The week after the second Mallory intrusion, the Palms had a much different kind of visitor, who restored confidence in relationships between generations. Laura Oliphant's niece, Mildred Oliphant, aged forty and unmarried like her aunt, flew down for a three-day vacation at Laura's insistence. Despite the difference in their ages, the two women looked alike: medium height, sharp-featured, aggressive but loath to speak unless vitally interested in the problem at hand. The younger Ms. Oliphant worked as a computer expert on the staff at Duke University Press and was helping move that distinguished outfit from old-style publishing into the new electronic systems.

When Dr. Zorn and Krenek dined with the two women, the younger Ms. Oliphant spoke at length and with considerable ardor about how her aunt had taken her in when she was orphaned, seen her through puberty and high school, and sent her on to college: 'If there is a living saint, it's this woman sitting here. What a difficult time she had with me. I hated the world. Felt that my mother's death was a personal affront to me. Despised my teachers when they wanted to help me. Aunt Laura, no wonder you turned gray prematurely.'

After the younger woman's long explanation of how they survived, emotionally and financially, Laura finally spoke: 'In the middle of the Sturm and Drang when I was feeling sorry for myself a thought flashed through my mind: "The job of parents is not to browbeat a child into the kind of adult they would prefer, but to give the rebellious one all the love in the world and the encouragement to become the kind of productive human being the child aspires to become." Later, I phrased it more simply: "It isn't Mildred's obligation to make me happy. It's her job to make herself productive, in whatever that might be." ' She smiled at Mildred, reached out and clasped her hand and said: 'After that it was easy, for all I did was allow her to become a wonderful, mature, emotionally free human being.'

The following night the residents were assembled after dinner to hear Mildred give a forty-minute talk on how Duke University was now publishing its books, and almost every step in the new processes she described astonished her listeners, including Zorn and Krenek. She was an excellent speaker as she explained the miracles of desktop publishing in which the word processor made obsolete a half-dozen cumbersome machines.

As they left the session, Krenek asked Zorn: 'Wasn't she fascinating? She presented her ideas so clearly and interestingly.' He added: 'Wasn't she a nice change after those horrible Mallory kids?'

And then a cloud momentarily dulled the shining impression the young Ms. Oliphant had made. The Duchess received a letter from a friend on the faculty at Duke that contained startling news: I understand that Mildred Oliphant, one of the stars at Duke, spent some time with her aunt at your establishment. She's notable here for having been the first unmarried woman to bear a child out of wedlock. She not only kept the little girl and reared her with no outside help, but proceeded rather promptly to have a little boy by the same process but not necessarily the same father. It raised an enormous stink, but that was at the beginning of the drive for women's equality, and Duke was afraid to fire her, because of lawsuits and possible campus marches.

But even hurricanes quiet down after the big blow, and the same happened here. If you take the North Carolina triangle of Duke, North Carolina, and N.C. State, I suspect you'd be able to find several cases of faculty women who are unconventional mothers and nobody worries about it anymore.

When this news circulated through Gateways, women who had met Mildred could scarcely believe it, for they remembered her as such a congenial person that rumors of her sexual rebellion were hard to credit. Some months later the elder Ms. Oliphant not only invited Mildred to return to the Palms but asked her to bring along her daughter and son. The girl, a scholarship student studying French at Princeton, and her younger brother, a football player at Wesleyan, were so well mannered and such charming conversationalists when they visited with the other residents during their three-day stay that any objections the gossips might have had regarding their mother were completely withdrawn.

The Duchess, who knew class when she saw it, and who was pleased that the young woman was studying French, broke her habit of avoiding the dining room at night and preempted two tables for a small dinner party featuring the two young scholars. She brought two bottles of a good French wine from her private stock and offered a toast in a voice so loud the nearby tables could hear it: 'Autres temps, autres moeurs!' To the man at her right she whispered: 'If the peasants don't know what that means, they're the losers.'

The visits of children to the Palms continued to pay dividends for two reasons, as Jimenez pointed out: 'When you're past seventy, you need children around now and then to remind you of what the continuity of life is, and also, in these days, you never know what refreshingly unexpected types you're going to get.'

The unbidden guest at every Palms meal was death. Sensible residents did not brood about his presence; they remembered some of the reasons why they had entered the Palms and accepted their advancing years with equanimity and a resigned sense of 'So be it.' Some, on whom the burden of age was debilitating and repugnant, would occasionally even say to themselves: I'll be grateful when he comes knocking, but they were a minority.

