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workable “death ray” that Rand may have borrowed, in part, for Dr. Stadler’s terrifying weapon, Project X.) Along with Edison, Tesla became one of Rand’s models for her hero. She and O’Connor stopped in Cleveland, where they took Frank’s sister Agnes Papurt and her youngest daughter, Connie, out to dinner. Connie recalled that her exotic aunt by marriage wore a modish blue sharkskin pantsuit, its glamour undercut by brown ankle socks in black pumps, and puffed on a cigarette holder that seemed “as long as my arm.” Rand explained that Uncle Frank was in charge of safeguarding the manuscript of Atlas Shrugged, which he took with him to the delicatessen where they ate. It was in a case attached by a chain to his wrist, like a handcuff, Connie recalled. “He uncuffed it for dinner, I think with a key. We ate. They paid. He locked it to his wrist again, and left.”

Berner had leased them an apartment at 36 East Thirty-sixth Street, across a tree-lined street from the beautiful McKim, Mead and White-designed Pierpont Morgan Library. On October 24, they took occupancy of apartment 5-A. Their furniture had preceded them by a day, but the apartment was small, and much had been left behind in care of the Hills, who were to live at the ranch while they were away. Because they didn’t plan to drive in New York, they gave their convertible car to Branden.

The younger man later claimed that he felt nothing but pleasure on learning that this middle-aged celebrity was coming to join him in New York. Although Barbara told him that she, too, was delighted, she was aware of having reservations. She had enrolled at NYU with a desire to start a new life, on her own. First Branden had followed; now Rand. She knew that her lover had spoken to Rand about her flirtations and infidelities, and she anticipated personal pressure on Rand’s arrival—about Branden and about her inner conflicts. “Part of me wanted to be free. To find out what my own way was and to go that way. I wanted it desperately,” she said in 2006. But that was not to be.

Frank O’Connor didn’t write many letters, but when he and Rand were settled in New York he wrote to Ruth and Buzzy Hill. The letter was written in ink on lined notebook paper, Hill remembered, and was wittily titled “The Fountain Pen, by Frank O’Connor.” He asked for news of the crops, especially the gladiolus pips that had been harvested for planting in the spring. He thanked them for moving in on such short notice and asked Ruth to say hello to Aretha Fisher for him.

He was expecting to live in New York for five years, seven at most, he reminded the Hills, which was the amount of time Ayn now believed she would need to finish Atlas Shrugged. Before leaving, he had told them that her writing had been going slowly and that she was tired of country life. “She wants to write her novel in the shadows of skyscrapers,” he explained. The Hills had promised to keep everything just as it was for their friends’ return. And like good anti-altruists, they insisted on paying rent: eighty-five dollars a month.

From Rand’s first burst of enthusiasm for moving to New York, Hill thought that her beloved friend was acting rashly. She didn’t believe the explanation about writing in the shadows of the skyscrapers. It was not the skyscrapers that motivated her, Hill later said. “It was one hundred percent ‘the kids.’ They were the only reason she went to New York, and I knew it at the time.” The main attraction was Branden, she added. Barbara was a side issue, though an important one.

Hill, like Frank, was sure they would return to 10000 Tampa Avenue. “You see, Ayn had told Frank that they would be back,” she said, “and Frank had told Buzzy. I thought so, too. But I believe Ayn knew that they would not be back.” As it turned out, the Hills stayed on as tenants for twenty years, during which time Ayn and Frank visited just once, in the fall of 1963. In 1962, the O’Connors arranged for the sale of the ranch to one Katharine Houchin for a price of $175,000, a 700 percent gain on the $24,000 they had paid in 1944, confirming Frank’s