"I understand." Antoine shook his head despondently. "It is sad, seeing you here alone. And seeing Mrs. Storrs come in with two ugly old men. You made a brilliant pair. Two shining animals. All eyes were drawn to you together. Whosever fault it is, you are both making a mistake."

"Go play the goddamn piano, will you?"

"What I said had to be said."

"Go play the piano."

Antoine hopped off the stool and glided over to the piano. When he moved it was as though to some inner syncopated music. He sat down at the piano and lit a cigarette and stared down at the keyboard in silence as though he were almost afraid to touch the sacred object.

Next to Michael, the overblown blond woman was staring at him and Michael became conscious that the droning, grasping voice of the fat man she had been with had stopped. He turned and looked frankly at the woman. She was alone. She smiled at him coquettishly. Actually, she was quite pretty, gaudy but pretty, and the full, well-rounded bosom was temptingly displayed, a considerable length of cleavage showing.

"Good evening," the woman said. "My boyfriend got discouraged and went home. Would you like to buy me a drink? I've been looking at you ever since you got here."

Michael bought her a drink and had another himself and after a half-hour of conversation with her during which he learned that she was a physiotherapist and came from Seattle and that her name was Roberta Munson, he thought, Why not, after all this time? and left the bar with her, sketching a farewell wave to Antoine, wreathed in cigarette smoke at the piano, looking deserted. They got into a taxi and he kissed Roberta Munson politely because he knew that was expected of him and couldn't honestly tell whether he enjoyed it or not.

Roberta's flesh was fragrant and tasty, firm, as befitted the body of a physiotherapist, and she was as enthusiastic as a man could wish, but after a half-hour of useless effort in bed, he said, "I'm awfully sorry, but I guess tonight is not the night," and got up and began to dress.

"Ah, what a pity. A beautiful young man like you. New York is a terrible town for men. Maybe another night?"

"Maybe another night," he said, knowing there wasn't going to be another night with her, or perhaps with anyone else. He leaned over and kissed her forehead apologetically and then went out of the bedroom and let himself out of the apartment.

As an experiment, he tried once more, the following week, with a girl he had particularly liked in the days before he met Tracy, a girl who was sunny and serene and uncomplicated and who had been among the most persistent of the women who had kept calling him after, as he ironically put it to himself, he had dropped out of the circuit to spend all the time he could with Tracy. It had been years, but when he telephoned her, her voice was as fresh and eager as it had always been, and wonder of wonders, she had not gotten married or moved out of town or turned Lesbian or taken up Zen or dope or had a nervous breakdown. He had a pleasant dinner with her and took her to hear Antoine play and sing and Antoine had arched his eyebrows in approval when he saw her, but when he took her to her apartment and she began to shed her clothes in her frank, uncomplicated way, he knew that it was going to go wrong and it did.

As he got dressed, he tried to avoid her eyes. She lay naked on the bed, young, distressed and appetizing, looking at him worriedly. "Something's happened to you, hasn't it?" she asked. "The well gone dry temporarily?"

"Poisoned," he said. "I hope temporarily."

"God be with you, baby," she said. "And thanks for the dinner and the music."

One more try, he thought as he descended the stairs from her apartment, and it will be all over town. He wondered what Tracy would think if she heard.

He met Antoine's undependable love, a girl by the name of Susan Hartley, with a tiny lively face and long hair that seemed too heavy for that small head to bear up under and dark eyes that would have been described as flashing if she had been Spanish or a character in a novel about the South before the Civil War. But she was just a nice American girl from New Jersey who worked as a laboratory assistant in the research department of a big cosmetics firm and tried out the company's products on herself constantly, so that you never could guess in advance what color her hair would be when you saw her next or what outlandish shade she'd be wearing around her eyes or using on her fingernails. She seemed to like him and treated Antoine with amused sisterly affection and was pert and delicate in her movements and obviously attractive to men, with her hearty laugh and deep voice, surprising coming from the small fragile body. She did not look as though she would sweep the memories of anybody from a man's mind, but Antoine's tastes had always been erratic.

She came into the bar quite often and did not seem to be noticeably suffering from the cafard on any of the occasions Michael saw her.

"Praise me to her," Antoine said on a night when they were sitting together at the bar, Susan between the two men. "She has no notion of my true qualities and my profound talent for affection. Perhaps a kind word from an old friend like you will soften her heart."

"Oh, Antoine," Susan said, laughing, "why do you have to go public with everything-even your failures?"

"I have an open and sincere nature," Antoine said. "I am not an American, but a warm, emotional Latin. What I feel I tell. I repress nothing and that is why the whole world loves me. Except you."

