So much for Saturday afternoon. He stared at the phone as he put it down, felt a pang of doubt, wondered if he oughtn't to call her back and say he was sorry, it had just been a random impulse, it would be better if they did not meet, better for the both of them. He did not call the familiar number and although he didn't know it then, he was dooming his marriage.

"Ah," she said, with a contented sigh, stroking him with soft fingers after they had made love in her shadowed, alimonied bedroom, "ah, well-known, well-beloved territory. I'm glad you put off breaking your neck at least until next Saturday." He had told her of his jump that morning. She had watched him often and had even jumped twice, to amuse him, although never free-falling, and had gone surfing with him on rough days out at Montauk, although she professed to be a coward and afraid of planes and the sea. "I am just one of those female idiots," she said, "who is that male cliche-a dam good sport. Loads of fun, the boys tell me. If ever I find a man as rich as my ex-husband and one I like as much as I like you, I'll stop being loads of fun so fast it'll be like the sonic boom. Glad to have you aboard, bridegroom, even if it's only on furlough."

"Stop calling me bridegroom."

"Is your wife loads of fun, too?"

"Not in the way you say it."

"Is this the way you usually spend your Saturday afternoons or do I detect a rift?"

"I have no usual way of spending Saturday afternoons."

"How's it going?"

"So-so," he said.

"Tempered steel," she said. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting the lady but I have gotten reports from acquaintances."

"Let's not talk about my wife," he said. "Is that all right with you?"

"Everything is all right with me," she said, putting her long, leanmuscled leg over his in the soft bed. "Can I expect further Saturday calls?"

"Time will tell "

"Praise Saturdays," she said, giggling. "Do you think you'll ever work yourself free to take me skiing or surfing again?"

She was an athletic girl, in and out of bed, and was willing to try anything, although after her second jump she had forsworn parachuting. "I've got the idea," she said, "and that's enough. And each time I had the feeling my tits were going to come up and choke me." But it was the only thing she had complained about in the way of sport and she was always available at the last moment for any kind of holiday. At least for him. She had never said she loved him and she didn't make him feel guilty and he was grateful to her for that.

"I asked you a question," she said, whispering, her tongue licking his throat. "Are you working yourself loose from the shackles?"

"As I said, time will tell."

She pulled away from him a little and looked at him soberly. "In some ways, you're such a reckless man-but in others . . ." She shook her head*. "Did you ever find yourself crazily, head-over-heels in love?"

"Once."

"With whom?"

"My wife."

"Oh, Christ," she said, "who would have expected a dreary old answer like that? And how long have you been married now?"

"Three months."

"And here you are on a Saturday afternoon in the sack with your good old round-heeled pal, Josey."

"Here I am," he said. "Marriage isn't as simple as some people think."

"You're telling me. If I told you some of the things my husband wanted me to go in for ..."

"Don't tell me. I want to keep the pure image of you I have always cherished in my heart."

"Boy, you are a cold sonofabitch, aren't you?"

"I wish I was," he said sadly. "I wish I was."

"Tell me-did you ever not get a girl you wanted?"

"By the thousand."

"The truth."

It was almost the truth. He did not pursue women, but he had gone out many times with girls and women he would gladly have gone to bed with, but had never tried because he knew instinctively he would be rebuffed if he made any advances. He knew he had a strong appeal to the opposite sex and he was not above admiring himself in a mirror, but there was a certain kind of woman, the cheerleader types in college, the show girls and pretty and desirable receptionists in outer offices, the dumb or placid or silly ones, whom he did not allow himself to be interested in for more than an hour or two since in their turn they quickly showed that they were not interested in him and were bored with his conversation. With smart girls and women, although by no means with all of them, he knew he was on a shared psychic wavelength and he felt it when they were attracted to him and at just what moment, without any overt moves on either his part or theirs, the decision to become lovers was tacitly made. It had been that way with Josey. She was frivolous, but she was far from stupid. She used her brain for inconsequential things like the most difficult crossword puzzles and playing charades brilliantly at parties, but her intelligence was evident at all times. It was not only a question of sex with her. When, as had happened from time to time, he had become involved with someone else, he and Josey still saw each other often, for lunch or dinner or merely a stroll in the park. As she had said early in their affair, "The rule here is that there are no rules-everybody is allowed to come and go on his or her own schedule. Nobody is going to break my heart."

Now she was repeating, "The truth? If not by the thousand, by how much?"

"By the dozen."

"I'm curious-what do you really think of women? Not me in particular, but women in general?"

"About like men."

"What do you mean by that?"

"They come in all grades. Categories A, B, C, D and so on."

"You tell me how you grade me," she said playfully, "and I'll tell you how I grade you."