All were aware of death's constant presence; they could not avoid his shadow if they wished. A friend would die. A bridge partner would suffer a stroke and be moved into Assisted Living, no longer able to take her meals in the dining room or to linger afterward for the evening card foursome. And occasionally one of the older residents, as he left the dining room, would bid effusive farewells, much more protracted than the dictates of friendship would have demanded; he wanted to say a fond good-bye to his friends because there had been signals warning him that death was near, and in the morning he would be found dead. In such a case most of his acquaintances would tell one another, as they did when Fred died: He came to the kind of end he would have wished. And three days later Reverend Quade, in her obligatory memorial service, would speak of the tranquility with which the deceased had passed away. In Fred's case the afternoon service coincided with a rather noisy storm marked by flashes of lightning and loud claps of thunder, and on the spur of the moment she improvised: 'We seek refuge from the storms of life and if we are fortunate we find a safe haven. Our beloved friend has found eternal peace in the bosom of our Lord.'

Death is, of course, universal; man is not the only animal fated to die-sometimes arbitrarily, without warning, or hideously, or capriciously in a manner that has no meaning. When Muley Duggan led some two dozen of the residents to a nearby racetrack for the races and for a convivial lunch, neither he nor they could have foreseen they would encounter death that pleasant afternoon.

'The real reason I've arranged this,' Muley explained as his friends settled down for the ride to the track, 'is so we can see this spectacular filly, In For A Penny, who is beginning to look as if she might have a chance to win the Kentucky Derby. There hasn't been a filly winning that race in years. So we can look her over at the beginning of what could be a gallant career.'

At the track, where he was well known because of his affiliation with racing in New York, he was allowed to take the Palms people into the paddock, where they could see In For A Penny close up, and they found her to be a most handsome young lady, with her chestnut coat, fine head, bright eyes and an auburn mane and bushy tail. Muley's male friends praised the horse's conformation, assuring one another: 'She looks as if she could run,' while the women were impressed by her delicacy of manner: 'She conducts herself as if she were a great lady,' and Muley assured them: 'That's just what she is.'

The group was so taken with the famous filly, already the winner of several important races in which she had handily beaten the best of the young male colts, that most of the people wanted to place bets on her in the big fifth race of the afternoon, but Muley warned them: 'Don't get carried away by her looks. Remember, she'll be racing against young male horses, and sad as it is, the males usually win. Stronger, better wind, more determination.'

'Male chauvinist pig!' one of the women cried, and she led her friends to the betting window to place their five- and ten-dollar bets on the filly, but Muley now contradicted himself by warning them: 'You can see by the board that In For A Penny is going to start as the heavy favorite, so your odds are not going to be very attractive. You bet two dollars and if you win you're paid back only one extra dollar because everyone else is betting on her, too. But if you are lucky enough to bet on some other horse who beats your filly, you might win ten or twelve dollars.'

Despite this warning, which two other practiced bettors confirmed, the Palms contingent insisted on backing the favorite, especially the women, who were moved by considerations other than winning a few dollars: 'Wouldn't it be great if she beats all those colts? Let's give her our support.'

The Palms people did not wager much on the first four races because they knew nothing about the horses running, but almost everyone placed at least a two-dollar wager on the charismatic filly, while Muley Duggan, as the sponsor, bet one hundred dollars on her to win and fifty on her to place, or finish second. He instructed the cautious women bettors how to bet win-place-show, which covered the horse if it won or placed second or third: 'But you understand that since she's the favorite, she's likely to finish among the top three, so you'd hardly win anything with such a bet.' However, just to be in the game, some of the women did make such bets, and before the start of the race they were just as excited about their prospects as were the daring women who had bet up to fifty dollars on the filly to win.

It turned out to be a perfect day for racing in Florida: warm with a cool breeze now and then, sun shining but tempered by casual clouds drifting by, the grass on the oval a bright green, the red flamingos in the man-made lake active in beguiling ways, the track raked clean and without blemish. 'You couldn't ask for much improvement,' Muley told his companions. 'And that lunch was pretty acceptable, too.'

