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incredibly brazen in the kitchen, had made her acutely aware of sex and its various ramifications. And now, after all that, she and Howard had had sex. And it had been, well, boring.
    So now, unwillingly, she thought again of Ted Carr. It would not be love with Ted, as it always was with Howard. It would not be warm. It would not be so thoroughly fulfilling.
    But neither would it be so annoyingly predictable!
    That was the whole thing. She tried to imagine what it would be like—kissing Ted and being kissed by him, touching him and being touched by him, making love to him. It was ridiculous, she would never do it, nothing could be farther from her mind.
    And yet—
    And yet she was thinking about it, was wondering. And, to be as painfully truthful as possible, was interested.
    Damn!
    She could not sleep. She had just had sex, and sex almost always brought sex. But now the very fulfillment of union with Howard left her mysteriously unfulfilled and sleep was not possible. She tossed on her pillows, listening to Howard’s measured breathing, remembering again the boring events of the day from the first ringing of the alarm clock through the loneliness up to Howard’s return.
    Now, suppose she were going to have an affair with Ted. How would they work it? Where would they meet, for the love of God? And what would it be like—what on earth would it be like?
    Ridiculous, absolutely absurd, simply ridiculous. She wasn’t going to have an affair with Ted. She wasn’t going to have an affair with anybody. She was in love with Howard—
    Love hasn’t got a goddamned thing to do with it. I don’t want to love you, Nan-O. I just want to lay you.
    Damn!
    She took a sleeping pill. After a while, it worked.

5
    L INC B ARCLAY awoke around ten in the morning. He came down to breakfast, buried his face in the Times, drank two cups of coffee in stony silence. Then he folded the paper carefully and placed it on the floor beside him. He shook a cigarette loose from a crumpled pack and lighted it, blowing out a thick cloud of smoke.
    Roz looked at him across the breakfast table. She saw his high forehead, his deep eyes, his hawklike nose, his well-trimmed, square-cut black beard. A handsome man. A man she loved.
    “Morning,” he said.
    “Good morning?”
    He shrugged. “Not especially.”
    “Hung over?”
    He thought that over. “A little bit hung,” he admitted. “Nothing drastic, no bombs going off in my skull. Just a quiet to-hell-with-it hangover. It won’t kill me.”
    He had come home for dinner last night, money in his pocket, a bottle of J.W. Dant bourbon on the seat of the car beside him. His agent had come through, after prolonged argument, with five hundred dollars, half of the thousand he had asked for. The banks were closed by the time he got the check, but he had been able to cash it at a check-cashing office on 42nd Street at Sixth Avenue. They’d eaten dinner, and then Linc had gone to work on the bourbon. Roz drank with him.
    “Well,” she said now. “Sure you feel okay?”
    “Positive.”
    “What’s on today?”
    He looked away. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I should get to work.”
    “Not if you don’t feel—”
    “Oh, hell,” he said. “Not if I don’t feel like writing? I haven’t felt like writing for months. I can’t sit around waiting until I feel like it. I’ve got a goddamned book to finish and I have to finish it. We’re broke, babe.”
    “I know.”
    “And it’s such a rotten book.” He stubbed out his cigarette, poured a fresh cup of coffee from the silex. “It’s a terrible book. Thirty thousand words done so far and all of them ill-chosen. A stupid plot and a cast of cardboard characters.”
    “Don’t you want to finish it?”
    This was familiar ground. They’d had the same conversation for roughly three months now.
    “No,” he was saying now. “No, I don’t want to finish it. But, by Christ, I want it to be finished. I want the damn thing out of the way