”You know what I’ve been looking for since I came to Boston?“ she said.

”Two tickets to Symphony,“ I said.

She made a measuring gesture, holding her hands about two feet apart.

”About that long,“ she said. ”I been looking for something about like that.“

I studied her measure.

”Looks to be about two feet,“, I said.

She held her gesture, staring at me with her head canted back. Her eyes were narrowed. She jiggled her hands as if weighing the two-foot length.

I grinned and nodded. ”You’re in luck,“ I said.

Her eyes got narrower and something that looked only a little like a smile moved on her lips. ”You?“ she said.

I shrugged becomingly. ”Unless I’m excited,“ I said.

The tip of her tongue appeared at the center of her mouth and moistened her lower lip.

”Are you excited now?“ she said. The huskiness in her little-girl voice had shaded into hoarseness. Her eyes had narrowed until they were barely slitted. Her body had gotten more lax as she talked and her thighs had slid forward on the banquette seat until her skirt was merely ornamental. Her breath was short now, and audible. Her body seemed entirely inert, almost boneless, and yet the tension in her was manifest; physical slackness over tight-coiled emotion.

’‘No,” l said.

There was silence. Jill Joyce stared at me through her barely open eyes.

“Whaaat?” she said.

I shrugged and flipped up my palms. I smiled engagingly.

More silence. More staring with her reptilian slits. She picked up her wineglass and drank most of it and lowered the glass and gazed at me over the rim of it. Then she threw the contents at me. She missed.

“Probably better than drinking it,” I said.

“Sonovabitch,” she said.

The flaccidity left her body. She rolled suddenly out of the banquette and stood in front of me and threw a punch with her clenched right fist. I blocked it with my left forearm.

“Oww,” she said. “You bastard.”

She swung at me with the other hand and I blocked that and she said “Ow” again and called me a bastard.

“Does this mean you’re not going to call me dickie-bird anymore?” I said.

She was rubbing both wrists where I blocked her punches with my forearms, her shoulders bent, huddling over the sore arms.

“Limp dick, motherfucker,” she said. Her voice sounded tight, as if her throat were closing. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re fired, you prick.”

“Fired,” I said. “How can I be fired? I haven’t been hired yet.”

She lunged against me suddenly. Her face tilted up at me, her eyes closed all the way, her face very white except for two red spots that glowed feverishly on her cheekbones. Her mouth was open, her tongue protruded a little.

“You bastard,” she gasped. “You better, you bastard. You better.” Some tears squeezed out under the tightly closed lids. “You better,” she said. Then she passed out on me. I caught her under the arms as she started to slide.

“Star quality,” I said aloud.

I looked around the mobile home. Across the back was a big double bed with a pink puff on it, and half a dozen white pillows with lace ruffles. I turned and dragged Jill Joyce to the bed. Her legs were entirely limp. Her heels made little drag marks in the carpet. When I reached the bed, I got her over my hip and plumped her backside onto the bed and eased her down. She lay crossways, her feet still on the floor. Her skirt bunched up around her waist.

A voice said, “This would be more exciting in the pre-pantyhose era.”

It was my voice and it sounded extraordinarily normal. I got hold of her ankles and half spun her around so her head was among the pillows and her feet were on the bed. Then I arranged her head so she wouldn’t smother, and rearranged her skirt and put the mink coat over her.

The voice said, “What becomes a legend most.” It was me again. I sounded sane.

I stood back and looked down at her. Her cheeks were still wet with the faint tracing of tears. Her mouth was slightly open. She was snoring, not very loudly, but quite clearly. The only other noises in the mobile home were the faint hum of the refrigerator somewhere forward and a faint tingling sound which was probably from the heaters.

My voice seemed booming when it spoke again. “You are a mess,” my voice said thoughtfully, “you are a terrible mess.”

I went out of the mobile home and closed the door carefully behind me.

Chapter 4

I COLLECTED Susan from the wardrobe trailer, and we I walked down across the Common toward Boylston Street. As the afternoon shortened it had gotten colder, and now in the late half-light of a winter afternoon the temperature was maybe ten above. The wind had died and it was still and brittle among the black trees. Around the Common the city lights had begun to show weakly, pale heatless flickers at the fringe of the hard silence. There was no one on the Common. Susan’s shoulder touched mine as we walked. Her hands were jammed into the big pockets of her coat. Only a small white oval of her face showed inside the turned-up collar, under the fur hat, framed by the black hair. I had my hands in my jacket pockets. There were times for holding hands, and times for not. I had my watch cap pulled down over my ears too. It wasn’t raffish but I knew Susan would let it pass.

“Cold, cold, cold, cold,” Susan said.

“Cold,” I said.

“Ah, the master of compression,” Susan said. “How far is Biba?”

“Other side of Charles Street,” I said.

Susan had been to Biba exactly as often as I had, since she’d always gone with me. But she always asked distances like that as if she was just in from Boise.

At Charles Street the commuter traffic had started to develop and the exhaust of newly started engines plumed in the iron air. We crossed Charles and then Boylston and went past the Four Seasons Hotel and turned in under Biba’s blue awning.

The bar was not crowded. The cold slowed everything down. Susan ordered a cup of tea with Courvoisier on the side. I had a brandy and soda. She had draped her coat open over the back of her chair and pulled off her gloves. Her face was bright with the cold. She kept the fur hat on and it seemed almost to blend with her thick black hair. Her chin rested on the heavy fold of a black turtleneck sweater. With our drinks we ordered some crab tacos and some empanadas. It was warm in the bar and I knew downstairs the brick oven was baking bread. A hint of its warmth and smell drifted down, or it seemed to. I could feel the stiffness leave me as I drank maybe a third of the brandy and soda and felt the warmth under the cold soda ease through my system. I looked at Susan, at the width of her mouth, the fullness of her lower lip, the line of her cheekbone. I watched her dab a microscopic portion of salsa on one corner of a crabmeat taco and bite off an edge. It was a small taco, the kind you pop into your mouth all at once, if you’re any kind of an eater at all. It would take Susan fifteen minutes to finish it. She chewed her tiny bite carefully, watching me look at her.

“So,” she said, and her teeth flashed white and even as she smiled at me. “How do I stack up against Jill Joyce?”

I popped one of the empanadas into my mouth and chewed. I washed it down with more brandy and soda.

“I think I’d need to see you both naked before I can make a full judgment,” I said.

Susan nodded thoughtfully.

“Well, I could arrange that at my end,” she said.

“Nicely phrased,” I said. “Jill has already made a similar offer.”

Susan poured a splash of cognac into her tea, took a small sip, and put the teacup down. She watched a couple of guys in tweed overcoats and plaid scarves come in, rubbing their hands and hunching their shoulders from the cold. They crossed to the bar, put briefcases on the floor, and ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Susan looked back at me. Her big dark eyes seemed bottomless.