At the end of the great duet, Muley said: 'There was empty space left at the finish, so Marjorie asked me to tape a song she loved dearly, but it wasn't a duet. It's another girl singer dressed like a man. He's a Greek god or something, and he's lost his sweetheart with a crazy name something like Yurideechy, and he is searching through hell for her. I know his words in Italian: "Che faro Yurideechy? Where is she?" '

And suddenly, as the contralto sang this meltingly yearning aria from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Muley, the truck driver who had married a princess, looked pitifully at Dr. Zorn and whispered: 'I'm like him. We both search through hell for the women we love, but neither of us is going to succeed.'

When Laura Oliphant was halfway through her treatment for cancer-she had decided, with Dr. Zorn's guidance, to opt for the entire battery, which would give her a 97 percent chance of survival-most of her hair fell out, and she was distraught, taking her meals in her room and refusing to allow friends to see her in this condition.

Nurse Nora, aware of Laura's self-imposed isolation, strode purposefully down the first-floor corridor to find the poor woman sitting listlessly in her sitting room. Distressed to see the extent to which this onetime strong school principal had been devitalized by her bout with cancer, the nurse attempted to cheer her up: 'Laura, you're looking so much better.'

'I look like a ghost,' Ms. Oliphant said weakly, 'a bald-headed witch.'

'Now wait a minute, Laura. Hundreds of women undergo chemotherapy and lose their hair. But it grows back, stronger than before.'

'Yes, but how soon? I can't sit in this room till Christmas.'

'Laura! The world looks out for people with problems. Brilliant men and women work to find solutions, and yours has been around for two thousand years.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Wigs. They had them in the pyramids, I've seen pictures-in color. And today we have stores that specialize in selling them. Near the offices of doctors who specialize in cancer treatments. I'm taking you to one of those stores right now.'

She was looking into Ms. Oliphant's eyes when she said this, hoping to give the woman courage, but the teacher shied away at the mention of the word store, as if she'd had a bad experience in such a place. Nora told her to relax, and in a few minutes they were on their way in Nora's car to downtown Tampa, where a medical district containing several wig stores was easy to find. Even though Ms. Oliphant was uneasy about entering one, for reasons Nora could not fathom, the nurse prevailed, and within minutes of entering the shop, whose two saleswomen were skilled in dealing with cancer patients, Laura was inducted into the mysteries of wigs.

'They come in all styles and all prices,' the saleswoman explained. 'This least expensive one starts at forty-nine fifty. We call it our "cover-up and throw-it-away job," and many women on a limited budget use it with complete success. If a somewhat better wig is to your taste, we have these beauties at a little over a hundred and fifty. And over here are the imported masterpieces from Paris, high style, at something over five hundred dollars. What do you fancy, madam?'

Laura looked at the wigs, fingered the two cheapest and, looking at Nora hopelessly, whispered: 'Get me back home. I'm not well.'

The saleswoman treated Laura as if the latter were her daughter and helped bundle her into Nora's car. Before the car started, the woman whispered to Nora: 'Don't take it too seriously. Women often suffer shock when the reality of a wig hits them. Jolly her along. A week from now she'll be laughing about this.'

Nora had barely started her car on the road back to the Palms when Laura covered her face with her hands and began to sob piteously. When Nora slowed down to comfort her, she whimpered: 'You don't understand. I'm the poorest resident in the Palms. I live right at the edge of destitution, and a wig at five hundred dollars-it's unthinkable.'

'But there was one at fifty.'

'That's unthinkable, too, if it isn't absolutely required.'

'But it is required-for your self-esteem-for your recovery.'

Laura would say no more, except that when Nora walked her to her room she stopped at the door and said: 'It's all happened so suddenly, Nora. And right in the middle of it I realized that I had no money, no close friends, and that if my cancer spreads I shall one day soon be dying in this room. It's overwhelming. Life isn't easy for an aging woman on her own.'

It was obvious to Nora that she had to help Laura escape from her malaise, so she said firmly: 'Bald or not, wig or not, you are going to start rehabilitation work tomorrow with Mr. Yancey and his wife, and I'm going to speak to Mrs. Mallory to see if she can cheer you up. Now go to bed and I'll be back to see you at nine tomorrow.'

