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renewing.”
    “Why not?”
    “The person didn’t say.”
    “There’s always the Navahos,” I said.
    “David, I think it’s the third or fourth best show on TV.”
    “Soliloquy” was a series I had worked out on my own. It was the first major thing I had done since joining Weede’s group—a small, elite and experimental unit put together for the purpose of developing new concepts and techniques. The rest of the network despised us because of our relative freedom and because of the industry prizes we had won for our warcasts, which were done independently of the news division. “Soliloquy” had won nothing. Each show consisted, very simply, of an individual appearing before the camera for an hour and telling his life story. I wanted to ask her what else Weede had said about the series. But that wouldn’t have been fair. She had already taken a chance in telling me as much as she had. Just then Weede went by my office, moving swiftly, head down, body tilted forward as if on skis. He always came back to the office at least half an hour after Binky on Thursday afternoons; this maneuver, obviously, was an attempt to avoid suspicion. I liked to think that he walked around the blockfive times during that half-hour, or stood in a phone booth in the lobby and pretended he was talking to someone, moving his lips over the mouthpiece, perhaps actually speaking, carrying on a normal businesslike conversation with the dial tone. And he always walked by my office very quickly, then tried to avoid me for the rest of the day. He must have possessed an extraordinarily complex sense of guilt. I think he was afraid of me on those Thursdays. But on Friday morning he would come looking for me, breathing smoke and vengeance, as if I were the engineer of his guilt.
    Binky went back to her desk. I loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. I had managed to deceive myself into believing that people would be deceived into believing that a man so untidy (in an atmosphere so methodically spruce) must be driving himself mercilessly. The phone rang. It was Wendy Judd, a girl I had dated in college. She was living in New York now, having traveled for a year right after she divorced her husband, one of the top production people at either Paramount or Metro.
    “I’m dying, David.”
    “Don’t generalize, Wendy.”
    “New York is vicious. Listen, before I forget, can you come to a dinner party tomorrow night? Come alone. You’re the only one who can save me.”
    “You know I go bowling with the fellas on Friday night, Wendy.”
    “David, please. This is no time for jokes.”
    “Our team is called the Steamrollers. We play the Silver Jets for the all-league title tomorrow. Winner gets a cup with a naked Greek bowling ace embossed on the side.”
    “Come early,” she said. “You can help me toss the salad. We’ll talk over old times.”
    “There are no old times, Wendy. The tapes have been accidentally destroyed.”
    “Eightish,” she said, and hung up.
    Outside, the girls were hammering at their little oval keys.I went for a walk. Everybody was busy. All the phones seemed to be ringing. Some of the girls talked to themselves while typing, muttering
shit
whenever they made a mistake. I went around to the supply area. The cabinets were the same color as troops in the field. Hallie Lewin was in there, leaning over a bottom drawer. There is no place in the world more sexually exciting than a large office. It is like a fantasy of some elaborate woman-maze; wherever you go, around corners, into cubicles, up or down the stairwells, you are greeted by an almost lewd tableau. There are women standing, sitting, kneeling, crouching, all in attitudes that seem designed to stun you. It is like a dream of jubilant gardens in which every tree contains a milky nymph. Hallie saw me and smiled.
    “I heard Reeves Chubb got canned,” I said.
    “Really? I had no idea he was in trouble.”
    “Don’t breathe a word.”
    “Of course