Senator Raborn, who in his public life as an interrogator had fought to obtain clear, simple answers, asked: 'So where does that leave the couple with the pregnant wife? What problem do they face?'

'Abortion.'

'No, no!' Jimenez protested. 'I oppose abortion.'

'So do I,' Zorn said. 'In ordinary cases. To make it easier for a careless couple. Or as a form of birth control. But in this it would be a therapeutic abortion, recommended by careful medical practice.'

'I'm in favor of that,' Senator Raborn said. 'It seems the practical thing, to correct nature's accident.'

'God does not make mistakes,' Jimenez said. 'The Down's syndrome child can bring powerful love to a family. Parents and siblings alike, they unite to nurture the unfortunate and become better human beings in doing so.'

St. Pres said quietly: 'When you've served in the underdeveloped countries in South America and Africa, you look on therapeutic abortion in a different way. It seems the humane way to go.'

'Never humane!' Jimenez said firmly, the long tradition of his Catholic heritage coming through. Then, as if conducting a debate in some parliament, he placed his hands flat on the table and reminded his tertulia: 'We were supposed to be discussing triage. What's your medical reaction there, Doctor?' And he pronounced the title with all the reverence that citizens of the Latin American countries feel toward their medical men.

Zorn said: 'I side with the senator. Cost alone will demand that we ration health care. And that throws us into value judgments, severe moral dilemmas.'

'Who will make such judgments?' President Armitage asked, and Raborn said sharply: 'The public. Through discussions like this, and public statements by our leaders including the church and the economists, we'll reach a consensus.'

'And when it is reached,' St. Pres said with an almost cruel insistence on facing the truth, 'seventy percent of the operations performed on people like us in the Palms will be declared nonessential. They'll be forbidden in the regular system, but remain available through a black market, which only the rich will be able to afford.'

Such a conclusion disgusted Armitage, who rebutted with considerable force: 'So you'll ration health needs by the standard of the pocketbook?'

'Has there ever been any other way?' St. Pres insisted. 'Isn't that what we do now? Tell us, Dr. Zorn, could a married couple of modest means gain entry to this establishment, and the good health advantages you provide us? Are your services not rationed by our pocketbooks?'

Zorn took a deep breath, for he did not yet know how much power the ambassador wielded in the establishment, but even so, he was not afraid to answer: 'You may be surprised to learn, Mr. Ambassador, that we have three widows now occupying single rooms who used to live in expensive duplexes when their husbands were alive. They've fallen on bad times, the poor women. Their husbands weren't as rich as they both thought they were. We figure that our corporation made a decent profit from such a family while the husband was alive, and so we carry the widows on our books at a very low rate-very low indeed.'

'So you're practicing your own version of humanistic triage,' President Armitage said enthusiastically, pleased to hear that their corporation had a semblance of a heart, and St. Pres conceded: 'I suppose that's the way it will always work. Strict rules governing priority, but subtle ways, often secret, for circumventing them.'

'But ultimately,' the senator warned, 'it will have to come down to the available dollars. Ultimately someone will have to choose who shall live and who must allow nature to take its course.'

'I know this about triage,' Armitage said. 'If I'm driving my car carefully, sober, eyes on the road, and a situation over which I have no control suddenly explodes-three children running onto the road over here, an elderly man with a cane occupying half the road over there, and I have to make a split-second decision, I will invariably head away from the children and instinctively allow the car to plow into the old man. He's had his life. He's done whatever good he's going to do. The children have sixty or seventy or even eighty years ahead of them in which to accomplish miracles.'

'Easy choice,' Ambassador St. Pres said quietly. 'Three young children, one old man. Let's make it one child about whom you know nothing. And an old man living in a district of some affluence. He may have made a tremendous contribution, maybe he still does. Then where do your reflexes direct you to steer?'

