The Top of the Hill

Part I it was by chance that he met Dunky Aldridge on Thursday on Fifth Avenue after work. It was an unlucky meeting, though they greeted each other cordially and had had good times together and had drunk considerable beer in each other's company. But on Saturday morning, Aldridge was one of the two men who were killed.

"Where've you been, Mike?" Aldridge asked. "I haven't seen you around the drop zone in months. Sneaking away doing secret jumps?"

"I got married three months ago," Michael said, feeling that was enough reason for any absence.

"Congratulations." Aldridge slapped him on the back. He was a burly, red-faced man, who had played football in college. They had both started sky diving at the same time at the field and had made many jumps together. "How's it going?" Aldridge asked.

"Euphoric," Michael said.

"Slippers-and-fireside time now?" Aldridge asked. He laughed, because they were the same age--30. "Keeping away from the old pernicious haunts?"

"More or less."

"Would it be against your marriage vows to have a drink with an old pal?"

Michael looked at his watch. "Half hour before I have to report for duty in the kitchen," he said.

They went into the Gotham bar and they were there more than 30 minutes and had more than three Scotches.

"You still look in pretty good shape," Aldridge was saying. "In fact, I'd say marriage has leaned you down a bit."

"I do my push-ups."

"Listen, we've got two pretty hot new shots at the DZ. We're doing a four-man star on Saturday morning. If we find a fourth. Like you, for example."

Michael hesitated. Since he had met Tracy, his wife, he hadn't done any free falls. Or anything much but think about her and spend as much time as he could with her and get through his chores at the office. The sight of his friend stirred old memories. Aldridge wasn't really his friend, except in the rough comradeship around the DZ and in the nearby saloon. They had always gotten along well with each other and Michael trusted him.

"It sounds like a nice idea," he said.

"Bring the lady. Give her a thrill. Her old man dropping out of the sky like a shining angel."

"Maybe I will. If I can get her out of bed. Saturday mornings're tough." He took Aldridge's office telephone number and promised he'd call in the morning.

•

Over dinner, which was laid on a table in front of the fire, he stared entranced at his wife and (continued on page 138) Top of the Hill (continued from page 135) thought of how Aldridge's eyes and the eyes of the other men at the field would light up when they saw her. He told her about the plan for Saturday and she frowned. "Jumping out of airplanes," she said. "Isn't that for kids?"

"They're all men, about my own age."

"What do you do it for?"

"Fun," he said. He had known her for more than five months, but he hadn't ever told her what other kinds of fun he had indulged in before they met. Time to begin, he thought. "Haven't you ever had a feeling you'd like to fly?"

"Not that I remember," she said.

"One of the mythical longings of the races," he said. "Remember Icarus."

"Not such a happy example," Tracy said, laughing.

"Anyway, you could try it, too. Not free-fall, at least not at first. Just attached to a line that opens your parachute automatically. The earth never looks quite that beautiful again. A lot of girls do it."

"Not this girl," Tracy said decisively.

"Still, will you come?"

"Why not?" She shrugged. "If my husband's crazy, I might as well find out what he's crazy about. Anyway, I have nothing else to do on Saturday morning."

•

It was a bright, sunny day as they drove out of New York toward the field in New Jersey. As usual, when he left the city, Michael felt exhilarated.

"There's a great country restaurant not far from the field," Michael told her as they turned north on the Jersey side of the river. "For lunch. Wonderful daiquiris and lobster."

"Ummn." She looked across at him curiously. "Aren't you scared?"

"Sure," he said. "I'm scared the other fellas're going to think I married a dog."

She leaned over and kissed him. "Next time, I'll have my hair done."

Aldridge and McCain, who ran the jump center, were waiting at the shed with the two other men who were to make the jump, and the plane was warming up on the strip. McCain had laid out the target area on the grass, which had just begun to turn damp after the night's frost. The men were affable and polite and obviously impressed with Tracy.

As they walked out toward the plane, Aldridge whispered, "Holy man, Mike."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Michael said innocently.

"That's what I call a fitting audience for our skill and daring is what I mean, you sneaky bastard."

Then McCain was explaining how they were going to do it--relative work, as free-fall multiple maneuvers were called--the sequence in which they were to exit, reminding them to break away at 3500 feet, no matter how well or how poorly they made the star, to give them the necessary five seconds to get safely away from each other before opening their chutes at 2500 feet. It was all old stuff to the four men, but they listened carefully. If McCain suspected that anybody's attention was wandering, he was just as lief to call the whole flight off.

They got into the plane, McCain at the controls. With the door stripped off and the doorway open, the wind gusting in, cold and biting, they gained speed and took off. Michael looked out the window and saw the small figure in the blue coat standing waving next to the shed. Maybe, he thought, one day I'll get her to see what it's like.

At 7200 feet, they jumped, one after the other. They were supposed to free-fall to 3500, planing and meeting up and touching hands in a circle, then tracking away from each other before opening their chutes. Aldridge was the fourth man out. They made a good star and separated as programed, but for some reason that nobody would ever find out, the third man opened his chute immediately and Aldridge crashed into it at about 125 miles an hour and hit the man as the chute collapsed, while Michael and the other man, now swinging safely from their parachutes, and McCain at the controls of the plane watched helplessly. The doctor later said they were both killed instantly, so they were spared the terror as they streamed down to earth.