Next morning, Laura reported to Mr. Yancey, who took no notice of her baldness: 'They tell me you had a cancer operation, Ms. Oliphant. Rotten luck, but you appear to be in good health otherwise. I know you had a hip operation and you walk so well you must have been a model therapy patient. Makes my job easier.' Taking both her hands he began a series of broad, easy swaying steps intended to loosen her upper torso. Then he raised her arms gently to the point at which she cried: 'It hurts!'

'I know it does, but I wanted to see your limits. Ms. Oliphant, you're way ahead of most mastectomies I see. You're already on your way to being rehabilitated, but I can help you speed it up,' and he moved her into a different kind of dance, one likely to relax the entire body. She complied, and by ten o'clock, after an hour of carefully controlled exercises, she was actually smiling and had, at least temporarily, forgotten her baldness.

Her meeting with Mrs. Mallory had been arranged for ten-thirty. Nora simply led her to the big double apartment on the seventh floor, knocked on the door, told the petite former banker: 'Esther, Laura's here,' shoved Ms. Oliphant forward and left.

When the door was closed, Mrs. Mallory said: 'Let's sit over here on this love seat overlooking the river and the swamp. We may see some deer.'

She was not hesitant in getting to the heart of the matter: 'Nora-and may God bless such women-informed me in strictest confidence, which I shall honor, Laura, that you have money problems-Now wait, we all do. Did you know that Chris was once sued for three million dollars? She also told me that you refrained from buying a wig, and God knows you need one, because of the cost. Well, my dear, I have a present for you,' and from behind the love seat she produced a square box of some size. Laura, wondering what was happening, noticed that the box was decorated in red, blue and white with a drawing of the Eiffel Tower, and when she removed the lid she saw a papier-mche baldhead atop which rested a beautiful Parisian wig.

'Put it on,' the owner said. 'It's yours.'

'Esther-'

'I too had chemo, my dear. Three packs of cigarettes a day. And this wig was a great consolation to me because I could look at myself and say: "Well, Es, old girl. You may have a leaky lung but on the dance floor on Saturday night you can still knock 'em dead." '

For some moments they discussed illnesses and Mrs. Mallory said: 'You're about seventy-five. I'll soon be ninety. So if my wig brings you as much luck as it brought me, you could have twenty years more of a rousing good life. At least take a shot at it.'

She then left her seat overlooking the river, went to her desk and returned with a long envelope: 'My dear, Chris and I discussed your case when Nora brought it before us, and we want to give you this document, but you must pledge never to tell anyone in the Palms about it or ever to speak to us about it. Go ahead, read it.'

It was a lengthy paper, a transcription of sixteen pages purloined by Nora itemizing all the medical bills pertaining to Ms. Oliphant's cancer treatment, including the heavy fees of the seven doctors she had consulted. It came to forty-one thousand dollars, of which Medicare had paid more than half. All remaining charges for which Laura was responsible were marked in red ink: 'Paid in full.' The Midwestern banking couple had decided to help this retired schoolteacher start her final years with a clean financial slate, freed from the devastating fear of running out of funds and with no place to which she could retreat. Laura returned to her room in a daze, studied the papers that would rescue her from poverty and broke down in a flood of tears.

That first night she was apprehensive about appearing in the dining room in the elegant Paris wig, but when she dressed in one of her most attractive outfits and put on the precious wig, she had to admit that she looked fairly presentable. Gingerly she left her room, pleased to see that there was no one in the hall, and walked slowly to the dining room.

When she entered that center of social life she became aware that everyone was looking at her, and some called out greetings, but no one mentioned the wig: 'How grand we look tonight!' and 'Laura! You've done wonders since your stay in the hospital,' and before the dinner ended she was again a full-fledged member of Palms society. Such universal support spurred her recuperation until both she and her doctors could say the treatment was a success, and she reverted to the comfortable routine she had known before: the visit to a nearby church on Sunday, working in the flower gardens in the late afternoons and the intense bridge games after dinner.