Armitage did not hesitate: 'Not even a moment's hesitation. I'd rub out the old man. And I'll tell you why my reflexes are conditioned to respond like that. As a college president I never lost sight of the fact that the freshman boy, just in from the farm and starry-eyed with vast ambitions, was a damned sight more important to my college than some sixty-year-old professor whose dreams were now dead. That's how I was conditioned to think, and that's how I'll always respond, automatically.'

'But if the freshman is destined to flunk out at the end of his sophomore year,' St. Pres asked, keeping the pressure on, 'and the doddering old professor has the capacity to leave your school two hundred thousand dollars if he's allowed time to draft his will-if you don't rub him out prematurely-then what?'

President Armitage said very slowly: 'Then debaters like you and senators like Raborn will draft new procedures for establishing human values, and may God have mercy on all of us, for humanity will have been sacrificed to greed.'

'No,' the senator replied in an equally controlled voice. 'The budget, inescapable from the moment of birth till the instant of death, will have dictated the value decisions.'

Dr. Zorn, though impressed by both the gravity and the civility with which these men argued, felt that the time had come to add a light-hearted note. Turning to Jimenez on his right, he said jovially: 'I've noticed that you always sit in that corner chair. Is it your good-luck spot?'

The Colombian intellectual gave a surprising answer: 'Two reasons. First, sitting here I can watch the pretty girls as they float about our dining room. Second, when you've edited a newspaper in Bogot and traveled frequently to Medelln, you learn always to sit with your back to the wall, and in a corner like this I have my back to two different walls. Double precaution.'

That session of the Palms tertulia ended with the members' assuring their new manager that he would be welcomed back at later meetings when the discussion would probably focus on some less morbid topic.

Dr. Zorn had now enjoyed a series of triumphs in getting the two Indiana couples to enroll in Gateways and in welcoming the affluent Yo-yo Mallorys back into their big apartment, and on his terms. But he had accomplished nothing in his real problem area, filling the beds in Assisted Living.

But now he was about to achieve an outstanding victory in that field, not because he had been especially brilliant in setting it up but because a used-car dealer from Sarasota had to go to the men's room. The fortunate accident was set in train one day as Andy sat in his office biting his nails, studying a report on what the Palms was spending on advertising for Assisted Living and the meager results the ads were producing: 'Krenek, there's got to be a more effective way of bringing patrons in here to Assisted.'

'You have to keep your name before the public. Otherwise you slowly die.'

'Granted. But you don't always have to do it in the same old way. Tell me. Who is our ideal prospect?'

'For what? Residence in Gateways or temporaries in Health?'

'Gateways takes care of itself. Long-term assured growth. Over here in Health is where we make our money. Who's our target?'

Krenek thought for a few moments, then spoke judiciously: 'First of all, someone with above-average income. Stable family but not rich enough to afford round-the-clock private nurses. An accident happens? An operation is necessary? A temporary bed here is their ideal solution.'

'I know, but explain who these people are.'

'Upper-class but not elite. What you might call upper-upper.'

'What are they like?'

'The men go to work in offices. They belong to luncheon clubs like Kiwanis. They play golf. And when older family members get real sick, toward the end, they want to get them into a center where they'll get good care. They aren't afraid to spend money, these people, especially on parents who've been good to them. They love them, but they do want them out of the house.'

Andy was reflecting on something Krenek had said: 'Kiwanis, aren't they something like Rotary? Which has more prestige?'

'I think you'd have to say Rotary, at least in this part of Florida.'

Without further comment Zorn said: 'We're going to invite Rotary clubs to have their meetings here. We'll give them free dinners.'

'They meet at noon.'

'Good. Luncheons are cheaper,' and Zorn's plan was set. From the start it began to produce results, for when these men of upper management saw that the Palms had a touch of class they began recommending it to friends who needed health services for the elder members in their families.