•

At least she didn't cry, Michael thought as they drove slowly back to New York, with the shadows of the afternoon already streaking the road, at least that. He put out his hand to touch hers. Her hand lay still, her face averted as she stared out the window. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Please don't say anything," she said. "For a long while."

When they got to the apartment, he made himself a drink, but when he asked if she wanted one, she merely shook her head and went into the bedroom and lay down, coat and all, as though her bones, to their marrow, were freezing.

He must have fallen asleep sitting in the easy chair, the empty glass on a table beside it, when she came in. She still had on her coat and scarf. He had never seen her face so pale. "You're not ever going to do anything like that again, are you?"

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe next week, maybe next year."

"Next week?" she said incredulously. "What sort of man are you?"

"Several kinds."

"Don't you love me?"

"I love you. But I don't want to be a man who loves you and lives scared."

"What're you trying to prove?"

"Nothing. Everything. I'll find out later."

"You didn't tell me all this time."

"The subject didn't come up."

"Well, the subject has come up now."

"I'm sorry, darling, I can't honestly promise anything."

"I thought the man was your friend."

"He was. If it'd happened to me, he'd be up next week."

"Macho idiot," she said contemptuously.

"It isn't even that."

"What is it, then?"

He shrugged. "When I find out, when I really understand, I'll tell you."

She sat down opposite him. There was only one lamp on, at the other end of the room, and her face was in shadow, only her eyes glistening. She had waited to cry. Strong woman.

"Michael," she said, "I have something to tell you." Her tone was flat and emotionless and troubling.

While he was sleeping in the chair, he had dreamed that Tracy had left him and he had searched, first in the empty apartment, then vainly in the darkened streets, for her, almost seeing her, a flick of cloth disappearing around a stone corner. "You're not going to tell me you're leaving me, are you?"

"No," she said, still in the flat, dead voice. "The opposite of that. What I have to tell you is that from now on, after today, I'm going to stop taking the pill. I want to have a child."

He stood up then and slowly walked, without speaking, to the window and looked down. In the light of a street lamp below, an old woman with a cane was being helped out of a taxi. It's the wrong thing to be seeing at this moment, Michael thought, the inevitable decay and the approach of death, when the start of a new life is the subject of conversation.

"Well?" Tracy said.

He turned and tried to smile at her. "Well, give a man a little time to think." He went over to her and bent and kissed (continued on page 210) Top of the Hill (continued from page 138) the top of her head. She sat rigidly. "You have to admit, it's pretty sudden."

"What's sudden about it? You may disappear like that." She snapped her fingers, the sound like ice crackling in the quiet room. "I don't want to be left with nothing--nothing. Anyway, we've been married three months. I'm twenty-nine years old. You're thirty. As far as I know, you may never see thirty-one. How old was your mother when you were born?"

"What's the difference?"

"How old?"

"Twenty-three."

"Well... ?"

"Those were different times."

"Every second is a different time. That doesn't stop people from getting born." She moved to the sofa and sat down on it. "Come here and sit by me."

He went over and sat next to her. She was shivering under her coat. I must refuse, he thought, to surrender to her anguish. "I destroyed my mother," he said gravely. "I think the real reason she died so young was me. She never admitted it even to herself, I think, but she knew I haled her."

"Those are the risks you take."

"Not necessarily," he said. "There's no law I know of in America that says. Go thou now and procreate." He sighed. "And I was the unhappiest and most unappealing little boy anybody had ever seen. At the age of twelve. I was contemplating suicide."

"You're not twelve anymore. You're a big grown man with a good job and a bright future and a wife who, as far as I know, loves you."

"Let me tell you something about my job"--if ever there was a time for truth and resolution, this was it--"I despise it. If I thought I had to continue in it for the rest of my life, I'd be the twelve-year-old boy again, contemplating suicide."

"Melodrama," she said harshly.

"Call it what you will," he said. "With a family, I'd be locked in for good. The chains would lie permanent."

"I suppose I qualify as one of the chains, too."

"You know I don't think that."

"I don't know what you think." She stood up. "I'm going out for a walk. Let's not talk about it anymore tonight."

He watched her stride toward the door and click it shut behind her. Then he sat at the table before the fire and poured himself a glass of whisky.

He was still there at the table, with the half-finished bottle of whisky in front of him, when she came back. She didn't greet him but went into the bedroom.

When he went in two hours later, walking unsteadily, the light was out and she was asleep or pretending to be asleep. When he got into bed, she did not make her usual move toward him and for the first night since they were married, they didn't make love.

He couldn't sleep and he got out of bed and went back to the living room and the second half of the whisky bottle.

I remember Momma, he thought drunkenly. The title of an old play. He sat staring into the semidarkness.

•

Michael Storrs, Jr., stopped being Jr. at the age of five, when his father was killed in a barroom brawl. Lila Storrs, the mother of Michael, Jr., a fragile, over-educated, incompetent beauty of 28, called the death irresponsible. The elder Storrs had been an executive in his father-in-law's bank in Syracuse. He had stopped in at a bar on his way home alter what had been perhaps an especially wearing day at the bank and while sipping his first glass of bourbon, had witnessed an extremely bloody fight between two of the other men at the bar and had stepped between them and tried to get them to quit. One of the contestants, later identified as a man who had been released three days before from the Matteawan State Hospital for the criminally insane, had pulled a knife and killed the young banker with one stroke.

