When she went back to her own office, she heard their laughter start up again. She suspected they might be laughing at her, and looked down to make certain her sweater and skirt were not stained, her belt was properly buckled, her pantyhose without runs. She could see nothing amiss, but still ...

She sat primly at her desk in the windowless office, sipping her coffee. She listened to the drone of talk of the two men and the bustling sounds of the hotel about her. She wondered if she was invisible. She wondered if she did exist.

Zoe Kohler was neither this nor that: not short, not tall; not fair, not dark; not thin, not plump. She lacked the saving grace of a single extreme.

In their final argument, just before Kenneth had stormed out of the house, he had shouted in fury and frustration: "You're not definite! You're just not there!"

Her lusterless hair was cut in a short bob: a straight line of bangs across her brow, a center part with thick wings falling just below her ears. She had not changed that style since college. Her hair fitted as precisely as a good wig and was all of a piece, no tendrils or curls, as if it could be lifted off, revealing the pale scalp of a nun or collaborator.

Her face was triangular, dwindling to a pointed chin. The eyes were the same shade of brown as her hair, and without fire or depth. The eyeballs were slightly distended, the lashes a lighter brown and wispy.

Her lips were not pinched. Clever makeup could have softened them-but for what?

At work, in public, her features seemed immobile, set. She rarely smiled-and then it was gone, a flicker. Some thought her serious, solemn, dull. All were wrong. No one knew.

She would soon be thirty-seven, and though she exercised infrequently, her body remained young, with good muscle tone. Her stomach was reasonably flat, buttocks taut. Her thighs were not slack, and there was a sweet indentation between ribcage and hips.

Dr. Stark assured her that, other than the controllable disorder and menstrual cramps, she was in excellent health.

She knew better. She was unloved and incapable of inspiring respect. Was that not an illness?

Dim she may have been, even blank, for there was nothing robust, vital, or assertive in the role she played. The dowdy clothes. The sensible shoes. The subdued eyes, the quick, tremulous smile.

That was the lark, you see. It was all a grand hustle. Now, after so many years, she was swindling the world. She was making her mark.

Barney McMillan left, giving her a wave as he passed her office.

"Ta-ta," he said.

She planned her work for the day: drawing up the Security Section's employment schedule for the following week, writing letters to departed guests who had left personal property in their rooms, filing petty cash vouchers with the bookkeeping department.

It was, she acknowledged, hardly enough to keep her busy for eight hours. But she had learned to pace herself, to appear constantly busy, to maintain a low profile so that no executive might become curious enough to question her value to the Hotel Granger.

She felt no guilt in taking advantage of this sinecure; her take-home pay was less than $200 a week. She was able to live comfortably only because of her alimony and the yearly checks of $3000 each from her mother and father. She had a modest savings account, a checking account, and a small portfolio of tax-exempt municipal bonds.

She did not waste money, but neither did she deny herself. Anyone who might glimpse the gowns concealed in the back of her closet, or the lingerie hidden in the bottom drawer of her dresser, would agree to that: she did not deny herself-what she wanted and what she needed.

Everett Pinckney stopped by. Because there was no extra chair in her tiny office, he put one thin haunch on the edge of her desk and perched there, looking down at her.

He was a tall, jointed man, balding, a bony crown rising from a horseshoe of gray hair. His bare scalp was freckled and there was a sprinkle across his nose and cheekbones.

His eyes seemed constantly teary, his lips moist. He had the largest ears Zoe Kohler had ever seen: slices of drooping veal. His voice was hoarse and raspy, which was odd because he had a Boston accent, and one expected a tone more elegant and precise.

He wore vested suits with small bowties and, occasionally, in his lapel, a fake flower made of feathers. His cracked shoes were always polished to a high gloss. If he was a man on the way down, there was no bitterness or self-pity in him.

It hadn't taken Zoe long to realize she had been hired by an alcoholic. You could not judge from his manner or speech, for he moved steadily, if slowly, and his words were never garbled. But even in the morning he exuded a faint but perceptible odor: sour, piercing, musty. Whiskey had soaked into his cells, into the lining of his stomach, and bubbled up to seep from the pores of his skin.

He was never obviously drunk, but she had heard the drawer of his desk slide open, the clink of bottle against glass, the closing of the desk drawer: a steady and never-ending series of sounds that got him through the day in what Zoe imagined to be a constant glow, a buzz, a dulling of whatever gnawed at him so that he could function and face the world with equanimity and charm.