The greatest change in her life, however, was that now both Dr. Zorn and Nurse Nora suggested, whenever a woman resident faced the probability of cancer of the breast-and it happened regularly-that she might want to talk with Ms. Oliphant, who knew a good deal about the problem. This happened in the case of Mrs. Clay, a birdlike woman from one of the single rooms, who accepted the suggestion.

Nora and Dr. Zorn watched as Laura sat with the woman in a corner and outlined the options, as Laura had learned them from her own experience: mastectomy or lumpectomy, followed by radiation or chemotherapy, and then maybe treatment with Tamoxifen.

'What do you advise, Ms. Oliphant?'

'Unfortunately, no one can make up your mind for you, not even the doctors, because there are a lot of different schools of thought on cancer treatment.'

'But they tell me you've had breast cancer. What did you do?'

'All three-mastectomy, chemotherapy and Tamoxifen. And I feel good physically. I'm at ease psychologically. I did lose my hair, but it'll come back. For the present I wear this wig.'

'What did it cost?'

'About six hundred dollars in Paris.' When she heard Mrs. Clay's surprise, she added quickly: 'I didn't buy it. A wealthy friend gave it to me after she had used it. But you can find perfectly usable ones for less than a hundred. You wear it only a few months.'

'I didn't mean the wig. The operation and the other things. What did they cost?' She felt she must apologize for such intrusive questioning: 'I don't have a great deal of money, you know. How much?'

'I think everything ran something like forty thousand.' When Mrs. Clay heard this figure she gasped, and Laura said: 'Mine must have been extra expensive. I had to consult six different doctors.'

'Did Medicare cover some of the cost?'

'With our crazy system of health care, only a portion. But the information I've just given you is free. Do it right, ninety-seven percent success. Refuse to do anything, we'll bury you before Christmas. But only you can make the decision.'

Mrs. Clay, this frightened, friendless little woman, was terrified by what Laura had told her and by her reluctance to give specific guidance: 'But what am I to do? If you've been through the procedures and don't know, who does?'

Laura was deeply affected by this desperate cry for help. She stuck out her jaw and said almost defiantly: 'All right! I'll tell you what to do and save you fifteen thousand dollars. Don't consult any more doctors. Don't spend any money on exploratory surgery that merely tells the doctors what they already know. Go the whole route, but do it at the little hospital where charges are less, and then fight Medicare to pay the maximum.'

'You think that way I can afford it?'

Almost without being aware of what she was doing, Laura grabbed the little woman as if the latter were one of her students and shook her: 'Damn it all, woman. This is your life. Of course you can afford it.' Startled by the fury with which she had spoken, she calmed down and spoke in a soft, loving voice: 'Mrs. Clay, if you have to change your habits to save the money, if you have to borrow from family, if you have to do only God knows what, do it. We're talking about life, which is precious.'

Close to tears, she suddenly cried out: 'I'll tell you what else! By the time you get out of the hospital I'll be through with this wig, and it will be yours. You'll start your new life in a six-hundred-dollar Paris creation,' and impulsively she whipped it off her head and jammed it down on Mrs. Clay's.

The two women stared at each other. Laura with her bald spots, Mrs. Clay smothered by a wig too big for her, and they burst into laughter. Dr. Andy, who had been watching Ms. Oliphant's performance closely, quietly turned to Nora: 'She's recovered her spirits. I wonder what's happened,' but Nora, knowing about the secret financial relief the Mallorys had provided, only explained: 'That Paris wig. No matter how old a woman gets, when she looks good she feels good.'

When John Taggart assigned any young man to a position of importance in his organization, he allowed him free rein for much of the first year. The four roaming inspectors of his retirement empire did report occasionally on young Andy Zorn, but only in connection with some innovation that they had initiated. They did not spy on Zorn himself, and Taggart never allowed a director's subordinates to undercut him.

But Taggart was glad to pick up stray bits of information from disinterested visitors to a center like the Palms, or incidentally from Zorn's underlings like Miss Foxworth and Ken Krenek. In late April Krenek sent a letter that fell into this category because it mentioned the request of the scientist Maxim Lewandowski that he be allowed to rent, on behalf of the notable scientific societies for which he worked in his retirement, an unused closetlike room on the fourth floor: 'He says he needs more space for his new computer, which the consortium of universities is giving him, and for files to hold the paperwork the computer will develop. Miss Foxworth says the rental proposed by the universities is not generous, nor is it so low as to be ridiculous. In view of our constantly improving financial status, the request has been approved by Dr. Zorn, who said: "Who knows? The old fellow might discover something that wins him the Nobel Prize!" ...

