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By Root 2306 0

for two in the Hotel Sherry Netherland bar. It was not quite five o’clock and the tables on either side were still empty. “Hold it,” said Freeboard. She was groping through a briefcase. “There’s a really spooky picture of the house. Let me find it.” Troubled and distracted, the publisher of Vanities darted an apprehensive glance at the door as he heard another patron coming in from the street. It was no one that he knew, he saw with relief. Nervously tapping the stem of an unlit briar pipe against his teeth, he shifted his fretful gaze back to Freeboard. “Four of us alone in a haunted house,” she effused, “and Terry’s first magazine piece ever!”

A waiter placed a chilled Manhattan cocktail softly on the crisp white tablecloth in front of her, and then a glass of chardonnay in front of Redmund. “Chardonnay, sir?”

“Right,” murmured Redmund. “Thanks.” In his eyes, open wide and faintly bulging, an incipient hysteria quietly lurked. When the waiter had gone he leaned his head in to Freeboard. “Don’t you think we should talk about what happened at the party?”

“Oh, what happened?” Freeboard responded absently, still groping through her purse for the photos. And then abruptly looked up with a stunned realization. “Oh, what happened!” Her hands flew to Redmund’s, squeezing them ardently. “Oh, yes, Jim! That’s all I want to talk about, think about! Come on, let’s get this article out of the way and then we can get back to real life, to us! Do you like it? You’ll publish it?”

“It’s interesting, Joan,” observed Redmund.

Freeboard let go of his hands, leaned back, and then folded her arms and looked away. “Yeah, right.”

She knew very well what “interesting” meant.

“But it really isn’t right for us,” Redmund pleaded. “Joan, look … The other night was incredible.”

“Sure.”

“Just amazing. More exciting than anything I think I’ve ever known.”

“Yeah, me too,” Freeboard murmured. She was dully staring at the decorative fountain directly across from the Plaza Hotel.

“But it was wrong, love, we made a mistake,” Redmund faltered. “I thought it all over today while I was jogging and …”

Freeboard turned to stare at him in blank surmise.

“Well, I could never leave my wife,” said the publisher firmly. “I just couldn’t. This is taking us nowhere, Joanie. If I didn’t tell you now there’d be a lot more pain down the line. I’m sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.”

The Realtor continued to stare at him numbly, her eyes growing wider in disbelief.

“You’re sorry,” she echoed.

He gloomed into his drink.

“Yes, I know; that’s a lame word, isn’t it—sorry.”

Redmund heard a single, stifled sob, looked up and saw Freeboard choking back tears. “Ah, dammit,” he fumbled. The Realtor clutched at her linen napkin and held it tightly to her face; she appeared to be weeping into it softly.

“I feel awful … horrible,” Redmund groped. “Now how do I live in that condo you sold me? I’ll be seeing you everywhere … in every hallway, every square of parquet.”

This seemed to propel the weeping real estate broker to a noticeably higher emotional pitch, although one could not confidently distinguish, with anything approaching absolute certitude, her sudden, soft moan of pain from a desperate attempt to stifle a guffaw. Redmund glanced around to see if anyone was watching them, and then Jumbled at emptying his pipe. “Listen, Joanie, that article; it sounds—well, very challenging. Really. You’re certain that Terence would do it?”

“Redmund won’t do it unless you write it,” said Freeboard, concluding her account of the meeting.

“You are Liza Doolittle’s evil twin.”

“Liza Who?”

Dare assessed the avid shine in her eyes, the lower hp jutting out, the dimpled chin tilted upward defiantly. He saw the frightened child inside. “It isn’t the money at all, is it Joanie? It’s that ravenous tiger burning bright in your soul, that desperate drive to stay ahead, to keep winning, that need to keep proving that you’re really okay.”

She frowned and looked puzzled. “It isn’t the money?”

Abruptly a door from the beach clicked open and into the room bounded two yapping poodles, their