"I love you," Susan said.

"There is love and love," Antoine said darkly. "I will now go back to the piano and sing sad songs that will make you regret the way you are treating me." He rose from the bar. "Michael, be convincing."

Michael laughed. "Call me Cyrano."

"Don't be too eloquent. She has a deplorable weakness for eloquent men."

"I will describe you to her in plain but forceful language."

"I trust nobody," Antoine said, and went over to the piano.

"I'll say one thing for him," Susan said. "He never gives up. Do you think he'd change if he became an American citizen?"

"For the worse."

"Does he do well with girls?"

"So-so," Michael said. "You can never be certain how much of what he tells you he's making up."

"You can say that again," Susan said. "I like him, but-" She made a little moue. "That acne and that scar. Time will tell. Now, be eloquent." She looked at him fixedly and he became uneasy.

"That's not my strong point," Michael said. "Let's listen to the sad songs." Now there was no question that she was flirting with him. He hoped it was only an ingrained habit begun when she was in the sixth grade in grammar school. Besides, it was probably all in fun and not to be taken seriously, a more modern version of the debutante's old-fashioned divertissement of collecting names of beaux for a waltz on a dance card at a formal ball. But from then on he was careful not to do or say anything that might disturb Antoine and for the most part managed to confine their conversation to the subject of skiing, which she was so passionate about that she took all her vacations in winter so that she could ski in Zermatt or Davos or Kitz-biihel or Vermont. They innocently, he hoped, compared runs they had made in Europe and America. She professed to be amazed that she always saw him in The Golden Hoop alone and offered to introduce him to one or all of her girlfriends, tall, petite, smart, stupid, blond, brunette, married or not married, but Michael put her off as good-naturedly as possible and finally she stopped, saying, "I know what it is-you're having a dark secret romance with somebody famous and you can't be seen in public with her or it would be all over the papers and her career or her marriage would be finished and each night after you leave here you rush to her luxurious town house and it would never do if one night she caught you with lipstick on your collar."

He laughed at that and said, "Now you've got it, Susan," and they left it at that. He had no desire to tell her the simple fact that he was impotent.

Although he dropped in to The Golden Hoop for at least a few minutes almost every night, Tracy never came back again.

He celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday by going down to the office earlier than usual, although he was aware of the fact that by the terms of the wills of his mother and grandfather he was somewhat wealthier than he had been the day before. There was a meeting scheduled with the president of an electronics concern in Pennsylvania for the afternoon and he wanted to go over the report he had prepared. Nobody in the office knew that it was his birthday, so he was spared all congratulations. Tracy had always celebrated the occasion by coming to the breakfast table with a gift and a bottle of champagne, but if she remembered this day she had neglected to call or perhaps had called, but too late, because he was out of his room at the hotel by eight o'clock. He had not seen or heard from her for more than a year, but as he sat at his desk with the small pile of neatly typed folios on it, it took a conscious effort not to call the hotel and ask if there were any messages.

When Mr. Lewis, the president of the electronics concern, came into his office at three o'clock, Michael was sweating as usual, as the heat was full on, although it was a mild, golden day and New York was glittering like a box of jewels in the Indian summer sun. The president of the electronics concern was a small, portly, fussy man with a worried look on his face. Michael knew that Mr. Lewis was enormously rich and he guessed that the worried look came because Lewis went through his days and nights certain that everybody was conspiring to get his money away from him.

"There it is, sir," Michael said after they had shaken hands. He pointed to the folders on his desk. "It's all there. The bottom line. Chapter and verse. Costs, income, capital flow and investments, taxes, personnel, profit, research and development, the lot. In black and white. Do you want to read it here or take it home and have some time to digest it?"

"I'll read it here." Lewis had a gruff, suspicious voice. "I don't want anybody in my office or even in my home to know what's in it until I've made up my mind what I want to do."

"It will take some time," Michael said. "I have some things to do outside the office for about an hour or so. Make yourself comfortable."

"Thank you, sir," Lewis said. He sat down behind Michael's desk, put on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, then took out a monocle which he held next to his right eye and opened the top folder and glared at it.

Leaving Mr. Lewis to cope with his myopia and the problem of how to conserve and multiply the millions of dollars he had stored up in his far-flung business, Michael went out of the office. He had nothing to do away from the building, but he wanted some fresh air.

He hadn't bothered to put on his topcoat and the little nip he felt from the wind off the river was welcome after the sealed cloying warmth of his office.