"That's not a game I'm disposed to play right now," he said. He pulled her to him and kissed her to keep her quiet.

They made love for the rest of the afternoon and after that, while they were dressing and discussing where they would go for dinner, Josey said, "You ought to jump out of airplanes every day. It makes you marvelously homy." She chose a noisy, crowded restaurant, where she seemed to know everybody and men kept coming over to the table and kissing her and saying wasn't it a great party last night or last weekend or where have you been, darling, while Michael sat quietly, drinking a little too much wine and wondering what Tracy was doing while he was sitting there. By the end of the evening Josey was wandering from table to table and Michael paid the check and slipped out and went home, where he sat looking at the silent telephone for an hour before he went to bed.

CHAPTER SIX.

"And now," Josey said, "we bid a fond farewell to tender childhood toys, for I am to be well and truly wed tomorrow morning." She patted his cock gently. They were in bed in his room at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles. Cornwall and Wallace did not stint on the accommodations for their representatives. Now, business over, presentations presented, plans sent on to New York, he lay luxuriously, not alone, with the drapes drawn against the afternoon California sunlight. He had received the invitation to the wedding in the mail in New York and had volunteered to go on a job to a company in downtown Los Angeles so as to be able to attend. After such a long time it was, he thought, the least he could do for a friend.

In the last two years he had volunteered more and more often to go on the out-of-town trips. New York was becoming increasingly unbearable to him and after a week there-the noise, the constant insensate pushing, the unceasing, subterranean jockeying for power in the office, the look of manic effort on everybody's face, the drunken forgetfulness at the end of the day-he found himself with his nerves scraped raw, insomniac, waking fretfully at all hours of the night, listening to sirens, going through the motions of work and marriage with a bone-deep weariness. Living in the same small apartment, he and Tracy had grown steadily apart and the good moments between them had become briefer and rarer.

When he went on his trips-to Chicago, to Denver, to Monte Carlo, Zurich-he no longer called home every night. To avoid hurting Tracy more than was necessary he saved his free-falling, his surfing, his scuba diving and skiing for the times when he was away from New York. And when he slept with other women it was also in other cities. Quite often, Josey had flown out to wherever he was to join him but he had not repeated their Saturday afternoon performance of the day in New York when Tracy had left him to go to her parents' home on Long Island.

When he came home from his trips, Tracy asked only the most perfunctory of questions. She was becoming more and more successful in her work and had started a small business of her own, with two other women, which involved entertaining clients in the evenings two or three times a week. At first, she had invited Michael to accompany her, but he invariably said those things weren't for him and finally she had stopped inviting him. He went on his holidays alone because if she had any free time she said the only place she wanted to be was her parents' house in the Hamptons, where she could relax and not do anything but lie in the sun.

He was making considerably more money than before and so was Tracy and he had suggested that they move to a bigger apartment where each could have a room of his own, but Tracy had been firm about staying where they were and they still slept together in the same oversized bed. She no longer made advances to him when they lay side by side, but was as warm and ardent as ever when he moved toward her. At those moments he would feel that he would never grow tired of that lovely, familiar body, but when he was away from her he hardly ever thought about her and it did not interfere with his pleasure with other women.

They knew that they were approaching some sort of breaking point, but out of timidity, politeness, memory of happier times, they both postponed the moment.

"Now," Josey was saying, "I am going to get dressed and I am going to walk out of your room and through the garden as though I just dropped in for a cup of tea and from tomorrow morning on I am going to devote the rest of my life to making my gorgeous, rich young husband the happiest man in Southern California. You will be invited to family dinners and the christening of children and you will be asked to cruise with us on our yacht and you will not tempt my husband to jump out of airplanes with you or dive for treasure or whatever it is you do underwater or to follow you down a ski slope. Understood?"

Michael laughed. "Understood."

He watched her get out of bed, stretch the magnificent long body like a giant cat, then quickly, with businesslike efficiency, get into her clothes, whip a comb through her lustrous dark red hair. Gone, gone, he thought, self-pityingly.

Dressed, she gestured toward the bucket, with the half-drunk bottle of champagne in it. "One last, sneaky, delicious stirrup cup?"

"Of course." He got out of bed.

She watched him critically as he put on a robe. "It's a test of character," she said.

"What's a test of character?" He pulled the sash of the robe tight around his middle.

"Giving you up," she said soberly.

"Have you passed it?"

"Alas, yes," she said. She held out her glass and he filled it, then filled his own. They clinked glasses, drank. Surprised, he saw that she was crying.

"What's the matter?" he said, then knew he shouldn't have said it, that it was a stupid thing to have said.

She put her glass down on a table. "Why the fuck couldn't you have fallen in love with me?" she cried. Then she turned abruptly and fled from the room, a final dark silhouette against the brilliant sunlight and the green foliage of the hotel gardens as the door swung open, then slammed shut.