When the seven competing horses for the fifth race-five colts and two fillies-were brought out to the area behind the big mechanical starting gate, they milled about for some minutes, and a few proved difficult to lure into the gate. In For A Penny entered her starting stall like a well-trained lady and waited almost scornfully for the ones who were causing trouble.

When all seven horses were in position, their noses protruding from the gate, Penny looked to be the prize of the lot, and the Palms contingent cheered loudly as she broke handsomely from the gate, rushed to the lead position and came into the first turn clearly in command. The cheering was loud and reassuring. This filly was more than a match for the five male horses, and she seemed well on her way to a victory. One of the Palms women hammered on Muley's shoulder: 'You know how to pick them! Look at her gallop,' and Muley said: 'If she does gallop she'll lose the race,' and the woman, not understanding his distinction, shouted: 'Look at her go!'

Two seconds later this same woman uttered the first of the agonized screams that would fill the stands: 'My God! What's happened? She fell!' Wild cries swept the crowd as they looked in horror at the fallen horse, her left front leg jutting up into the air at a crazy angle. Obviously, it was shattered.

The filly's owner now faced a cruel decision. The race itself ran to a finish, with one of the colts winning at 8 to 1. Trained crews rushed out to tend the stricken filly, and one glance proved that she was so severely damaged that she would have to be 'put down,' the equestrian euphemism for killing by means of a pistol shot behind the ear.

This was not an automatic decision to make, for it had been amply proven that a racehorse with a broken leg could be saved, at a punishing financial cost, if the leg was splinted and the horse treated like a delicate infant for a protracted spell. The life could be saved but the horse would never race again, a perpetual expense to the owner. The sensible solution, proven time and again, was to shoot the horse immediately.

'What is that man doing?' the woman at Muley's elbow screamed. He said: 'Better not look, Mrs. German,' and with his right hand he turned her face as the track attendant aimed the revolver and shot three times into the filly's head.

Before the start of the sixth race, clean-up crews had hauled away the carcass, spread sand over the bloodstains and declared the track fit for resumption of the afternoon's card of three more races.

The effect of these events on the group was harrowing. Muley explained that racehorses are so carefully bred that they become fragile creatures: 'A leg can snap at any time. Even the slightest twist outside of normal can do it. Down he goes.'

'But this wasn't a he,' Mrs. German moaned. 'This was a beautiful young female horse. It's so unfair.' He thought it best not to explain that the destruction of the filly had been a commercial decision.

'Do they always shoot them just because they hurt a leg?' she asked.

'Ma'am, a horse is a big, heavy item. The leg is fragile, might never really mend. It's the humane thing to do.'

At these harsh but true words, she burst into tears, and her pain was so evident that Muley put his arm about her and whispered: 'Mrs. German-Nancy, it was inevitable,' but she would not be consoled. The sudden, arbitrary death of this splendid animal was too much for her to absorb, and she could not stop weeping.

When they got back to the Palms, Muley Duggan and Nancy German did not, like the others, go to the comforting cheerfulness of Gateways but to the second floor of Health, where, in Assisted Living, their spouses waited: Marjorie Duggan as frail and beautiful as ever, Richard German almost as tall and energetic as he had been forty years ago. Neither Muley nor Nancy could explain to their mates what had happened that day, for even the simplest communication was impossible, but nevertheless they spoke.

Muley said: 'You'd have loved the filly, Marjorie. She was one of the finest horses I've seen in years. And she was winning all the way until it happened.' He paused as if to allow her time to ask: 'What happened, Muley?' but the question never came.

Nancy German told her husband: 'Richard, the racetrack was so neat and well cared for you'd have approved. And the races were interesting, but there was this awful tragedy.' He, too, did not ask for details, so she did not tell him about the shooting.

Andy had been in residence almost four full months before he was again forced to witness death, but this time it entailed the complete cycle of residence at the Palms. The happily married Clements lived on the fourth floor, as typical a pair as the halls contained. He was in his early eighties, she in her late seventies, and they had obviously been of ample means, for they occupied one of the larger suites, frequently took their lunch at some restaurant in Tampa, and contributed generously to the collections made at Christmas for the staff. They were an amiable pair whom everyone liked; he was a good bridge player and she a volunteer helper on the floors of the nursing building.

Their lives were progressing in the orderly way they had planned, for when they were in their forties they had started to invest their income so that they could one day find refuge in some place like the Palms. Their two children, safely married and with good jobs, and four grandchildren came to visit them periodically. One would have predicted that it would be some years before they would be interested in Assisted Living, for Mrs. Clement still drove their Cadillac and he took a walk almost every day when it was not raining.