He walked toward Fifth Avenue and went into the St. Regis Hotel, with the idea of having a drink, then thought better of it because he had promised himself that he wouldn't drink before sundown anymore and went downstairs to the row of telephone booths and dialed the number of Tracy's office. He didn't know what he wanted to say to her and they hadn't spoken since the morning he had cleaned his things out of the apartment and he had to catch his breath when he heard the familiar low voice saying "Tracy Lawrence" over the wire.

"Michael," he said.

"Michael." He could hear the sharp intake of breath over the phone. "Happy birthday."

"Time marches on," he said. She had remembered.

"I'm glad you called. There are some things I must talk to you about."

"Today's as good a day as any. Dinner tonight?"

She hesitated for a fraction of a second. "All right."

"Shall we meet at the bar of the Oak Room and then go on someplace for dinner?" One thing was certain-he wasn't going to pick her up at her apartment. Birthday or no birthday, the apartment was one place he was not going to visit.

"Fine," she said briskly.

"Seven-thirty."

"Seven-thirty it is." She hung up.

He walked slowly back to his office, wondering what she wanted to talk to him about and dreading what it might be.

Mr. Lewis was pacing back and forth in his office when he got there. He had taken off his glasses and put away his monocle and looked more worried than ever. "You guys cut pretty deep," he said to Michael as soon as Michael had closed the door behind him. "You're asking me to fire thirty-five men who've worked with me for twenty years or more."

Michael sat down behind his desk while Mr. Lewis kept pacing the floor, looking, Michael thought, like a nervous, pouting, fat little bird. "We guarantee that the efficiency of your firm will be improved by at least thirty percent in every department, Mr. Lewis." His tone was neutral, nonargumentative. "But if you don't want to take our advice it's up to you." Our advice. Spread the responsibility around, although he had done all the work on this particular assignment. "We made it clear from the beginning that we would merely suggest."

Mr. Lewis sighed, the little bird confronted with the problem of flying or not flying, with the necessity of choosing whether he would have ten worms a day or fifteen worms a day. "Yes, you did," Mr. Lewis said unhappily. "You were admirably frank." He sighed again. "You were highly recommended to me. Highly. With good reason." He blinked, as though the light coming through the windows was suddenly too bright for him. "The bottom line, as you said. Well, I suppose business is business. Yours and mine." He began to stuff the folders into the attache case he had brought with him. "Still, I'll have to sleep on it."

"By all means, Mr. Lewis."

Mr. Lewis clicked the attache case shut. Michael stood up and they shook hands and Michael escorted the man to the door and opened it. "Good luck, sir," he said.

"I'll need it," Lewis said bitterly. Michael watched the little plump man, with the lives of hundreds of other men in his hands, pigeon-strut down the corridor, already pondering what he would say to the thirty-five men who had worked for him for twenty years or more.

Michael closed the door and took off his jacket and loosened his collar now that he was alone, annoyed with the sweat marks on his shirt from the goddamn steam heat. He went over to the cabinet where he kept some bottles and a silver Thermos ice bucket. This was one day he couldn't wait until evening. Anyway, it was his birthday. He took out a bottle of Scotch and a bottle of soda. When he opened the soda bottle it fizzed over and splashed over his shirt. He brushed at the wet spots. Who would have thought the old man had so much blood? he thought ironically, as he poured the soda over the whiskey and the ice. Then, holding the drink in one hand and the soda bottle in the other, he went over to the window and stared out at sunlit New York in its harvest season. He drank slowly, but it didn't do any good. "Shit!" he said aloud and suddenly threw the soda bottle with all his strength at the window that could not be opened in winter or summer. The bottle shattered in a hundred pieces against the window, strewing shards of glass over the carpet. There was no mark on the window. I've got to take a shower, he thought, ice-cold. Business is over for the day. He put on his jacket and, carrying his topcoat, went home. The shower helped, but not much, and the hotel room seemed dingy and unwelcoming and he decided that next week he would look for an apartment for himself where he wouldn't feel like a transient whose life or death was of no interest to any living soul in the city.

She came into the bar of the Oak Room, cool and splendid, in control of the city, the men, as usual, staring at her as she made her way to the table near the window where he was sitting. She was wearing a new dark fur coat, not the one he had bought her as a wedding gift. Whose gift was this? he thought as he stood to greet her. Unworthy thought. A girl who looked like Tracy had a right to as many fur coats as she could lay her hands on.

She didn't make a move to kiss him as they said hello and they stood facing each other awkwardly for a moment and then shook hands, which made Michael feel absurd, especially since they both moved in circles in which people kissed each other on the cheek at the most casual meetings.