The effects of the death were momentous, especially for the son. Lila made a nunnery out of widowhood, vowed never to marry again and to devote her life to the care and upbringing of the boy in such a way that the accidents of life would leave him uninvolved and forever safe. Thus, the boy was overindulged, overprotected, overfed on highly nourishing and scientifically chosen foods, kept from the hurly-burly of ordinary childhood, forbidden to climb trees, go out for teams, consort with rough children, play with toy guns or bows and arrows and to go to and from the neighborhood school unescorted. When other boys were playing baseball, young Michael was practicing the piano, for which he had no talent. During the summer vacations, when his classmates sported in swimming pools and on beaches and perilous playgrounds, he was taken, well guarded against sunstroke and offensive foreigners, on extended tours of museums and churches in France. Italy and England. In the evenings, he was treated to lectures on proper behavior. Profanity was an evil in the eyes of God, masturbation was the cause of untold disasters in later life, sly little girls and wicked older men would try to lure him into corners, where unmentionable temptations would be offered to him, belligerence had led to his father's death and contributed to wars in which beautiful young men like himself were killed in the millions. He was the staff upon which she must lean and she would always expect him to remember her words, even after her death; he had a fine and promising future; he was the only thing she loved in this world and he must never, never disappoint her. If Freud had been at the table, his giant groan would have been heard from Vienna to Catalina Island.

The most painful moment of his school career came when a boy his size, named Joseph Ling, challenged him to a fight after taking his hat.

There was a sudden hush as the other boys gathered round. Fighting, on Michael's mother's list of prohibitions, was the lowest of vices, lower, even, than masturbation. Ling had a sneering, monkey-like little snubbed face, as though there hadn't been enough stuff in his parents' genes to give their son a full-size human nose or eyes, and Michael trembled with the desire to hit him. But his mother's admonition--"Your father died in a fight, never forget that"--was too firmly graven on his brain for him to move. He just stood there in the iron schoolboy hush and said not a word.

Contemptuously, Ling dropped the pretty fur hat into the dirty snow at his feet and ground it with his boot.

Then the bell rang. Silently, Michael walked over and picked up the hat and put it on his head and got into line. Later, through the years, he would dream of the moment and awake, sweating, at the memory of it.

The next day, the game was repeated. Only this time, as he ran after his hat, he was tripped and sent sprawling and a chant of "Pansy! Pansy!" echoed mockingly on all sides. Finally, Ling got the hat and, just as he had the day before, stood still with it and said. "If you want it, fight for it."

Michael knew there was no other way out. And suddenly, he didn't want any other way out. He walked slowly up to Ling and hit him in the lace with all his force. Ling fell back a step, more surprised than hurt, and Michael was all over him, hitting wildly, oblivious of everything but the sneering, unfinished face in front of him, an exaltation he had never known before sweeping over him as he hit, was hit, fell tangled with the boy in the muddied snow, felt his nose begin to bleed, punching, kicking, trying to strangle, being strangled in turn, unconscious that the bell had rung, that a man was bending over him, trying to tear the two boys apart.

Finally, the two boys were pulled to their feet, the two faces bloodied, the hat a trampled mess, the manly little coat torn at the shoulder and filthy. "You wanted a fight, you motherfucker," Michael said, "you got it." He didn't know where the word came from, or what it really meant, and he certainly had never used it before, but it gave him great satisfaction to say it and he repeated it loudly. "Motherfucking little shit."

It was like a stream of pure music and he listened to himself, marveling, ignoring the teacher, who was saying, "Enough of that, Storrs, enough. You're in enough trouble as it is."

"Go fuck yourself, Mr. Folsom," Michael said, high on his personal wave.

"Your mother is going to hear of this, Storrs," Folsom said.

"Let her hear of it," Michael said, suddenly weary.

"Now, get in line," Folsom said.

Michael didn't put his hat on but threw it over the fence. And he didn't try to brush the dirt off his coat, not on the way up to the classroom nor when school was over and he went out of the gate to where his mother was waiting.

When she saw him, she began to weep. "What's there to cry about, for Christ's sake?" he said.

"Get in the car," she wept.

"I'm walking home." And, hatless, carrying his briefcase, the blood caked on his face, he walked steadily away.

•

He never went back to the school that was just five blocks from his home and was considered one of the best public schools in Syracuse. Instead, he was put in a private school 100 miles from home.

He made no more friends at the new school than he had at the old, but it was a small, quiet place with a teacher for every ten boys and so rigidly disciplined that there was no fighting or bullying and students who wished to be left alone were permitted to go their own way as long as they kept their marks up to a respectable standard and broke none of the school rules. What Michael's mother had not realized was that adjoining the school grounds, there was a hill with a tow to which the entire student body was led by the physical-education teachers four times a week to ski. For the first time in his life, Michael began to feel the exhilaration of grace and speed and he soon became so daring a skier he had to be warned time and time again by his instructors to slow down.

When the coach of the ski team suggested that he write a letter to Michael's mother explaining that he could become the star of the team, Michael shook his head obdurately and forbade him to communicate with his mother. His skiing was a secret he guarded for himself.

His deception went further. Having glimpsed on skis the zestful uses of his body, he made a grim resolve to lose weight and worked out regularly in solitary dedication, on the pulleys, ropes and parallel bars in the school gymnasium, and was rewarded by the new-found tone and strength of his muscles, the leanness of his face, the loose-limbed spring in his step. When the skiing season was over, still obeying his mother's injunction to keep away from team sports, he ran cross-country, a lonely, melancholy, determined figure, four miles every afternoon.