And then their placid routine was shattered when Mr. Clement, while climbing out of the bathtub, fell and broke his left hip. Since he would require nursing care after the operation, he was immediately moved to a comfortable room on the Assisted Living floor. Normally he would have remained there for five or six weeks receiving the best medical attention but, as in so many similar cases, his weakened condition produced severe pneumonia, known in previous centuries as 'the old man's friend' because it was often the agency for a quick, peaceful death. It served that function with Mr. Clement, whose condition declined so rapidly that it was clear to all that he was dying. He was therefore moved to a sunlit room on the top floor, Extended Care, where he would be expected to live for the brief remainder of his life. He realized what the move upward meant but was not distressed by it. He told his wife: 'We've had a decent life, fine children, wonderful grandchildren, everything in good order to protect you for as long as you live-the end of the trail, and I have few regrets.'

His stay in Extended Care was short, for the genetic inheritance with which he had started life eighty-two years earlier dictated that he had run his course. Everything was happening according to schedule, the only remarkable aspect to his dying being the ease with which he accepted it. The end came one Thursday night at about eleven o'clock. His wife, who had been sharing his room with him, was at his side when he died, holding his hand until it began to grow cold, then folding it gently over his heart. His death could be seen as almost a beautiful rite of passage. A responsible life had been lived and had ended with as much dignity as death ever allowed. If no angels sang at his passing, neither did friends and neighbors wail in unseemly grief.

Andy monitored with care the established routine for handling the event. At midnight Dr. Farquhar appeared to certify that Clement had died of natural causes. This done, an hour was spent dressing the body in street clothes and lifting it from the bed onto a rubber-tired stretcher, which was wheeled into the elevator before it could be seen by anyone except the nurses who had helped in the arrangements.

With Mrs. Clement remaining beside her husband's body, the elevator went to the ground floor and the stretcher was whisked out an unobtrusive door that some sardonic wit had labeled Avernus, regarded by ancients as the gateway to hell. Once outside, the body was placed in an ambulance, which sped down a rarely used unnamed path. This soon connected with the lane leading into the mall, from which the ambulance would go across town to the Tampa morgue. By three in the morning, with none but the medical staff aware that a death had occurred, the corpse was safe in its temporary resting place, from which morticians would retrieve it before nine the next morning.

At breakfast in the Palms a notice edged in black appeared on the bulletin board stating that at midnight Charles Clement had died peacefully and that memorial services would be held two afternoons hence. At these services, attended by more than half the residents, Reverend Quade conducted a shortened version of the noble Episcopal service for the dead, after which fruit punch and gingersnap cookies were served, with one person after another telling his or her neighbor that it was the kind of death Charley would have wanted.

Death was not yet finished. When Mrs. Clement returned to her fourth-floor suite and realized she must now live alone in those spacious rooms, she suffered what could only be termed 'a collapse of the spirit,' with the result that, for no medical reason that Dr. Farquhar could detect, she too died. 'She died,' the women in the Palms averred, 'because of a broken heart,' and they noted with unvoiced approval that she, like her husband, had died peacefully in bed.

'It's the way God intended them to go,' several of the women said, and they watched, again with approval, the orderly manner in which the Clement children and grandchildren appeared at the Palms with their own movers to clear the apartment of their parents' belongings. By the end of the next week Mr. Krenek had sold the empty Clement apartment to a couple from Skokie, Illinois. Andy, reviewing the transition, concluded that it had been handled with admirable efficiency, and he praised his staff for their unstinting help.

Very shortly after the calm departure of Mrs. Clement, Gus Ranger, an overweight florid man in his early seventies, dropped dead of a massive myocardial infarction. Quite a few men at the Palms said they were not surprised that a man like Gus, who took little care of himself, should have died in that dramatic fashion. 'He asked for it' was their opinion, but they were appalled by where his death occurred.

Word sped rapidly throughout the Palms: 'Have you heard where Gus died? In the bedroom of one of Tampa's prostitutes!'