Over their drinks the conversation was impersonal. Tracy was tanned and had been in the Bahamas for ten days and it had been warm and the weather perfect in the Bahamas. Her father and mother were well. Her father had sold the Tracy some time ago. Her middle sister was living in California and had married a newspaperman in San Francisco without warning. Her own business was doing well and they had had to move to larger quarters on upper Madison Avenue, which was convenient for her because she could walk to work in five minutes. They had both seen two of the same plays, on different evenings, and they disagreed politely on their merits. No, he had not had the time last year to do any skiing, but he had taken up hang-gliding last summer and liked it. She looked at him coldly after he told her that and abruptly changed the subject and asked him how he was doing at the office. He was doing fine, he said, but no one at Cornwall and Wallace had resigned or been fired and Mr. Cornwall's promise that Michael was going to be made a partner had not been realized so far. Still, he couldn't complain. He had even bought himself a Porsche last year with a big Christmas bonus. Yes, Antoine was playing and singing even better than ever. Yes, Antoine had told her about his new dazzling girl, but Michael didn't think she was as dazzling as all that.

There was no mention of the fact that she had said over the phone that afternoon that there were some things she had to talk to him about.

When they finished their drinks Michael said he was taking her to a new, very good Italian restaurant on Sixty-first Street. He had carefully chosen it because they had never been there together.

The small talk continued over dinner. Let her tell me what is on her mind, he thought; he would not ask. Then, over coffee, she said, abruptly, "Michael, I think it's time we got a divorce. I can't go on hanging in limbo like this forever."

V "Whatever you say," he said. Unreasonably, he was shocked. Living together or living apart, he still thought of her as his wife. A wife was a permanent fixture. "If that's what you want."

"That's what I want," she said. "There's a man I've met and I like him and he wants children, too. I'm getting too old to wait much longer."

"You look eighteen."

"Look." Her tone was bitter.

"What sort of man is he?" he asked. "What does he do?"

"He's forty," she said. "A widower."

Older and uglier than you, he remembered Antoine's description. "He manufactures fabrics. He's very well off."

"Your parents will be pleased."

She ignored that. "Naturally I won't ask for alimony or anything like that and there's nothing we have to divide," she said, crisply businesslike. "But we'll both have to get lawyers."

"Of course," he said. "There's a law firm that does the work for our office. I'll put them on notice."

"It shouldn't be too much trouble," she said. "Thank God we don't live in Italy or Spain where they make such a fuss."

"Thank God."

She looked at him harshly. "Don't be ironic."

"This is my first divorce. I don't know what the proper reaction should be."

"Not irony."

"I'm just trying to be civilized and modern," he protested, willing to hurt her now, because he was hurt. "I don't suppose I met your friend jumping out of airplanes or sailing or hang-gliding or anything like that, have I?"

"No, you have not. Now you're turning ugly. It isn't like you." Her voice was trembling as she spoke.

"Give me time to get used to the whole thing and I promise to improve. I may even turn out to be the perfect divorced husband as matters progress."

"I'm taking my maiden name," she said, "and I'll keep it after I'm married."

"Go with the times," he said.

"It's my firm's name, anyway," she said. "Why not?"

"I shall introduce you from now on as Ms. Lawrence."

"Introduce me as anything you wish," she said. "Are we finished here?"

"Finished," he said, and waved for the waiter and the bill.

Outside the restaurant she surprised him. Just as he was about to hail a taxi to take her home, she said, "It's early yet. I'd love to hear some music. And Antoine's place is just around the corner."

He looked at her speculatively. Was she trying to punish him, taking him to where Antoine's playing and singing would remind him painfully of all the good times they had had together and how much he had loved her then and what he had given up? But all he said was, "I'm sure Antoine will be most pleased to see you again." He took her arm and they walked down the street, arm-in-arm, like a sedate married couple.

Antoine kissed her when she came in and made them sit at a table next to the piano, so that, as he said, he could feast his eyes on her while he was performing. Susan came in with a man soon after they were seated and stopped at the table and Michael introduced Tracy as his wife. Tracy did not correct him and Susan and the man she was with went back to the bar, where three large men were speaking loudly in what Michael guessed were the accents of Texas.

"You're wrong," Tracy said in a low voice.

"About what? Saying you're my wife? You still are, legally, you know."

She shook her head impatiently. "No. About her. The girl. She is dazzling. Have you kept your hands off her?"

"That's a question I don't have to answer," he said. "But if you're curious, I haven't touched her. She's Antoine's girl."

"Since when has that ever stopped you?" There was a steely edge to her voice.