'I must add in closing that both the staff and the residents have taken to Andy Zorn with enthusiasm. He is vigorous and perceptive, and has a friendly manner and an urgent desire to master this business. Day after day he roams the place, eager to learn about everything that functions and especially about those parts that don't function, which he is determined to fix.'

On one such inspection late in the spring, Zorn came upon one of the small enclaves provided for chess players, bridge players and people who wished to read in quiet surroundings or have tea with a small group of friends. It was empty at the moment, but someone had left on the bridge table a copy of the glossy magazine Retirement Living. He knew of the journal, of course, but was not familiar with its contents, for he supposed it to be frothy and of little use to him.

However, when he casually leafed through the color pages, he came upon an article that commanded his attention. Written at some length, it told the story of a registered nurse and of her education, her early work in southern hospitals, her salary, her expenses, and the curious twists in her profession whereby she became a head nurse in one of the fine retirement centers in North Carolina.

He had read only a few of the tightly written paragraphs when he took the magazine from the table and sought a corner chair in which he could read the entire article. As he finished the last paragraph he closed the pages reflectively and said: 'I feel as if I know the woman. She's a real person with real problems and accomplishments. I wonder who wrote this?' and, turning back to the beginning, he saw the brief editorial note in italic at the foot of the first column of type: Pepper Riley, graduate of University of Missouri's School of Journalism, has worked in the health field for a dozen years and has written widely about it. She is a regular contributor to this journal.

Slumping in his chair in deep thought, he tapped the closed magazine and lost himself in imaginary situations: Think what a writer like that could do with a story about a center as fine and varied as the Palms! Done properly, it could attract the attention of thousands. But no amount of hard thinking produced answers to: What kind of story? Focused on what aspect? Photographing whom? He had no answers, but the basic validity of his conclusion remained with him: Our story is one that's worth telling.

With the magazine rolled up in one hand, he hurried down the corridors to his office, resembling a relay racer carrying a baton. Once in his chair, he summoned Foxworth, Krenek and Varney, and as they looked at the magazine he told them about what he had in mind: 'A six-page article on the Palms, full color, written by Pepper Riley. It could leapfrog us right up to the head of the pack. I'm sending a fax to the editors this afternoon, but what to tell them that will excite their interest?'

As the discussion continued, Zorn returned repeatedly to the journalist Pepper Riley: 'She wouldn't waste her time on trivialities.' Krenek was strong in voicing his counsel to go slow: 'You don't know these people. You've never met this sharp-eyed Riley woman. And don't forget, what you tell a reporter isn't necessarily what she writes. They can spot something faulty here and blow us out of the water. I don't like the idea.'

As they argued, Nora was reading about the other trained nurse who had found a good life in the health wing of a retirement center, and during a pause when the other three were staring at their knuckles, she said: 'This is great stuff. It tells the story-my story, really-through goods words and wonderful pictures. If we do it, we have to focus on one of our people. But which one?'

Zorn thought that Ambassador St. Pres might be a contender, but Miss Fox worth torpedoed that idea: 'Stiff as a post, and what's the story?' But as the discussion intensified, one resident after another being disposed of, she suggested: 'The story isn't someone who's already here in residence. The real story is why someone out there might reasonably want to move in,' and as soon as she said this, all four minds agreed, and the ideas exploded.

'It's got to be a widow. Her husband has died leaving her a big house.'

'Limited funds but not a pauper.'

'From some interesting state that photographs well, like maybe Kentucky.'

'She's going to leave the monstrous house, all that furniture, and move down here to a two-bedroom apartment.'

'No!' Dr. Zorn shouted. 'I see it all. Moving from a big house to a one-room special. That's the story. Every woman could empathize.'

'If she has this big house and her husband left her in comfortable financial conditions, why is she confining herself to one of our small rooms?'