The operation was simple. From a list of Rotary clubs, Krenek selected one nearby, telephoned the secretary, extended the invitation and set a date. Then Andy told the kitchen staff: 'Wednesday noon. Rotary lunch. Important to us, so serve an extrafine meal. There'll be tips.' The Rotarians, enjoying the break in their routine and a chance to inspect a different operation, completed their club business with dispatch and listened to Zorn deliver what he called 'a low-key, no-heavy-breathing, soft-sell description of the Palms,' after which the men were taken on brief tours of the health-care units. The procedure required only eighty minutes from the Rotarians and less than five dollars a plate from the Palms. As the men finished their meals they saw a box labeled: FOR OUR HELPFUL WAITERS, and many who had enjoyed the food tossed in dollar bills.

Zorn's strategy worked, because although he could not point to a single instance in which a Rotarian, after a free meal, brought a member of his own family to the Palms, he knew that the men did talk to others about the two health services, and several families in the area who enrolled elderly relatives did say: 'We heard about you from our neighbor who attended a lunch here.' When careful calculations were made, Zorn and Krenek reported to Chicago: 'The Rotary lunches pay handsomely. Assisted Living is slowly beginning to bloom.' But one such gathering brought an unexpected surprise.

Krenek had invited a club from the Sarasota area and was pleased with the number of apparently well-to-do men who traveled north to visit. The meeting started well, but just as Dr. Zorn was ready to launch into his spiel an excited Rotarian who had slipped out to go to the men's room came bursting back: 'Hey, fellows! Guess who I just met out in the hall!' He brought with him an old man of singular appearance, for despite his advanced age, the slump forward in his hesitant walk, and the cheapness of his sports shirt and trousers, he had the slim figure of a rigorously trained athlete who had not allowed the years to pile on excessive weight. Dr. Zorn knew him only as Mr. Bixby, but now the Rotarian who discovered him was excitedly addressing the luncheon: 'Fellow Rotarians, this man is one of the all-time great baseball players, Buzz Bixby of the immortal Philadelphia Athletics of 1929, '30 and '31. A computer study has just decided that they were perhaps the premier ball club of all time, because of their fabulous pitching staff,' and without notes he reeled off the names of that incomparable staff: 'Grove, Earnshaw, Walberg, Rommel, John Picus Quinn and Howard Ehmke.' As he mentioned each name, the old man nodded approvingly, for with his bat and glove he had helped them win their games: 'And among these immortals was Buzz Bixby!'

'What's his story?' Zorn whispered and Krenek explained: 'His admirers found him in a flophouse without a dime, so they put together a fund to buy him life occupancy in one of our less expensive one-room jobs in Gateways.'

'Was he pretty good?'

'Hall of Fame.'

'How old is he?'

'Approaching ninety, but he still has all his marbles.'

'And his physique,' Zorn said admiringly. 'Does he give us any trouble?'

'He's a teddy bear. Everybody loves him.'

Now the man who had found him wandering in the halls made the formal introduction: 'I've persuaded Buzz to tell us about that unforgettable afternoon when he achieved immortality.'

Standing tense and poised as if waiting for a fastball from some Yankee pitcher, the old fellow began what Zorn accurately judged to be a set speech; a sportswriter who admired him had gone to the record books and composed several flowery paragraphs that depicted that long-ago game and Bixby's role in it. Having given the speech many times, he had learned how to deliver it with maximum effect. The sportswriter had coached him on one important point: 'Buzz, you mustn't sound boastful. The facts are powerful enough, so you can afford to start low-key and self-deprecating.'

'What's that?' Buzz had asked.

'Sounding like you don't know you're a hotshot. It can be very effective. Start with exactly these words, and you'll win your audience right at the start.' Now, speaking to the audience at the Palms, he obeyed instructions: 'Some who are entitled to have an opinion believe it was the greatest game in the history of baseball, but I've seen better on television.' He knew the competing teams, the year and even the specific dates of memorable games: 'Bobby Thomson's one-out homer against Ralph Branca, Wednesday, October third, 1951, that won the National League pennant, or that grand World Series, Boston-Cincinnati, sixth game, Tuesday, October sixth, 1975, with Carleton Fisk dancing around the bases in the eleventh inning. But what I am about to relate was the greatest single inning in baseball, with no one qualified to cast a negative vote.' The effect of these polished words was sobering, for his listeners could see that the old man meant to be taken seriously. But then, using a tactic he had found effective, he turned away from the words the sportswriter had written for him and dropped to the street accents of his youth.