By now convinced that he could plan his own life, subterraneanly, so to speak, he worked unflaggingly at his studies and led his class, with especially high marks in mathematics. He had set his heart on going to Stanford--first because it was the farthest he could get from Syracuse and second because California, with its benevolent climate and athletic population, would give him the widest choice of the sports that had begun to capture his imagination, such as skiing, surfing and sex.

•

He was graduated at the age of 18, a handsome, powerful young man, a loner who had won the first prize in mathematics and had been accepted by Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Stanford.

Three and a half years later, he left Stanford with a degree granted summa cum laude. While he was at the university, he had earned a pilot's license for single-engine planes, had had it suspended for buzzing the stadium during a football game, had become a dazzling skier on weekends and winter holidays, had taken up sky diving and had made 25 free falls, had surfed up and down the California coast in all sorts of weather and tried some scuba diving, had talked his way out of having his driver's license revoked for repeated speeding, had grown to be six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds, had paid no attention to his male classmates and a great deal of attention to his female ones, had made no friends. He had paid for his expensive pleasures by winning high stakes at backgammon, where he had a considerable edge on his opponents because of his mathematical bent and training. To the men who knew him on the campus, he seemed lonely and somewhat mournful. To the men with whom he skied or dove both in the air and under the sea and to the boys he met casually on the surfing beaches, he seemed dangerously reckless and coldly gay. To the girls and women he slept with, he seemed charming, irresistibly handsome in a dark, brooding way, insatiable and fickle.

To appease his mother, at least geographically, he took the winter off, after he got out of Stanford and before entering the Wharton School, to go back East, to a small ski resort called Green Hollow, in Vermont, as a ski instructor.

Michael's mother died that summer and left a surprisingly small trust fund that she had prudently arranged in such a way that nothing but interest would go to him until he reached the sober and fiscally dependable age of 35.

At her funeral, he was distracted by the dark beauty of a girl whose mother had been a classmate of his mother's at Vassar. He found out her name--Tracy Lawrence--but did not meet her until eight years later, when he was working in New York for a management-consultant concern called Cornwall and Wallace.

•

He was in a theater lobby between acts when he saw her again, the dark, thick hair, the small white, pointed face and blue eyes. She was talking to an older woman, her eyes lively and smiling. He was alone.

Standing there, he remembered the funeral, the dark-blue coat she had worn, his quick feeling of guilt as he'd sensed her attraction, his mother's coffin before the altar, receptacle of so many confusing memories for him. He remembered her name--Tracy Lawrence. She happened to look his way and, after a hard glance at him, smiled. He made his way across to her and said, "How do you do, Miss Lawrence?" hoping it wasn't Mrs. Somebody by then.

She didn't correct him. "We didn't meet at the funeral," she said. "How do you happen to know my name?"

"I asked." He grinned. The death was far enough in the past so that it could be relegated to the status of just another ordinary occasion, a wedding, a christening, an anniversary, with no marked connotations.

The girl--woman--looked momentarily amused, complimented.

"This is my aunt, Mrs. Grenier," Tracy said. "Mr. Storrs."

He greeted the aunt. She was fashionably dressed, her hair groomed over a gentle, weary face.

"How do you like it?" Tracy asked. "The play, I mean?"

"Good for an evening. I'm going back for the second act. And you?"

"We, too," she said.

"Perhaps we all could go out for a drink after it's over."

"I'm tired," the aunt said. "I'll just take a cab home. You young folks go have your drink."

The buzzer rang for the curtain and he followed the women into the theater. She walked erectly, her shoulders squared, lovely legs, no coquetry as she moved, a simple, nonrevealing dress, dark green in color.

She sat three rows in front of him and he could see the dark head, distinguish her laugh, which was full and unconstricted, from the other laughter. He paid very little attention to the play, thinking about her, knowing that he was attracted, not in the generic, male way in which he had been attracted often enough by other women, but in a specific stab of feeling, a message across the darkness from her to him, as though he heard a voice whispering, "Special."

After the play, they bundled the aunt into a taxi and she took his arm lightly and they walked over to Sardi's, since neither of them had had dinner.

As they were escorted to a table by the headwaiter, he saw the men turn their heads and stare at her. She must be used to it. Well, women always looked at him, too, and he was used to it. He had become accustomed to women trying to impress him. That, too, like his work, had begun to pall on him.

He ordered a bottle of chianti and spaghetti for both of them. They discussed the play. "A lot of talent," Tracy said, as she ate with gusto, "and not enough thought. The blight of our age. What did you think?"

"I wasn't paying much attention. I was thinking of other things."

She lifted her head quickly and glanced at him, her eyes on his. "Were you?" But she didn't ask what the other things were.

"Business," he lied. "I should have stayed in the office tonight. I have some things on my desk I'll have to report on on Monday. But by Friday night, I get tired of business." He laughed, low. "The fact is, I'm beginning to get tired of business quite early in the week these days. Like Monday morning at ten o'clock."

"What sort of business?"

"Management consultant."

"What do management consultants do?"

"They consult with managers in the managerial society that enslaves us all," he said.

"More specifically?"

"We go into factories, we examine books, we roam through offices, we interview employees and we strike terror in hearts wherever we go." He realized he had never talked like that to anybody and that he somehow felt free to say whatever came to his mind with this woman whom he had just encountered.

"Why terror?"