And he was charming, with a crooked smile, endless patience, and sympathy that seemed without limit. He was invariably cheerful, always obliging, and knew how to endure fools. Zoe had heard gossip of a bedridden wife and a son who had gone bad, but she had never asked, and Everett Pinckney had volunteered no information about his life outside the Hotel Granger.

Nor did he ever question Zoe about her private life. They respected each other's pain. It brought them closer than confessions and confidences.

"Sergeant Coe called me last night," Pinckney told her. "At home. His wife is pregnant."

"Again?" Zoe Kohler said.

"Again," he said, smiling. "So he'd like all the work he can get. Naturally. You're going to make out next week's schedule today?"

She nodded.

"Can you use him?"

That was the way Everett Pinckney was. He didn't tell her to find work for Sergeant Coe, although he had every right to. But the employment schedule of the Security Section was one of her duties, so he asked her.

"Could he fill in for Joe Levine?" she asked.

"I'm sure he could."

"I'll check with him before I show you the schedule."

"Fine. Thank you, Zoe."

Pinckney, Barney McMillan, and Joseph T. Levine, the three security officers, worked eight hours a day. Each had two days off a week (Pinckney, the chief, on Saturday and Sunday). To fill in on their days off, or during vacations or illness, temporary security guards were employed.

Most of the temps were moonlighting New York policemen and detectives. The Security Section had a list of a dozen or so officers who might be available, and had little trouble keeping a man on duty around the clock.

Pinckney told Zoe Kohler he was going to check at the desk and then he was going to inspect the new locks on the steel doors leading to the roof.

"Be back in about an hour," he said.

She nodded.

He slid off her desk. He stood a moment, not departing, and she looked up inquiringly.

"Zoe ..." he said.

She waited.

"You're all right?" he asked anxiously. "You're not ill? You seem a little, uh, subdued."

His concern touched her briefly.

"I'm fine, Mr. Pinckney," she said. "It's that time of the month again."

"Oh, that," he said, relieved. Then, with a harsh bark of laughter, "Well, I have to shave every morning."

He smiled, and was gone.

Yes, he shaved every morning. But you didn't get back pains and cramps from shaving, she should have told him. You didn't see the dark, gummy stains. You didn't imagine the ooze and flow. The constant crucifixion.

The longer she lived, the more vulgar life seemed to her. Not society or culture, but life itself. Breathing, eating, excreting, intercourse, bleeding.

Animal. Crude. Disgusting. Those were the words she used.

She worked slowly, steadily all morning, head bent over her desk, a silent drudge. She didn't look up when Everett Pinckney returned from his tour of inspection. She heard him in his office: desk drawer opened, clink of glass, drawer slammed shut.

She was not bored with her job. To be bored, she would have had to think about it, be conscious of it. But she moved mechanically, her hands, eyes, and a snippet of brain sufficient for the task. The rest of her was away and floating.

At 12:30 she took her japanned tray and went into the kitchen. One of the chefs fixed her a tunafish salad plate with lettuce, tomato and cucumber slices, a single large radish cut fancily to resemble a flower. She carried the food and a pot of hot tea back to her office.

Pinckney never ate lunch.

"Got to keep this down," he would say, patting his sunken stomach.

But she heard the sliding of his desk drawer ...

She ate her lunch sitting erect in her stenographer's chair, her spine not touching the back. The cramps were intensifying, the pain in the lumbar region beginning to glow. It seemed centered just above the sacrum, but internal. The pain was a sun, spreading its rays.

She picked delicately at her salad, taking small bites, masticating thoroughly. She sipped her tea. When she had finished the food, she lighted a cigarette and poured a second cup of tea.

She kept a small pharmacopoeia in the middle drawer of her desk. She washed down two Anacin, a Midol and a vitamin C tablet. Then she patted her lips lightly with the linen napkin and brought the used dishes back to the scullery.

It was a rackety, steaming room, manned by two youths, a black and a Puerto Rican in sweat-soaked T shirts. They worked at top speed, scraping plates into garbage cans, filling racks with china, glassware, cutlery, pushing the racks into a huge washing machine.

They looked up when she came in, gave her scurvy glances. The Puerto Rican winked and shouted something in Spanish. The black roared with laughter and slapped his thigh. She emptied her tray, turned, and walked out. Their laughter followed her.

She called Sergeant Coe at his precinct, but he wasn't on duty. She called him at home. Mrs. Coe answered, and Zoe identified herself.

"Oh yes," Mrs. Coe said anxiously. "Can you hang on a sec? He's working in the basement. I'll call him right away."