Krenek solved that: 'I'm amazed at how many of our widows arrive here thinking they have more money than they do, but they soon face reality. And they take a one-room affair for the same reason Laura Oliphant does and half a dozen others. That's why we have one-roomers, because not only these widows but also single women have to be careful with their funds.'

Soberly, Andy concluded: 'We could have the story of a widow from Kentucky, or wherever, who faces a crisis in her life. The end of a wonderful life in a big house with her husband, the beginning of an acceptable new life in a small room alone. And then-now we get to the heart of the story-in the Palms she is not imprisoned in that one small room. She has the full richness of a great mansion,' and in a rush of words he explained the photographic shots that would be possible: 'We see her playing bridge with three attractive partners. Shuffle-board. Exercise room with the Yanceys. Movies in the recreation room. Chess one-to-one against Senator Raborn. Dining with friends. Library, our Sunday evening prayers, fishing with Judge Noble and his birds. God! this could be magnificent!' and afire with that enthusiasm he drafted a fax to the New York offices of Retirement Living, praising the editors for their fine article on the nurse in their February issue and inviting them to do an even better story on a bereaved widow making her big decision to sell off her house and move to what the average reader would call a nursing home, but this-the Palms-was a home with a vast difference. He suggested that Pepper Riley would be ideal for writing the story.

To his astonishment, next morning at nine-thirty he received a telephone call from the managing editor of Retirement Living: 'We rarely receive proposals, and we get a lot of them, with as clear a statement of possibilities for a story suited to our needs. Pepper Riley is sitting here with me and she says it sounds like a natural for her, and she's our best. But that's no commitment on our part. You have to agree to certain conditions before we can even talk. Now I want you to take down these requirements. One, the subject must be photogenic, not Lena Hornebeautiful at her age, but what you might call blue-hair good-looking like in the jewelry ads when he's giving her an extra diamond on their fiftieth anniversary. Two, she must still have her big house available so that we can photograph her heartbreak in leaving it. Three, she must be willing to talk with us openly and honestly about her financial position. That's an obligation, because without her compliance we have nothing. And we will not accept her playing coy and saying: "John left me comfortable." Readers insist on more than that. Four, when she reaches your quarters you must be able to surround her with five or six men and women of above-average attractiveness. We pay for visits to the hairdresser. Five, you must play honest with us in every detail about your financial arrangements with her.

'Talk it over with your staff, Dr. Zorn. Make them understand that our five requirements must be met, and if they are, Miss Riley and I have a gut feeling that this project could prove to be a live one.' As he was about to hang up, the editor added: 'Oh, Dr. Zorn! The widow's agreement to provide us with the details I mention is made with us, not you. We've learned not to accept blind assurances like "I'm sure we can arrange that." We'll do the arranging. Good luck.'

When Andy informed his staff of the five demands, they started immediately to sort out recent inquiring visitors who might satisfy the magazine's needs. Both Foxworth and Krenek were invaluable, since they remembered recent applicants with surprising accuracy. One after another the two experts rejected candidates: 'Not for a national magazine.'

'She sold her house a year ago.'

'That one would be possible, but she's taking a two-room apartment.'

With a cry of delight, Miss Foxworth looked up from her papers: 'I have her right here. A delightful widow who visited us from a small town in Arkansas, husband was a lawyer, who left reasonable funds, but she has to watch her pennies. She's found a buyer for the old house, is moving out shortly and coming down here in two weeks. Taking one room, very nice with a view of the water. Her name is Arlene Jessup, and here's her phone number.'

'But is she photogenic?' Krenek asked, and Miss Foxworth said: 'By my standards, yes. I hope I look as good as she does when I'm in my late sixties, but I fear I may have lost that battle already.'

'Stop it, Roberta!' Zorn said. 'You know you're attractive, and you're probably the most intelligent person on our team.'