Yes, a friend of the woman in question had called 911 rather frantically from a Tampa rooming house with the news that 'a gentleman has dropped dead in the living room of the apartment house,' and when the rescue squad arrived, the attending medic jotted in his notebook: 'Corpse showed every indication of having been hastily dressed by someone not himself and dragged down to the reception area.' Tampa newsmen who saw the official report had to explain in their stories how Gus Ranger happened to be in that unusual location and whom he was visiting. They used the convenient phrase 'a longtime friend,' and left it to the reader to deduce who that friend might have been and the circumstances of Ranger's sudden demise. But only a retarded reader would have failed to understand that Gus Ranger, aged seventy-two and a respected resident of the Palms, one of Tampa's finest retirement complexes, had dropped dead in the apartment of a well-known local prostitute.

Managing editors could see no reason for exploring self-evident truths or developing the fact that Mr. Ranger had been in the habit, for some time, of visiting this young lady and showering rather generous gifts upon her. Of course, the rumor mill at the Palms quickly developed the parts of the story the news media had censored, and various witnesses testified in private to the fact that Gus Ranger had developed a habit of absenting himself from his quarters in the morning for what he had described as 'business affairs in town.'

Privately some raffish men whispered to one another: 'What a glorious way to go!' but most of them thought to themselves: Jesus! I'd hate to be caught in a mess like that. My farewell performance. No thanks. And many thought: I couldn't do that to my wife. And the kids.

This feeling was strengthened by reports of how traumatic Gus Ranger's ugly death had been for his wife. Reverend Quade was not invited to deliver a eulogy at the memorial services at the Palms, and for the good reason that no such services were offered. Dr. Zorn had given orders: 'If Mrs. Ranger insists, of course we'll go ahead, but she hasn't left her rooms, so let's not suggest it.' Muley Duggan persuaded a few men to attend a service he organized at a downtown Tampa mortuary but no wives participated.

Andy did not wait long before visiting with Mrs. Ranger in her lonely apartment. When he sat with her he gave her the warmest assurance that he personally would see to it that she was offered a smaller apartment if she decided to remain at the Palms, which he advised her to do. 'You have your friends here. You already know everyone, and there's no need whatever to try to find a new life.' When she said she'd have to think about costs now that Gustavus was no longer there to manage their investments, he reminded her: 'You know that your monthly costs drop with only one of you occupying these quarters, and they'll drop even more if you accept my invitation to take smaller rooms.'

But since this was his first experience with a widow who might be staying on, Mrs. Clement having died almost simultaneously with her husband, he wanted to make sure that the women in the center knew that he and his staff would do everything in their power to make adjustment to a single life easy, friendly and inexpensive. He stayed with Mrs. Ranger more than two hours, reviewing all aspects of her financial situation and especially the alternatives she might consider: 'I want you to share with us your plans and your hopes, and if you'd do better shifting to some other retirement area, we'll give you the warmest possible cooperation. Mrs. Ranger, we were established to provide comfort and safety to people like you. You've made yourself a member of our family, and as family members we'll give you sound advice. I hope you'll stay with us.'

He asked also about her family members and what she might expect of them. He wanted to know what relations she had with any Tampa church, who her doctor was, what condition her will would be in with Gus gone, and whether she would feel more at ease if she had a room on the lower floor, or even one on the top floor with a broad view of the colorful swampland to the north. Everything he did in those mournful days proved that he was personally interested in her welfare and was prepared to serve as a business counselor to succeed her husband. He did not have to pose as a Good Samaritan, he was one.

But in the days that followed, when Mrs. Ranger was weighing carefully her choices, Andy became aware that one staff member was treating this widow less as a distraught elderly client than as an elderly beloved sister who faced great emotional problems. He heard Nurse Varney say one day when she was counseling Mrs. Ranger about some minor medical matter: 'You don't gots to bother with expensive tests for a thing like that. Go to the Eckerds down the way and ask the pharmacist what's best for a sinus attack. He'll tell you, total cost maybe four-fifty for one of the new medicines.' He had noticed before that when Nora spoke to residents about the serious problems of life, she reverted to the Negro dialect of her youth, the one her mother had used when sharing her folk wisdom. Now he heard her say: 'What you really gots to do, Mrs. Ranger, is start right now to get out into the community. Go to a restaurant now and then. Help out in some church. See if the school down the way needs a morning helper to read to the children.'