When the sergeant came on the phone, breathless, Zoe informed him that she had him down for Joe Levine's shift, 5:00 P.M. to 1:00 A.M., on Monday and Tuesday nights.

"Great," he said. "Many thanks."

"If for any reason you are unable to make it," she said formally, "please let us know as soon as possible."

"I'll be there," he assured her. "Thanks again."

She took the employment schedule into Mr. Pinckney's office and stood by his desk as he read it.

"I checked with Sergeant Coe," she said. "He told me he'll be able to fill in for Joe Levine."

"Good," Pinckney said. "It looks fine to me, Zoe. You can type it up. Copies to the desk, front office, and bookkeeping."

He said that every week.

"Yes, Mr. Pinckney," she said.

She had just started typing the roster when her phone rang, an unusual occurrence.

"Hotel Granger," she said. "Security Section. May I help you?"

"You sure can, sweetie," a woman's voice said briskly. "Come to a great cocktail party Harry and I are throwing this afternoon."

"Maddie!" Zoe Kohler said happily. "How are you?"

"Full of piss and vinegar," Madeline Kurnitz said. "How they hanging, kiddo?"

The two women chatted awhile. Mostly, Maddie chatted, rapidly and loudly, and Zoe listened, smiling and nodding at the phone.

It seemed to her she had been listening to Madeline Kurnitz all her life. Or at least since she had shared a room with her and two other girls at the University of Minnesota. That had been in 1960-1963, and even then Maddie had been gabbling a blue streak.

"A four-year vacation from the realities of life," was her judgment on the value of a college education, and her scholastic career reflected this belief. It was one long party studded with dates, escapades, affairs, unexplained absences, threats of expulsion, and an endless parade of yearning boys and older men that awed her roommates.

Maddie: "Listen, the only reason we're all here is to snare a husband. Right? So why don't they teach us something useful-like moaning. The only reason I got all these guys calling is that I've learned how to moan realistically while screwing. That's all a woman has to know to be a success: how to moan. This place should have a course called Moaning 101-102. Then the second year's course could be called Remedial Moaning."

Maddie: "Look, there are men, and there are husbands. If you were male, would you want to be a husband? The hell you would. You'd want to charge through life banging everything in sight. Men fuck, husbands have sex. Men smell, husbands use fou-fou. Men drink whiskey, husbands drink beer. Men are hung, husbands have hernias. Shit, I don't want a husband, I want a man."

The three roommates, from small towns in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, listened to these pronouncements with nervous giggles. It wasn't the way they had been brought up. Maddie, from New York City, was a foreigner.

They worshiped her, because she was smart, funny, generous. And she passed along the men she didn't want or had tired of. In return, they loaned her lecture notes, coached her, covered up her absences, and finally got her through the four years to a BA degree.

She didn't show up for graduation, having taken off for Bermuda with a Yalie. But her diploma was mailed to her.

When Zoe Kohler came to New York from Winona, Minnesota, after her divorce, her first phone call was to Maddie. She was now Madeline Kurnitz with her own number in the directory. Harold Kurnitz was her fourth husband, and Maddie took Zoe under her wing as an experienced combat soldier might comfort, advise, and share his know-how with a raw recruit.

Maddie: "A divorce is like falling off a horse. You've got to get right back up and ride again or you'll be spooked for life."

"I don't think I want to marry again," Zoe said timidly.

Maddie: "Bullshit."

She had done her best-cocktail parties, dinner, blind dates-but finally she realized Zoe Kohler had been telling the truth: she didn't want to marry again, not at that point in her life.

Maddie (wrathfully): "That doesn't mean you can't screw, for God's sake. No wonder you have cramps. If I go two days without a bang, I sneeze and dust comes out my ears."

Now, listening to Maddie natter on about all the beautiful people who would be at her cocktail party ("A zillion horny studs!"), Zoe Kohler caught some of her excitement and said she'd come over from work, just for a few minutes, but she had to get home early.

Maddie: "That's what they all say, kiddo. But they come and they stay and they drink up all our booze. There's a guy I want you to meet ..."

"Oh no," Zoe said. "Not again."

"Just meet him," Maddie urged. "That's all. Just shake his paw and say, 'How ja do.' Is that so awful?"

"No," Zoe said faintly, "I guess not."

Maddie finally got off the phone and Zoe went back to typing the Security Section roster for the following week. She guessed that she had been invited to the cocktail party at the last minute because Maddie had realized that she would have a preponderance of male guests and not enough women. So she was calling friends and acquaintances frantically, trying to redress the balance.