'Can't never forget it. Columbus Day in Philadelphia, 1929. World Series fever. The A's and Cubs locked in a duel. Saturday game all-important. We win, we gotta near lock on the world championship. They win, they surge on to take it all.

'As I'm leavin' home for the ballpark I'm stopped by Zingarelli, who runs the sandwich shop: "Buzz, you gonna have a great day." So I ask: "You the prophet now?" and he says: "Columbus Day, ain't it. All us Eyetalians got power this day. You gonna be hot."

'So I thank him, but when the game starts I think: That crazy Eyetalian don't know from nothin', because we can't get men on base let alone around to score, while Chicago is runnin' wild. They rack up two runs in the fourth and explode in the sixth with five runs. And in the seventh they add another to insult us. Score them eight, us zero. And no sign of us bein' able to change things, because their pitcher Charley Root ain't throwin' baseballs, he's throwin' BBs. We can't even see 'em let alone hit 'em. Game is lost and we're in deep trouble.'

At this point in his recollection of that historic day, un-equaled in World Series history, Buzz allowed his entire body to relax in despair. Hands, fingers, shoulders, head all displayed the grief of a professional athlete whose team has collapsed, and he looked so forlorn that Zorn felt sorry for him, a fine fellow who had thrown away his chance for the world championship.

Suddenly everything changed, for he judged that he should return to his prepared speech. Straightening his head, stiffening his jaw, and making his eyes flash, he kept his voice very low and with increasing volume delivered the lines he liked best: 'But our A's were not dead. Slowly, like a summer storm about to explode in fury, we began to chip away at our overconfident enemy with a determination never before seen. The miracle happens slowly, nothing dramatic to scare Chicago, just a scratch hit here, another there until they realize, too late, that the full storm is upon them.'

An imposing figure, he returned to his own words: 'Al Simmons nudges a home run over the wall, saves us from the disgrace of a shutout, but that makes it only eight to one. Foxx gets a hit. Bing Miller slips one through the middle. Another scratch hit and I come up with two on and the score eight to two, still their favor. I shoot a hard one toward second, where Rogers Hornsby, greatest second baseman of all time, dives for it and misses by one inch. I'm safe and two runs score. On and on our bats rattle out hits like the spatter of raindrops in June, so that when I come up for the second time in the inning, again we have two men on, and this time I hit a Texas Leaguer, you know, a short pop fly just past the infield. Now the best man in the majors to handle a Texas Leaguer is Rogers Hornsby, but this time he gets a slow start on his famous backpedal and again he misses by one inch and again I bat in two runs.

'At the end of that famous inning we have ten runs, unbelievable, and the victory. And our luck holds, because next day we go into the bottom of the ninth trailing two to zero, but like before we start pecking away and win the game three to two, and wind up the series four to one, favor of us.'

Recalling those miraculous days when he was twenty-two and champion of the world, he stopped being a garrulous old raconteur and finished with an effective parable penned by the writer: 'And so we see that we are the toys of fate. Chance determines so much of our lives, as my case proves. I keep with me photographs of my two hits in the wild inning. They show Hornsby missing my grounder by less than an inch and my pop fly, same margin. An inch and a half in his favor, I'm a bum. An inch and a half my way, I'm in the Hall of Fame. Chance does direct all.'

The light faded from his eyes. His voice returned to its characteristic rumble, and once more he was eighty-eight years old, enjoying a Florida retirement complex paid for by admirers who felt that they too had shared in the glory of that distant Columbus Day in 1929.