It's a lucky thing, he thought numbly, we didn't indulge in one last kiss.

He went to the service in the morning and recognized many of the faces from the movies and television. Josey's husband-to-be was in the oil business, but he lived in Beverly Hills and was popular with the more affluent natives. He was a tall, thickset, open-faced, ruddy man who looked as though he had played football. If Michael didn't think he was gorgeous, it was probably because he used a different vocabulary from Josey's.

Josey came down the aisle on the arm of an elderly gentleman Michael didn't recognize. She looked splendid, disdainful and untouchable, in her best Vogue cover manner and gave only the briefest of smiles to the groom, who was looking at her adoringly. But she winked at Michael, the barest flicker of an eyelid, as she passed him.

Michael didn't go to the wedding lunch, but got into his car with his surfboard and drove out to Malibu. This is one afternoon, he thought, that I want to be alone.

He parked his car across from the cove and got into his bathing trunks and walked barefoot, carrying his board, to the beach, where a fine mist made blurred shapes out of the buildings to the north. The sea was rough, whitecaps out beyond the long rolling breakers. It was a cold day and there was nobody else riding a board that afternoon. So much the better, he thought. He disliked it when he was surrounded by dozens of superb young boys and girls fighting for position around him as the waves formed out to sea and looking at him as though he were an escapee from an old peoples' home.

Gingerly, because the water was brutally cold and he hadn't brought along a wet suit, he slipped into the foam, then plunged, lying on the board, and started to paddle out. It wasn't easy. The waves came one after another, in short chopping series, and he was knocked around as he submarined with the board under the curl. After the stiffness and formality of the morning and the confusion of memories in the church, the tingle and roughness of the cold water and the single combat with the waves was delicious.

Finally, he was out beyond the breakers, sitting on his board, resting, still breathing deeply after the struggle to get out, at the point where, he judged, he could start in when he saw the right wave sweeping in behind him. The shore seemed far away in the gray mist and the ocean was his as he rose and fell on the swells. He was warmed by the paddle out and he was in no hurry-no one was waiting for him, his week's work was done, his plane to New York was not taking off till Monday morning. He was blessedly alone, his life afloat, his world wind, water, waves and salt, and he embraced it all. He took a deep, tonic breath, saw the wave he wanted massing up in the mist, started paddling, felt the gigantic power of the Pacific under him, knew that he had caught it right, stood up and sure-footed and triumphant rode the giant diagonally, just in the cup, the crest of the wave foaming high above his head. Then, suddenly, it was too much for him. The wave was breaking more sharply than he had thought it would. He held on for a moment and then the board went shooting out from under him and he was tumbled, deep, over and over in tons of black sea water. He held his breath, fought, came up, was swept under again after just one short breath of air, came up in a turmoil of chopping swirling water.

The board was gone, but he could breathe now, careful to duck when the waves broke on him and hurled him toward the bottom. Calmly, knowing that if he worked too hard he would exhaust himself quickly and never make it, he began swimming, feeling the pull of the undertow, catching a wave when he could to take him a few yards inland, then going along with the current, parallel with the shore, not resisting the ebb tide, until another wave pushed him a little closer toward the rim of beach. If there had been anyone in sight he would have waved for help, but the beach was deserted. He swam, thinking, What luck I didn't stay for the lunch and the champagne, I'd have sunk like lead by now if I had.

It took him a full half hour to get in and as he crawled onto the beach he was sure that he couldn't have lasted another two minutes. He stood up, tottering, then steadied himself. Then he did something that he knew was crazy even as he did it. He threw his arms up into the wide air above his head and with his fists clenched, shouted hoarsely, wordlessly, into the gray, empty mist, shouted with joy.

Then he walked, breathing deeply, along the edge of the sea, his feet in the sucking plaques of foam, until he found his board, careened on the sand. He picked it up, inspected it. It had not been harmed. He patted it, as though it were a horse that had won a race for him, and carried it back to his car. He toweled himself off, taking off his trunks, which were full of wet sand, not caring if anyone who might be passing could see the naked bruised man carefully tending to his body in the cold mist sweeping toward the mountains behind him, off the cold sea.

His clothes felt soft and warm against his skin and he got into his car and drove a little way down the Pacific Coast Highway until he reached a bar. He went in and ordered a whiskey and looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His face was scratched from the sand and a little bloody and his sun-streaked hair, now darker than ever with salt water, was tangled and thick with seaweed and sand. Neptune's lucky child, he told himself, grinning at his frightening reflection, what a marvelous day. Where were all the superb young cowards, all those sweet-limbed California boys and girls, this overcast afternoon? Another day, another death, challenged and overcome. Mother, dear, if only you could see me now.