'That's been the bane of my existence,' Miss Foxworth replied. 'I never look half as good as I sound. But it doesn't matter-I've become really excited by this project. It's a great idea, Andy, and we've got to carry it through.' She volunteered to call the widow Jessup and propose the story to her, and she made the project-both the photographing in Arkansas and the special introduction to the Palms-so alluring that Mrs. Jessup agreed. A fax was sent to New York giving the positive and enthusiastic details, and word was returned: 'Have talked with Jessup, sounds ideal if she has acceptable appearance. Assigning Pepper Riley to story. She and our world-famous Austrian photographer on their way to Arkansas immediately to shoot removal from Jessup's big house. Riley and her crew should be with you in ten days.'

When Pepper Riley reached the Palms, with the Arkansas half of her story already in draft form, she was a new experience for Andy Zorn. Two years younger than he, she had been a nurse in a variety of health-care institutions: hospital, nursing home (a horrid experience), top-scale retirement center in North Carolina, and county nurse in the Carolinas. At the advanced age of twenty-seven she quit her nursing job and enrolled in the University of Missouri's School of Journalism, where she took a degree in writing about science and health.

Upon graduation with good marks, she quickly landed a job with a Kansas newspaper, where her writing attracted favorable attention, and this led to an apprenticeship at the age of thirty-two with Retirement Living, where almost immediately she was promoted to staff writer and then to feature writer. An unbroken series of excellent stories followed, and now she was in Tampa to sustain her record.

Her rapid rise in her profession had made her self-assured, if not arrogant, for when Dr. Zorn presumed to advise her about how he thought the Tampa half of her story should develop, she told him curtly: 'Let's understand one thing at the start, Doctor. I decide where the story is going and how,' and he retreated.

She brought with her a team of three: a young woman who served as her assistant, looking after the script and the details; Fritz, the Austrian cameraman, fifty-one years old and showing signs of aging; and his assistant, a lanky young fellow with a pigtail and one earring who was a master at lighting-with a square of reflecting metal, a white sheet, a newspaper and a variety of booms and klieg lights he could either make a scene seductively romantic and filled with mysterious shadows or throw a blazing spotlight on a face to reveal the crags and lines that indicated character. Fritz told Zorn: 'That boy is my credit card. I won't leave home without him.'

When the Palms command crew saw the photographs taken in Arkansas, they were elated, for they sensitively captured the sad aftermath of the death of a loving husband, surrender of a cherished home, disposal of furniture and objects assembled over a lifetime, and the beginning of the great loneliness that awaits so many. One picture seemed to tell it all. Mrs. Jessup stood by the window of an empty room, looking out at a bleak landscape. The lighting genius had kept the room in deep shadow, played a soft light on the woman's profile and used a spot to illuminate a forlorn tree that stood some distance from the house. The result was a masterly depiction of a person totally alone.

Although the widow Jessup arrived with more furniture than could be fitted into her one-roomer, the son and daughter who accompanied her were happy to turn the extra pieces over to an antique consignment dealer. The three Jessups were a delightful trio, she in her late sixties, they in their early forties with every sign of having been well cared for. Miss Foxworth substantiated the financial figures provided during the interviews in Arkansas: 'Mr. Jessup, a small-town lawyer, had lived well in a big house with three bathrooms but had left his widow only $260,000. She was able to sell the big house, rather outmoded, for $176,000 because it carried with it almost half an acre of desirable land. Since her children made it clear that they expected no bequest from their mother when she died, they encouraged her to enter the Palms on the no-return-of-capital principle and she chose one of our least expensive one-roomers. This meant a lower monthly fee, in her case $110,000 for the buy-in, and only $917 for the monthly fee. Because she loved her children she opted for a 50 percent recoverable for them at her death.'

Zorn could not recall a more equitable arrangement. It left Mrs. Jessup with a substantial sum to be invested so that she would have the interest to use as spending money. He wished that all transactions were as amicably put through.

But as Zorn worked on the Tampa end of the story he quickly found that the strong characters involved in this project had three separate agendas: Pepper Riley was determined to tell her story her way; Fritz would shoot the pictures his way, regardless of what Pepper suggested; and he, Andy, was determined that the Tampa segment tell the story of the Palms in a way so favorable that a reader, studying the elegant text and looking at the strong pictures, might want to fly down to Florida and take a look at the place-he hoped that some of these sightseers might become interested in taking an apartment or, in later years, to utilize the health services.