Although Zorn was mesmerized by Bixby's talk, he was not entirely happy with it, for the old hero had talked so long that he denied Zorn a chance to deliver his sales pitch about the Palms. But the lunch was not a loss: the Sarasota club members told so many of their fellow Rotarians in south Florida that the great Buzz Bixby was residing at a rather neat place called the Palms that they began telephoning to see if they might hold one of their meetings where Buzz could address them. So many asked that Zorn had to say: 'We'd be honored, but we can't keep doing this for free,' and the various clubs gladly paid for their lunches. Zorn also organized a program so that he was assured ten minutes at the end to speak about the Palms. As the weeks passed he found that he was listening to Buzz so often that he had memorized the speech and would catch himself reciting as he went about his duties: 'Some who ought to know are of the opinion that it was the greatest inning in the history of baseball,' so he made an adjustment in the schedule. He spoke first, then had Krenek hurry in: 'Dr. Zorn! Important call from Chicago,' and out he scurried. Although he and Krenek did notice that patronage from the Sarasota area had increased, in his March report he could not yet tell Chicago: 'The Palms is now in the black.' But he would keep working.

One of Andy Zorn's most reassuring experiences at the Palms was his discovery that John Taggart had told him the truth about the man he would be working with. Ken Krenek had a remarkable ability to work for those above him. He studied their habits, their preferences, their weaknesses and their vaulting ambitions. He then asked himself: What can I do to help this man achieve the best for both of us? He seemed to have neither vanity nor envy.

At fifty-four he was the epitome of indispensable service, as exemplified in that marvelous word factotum (from the Latin facere, do, and totum, everything). A smiling pragmatist, he had the job of keeping everyone happy, which meant that he was on call a good twenty hours each day. A leaky faucet was brought to his attention at midnight, and a bus arriving fifteen minutes late for a scheduled nine-in-the-morning start was sure to result in telephone calls to Ken, as he was generally called. He arranged for guest quarters when relatives visited residents, found dentists and ophthalmologists when needed, and arranged tours to museums and parks and places of unusual interest in the TampaSt. Petersburg area, work for which he was applauded by his appreciative guests.

But he was also in charge of two functions that brought the most protests from the residents: he allocated parking slots, a thankless task, and he was in charge of the food program, especially the operation of the dining room. Since only one meal a day was served to the majority of the people, the problem of feeding could have been considered secondary-quite the opposite, it was a constant challenge and a constant woe.

Parking at any retirement center throughout the United States is usually difficult for several reasons. First, the kinds of people who enroll in the centers are from families of more than modest means, and they are apt to have two cars, whereas the centers have been built on the supposition that the occupants of each apartment will have only one car. Thus there is a fundamental problem that can never be easily solved; there simply is never enough room for all the automobiles, and attempts to wedge in a dozen unexpected new arrivals becomes an impossible task. Second, strong-minded people with two fine cars want them parked side by side and raise all sorts of protest when one car is assigned a choice spot and the other a corner of a more distant parking area. Third, in an upscale place like the Palms, the car or cars represent not only the most valuable but the most important item that the couple brings with them because cars are a vital necessity in day-today living. On several occasions couples had moved out, demanding refunds, primarily because the problems of parking could not be solved.

Krenek told Zorn at the conclusion of one unresolved battle: 'We should mail brochures only to couples with one car, and it has to be a European mini-mini. No Cadillacs, no Lincolns and, for heaven's sake, no elongated station wagons.' Then he ridiculed his own suggestion: 'I know we exist on the occupancy of people with two big Mercedes or Jaguars, but have you given serious thought to the possibility that all places like ours might one day have to erect three-level skeleton garages? Don't laugh. I can't see any other solution.' When Zorn pointed out that they had all that open land in the savanna, Krenek replied: 'But our residents are older and not very surefooted, and they're willing to walk only so far to get to their cars. Andy, this is one hell of a mess and I see no easy solutions-fact is, I don't see any difficult solutions, either.'

