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good to hear from you.”
    Margo and I have discussed, off and on, the possibility of living together—just the possibility—and not marriage, certainly.
     “We tried that, and it didn’t work for either of us,” said she, and I couldn’t disagree. Marriage, as someone once remarked,
     is a romance in which the hero dies in the first act.
    “Are you having fun?”
    “No,” I said, “but I won’t bore you with the details.”
    “No little fling?”
    “I am saving myself for you, my love.”
    “Is that irony I detect in your voice, Nicky?”
    “There is no one in New York I miss but you, darling, and that’s the truth.”
    She was silent for a moment. “You mustn’t depend on me too much, my dear. I’m not cut out to be a support system for the male
     ego.”
    “But you have been a pal,” I said, “and more.”
    “And also less,” she said softly.
    Before ringing off, we agreed to have dinner one evening soon after I got back from Washington. It is never easy living in
     the world of the liberated woman, but it is certainly always exciting.
    That afternoon Parker Foxcroft showed up in our booth. Only Mary Sunday, Harry Bunter, and I were there at the time. Parker
     walked over to Bunter, who was replenishing our supply of catalogs. He had his empty cigarette holder clamped between his
     teeth, suffering, I suspected, from nicotine withdrawal. At any rate, he seemed in no mood for small talk when Foxcroft confronted
     him by saying, in stentorian tones: “I called the office yesterday,
Bunter.”
    Harry looked up, took the cigarette holder out of his mouth, and said mildly, “So?”
    “I spoke to your secretary.”
    At this Harry visibly bristled. “What the hell for?” he demanded.
    “I wanted to know if you’d sent the galleys of
Rainbow Territory
to the book clubs.”
Rainbow Territory
was one of Parker’s strongest contenders for—what else?—next year’sNational Book Award for fiction. “She told me you had not, although you promised to do so last week.”
    “Listen, Foxcroft,” said Harry, “you let me run my office my own way, and I’ll let you run yours.”
    “Well, I took the liberty of
telling
her myself to send the galleys out.”
    At this, Harry blew, nor could I blame him. “You meddling son of a bitch,” he said.
“I
decide when the galleys go out, and when they don’t.”
    Parker stepped back a pace. “No need to get abusive,” he said.
    “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again, or I’ll—”
    “You’ll what?” said Parker, Mr. Cool himself.
    “Oh, go to hell,” said Harry. I stepped in, thinking it was about time somebody broke up the combatants, but Harry would have
     none of the peacemaking process. He shoved the catalogs he was holding into their carton and stalked off, all the way back
     to New York, as it later turned out, probably to change the locks on his office. It occurred to me while watching this little
     scene unfold that it was probably quite true that his wife had been having an affair with Parker Foxcroft. Nothing else, not
     even Parker’s interference in Harry’s office, would account for his anger and his bitterness.

Chapter 5
    Sunday morning. “Complacencies of the peignoir, and late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,” wrote Wallace Stevens in his
     magnificent poem. Not for me those pleasures. For Sunday is the same as any other day at the ABA. The publishers are in their
     booths; the booksellers roam the halls again in search of enlightenment, or at least in search of freebies, most of which
     are gone by the second day of the convention. In other words, business as usual. I doubt anyone here much thinks of worship
     or even of playing golf—well, worship anyway. I’m sure things are different at the Christian Booksellers Association Convention,
     which is usually held somewhere in the Bible Belt, but I’ve never attended one of those. Barlow & Company, thank God, has
     no religious list. I am a firm believer in the