When Mrs. Ranger said: 'I'm ashamed to show my face. I'm here in your office only because I have this sinus pain,' Nora led her to a corner chair, pulled one up for herself and lectured the bereft widow: 'Mrs. Ranger, we don't want no more such talk in this place. Listen, my dear friend,' and Andy saw his nurse take Mrs. Ranger's hands in hers, 'every peoples gots trouble, lots worse than yours sometimes, but they live on, find trusted friends, dress up each Saturday night as if it was a party, and get on with their lives.' When Mrs. Ranger held fast to the nurse's hands and began to cry, Varney snapped: 'None of that! Did you know that Mrs. Rexford has a daughter, bad brain damage, her mind stopped growing about age five. Girl's in a home for the past forty years. And poor Mr. Duggan, his wife doesn't even remember who he is, that's trouble too, Mrs. Ranger. And the ambassador, his wife died young, I cared for her, a lovely woman, he like to died, but you see him now, active in his corner with his talky-talky men. He keeps living.' For some minutes she continued sharing with Mrs. Ranger the secrets of the Palms until it sounded as if half the residents lived with some dark misery in their closets: 'But they keep on living. Peoples gots to stay in the fight. You know what they say in the football television? "No pain, no gain." You got pain, yes, but so do all peoples.'

'Yes, but mine is so public.' She burst into tears and covered her face with her hands, as if trying to hide from cruel strangers. 'I'm so ashamed.'

For some moments the nurse allowed her to cry, then said softly: 'Mrs. Ranger, they'll whisper about it for maybe a week, then it'll die down. What you do is learn to hold your head high. You're a proud woman. You're a good woman, as good as any of them, and if they stare at you, stare right back, head high as if you were saying: Go to hell! and in one week it will pass.'

When the widow continued to weep, Varney grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, saying in a harsh voice: 'Snap out of it, sister. How do you think I felt when my man left me with no money, no job, and two small daughters? How much shame did I have to swallow? Mrs. Ranger, all peoples gots misery. We all gots shame. And yours is standard issue. Come on! Smile!'

When Mrs. Ranger composed herself she said: 'I'll see what the man at Eckerds has to say about my sinuses.' There was a pause, then: 'Nurse, may I kiss you good-bye?'

'I ain't leaving,' Varney said, 'and neither are you,' and she embraced the widow.

On the last day of April, marking the completion of Andy's first four months at the Palms, he conducted a tour of inspection to check on the buildings and grounds. He started by having Ken Krenek drive him out to the first of the great palm trees reaching toward the clouds, and he inspected each one as he walked westward toward the massive gateway to the buildings. He understood that in due course one or another of those majestic trees would die and have to be replaced, but he could detect none that seemed threatened: 'Anyway, those out in the savanna grow so fast that replacements would be possible.' Then he had a better thought: If they can do with dead palms what they did to replace those Brazilian pepper trees that were so splendid, we could move in nearly mature palms and no one would be able to spot the difference.

With mixed feelings he turned his attention to the left-hand side of the entrance row, for although the Brazilian pests had been sawed off and rooted out, they had been replaced, through the generosity of Mr. Taggart, by a gorgeous line of nearly full-grown oleander shrubs that formed a sturdy hedge of dull-red flowers set among bright green leaves. 'They're curious,' Andy said as he checked their growth, finding each of them firmly rooted in the short time since the cutting of the Brazilians, 'because they carry a deadly poison. There are stories galore of lost wanderers who slept under a growth of oleanders and died because the poison from their leaves dripped down on them. Probably an old wives' tale, but we do know their leaves are poisonous to eat. Yet how beautiful!'

He also walked south of the buildings and saw with a pang of regret where the ruins of Judge Noble's chair rusted at the edge of the channel. The big pool was in good condition and the walking path south had good footing. 'The Palms is a sanctuary tucked within its own little paradise. I hope we can protect it.'

Indoors, he inspected first the health center and was pleased to observe the bright colors of the new paint in the hallways of Assisted Living and Extended Care. He shuddered when he passed Room 312, where Mrs. Carlson still survived amid her wonderland of tubes, insertions and electrical connections, but he had learned to keep his mouth shut about that medical aberration. He had been indoctrinated in the fact that neither he nor any other Palms employee had anything to do with that room. What happened there was determined by the courts of Florida.