In supervising the dining room Krenek enjoyed more success. A health fanatic himself, with a partiality for fish, poultry, vegetables, salads and whole grains, he, with the help of his cooperative staff in the kitchen, offered a menu that was both diverse and healthful. In a printed menu that changed radically from day to day, he offered for the evening meal a soup, a meat dish, a fish course, three vegetables and, to the delight of almost everyone, a huge salad bar filled with lettuce, pickles, sliced tomatoes, fruits, croutons, applesauce, pineapple cubes and other appetizing foods. Some relatively abstemious residents had only the soup, the salad bar and dessert with a large glass of one of the many beverages served every evening. Some of the men were especially fond of the mild lemonade.

One would suppose that with a menu so varied-a different meat course every night through an eleven-day routine-that there could be few complaints, but Krenek was bombarded by two recurring protests that could at times grow rather heated. The first concerned dining hours. In retirement areas throughout the nation, it had been decided, as at the Palms, that the ideal hour for the evening meal was five-thirty in the late afternoon, and for a variety of reasons. The diners were older and did not want protracted dinners. Many of them wanted to watch the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour at seven and would leave the dining room in time for it. The high school boys and girls who waited tables wanted to leave early for either study, the movies, favorite television shows or socializing with their friends. And the kitchen staff, especially the male cooks, also wanted to finish work early.

It seemed that once they had time to adjust to it everyone wanted the early hour except the more vocal residents. Seora Jimenez growled in her delightful self-deprecating way: 'In Colombia we often finished lunch at five-thirty! This is uncivilized.' People who had traveled to the Continent reported that in the good restaurants their evening meals were often served at nine or ten, or even, at places like Horchers in Madrid, at eleven. Most men did not seem to mind about the early hour, but their wives complained so constantly that Dr. Zorn had to carry their protests to Krenek: 'Ken, can't we do something about the dining hour?'

'Andy, I give you my word, five-thirty is the most workable compromise-'

'But some of the women-'

'Andy, have you ever watched the lineup for dinner? Let's go down this afternoon and see what's happening.' And Zorn thought he meant he should be there at five-thirty, but Krenek corrected him: 'I mean at a quarter to five, forty-five minutes early.' When they got there at that hour they watched unobtrusively and Andy saw that some of the older couples were already lining up for their evening meal, waiting in chairs nearby so as to be first in line. At five some were actually in the dining room, staking out desired tables near the salad bar, and at a quarter past five the early birds were threading their way along the salad bar and picking off large helpings of favorite dishes, such as spiced apple squares and Spanish chickpeas marinated in a mild garlic sauce. By five-thirty when the doors officially opened, some of the popular salad dishes were already gone.

Back in Andy's office. Krenek awakened him to the realities of food service at the Palms or any other retirement center: 'The most important moment in the day for these older people is their evening meal. Sex is a thing of the past. They don't go out to the movies very often. The men don't go to ball games. Dinner is the climax of the day. I'm sure that if we served our evening meal at four-thirty, the eager beavers would be in line at a quarter to four, and the gate-crashers would have emptied the best salad dishes by four.'

'I can't believe that.'

'This afternoon you told me you couldn't believe that our people were starting their evening sit-downs at five o'clock. You saw them.'

'Isn't there anything we can do to stop the complaints?'

'Andy, you didn't grow up in the country. One thing you learn out there, early and painfully, is never agitate a hornet's nest. You can walk by and not touch it, no strain, no pain. But if you poke a stick at it, all hell breaks loose. If you open this up for public discussion, you'll age ten years before your time.'

'Are we powerless?'

'Yes. A compromise has been agreed on. It works. Not perfectly, but it works. So, please, no jabs at the hornet's nest,' and Zorn promised to desist from any further discussion on the matter.

It was by accident that he discovered another aspect of Krenek's second perpetual headache. One day as he passed his assistant's office door he heard loud voices. A woman was demanding: 'Why can't it be fixed?' and Krenek was attempting to calm her while a man was saying angrily: 'If you'd bought a good one in the first place, you'd have saved money.' They were so vociferous that he waited for them to leave before popping into Krenek's office and asking: 'Ken? What's the problem?' Ken answered sheepishly: 'It was my fault to begin with, and everything I've done to correct it only makes it worse and makes me look more foolish. You heard them.'

