"And ran over me," Willi said sadly.

"You were the one who overbid the hand," Erika said.

"The hell I did," Willi retorted. That got to him, where the other sneers hadn't.

Heinrich grabbed the cards and started shuffling. "We've all butchered a hand or two-or twenty-two," he said. "And some of us-I'm not sure now, but I think it's just barely possible-some of us may even have made some other mistakes, too." He started to deal.

"You've got good sense, Heinrich," Willi said gratefully. Erika also nodded. Neither Dorsch looked happy about agreeing with the other. Heinrich wasn't happy about having Erika praise him in any way. It might give her more ideas than she had already-ideas about which Heinrich couldn't and wouldn't do anything.

The second rubber turned out even longer and sloppier than the first one had. Heinrich and Lise took two games out of three, but they went set three times while they were vulnerable and the Dorsches had a couple of hands with honors bonuses, so in spite of "winning" the rubber they came out 150 points in the hole.

"Well, no one will send any of those hands to the bridge magazines," Heinrich said ruefully.

"Oh, I don't know," Willi said. "If they're looking for lessons on how not to do it, I think we just wrote the book."

"Another rubber?" Lise asked.

Willi nodded. "Why not? The night is young, and I am beautiful."

Even Erika laughed, and she'd been sniping at her husband all evening. She still had the tricks they'd taken during the last hand in front of her. She tossed them across the table to Willi. "Shut up and deal."

"Always a good idea," he said, and did. When he picked up his hand and arranged it, he solemnly shook his head. "Nothing's going to go right tonight, though. I pass."

Everybodypassed. Heinrich took the cards and shuffled them extra hard, trying to get rid of the mediocre hands people had been having. He looked at what he'd dealt himself. No such luck, not as far as he was concerned. "Pass."

They all passed again. "At this rate, we'll be here forever," Willi said, which proved economic planners in the USA weren't the only ones given to extrapolating too far from not enough data.

"Give me the cards," Erika said. As she shuffled, she sent the deck a severe look. "Have to be some playable hands in here somewhere." By the way she said it, the cards would go to bed without supper if there weren't. She nodded briskly once she saw her own hand. "One heart."

She won the contract at four hearts, and made it without much trouble. Even Lise murmured, "About time," as she shuffled for the next deal. She and Heinrich made three diamonds and then made two hearts, so they were vulnerable, too.

That sent the deal to Heinrich. He liked the face cards that looked back at him when he picked up his hand. He put things together, and… "One no-trump." Erika passed. Lise made it two no-trump. Willi opened his mouth and then closed it again, as if he wanted to jump in but couldn't, not at the three level. Heinrich said, "Three no-trump. Let's see if we can steal this rubber." Everyone passed.

Erika led. Lise set out the dummy. Heinrich looked at what she had and added it in his head to what he had. He saw eight sure tricks, one more with a spade finesse-and he knew which way he intended to try it, because of Willi's wiggling-and maybe a couple of overtricks if he could set up her clubs and run them.

Everything turned out the way he thought it would. He ran the spade finesse past Willi the first chance he got, while he still had the other suits stopped-vital in no-trump-and it worked. After that, everything else flew on automatic pilot. He ended up making five.

"Very neat," Willi said. "Nothing we could do about that one."

"I don't know," Erika said. "Why didn't you hold up a sign that said,I've got the strength?" Willi bridled. As he had in the auction, he started to say something. This time, Erika forestalled him: "And who did you really have lunch with today?"

"I told you-with Heinrich," Willi answered.

"Yes, you told me. Now try telling the truth, because I know crap when I hear it," Erika snarled. Lise looked at Heinrich in surprise-she'd known something was going on, all right, but she hadn't realized Willi was out-and-out lying. Heinrich did his best to keep all expression off his face. Anything he did or said now was only liable to throw gasoline on the fire.

Willi got to his feet with ponderous dignity. "I don't have to take these kinds of questions," he declared. "You're not the Security Police, even if you think you are." He left the table and walked down the hall again.

Erika looked daggers at his back. "Bastard," she said, just as the bathroom door closed. She turned back to Heinrich and Lise, her eyes going from one of them to the other and then returning. "I swear, there are times when I'd like to sleep with the first man I happen to see, just to pay him back." She was staring squarely at Heinrich when she said that.

He tried to look at the floor, at the ceiling, out the window-anywhere but at either Willi's wife or his own. He kept waiting for Willi to flush the toilet again. But Willi, this time, was using the bathroom as a bomb shelter, and odds were he wouldn't come out any time soon.

Silence stretched. At last, warily, Lise said, "Don't you think that's a little…drastic?"

"Why?" Erika didn't keep her voice down. If anything, she pitched it to carry. "If he's fooling around on me, why shouldn't I fool around on him?"

More silence. Heinrich decided he'd better say something. If he didn't, Lise was liable to get the idea he wanted Erika thinking about him like that. He chose his words with even more caution than Lise had: "If you're going to stay married, it's probably a good idea that neither one of you fool around on the other."

"Ha!" Erika said: a one-syllable demolition of the very idea. Lise had started to nod in agreement with her husband. That scornful laugh froze her for a moment with her chin in the air. She looked as if she needed a distinct effort to bring her head back down to a normal posture.

After what seemed like forever, water ran in the pipes at the far end of the hall. Willi came back to the bridge table looking grim. "We'd better go," he said to Erika. "It's getting late."

"It certainly is-in a lot of ways," she answered. "And we have a few things to talk about, don't we?"

"Yes, just a few," Willi said. The Dorsches headed up the street for the bus stop after the most perfunctory good-byes. They were shouting at each other long before they got there.

"Well!" Lise said. "That was another interesting evening."

"Interesting." Heinrich considered. "Mm, yes, that's one word for it, anyhow."

"It was the politest word I could think of," his wife replied. "What exactly did Erika mean there? And whowas Willi at lunch with?"

Answering the second question seemed safer, so Heinrich did that first: "Ilse-again-if lunch is where they went." Lise's eyes widened. Her mouth shaped a silentoh. But her expression said she hadn't forgotten the other question, either. Unhappily, he told her, "Erika probably meant just what she said. She usually does."

"I know she does. That's why I wondered." Lise frowned. "But she was looking at you when she said it. I didn't much care for that. What did you think about it?"

Now there was a question to make a man want to pretend he'd suddenly gone deaf. "It's a compliment of sorts," said Heinrich, whose ears still worked, however much he wished they didn't. His wife coughed dangerously. "Will you let me finish?" he exclaimed. Lise gave back a pace in surprise; he didn't raise his voice very often. He went on, "It's notmuch of a compliment, not when she would have said the same thing to any man who happened to be in the neighborhood." He didn't mention that Erika had already said the same thing about him in particular. He did add, "And I've told you before-I know when I'm well off."