When he reached Gateways he was gratified to see it was such a treasure in the retirement system, clean, cheerful, well ordered and brightened with vases of flowers. But he was less happy when he reached the ground floor and telephoned the main desk to send him a key so that he could inspect the new hobby room. When Delia, the efficient receptionist, said: 'I have strict orders. No one can go to that room without being escorted by one of the five men building the plane,' he asked: 'Not even me? This is Dr. Zorn.'

'I recognized your voice, sir. No, not even you.' He asked Delia to roust out one of the team, and in time Maxim Lewandowski, the aged scientist, appeared. The accident that it was he who came to represent the tertulia of dreamers was unfortunate in that he seemed so terribly old and frail that to think of him building an airplane was, frankly, ridiculous. But once inside the crowded room he became a different person. Moving to his lathe, he pointed to a blueprint diagram that gave the specifications for the propeller; he was obligated to follow the specifications to the smallest fraction of an inch. The old fellow had mathematical measuring devices that enabled him to do this, and a handsome twist of laminated wood sanded to a micrometer smoothness and covered with a hard, luminous varnish glistened in the morning sunlight.

'How about that motor you men ordered?' Andy asked, and Lewandowski became once more the professor: 'Dr. Zorn, the terms "motor" and "engine" are not synonymous. A motor is a device that runs on electricity provided by some outside force. Like the motor that operates the windshield wiper. An engine is a device that runs on the power it generates itself.' He paused, then used an illustration he had often used in his seminars: 'Can you imagine how long the wires would have to be if you tried to power an airplane on a flight from New York to Tokyo using a motor? Or just as bad, how big the batteries would have to be to store that amount of electricity?' Patting the front end of the fuselage, he said: 'To fly a plane, you need an engine. To operate this wiper, a little motor.' When Andy said he had it clear, Lewandowski said: 'And where do we get the electricity to run this little motor? From a generator attached to the gasoline engine. On a big passenger plane it automatically generates enough electricity to light the cabin, air-condition it and operate all the instruments in the cockpit.'

When Andy left the old man and his shimmering propeller, he had a better understanding of what the tertulia was attempting, but when he returned to his desk he was overcome with apprehension: 'Good God! What if those old-timers do finish their plane, and take it out there and it gets into the air for eight or ten minutes and then crashes-with everyone watching-and maybe even television cameras? What a horrible mess. The story would make news across the nation. I wonder if I could persuade them to call this off. They'd object, of course-they've invested so much time-but I'd better try.'

He did, that evening, when he dropped by table four and asked if he might join them for dessert. 'You can join us,' Senator Raborn grumbled, 'but you can't have dessert. The yogurt machine is on the blink.'

'We'll get it fixed,' Andy said for the twentieth time. When he had the attention of the four men he asked, tentatively: 'Have you ever thought of just building the plane, leaving out the engine and giving it maybe to some industrial arts school in Tampa?'

Ambassador St. Pres stiffened as he had in central Africa when his second in command at the embassy had asked: 'Mr. Ambassador, do you think it prudent to take up flying ... at your age, I mean? Why couldn't you rely-'

He had stared at the young man and growled: 'That's an asinine question. Schedule me for lessons on Wednesdays and Fridays.'

Now, with equal stiffness but softer language, he said: 'Dr. Zorn, I appreciate why you might be apprehensive about us old men taking our plane into the air over your establishment, but I assure you that was fully our intention from the moment we started building The Palms One, which is what we shall christen her. And our determination has never wavered. I have renewed my license every year as an act of faith. And I believe the senator does, too.'

'Mine lapsed, but I can get it renewed,' Raborn said.

'So the plane will fly, Doctor, in capable hands.'

'I wish you well. I'll be there to cheer you on.' But as he left the table he paused, looked back at the four elderly dreamers and made the wish: I pray that you clowns can keep it in the air, just this once.

Back in his office, he leaned back in his chair and juggled John Taggart's imaginary blocks: This place is in great shape, Gateways is filled to capacity barring those two small rooms that Miss Foxworth likes to hold in reserve for unexpected visitors. Extended Care also filled to capacity. Then he smiled self-indulgently: But my best move was to bring good old boy Bedford Yancey and that wife of his, energetic Ella, down here. With their help we have Assisted Living under control and almost flourishing.

He considered for a brief moment whether he should write a report on his successes to Mr. Taggart, but his cautious nature warned him against premature boasting: 'Play it cool, Andy my son,' he could hear his father saying. 'Save the letters to Chicago until you have this place locked into the profit column.'