'Cue me in.'

'I'm a health nut, as you know. Most of my proposals have been warmly accepted. People appreciate simpler food, well prepared, lots of greens and low cholesterol. Well, I decided that for dessert we should knock off the ice cream overloaded with butterfat. Instead, we'd serve yogurt, healthiest sweet dessert in the world. We tried a small sample purchased from a public dairy, and the residents went crazy over it, said it was the best they'd ever had. But so many wanted it that I thought we couldn't afford to go on buying the prepared product. So I had the bright idea of buying our own yogurt machine and the raw products that go into this excellent dessert.'

'What happened?'

'It worked perfectly, a smash success, and now everyone wants yogurt at the end of the meal.'

'Why the fracas just now?'

'Horrible miscalculation. The machine we had was meant to service ten, fifteen people. We had to serve more than a hundred and fifty. So it broke down. We had it fixed. It broke down again. We bought a new machine. It breaks down.'

'What do you mean, "It breaks down"? Do the parts break?'

'No, the system. Some nights it makes delicious, creamy yogurt. The next night it turns out sweetened ice chips. The following night it doesn't freeze, just sweet milk at room temperature. And the next night it doesn't turn on at all.'

That night Zorn walked through the dining room stopping at various tables to ask about the food, and the majority of the diners said: 'First-rate. But there was no yogurt tonight.' The complaint was so universal that the doctor returned to Krenek's office and announced: 'Ken, I'm taking over the yogurt machine. This thing can be licked,' and he took down the phone number of the distributor.

The expert Allied Yogurt sent out was a Mr. Richardson, sixty years old and a veteran of the dairy business: 'I've been making ice cream for most of my life. Yogurt is nothing but a modern variation, and you have the best machine in the business. A twist here, a twist there, and you get perfect yogurt, every time.'

He was far too optimistic. His adjustments mended the machine for two nights and the diners applauded, but on the third night it produced shaved ice with a smear of flavoring, and on the fifth night it stopped altogether.

When Mr. Richardson returned to fix the machine by replacing certain parts, it worked superbly-for half of the diners, those who beat the opening gong. The other half, who had respected the posted dining hours, got no yogurt, not even shaved ice, and the complaints grew.

Zorn would not admit defeat. He tried another machine with deplorable results, then tried a dairy that sold him a low-fat, non-cholesterol ice cream, which the diners refused to eat. His next proposal to the committees of protest was ingenious: 'I've found a dairy that will provide us, within our budget, a real ice cream for those who can handle the butterfat, and an excellent real yogurt, not frozen.' This worked for a while, a three-tier system: early birds got the good frozen yogurt; latecomers who were not dieting, the real ice cream; and those who were, real yogurt.

Still Zorn was not satisfied. One day, when a delivery man from the dairy said: 'We make a wonderful sherbet. Costs less than ice cream. Real fruit juices. Low sugar. No butterfat at all,' Zorn saw this as a solution to his problems and added the sherbet to his nightly menu. Of course, the machine making the frozen yogurt continued to break down two or three nights a week, but the ice cream and sherbet were always available, and now when he walked through the dining room to chat with the residents, far more than half said: 'Very good meal. And the sherbet at the end was quite acceptable. We would have preferred frozen yogurt, but the girl said the machine was on the blink again.'

When a kind of truce had been achieved so that the residents no longer accused Ken Krenek of gross ineptitude, Zorn told his assistant: 'Fair deal, Ken. You handle the squawks about parking, I'll protect you on the yogurt front.'

To ensure that his eighty-seven retirement and health centers remained up-to-date, John Taggart employed a team of four traveling agents, experts in general medical care, and expected them to keep him and his organization apprised of new developments in the field. They were especially commissioned to inform Taggart of any new men or women who might be employed to strengthen any one of the Taggart centers that could profit from the infusion of new blood and fresh ideas.