe stone buildings. That surfer's gleam rising to Mudger's face. His lustrous blue eyes seemed to have been attached to him independent of his other features. They were devices of a sensitivity and distinctness she didn't associate with Mudger, although she was willing to consider the possibility she was wrong. All she had to do was recall the number of varying moods he'd already composed and demolished in the relatively brief time they'd been in the taxi together.

She would have liked to suspend judgment, somehow to sabotage her own capacity to perceive the crux of things. When she was with Mudger earlier, in Virginia, sitting under the scarlet oaks, she'd felt they were communicating from either side of a semitransparent curtain or theatrical scrim. It was a weakness of hers. She liked drifting into strange terrains. It was what she'd had for a while with Selvy. That other son of a bitch. That son of a bitch in entirely different ways.

But things were clearer now. She was able to follow this man's line of attack, or that man's, or the other's, nearly to the end. The only real question remaining was a rhetorical one, a lament, uttered solely for effect. Who are these bastards and what do they want?

They passed a horse-drawn cab, four tourists huddled in the chill. Some kids chased each other across the road, causing the driver to start mumbling. Mudger sat with his head tilted back. She noticed the cuts and crosshatchings on his fingers, the eroded skin near his thumbnails.

"Who are you sleeping with these days?" he said.

"That's what my father used to ask me."

"Was he jealous?"

"Just sophisticated, that's all, and a little stupid."

"You should have slept with Percival. He knows interesting people. You could have had some sneaky fun. Junkets galore. You could have written a book. Lloyd's into everything. He'd love having someone like you to show off for. We talk, Lloyd and I. Not directly. There are channels. It never hurts to stay in touch."

He was getting ready to deliver another preemptive speech. Mo!! had noticed during their first meeting how he tried to establish prior rights to convictions and views he assumed she held. A tactic she found amusing.

"People are born conservative. They have to learn how to be liberal. In substance, at the bedrock, we're all of us conservative. People at the helm, I'm talking about. Lloyd's an instance of this. Slowly, surely reverting. Progress, mild reforms, old Lloyd's made a name. But those are the gleanings, the accidents, the random accretions. It all slides off eventually. It becomes sheer biology at a certain point." Here he smiled thinly, as though anticipating a joke on himself. "You return to your origins. What's old age but a kind of jaded infancy? You get physically smaller. You start to babble. You become sexually neuter."

"Poor Lloyd Percival."

"Now, myself, I'm getting out before any of those dire things can happen to me."

"Yes, you've said."

"The corollary to secrecy and power in this country is selfpity. I want to avoid that if I can."

The meter read twenty-one dollars.

"We're not getting anywhere, Earl."

"At least you call me by my name."

"It signifies an end to tension. To all these energies you tell me you detect in the air."

"I only sense what's there."

"Ride's over."

"That's regrettable."

"Your specialized bullshit versus my debased sensibility."

"She's warming up at last."

"If bullshit was music, you'd be a brass band."

"Don't stop now."

"It's over, really."

"What else do you have?"

"Nothing else," she said.

Mudger leaned toward the bulletproof partition.

"Flip an L," he told the driver. "Flip an R. Flip an L."

"Old man doesn't like me, it appears."

"He belongs in the archives," the driver mumbled into his steering wheel.

"Picturesque old character."

"He's an oral history. Keep talking. I'll find a museum."

"Ought to be driving a hansom. You ought to be driving a hansom cab with a colorful personality like that."

Mudger sat back, smiling. It was an unsatisfactory way to end. Caricatures and gibes. Moll felt an injustice was being done to her own feelings, which were complex.

A downpour hit. The cab was stopped outside her building. Mudger sat in darkness, looking straight ahead. He didn't speak until Mol! reached for the door, and then very quietly began. With rain beating down on the hood and roof, she had to concentrate intently to hear.

"I've seen you in motion, physically, only once. Walking toward my house that time. Getting out of the limousine and coming slowly toward the house. I remember it. It's engraved. It's the clearest picture I have of you. Physically in motion. Long legs. Long legs kill me. I'd die for long legs. I see you walking. You're tentative, not knowing really where you are. It's a lovely, a choice body. Forgive the crudeness. It's a choice body. Then you're standing still. Watching me in the doorway. I'd love to get my hands on that body. That's a little strong. That's crude. A little violent-sounding. But it's what I'd love to do. My hands, those legs. Feel those long legs wrapped around me. That's what I was thinking in that doorway. First time I saw you. Love to get my hands on that body. Has to happen, I thought. Must happen. I want that bitch. We'll fuck each other dizzy. We'll be walking in circles for two weeks. I'm trying not to be crude. Although I don't think you mind. You're way beyond minding a thing like that. Woman like you. Long legs like yours. You don't mind a little rough language, a touch of the unrefined. Legs like yours, and I'm only speculating, you can't possibly be put off by a little directness, a crude word now and again. This is number two. Second time I'm watching. Only this time you're walking away. Cunt. Aren't you? Only this time you're leaving, not arriving. Aren't you? Cunt. Bitch, Cunt."