"Because we are trained ferrets, armed with computers, statistics, expertise, coldness of heart. We ferret out incompetence, waste, larceny, nepotism, tax evasion, incompetent bookkeeping, sickly correlations between profit and loss, lack of attention to important aspects of the consumer society such as relations with Washington and unrewarding advertising campaigns. We advise changes, Draconian measures, we are the church militant of efficiency. In some cases on which we have worked, companies have looked like battlefields after we have passed--with bodies strewn everywhere, factories closed down and left to rot, presidents and chairmen deposed, men who have grown too old for their jobs out on the street."

"Are you good at all this?"

"A rising star." This was no lie. Old man Cornwall had told him the month before that he was pleased, deeply pleased with Michael's performance, that he was the best man the firm had, and had virtually promised him a junior partnership the next time somebody resigned or was fired.

"You don't make it sound very attractive," Tracy said.

"It is not the business of business to be attractive. Whatever attractiveness we can muster we save for evenings and weekends. Now that I have told you the worst about me, my dear Miss Lawrence, what have you to confess?"

"Tracy," she said.

"My dear Tracy."

"First of all," she said, sipping at her wine, "it isn't really Miss Lawrence."

"Oh." He felt a dull ache somewhere in his body.

"I'm still married. Mrs. Alvin Richards." She laughed. "Don't look so woebegone. I'm in the process of getting divorced."

"How many years?"

"Two. Years of error for both of us."

"What does the man do?"

"He's a theater director. Like tonight--a lot of talent and no thought. Also, overequipped with ego. Necessary in his profession, he's told me, but not so hot for marriage."

"And how do you earn your daily bread?"

"I'm a designer. I do patterns for fabrics, wallpaper, things like that."

"Good?"

"Not so bad." She shrugged. "I earn my way. People seek me out. You have probably sat on dozens of chairs and sofas upholstered with cloth that I've designed."

"Happy in your work?"

"More than you, I'd think," she said challengingly. "Actually, I love it. The joy of creation and all that jazz." She smiled. She had an enchanting smile, childlike, crinkled around the eyes, without affectation, and she didn't smile too often or merely to flatter or to ingratiate herself.

"Now," he said, "the preliminaries are over."

"What preliminaries?" She suddenly looked stern.

"The exchange of biographies. Now we go on from there."

"Where?" Her tone was hard.

It was his turn to shrug. "Anywhere we choose."

"You seem too practiced," she said.

"Why do you say that?"

"You're too expert in talking to women. Everything falls into place too quickly. A little night music, a well-rehearsed aria before falling cozily into bed."

"Maybe you're right," he said thoughtfully. "I apologize. The truth is, I haven't talked to anyone else in the whole world the way I've talked to you tonight. And, for the life of me, I can't figure out why I have. I hope you believe me."

"That sounds rehearsed, too," she said stubbornly.

"I have a feeling you're too tough for me."

"Maybe I am." She set down her glass. "And now I'm ready to go home. I have to get up early in the morning."

"On Saturday morning?"

"I'm invited out to the country."

"Naturally," he said. "I'm invited out to the country tomorrow, too."

"Naturally," she said.

He laughed. "But I'm not going."

"Well, then, I'm not going, either."

He shook his head wonderingly. "Your moves are too fast for me, Tracy, darling. I'm dizzied."

"I'm free for lunch tomorrow."

"By a happy coincidence..." he began.

"Come up to my place at one o'clock. I'll give you a drink. There's a nice little restaurant down the street. Now, shall we leave?"

He paid the bill and they got up and walked toward the door, the other men in the restaurant staring at her and the women staring at him.

They got into a cab and she gave him an address on East 67th Street. He repeated it to the driver.

"I live on East 66th Street," he said. "It's a sign."

"A sign of what?"

"I don't know. Just a sign."

They sat apart from each other on the way uptown, not touching. When the cab reached the converted brownstone in which she had her apartment, he told the cabby to wait and went up the steps with her to the front door of the building.

After she had unlocked the door, she turned to him and said, "Thanks for the spaghetti and the wine. I'm glad my aunt was tired."

"Good night," he said formally. "Until tomorrow."

She frowned. "Aren't you going to kiss me good night?"

"I didn't know matters had progressed that far," he said stiffly. She had put him off balance and he didn't want to give her any more advantage than she had already acquired.

"Oh, don't be a goof," she said and leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. Her lips were soft and sweet smelling. He didn't put his arms around her.

"Night," she said casually and opened the door wide and went through it.

He stared at the closed door for a moment, then went back down the steps and into the cab and gave the driver his own address. By the time the cab had turned the corner and drawn up to his own apartment building, Michael knew that he was going to ask her to marry him. Probably at lunch the next day.

•

Tracy was divorced and they were married two months later at the Hamptons home of her parents, where Tracy had grown up. It was a small wedding and except for old Mr. Cornwall, whom Michael had invited to be his best man, all the guests were friends and relatives of the bride.

They flew out to Aspen for the honeymoon. Tracy didn't ski and had no intention of learning, but she knew that Michael had skied when he was younger and yearned for the snow and she said that she loved mountains and cold weather.

The snow was good, the weather perfect for a mountain honeymoon, and he skied blithely all day, with the old exaltation that he thought he had forgotten in the years he hadn't been on skis. He left for the slopes early each morning, leaving Tracy lying cuddled lazily in bed. During the day, she took long walks in the bulky fur coat he had bought her for his wedding present, and when he saw her in the early evening in the bar they had chosen for their own after the last run down the hill, she was rosy from the cold and looked, he thought, like a glorious 18-year-old girl.