Pepper would have none of that. A handsome young woman who could look quite intriguing when she smiled, she could also be rock-hard when required: 'I am not here to glorify your nursing home,' she told Zorn, aware that her linking the Palms with an ordinary nursing home would annoy him, and she certainly meant what she said. Trouble came when she and Fritz spent most of one day photographing Mrs. Jessup tucked away in her one room. They showed her converting her sofa into a bed, showed her edging into and out of the bathroom, and photographed her huddled at one extreme edge of her cramped quarters. The pictures made the constricted area look almost repulsive.

When they continued exposing the room's deficiencies well into the afternoon, Zorn had had enough: 'Damn it! She doesn't live in this room twenty-four hours a day! She has the full run of this spacious and well-appointed installation. That must be shown, too.'

Pepper listened and tried to hide her impatience with his complaint, then said almost as if speaking to a child: 'My dear Dr. Zorn. Don't you suppose I understand the necessity for an upbeat conclusion to my text? Do you think I'm so stupid as to ignore the inevitable?'

Humbled by Pepper's repeated rebukes, Zorn was tempted to feel sorry for himself, the manager who was not allowed to manage, but one busy afternoon he discovered that he was not the only one who was being put down. Fritz was snapping at Pepper rather nastily because she had ruined one of his shots by trying to interview Mrs. Jessup when he required the widow's full attention. Pepper waited till Mrs. Jessup had wandered off to her next setting, then she unloaded her wrath on her white-haired photographer genius: 'Listen, old man, I've been covering for you on our last three jobs. I do everything to make you look good. Well, Grandpop, I'm serving notice I will not take any more of your petulant bullshit. Keep it up and when I get back to New York I'm going to tell them you're over the hill. You can't pull your weight in these assignments, and I will not go out with you ever again. But if you stop the crap, do your job and keep your big mouth shut, I'll continue to make you look good and you can probably hang on for another two or three years. But don't you ever yammer at me like that again.' The old cameraman had no response.

When they finished shooting what Zorn called 'the ghetto shots,' they turned to the new life that Mrs. Jessup would be enjoying, and here Fritz used his cameras in a fully upbeat way. He showed her in a charming mix of scenes, walking beside the channel to talk with Judge Noble and inspecting his birds, or roaming in the African veldt, or looking down the beautiful entry lane of tall Washingtonias.

Even more gratifying to Zorn were the shots of her making friends in the library, watching the men play billiards, or sitting in as a fourth at bridge, helping in the garden with the flowers, or going on a bus trip to the Dali Museum in nearby St. Petersburg or to the Ringling Brothers circus museum in Sarasota or to the exquisite new marble art museum in Ocala to the north. She took a day trip to Disney World's Epcot Center and attended an orchestra concert in Clearwater. Some of the most interesting pictures were those of Judge Noble and her as they took a nature walk in a wild area north of Tampa and then as they enjoyed a dinner-paid for by the magazine-at the Colombian Restaurant, where they were entertained by flamenco dancers.

But the sequence of shots that really impressed most viewers were the photos of the Mallorys inviting Mrs. Jessup into their big Cadillac for the drive to the posh Berns' Steak House in Tampa, and then to a public dance at which Mr. Mallory, nearly ninety, did fancy steps with the new widow.

Pepper did not allow Mrs. Jessup to gush over any of her experiences; she turned off her recorder whenever effusiveness threatened to slip in, but she liked to catch the newcomer's surprise at the richness of life awaiting her once she left her little room. Pepper also caught couples who had been in residence for some years saying: 'We should have come here ten years earlier than we did,' but she also snooped around until she found a bitter elderly woman who was moving out, and her comments, eagerly spewed onto the tape, were scathing: 'They charge double what they should. The people are boring, the food is dreadful, and come summer in this climate you swelter.'

'Where are you going?' Pepper asked.

'Back to Vermont, where people are civilized.'

'Aren't the winters pretty cold up there?'

'Yes, but you have libraries and you expect your neighbors to have read books, too. Worst decision I ever made in my entire life was moving into this area of cultural wasteland. Television six hours a day, and the yogurt machine is never working. If you moved in here at your age, you'd commit suicide within a month.'

'But it wasn't intended for people like me.'