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disappointing and frustrating day, much of it on the telephone. The rest of the evening was similar. It had been a mistake to drink champagne, which left me with a thirst and renewed jet lag. It had been a mistake, also, to discuss with Vickers those three months I had spent with Steenie at Winterscombe. Above all, it had been a mistake to look at that Venetian photograph, to see myself as I used to be and was no longer.
    There were people I might have called, had I wanted company, but I did not. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to decide, I suppose, whether to continue my search or abandon it and return to England.
    I persuaded one of the windows in my hotel room to open. I stood there with the warm urban air on my face; I watched Manhattan. The transition hours, between day and night. I felt myself in transition, too, poised just this side of decisive change—and perhaps for that reason I became obstinate again. I would not be beaten this easily. I knew Constance was here; the sensation that she was close was more intense than it had been the day before. Come on, said her voice, if you want to find me.
    Before I went to bed I telephoned Betty Marpruder again. I telephoned three times. I checked with Directory Assistance. I checked there was no fault on the line. I dialed a fourth time. Still no reply. I found that very curious.
    Betty Marpruder—Miss Marpruder to everyone except Constance and me; we were allowed to call her Prudie—was quite unlike the other women Constance employed, since she was neither young nor decorative and no member of her family had ever adorned the Social Register.
    Constance, like many decorators, was careful to employ women—and men—whose accents, clothes, and demeanor would impress her clients. She did so with a certain scornful pragmatism—window-dressing, she called it—but she did so nonetheless. Miss Marpruder, therefore, with her chain-store necklaces, her jaunty mannerisms, her brightly colored slacks, her aging invalid mother, her defiant yet sad air of spinsterhood, was always confined to a back room. There, she ruled the roost: She supervised the books, she tyrannized the workshops on Constance’s behalf, she put the fear of God into manufacturers, and she never, under any circumstances, met the clients. Constance had always supplied the inspiration within the company, but it was Miss Marpruder, compensating for Constance’s undeniable capriciousness, who did all the practical work.
    In return for this, she had been granted certain favors; I was sure she would enjoy them still. Chief of these was that knowledge of hers of Constance’s whereabouts. Miss Marpruder alone would be given the address of the villa or the number of the hotel suite; she would be entrusted with the details of the flights. She was given these privileged pieces of information because Constance knew how jealously she guarded them; Miss Marpruder, a worshipper at Constance’s temple, was also Constance’s high priestess.
    In any decorating business there are constant crises; people relish them. In Constance’s workplace they happened daily. Her clients were very rich; their riches made them whimsical. Costly material, a year on order, would arrive and fail to please. Rooms, hand-lacquered with sixteen coats of paint, would be completed and would disappoint. A drama would ensue. Assistants would scurry back and forth. Telephones would shrill. Clients would insist, demand, to speak with Constance, no one else.
    In the midst of this melee, secure in her little back room, Miss Marpruder would wait. No, Miss Shawcross could not be contacted; no, she was not available; no, she would not telephone Venice or Paris or London or the airline—not just yet.
    “Prudie has a perfect nose,” Constance would crow. “When it comes to crises, she’s a Supreme Court judge.”
    I listened to Miss Marpruder’s telephone. I could see it quite clearly, this instrument, as I listened to it ring. I could see the lace mat on