"I see how the girls keep looking at you. Tell me, what do you do with them up on the mountain all day long?" Tracy said teasingly.

"It's ten below zero up there, darling. There's very little fucking over ten thousand feet in the winter in the Rockies."

"You mean I have to worry about the summers--at sea level." She was still teasing him.

"I want you to remember one thing," he said, more seriously. "For the first time in my life, I have discovered the ultimate sexual pleasure--monogamy. I invite you to join me."

"Will do, as you put it," she said.

For a moment, they just sat in silence, soberly, looking into each other's eyes.

"You're a different man up here," she said.

"Than where?"

"New York. This seems to be your climate, your ambience."

"Am I better for it or worse?"

"Better, I think. I haven't caught you looking melancholy. And you seem ten years younger."

He laughed. "That's just what I was thinking about you when you walked in in your fur coat."

"Maybe we ought to set up housekeeping in a place like this and never go down off the hill." There was a note of wistfulness in her voice. "Maybe I'm a mountain woman myself."

•

On Friday, he ran the downhill race. He had scouted the course the day before and memorized the points where he would have to check if he didn't want to wipe out. It was a tough course, long, with difficult, sneaky turns and a couple of places where you were in the air for 20 feet or so and some hidden, sharp drops. He had a late starting number and he watched intently as the men before him made their descent and noticed that the good ones hardly checked at all, taking everything full out. When his turn came and he skated off, he knew he wasn't going to check anywhere, either. He had never gone so fast and, even with his goggles, his eyes began to tear, and he nearly made it to the finish line, where he knew Tracy was standing, watching for him. But just before the last schuss, there was a bump that sent him into the air unexpectedly and he came down in a pinwheel, his skis' tips digging into the snow. Luckily, the skis came off and he rolled downhill another 50 feet, head over heels, before he came to a stop. He stood up quickly to show Tracy that he was unhurt, but had to limp down the rest of the way because his knee had twisted in the fall.

He limped off, Tracy holding his arm, without watching the rest of the race, and for the rest of the honeymoon, he didn't put on a pair of skis again and they had a fine time spending all day and all night together.

•

When they got back to New York, Michael finally moved into Tracy's apartment. Except for an old leather chair that Michael liked to read in, he didn't take any of his furniture.

She turned out to be a good cook and, smugly satisfied with the place they were living in, with themselves and each other, they felt no need for anybody else and rushed home immediately after work to help each other in the small kitchen, eat on a table before the fire with a bottle of wine, spend the evening reading and comparing notes on what they had done during the day. When Michael was sent out of town on a job, he tried to cut his trips as short as possible and called home every evening for long talks with Tracy.

The euphoria of their honeymoon lasted until the day Aldridge was killed and she told him she wanted a child.

•

The Saturday after the sky-diving tragedy, he awoke early. Tracy was still asleep and he dressed quietly, in a pair of old corduroy pants and a windbreaker. But before he could get out of the room, Tracy awoke and said, "Good morning." He was on the other side of the bed and he could see her looking at him, observing how he was dressed.

"Good morning, darling," he said and went over and kissed her. She moved her head quickly, so that he just brushed her cheek. She smelled of sleep and faintly of perfume. "I'll be back by the middle of the afternoon," he said.

"Where're you going?"

"It's just..." he began.

"Don't tell me," she said. "I know." She turned so that her back was toward him and covered her head with an up-thrown arm.

"You have to understand," he said, "I----"

"Don't try to explain. I'll see you later."

He shrugged and went out of the room.

When he got to the drop zone in New Jersey, the wind was gusting and the wind sock blowing, first in one direction and then another. McCain and his assistant, a lanky blond boy, were in the shed, drinking coffee. McCain looked up at him, without surprise, as he entered the shed. "Early today, aren't you, Mr. Storrs?" McCain said. They had seen each other twice during the week, at the two funerals, but had said nothing to each other.

"I have things to do in New York this afternoon," Michael said. "I thought I'd just take a couple of nice little mediocre jumps and get back. Am I the only one this morning?"

McCain nodded. "The only one," he said. "Trade's been slow this week. And the weather's not so hot. You sure you want to go?"

"Sure."

McCain got up slowly and after Michael had put on the jump suit and boots, which he kept in a locker in the shed, and the lanky blond boy had helped him strap on the main parachute and the flat backup belly parachute, they all went out to where the plane was parked next to the strip. "The wind's tricky this morning," McCain said, as he started the engine. "Stay well north of the field." There was a stand of tall pines that bordered the southern end of the field and it was a standard warning each time McCain took anybody up. "It's not a day to do anything fancy. Pull it at no less than three thousand. Understand?"

"OK."

McCain gunned the motor and they took off. The plane shuddered and bucked in the wind. Michael had felt sleepy and slow-moving all the way out from New York, but now the cold slap of the wind coming through the hole from which the door had been stripped woke him completely and he felt the old feeling, expectation, an electric sense, total alertness, the tingle of mindless, ecstatic, primitive pleasure, as the adrenaline started flowing.