As he sat at his desk, a strange lethargy began to creep over him. For a long time he did nothing, just letting his thoughts drift aimlessly, but he slowly realized that although he was pleased by the apparent success of the initial period of his custodianship, there was a deep unhappiness within himself-a gnawing dissatisfaction with the state of his personal life. He disliked being introspective-he feared the danger of plumbing the depths-but now he was forced to ask himself: Why am I so restless? Why, at the very moment of having turned this place around, am I so damned ... unhappy? The instant he acknowledged-almost involuntarily-that he was profoundly unhappy his defenses crumbled: I've lost everything that matters to me-my wife, my work in the clinic. I was meant to be a doctor ... and I threw it all away ... through cowardice. I allowed that damned lawyer to destroy my life.

At this moment his protracted soliloquy was interrupted by a committee of three women who were part of a group rehearsing for an amateur gala to be performed on Memorial Day. They were dressed in the costumes worn by little girls around 1910: short, frilly dresses, lace collars high at the neck and saucy little blue-and-white hats. Their spokesman explained: 'Dr. Andy, we've added a new song to our number and we want you to be the first to hear it. Come along, business matters can wait till tomorrow,' and they dragged him off to the rehearsal room.

They were three from a group of seven, who, after apologizing for the fact that not all had memorized the new words, gathered about Andy and sang: 'Dr. Zorn, he's a dandy Hair not red but kinda sandy.

He gives kids an extra candy We feel safe to have him handy Give the guy a shot of brandy.'

Muley Duggan, passing by on his way to his apartment after visiting with his afflicted wife in Assisted Living, heard the last line and scurried about to get a bottle of brandy and returned to pour Andy a hefty portion. Normally, Andy was abstemious, having watched several doctor acquaintances of his washed down the tubes in a flood of alcohol-'I like a cold beer now and then, but that's about it'-but this day had been so painful and the song such a vote of confidence that he guzzled the brandy with alacrity, grateful for its comforting heat passing through his veins.

Leaving the chorus and Muley, he returned to his office, where he began brooding again. Bitterly he asked himself: Is this to be the balance of my life? The respected director of a refuge where delightful elderly women idolize you and the long years drift by?... At this moment, unaccountably, an inner voice he did not recognize as his own spoke decisively: Get yourself back on the main track. Find someone to share a life with. And don't postpone it till you're fifty.

Suddenly lighthearted, he went to his apartment and, thanks to the brandy, was asleep in less than ten minutes.

Shortly after that emotionally wrenching night when he had had to sort out his personal long-range goals, he received a letter whose potential for ugliness made perspiration spring to his forehead. It came from Chattanooga and carried in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope the ominous name of Dr. Otto Zembright, M.D. Before daring to open it, Andy leaned back, visualizing the Tennessee doctor who had been so proficient and helpful that snowy New Year's morning when the girl lost both her legs in the car crash.

He remembered Zembright's cautionary counsel never to play the Good Samaritan: 'I'd have got the hell out of there as soon as I could,' he had said. So it was unlikely that Zembright himself was about to bring any kind of action against him, but he might be warning him about someone who was. Memories of his days on the witness stand flooded back to him and he shuddered.

Unable to postpone opening the letter indefinitely, he gingerly slipped a desk knife into the fold at the top and took out the single sheet of paper. It contained only three sentences: 'Father of girl is grateful. Nothing to fear. Please call me.'

Andy should have been relieved by the letter, but he was so afraid of yet another lawsuit of some kind that he sat numbly for several minutes. Finally he grabbed the phone nervously, found Zembright's number by calling information, and said, his voice trembling: 'It's Dr. Zorn. I received your letter. What does it mean?'

'What is says. Nothing to fear from this end.'

When Zorn sighed in relief, Zembright explained: 'Oliver Cawthorn, Betsy's father, is a first-class human being. One of God's finest. He knows you saved his daughter's life and wants to see you on a most important mission.'

'Like what?'

'Not over the phone.'

'Should I let him come?'

'Yes. I think highly of him, the way he's behaved the past several months, and I want to come down with him.'

'Is it that important?'

'Yes.'

'In spite of the advice you gave me? To get the hell out if you interfere in a car wreck?'

'Conditions vary.'

Reluctantly Andy agreed that Zembright should fly down to Tampa right away and bring Oliver Cawthorn with him.