When he got back to the hotel, he washed the traces of blood off his face and showered, to get the sand and the salt out of his hair and off his skin. It was late and he was hungry, but today he didn't want to lunch alone. He knew some girls in Los Angeles but the chances were slim that any of them would be home in the middle of a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The men he knew were all business acquaintances and he'd had enough of business for the week. Then he remembered that there was a nice woman whom he had met a few nights before at a party given by the chairman of the board of the company he had been working with. Her name was Florence Gardner and she was an actress who had come out from New York for a part in a movie. He had seen her once or twice on the stage in New York and had been impressed by her cool good looks and her talent as a comedienne. She had shown that she was clearly interested in him and when he had said that he was staying at the Bel-Air, she had said, "So am I. Maybe we can have a drink sometime."

The sometime might just as well be now, he thought. He asked for her room on the phone and was surprised at how pleased he was to hear the sound of her voice. "I apologize for calling at such short notice," he said, "and I know it's late for lunch, but I just got back to the hotel and if you haven't eaten yet why don't you join me in the restaurant?"

"Well . . ." she hesitated, "I've been studying my lines for Monday. But now that you mention lunch, I remember I haven't eaten yet. What the hell, a lady has to eat. Can you give me fifteen minutes? I was out on my patio in the sun and I'm something of a mess and I have to take a shower and generally pretty up for any kind of public appearance."

"Fifteen minutes it is," he said. "I'll be waiting for you at the bar."

He walked through the gardens toward the bar, to the pleasant tinkling of the sprinklers watering the lawns and the fragrant banks of flowers. The bar was dark and peaceful and he ordered a daiquiri, because he was in California. The rum and lime of the drink was an enormous improvement over the taste of the Pacific.

When she came in, crisp as a stalk of iced celery, dressed in pressed jeans and a light pink sweater, he saw that the sun had put color into her small oval face, color that was brought out nicely by the pink sweater. The jeans showed off her slender but well-rounded hips and behind admirably. She wasn't wearing lipstick but her lips, so flat they almost gave her the look of an Oriental statue, were a natural coral pink, a little darker than her sweater. She had soft, bright blond hair and green eyes that changed color, he noticed, in different lights.

She perched on the stool beside him and ordered a daiquiri too, while he asked for his second one.

"What a nice idea," she said as she drank. "Your calling me. When I'm working I have a tendency to forget to eat or drink."

"What are you working on?"

"Eating money." She waved her hand airily. "I will win no Oscars with this part. To tell you the truth, I'm waiting for the director to tell me why the part's in the picture at all." She shrugged. "Hollywood. Still, it has its uses. And this hotel is a splendid creation after the hole I live in in New York. Nibbling on the lotus from time to time can be nourishing." She had a clipped manner of talking, her voice low and musical. It suddenly reminded Michael of Tracy's way of talking and the tone of her voice. She was about Tracy's age too, he guessed, and her figure was like a slightly smaller version of Tracy's.

Stop thinking about Tracy, he thought, and asked the barman to have a waiter come in and take their order for lunch. When he came they both ordered salads and Michael asked for a bottle of white wine. After the waiter had gone, he noticed Florence examining his face closely.

"I don't like to sound curious," she said, "but what have you been up to? You look as though you've tangled with a kitten."

"Oh, these." He put his hand up to the scratches on his forehead and the bridge of his nose. "I'm afraid I tangled with something a little larger than a kitten."

"A lady?"

He laughed, shook his head. "The Pacific Ocean. I went surfing around noon and the ocean won this round. Does it mar my beauty?"

She chuckled. "Not beyond repair," she said. "Surfing? Are you a Californian?"

"Actually I started it out at Montauk."

"I have some friends out there," she said, "whom I visit from time to time in the summer. But they don't surf. All they do is sit around and drink and adulterize."

"Everyone to his own amusements," he said. "What do you do on your holidays?"

He was relieved when she didn't say that she adulterized, too. "Me?" she said. "I catch up on my reading. For some reason it's almost impossible to read in New York. Haven't you noticed that?"

"Now that you mention it-yes."

"A publisher friend of mine tells me that more than fifty percent of all the books sold in the United States are bought in New York. There must be more unread books on the shelves in New York apartments than in the Library of Congress."

"What sort of stuff do you read?"

"I'm a Civil War buff," she said, smiling. "Isn't it absurd? My father was a career officer in the Army and the way he talked about it, you'd think he was at every battle from Bull Run to Appomattox. I'm sorry I wasn't around to meet Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart. Well, you can't be everywhere."

The waiter came in to tell them their table was ready and after a little grave consultation they decided it was a nice afternoon for another daiquiri and the barman said he'd bring the drinks in to the restaurant.