At 7500 feet, McCain gave him the signal and he went out. There was the familiar great feeling, first of breathless dropping, then of soaring exaltation, as he hurtled through space, planing, swerving, supported by the rushing air, purposeful as a bird. His hand was on the rip cord and he didn't bother to look at the altimeter on his wrist and the stand of pines was getting closer and closer, dark in the windy morning sunlight. It was with regret that he pulled the rip cord and felt the jerk as the parachute opened above him and he pulled at the toggles to keep away from the pines. He landed hard, with the wind throwing him over at the last moment, not 20 yards from the edge of the woods. He stood up and gathered up the canopy, breathing deeply, sorry it was over, his mind and spirit drained, overwhelmed, full only of flight.

He walked toward the shed while McCain circled the plane down for a landing. He was in the shed when McCain came in. He was frowning, biting his lips.

"Mr. Storrs," McCain said. "I told you to stay well north of the field. You pulled the rip cord at a thousand. If anything had gone wrong, you'd be lucky to have the time to say, 'Mother, Mother,' and we'd probably be scraping you off the ground right now." McCain's voice was like granite. "I told you three thousand as always, didn't I?"

"I just felt everything was going fine and gave it an extra few seconds. It's a beautiful morning."

"So it is, Mr. Storrs," McCain said. "And it's the last time you jump from this field. Two men died here last Saturday and I don't want to make it a weekly habit."

"Whatever you say, Mac." Michael shrugged. "What do I owe you?"

"Nothing. The last two jumps, today and last week, are on the house."

"As you like it," Michael said. He was still feeling too high from the jump to be angry or even annoyed.

•

The apartment was empty when he got home. There was a note from Tracy, propped up against the telephone. "Have gone to visit my parents. Will be home late Sunday night or in time for work Monday morning." It was signed "T."

He crumpled up the note and threw it into a wastebasket. "T." Not "Love, T." or "Please call me, Tracy" or "Why don't you get into the car and drive out, too, darling?" In time for work Monday morning--not in time for love. And how did she get out to the Hamptons when he had used the car to drive to New Jersey? Probably one of her old friends, one of the masses of friends.

Not even sure which day she was going to get back. Sleep alone, my dear, one night, two nights, what does it matter? The rebuke was clear.

After the beauty of the morning, the freedom of the sky, the cozy little apartment, all neatly tidied up, was like a prison.

Angrily, he picked up the phone and dialed her parents' house. Might as well have it out here and now. Your husband arrived on your scene equipped with certain needs, tastes, aberrations, if that's what you want to call them. He is devoted to challenge, the illusion of escape. The equation is simple--ten minutes of flight, of conquering danger, equals five days from Monday to Friday. It concerns you only peripherally, except that it permits me to live joyously with you. I will not be trapped with female caution. You are not my mother forbidding me to climb trees. This is not Syracuse.

The telephone kept ringing. There was no answer. He let it ring ten times, then slammed down the receiver. Wifeless, he thought, wifeless.

He tried the telephone again. Still no answer. Saturday afternoon, Saturday night, urban revelry, stretched before him--a desert. He could not bear the empty show-window apartment, full of silent reproach. He dialed again, but this time a number he knew well, from before his marriage.

"Josey speaking." A light, eager voice, a particular familiar way of answering the ringing of the bedside instrument.

"Michael," he said.

"Ah, the lost bridegroom."

"Lunch?" he asked.

"Why not?" Without hesitation. How many dates, with how many other men, had she broken, without hesitation, for him?

"One o'clock?" he said.

"Will do." She had picked up the phrase from him. "Promptly."

"The old place," he said.

"Of course."

"You're a reliable lady."

"My vice," Josey said. "I'll wear a red rose in my hair so you'll recognize me."

"No need."

"It's been a long time, bridegroom."

"Not so long."

"I'll be lightly clothed," she said.

He laughed. "I'm not thinking beyond lunch."

"I am," she said. "I'm on champagne these days."

"What else is new? I'll have it ready in a bucket."

It was her turn to laugh. Her laugh was a curious giggle, low and girlish. He had been charmed and amused with it for a long time, because it was in such contrast with the way she looked--tall and haughty and disdainful. She had been a fixture in his life for years, off and on, if any woman could be said to have been a fixture in his life before Tracy. There were no grappling irons between them. When he called, after a month or so of silence, she would say, "Ah, you're convoking me again," but without complaint in her voice. She had been a simple but stunning young girl, when she had come to New York from Alabama, had had a brief but dazzling success as a photographers' model, had married rich and had divorced rich and had enjoyed every minute of everything, as she sometimes said when people tried to talk seriously to her. "I am the net," she had once said, giggling girlishly, "under the tightrope of numerous marriages."

So much for Saturday afternoon. He stared at the phone as he put it down, felt a pang of doubt, wondered if he oughtn't to call her back and say he was sorry, it had just been a random impulse, it would be better if they did not meet, better for both of them. He did not call the familiar number and, although he didn't know it then, he was dooming his marriage.

•

"Ah," she said, with a contented sigh, stroking him with soft fingers after they had made love in her shadowed, alimonied bedroom, "ah, well-known, well-beloved territory. I'm glad you put off breaking your neck at least until next Saturday." He had told her of his jump that morning. She had watched him often and had even jumped twice, to amuse him. "I am just one of those female idiots," she said, "who are a male cliché--a darned good sport. Loads of fun, the boys tell me. If ever I find a man as rich as my ex-husband and one I like as much as I like you, I'll stop being loads of fun so fast it'll be like the sonic boom. Glad to have you aboard, bridegroom, even if it's only on furlough."

"Stop calling me bridegroom."

