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dolls, and pornographic books their bosses had given them in the spirit of the new liberalism, and also to see if anything would happen. I closed the door. Then I unzipped my pants and took out my cock. I walked around the office like that for a while. It felt good. I put it back and then filed Trotsky’s memo in the folder that held all of his other work as well as some poems I had written in the office from time to time and some schizograms from girls I knew. (HELLO FROM THE SCENIC COAST OF NEBRASKA.) I opened the door. Binky was at her desk. She took a sandwich and a paper container out of a white bag. The sandwich, when she unwrapped it, looked wet and gummy. There was something very touching about that moment.
    “Welcome back to the big rock candy mountain.”
    “Hi,” she said. “I spent two solid hours at goddamn Saks without buying a thing. And now I’m about to eat a Coca-Cola sandwich. Merry Christmas.”
    “Trotsky struck again.”
    “I saw it,” she said. “I still think it’s you.”
    She knew that would flatter me. Often she said things that seemed intended to do me some good. I never knew why. In many ways Binky was a good friend to me and I used to wonder what would happen if I tried, in the jargon of the day, to complicate our relationship. Once, working late in the office, she removed her shoes while taking dictation. The sight of a woman taking off her shoes has always stirred me, and I kissedher. That was all, a kiss between paragraphs, but maybe it wasn’t mere tenderness which made me do it, nor a desire to challenge the blandness of our attachment. Maybe it was just another of my ego-moments. It was only several days before that I had learned about Binky and Weede.
    “Come on in,” I said.
    She brought her lunch with her and we sat on the sofa.
    “Phelps Lawrence just got bounced,” she said.
    “I heard.”
    “There’s a rumor that Joyner’s next.”
    “Joyner started it,” I said. “It’s part of his survival kit. If he’s not careful it’s going to blow up in his face one of these days.”
    “Jody thinks it’s the beginning of a purge. There’s been a rash of confidential memos. She thinks Stennis might be forced to resign. But keep it quiet. She made me promise not to breathe a word.”
    “I’ve noticed all the closed doors. Sometimes I think they close their doors just to frighten us. Everybody knows closed doors mean secret discussions and secret discussions mean trouble. But maybe they’re in there watching guitar lessons on Channel 31.”
    “Grove Palmer is getting a divorce,” Binky said.
    Suddenly I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth after lunch. I kept some toothpaste and a toothbrush in my office and always brushed my teeth after a lunch that included a few drinks. The washroom after lunch was always full of men brushing their teeth and gargling with mouthwash. There were times when I thought all of us at the network existed only on videotape. Our words and actions seemed to have a disturbingly elapsed quality. We had said and done all these things before and they had been frozen for a time, rolled up in little laboratory trays to await broadcast and rebroadcast when the proper time-slots became available. And there was the feeling that somebody’s deadly pinky might nudge a button and we would all be erased forever. Those moments inthe washroom, with a dozen men sawing away at their teeth, were perhaps the worst times of all. We seemed to be no more than electronic signals and we moved through time and space with the stutter and shadowed insanity of a TV commercial.
    “What’s happening with your Navaho project?” Binky said.
    “Quincy keeps jamming up the works. I’m going to talk to Weede and see if I can get to work on it alone. But don’t mention it to anybody.”
    “David,” she said.
    “What?”
    “They may drop ‘Soliloquy.’”
    “Are you sure?”
    “The person who told me said the crappy sponsor wasn’t interested in