"Is your wife loads of fun, too?" she asked.

"Not in the way you say it."

"Is this the way you usually spend your Saturday afternoons, or do I detect a rift?"

"I have no usual way of spending Saturday afternoons."

"How's it going?"

"So-so," he said.

"Tempered steel," she said. "I haven't had the pleasure of meeting the lady, but I have gotten reports from acquaintances."

"Let's not talk about my wife," he said. "Is that all right with you?"

"Everything is all right with me," she said, putting her long, lean-muscled leg over his in the soft bed. "Can I expect further Saturday calls?"

"Time will tell." He pulled her to him and kissed her to keep her quiet.

They made love for the rest of the afternoon and after that, while they were dressing and discussing where they would go for dinner, Josey said, "You ought to jump out of airplanes every day. It makes you marvelously horny."

She chose a noisy, crowded restaurant, where she seemed to know everybody and men kept coming over to the table and kissing her and saying, "Wasn't it a great party last night?" or last weekend or, "Where have you been, darling?" while Michael sat quietly, drinking a little too much wine and wondering what Tracy was doing while he was sitting there. By the end of the evening, Josey was wandering from table to table and Michael paid the check and slipped out and went home, where he sat looking at the telephone for an hour before he went to bed.

•

"And now," Josey said, "we bid a fond farewell to tender childhood toys, for I am to be well and truly wed tomorrow morning." She patted Michael's cock gently. They were in bed in his room at the Bel-Air Hotel in Los Angeles. Cornwall and Wallace did not stint on the accommodations for their representatives. Michael had received the invitation to the wedding in the mail in New York and had volunteered to go on a job to a company in downtown Los Angeles so as to be able to attend. After such a long time, it was, he thought, the least he could do (continued on page 222) Top of the Hill (continued from page 218) for a friend. In the past two years, he had volunteered more and more often to go on the out-of-town trips. New York was becoming increasingly unbearable to him and after a week there, the noise, the constant insensate pushing, the subterranean jockeying for power in the office, the look of maniac effort on everybody's face, the drunken forgetfulness at the end of the day, he found himself with his nerves scraped raw, insomniac, waking fretfully at all hours of the night, listening to sirens, going through the mo-lions of work and marriage with a bone-deep weariness. Living in the same small apartment, he and Tracy had grown steadily apart and the good moments between them had become briefer and rarer.

When he came home from his trips, Tracy asked only the most perfunctory of questions. She was becoming more and more successful in her work and had started a small business of her own. He went on his holidays alone, because if she had any free time, she said the only place she wanted to be was her parents' house in the Hamptons, where she could not do anything but lie in the sun.

He was making considerably more money than before, and so was Tracy, and he had suggested that they move to a bigger apartment where they could have separate bedrooms, but Tracy had been firm about, staying where they were and they still slept together in the same oversized bed. She no longer made advances to him when they lay side by side, but was as warm and ardent as ever when he moved toward her. At those moments, he would feel that he would never grow tired of that lovely, familiar body; but when he was away from her, he hardly ever thought about her and it did not interfere with his pleasure with other women.

They knew that they were approaching some sort of breaking point, but out of timidity, politeness, memory of happier times, they both postponed the moment.

•

"Now," Josey was saying, "I am going to get dressed and I am going to walk out of your room and through the garden as though I just dropped in for a cup of tea and from tomorrow morning on, I am going to devote the rest of my life to making my gorgeous, rich young husband the happiest man in Southern California. You will be invited to family dinners and the christening of children and you will be asked to cruise with us on our yacht and you will not tempt my husband to jump out of airplanes with you or dive for treasure or whatever it is you do underwater or to follow you down a ski slope. Understood?"

Michael laughed. "Understood," he said.

He watched her get out of bed, stretch the magnificent long body like a giant cat, then quickly, with businesslike efficiency, get into her clothes, whip a comb through her lustrous dark-red hair. Gone, gone, he thought, self-pityingly.

•

The next afternoon, after the wedding, Michael got into his car with his surfboard and drove out to Malibu. He parked across from the cove and got into his bathing trunks and walked barefoot, carrying his board, to the beach, where a fine mist made blurred shapes out of the buildings to the north. The sea was rough, whitecaps out beyond the long rolling breakers. It was a cold day and there was nobody else riding a board.

Gingerly, because the water was brutally cold and he hadn't brought along a wet suit, he slipped into the foam, then plunged, lying on the board, and started to paddle out. It wasn't easy. The waves came one after another, in short, chopping series, and he was knocked around as he submarined with the board under the curl.

Finally, he was out beyond the breakers, sitting on his board, resting, breathing deeply after the struggle to get out, at the point where, he judged, he could start in when he saw the right wave sweeping in behind him. The shore seemed far away in the gray mist and the ocean was his as he rose and fell on the swells. He was warmed by the paddle out and he was in no hurry. He was blessedly alone, his life afloat, his world wind, water, waves and salt, and he embraced it all. He took a deep, tonic breath, saw the wave he wanted massing up in the mist, started paddling, felt the gigantic power of the Pacific under him, knew that he had caught it right, stood up and, sure-footed and triumphant, rode the giant diagonally, just in the cup, the crest of the wave foaming high above his head. Then, suddenly, it was too much for him. The wave was breaking more sharply than he had thought it would. He held on for a moment, and then the board went shooting out from under him and he was tumbled, deep, over and over in tons of black sea water. He held his breath, fought, came up, was swept under again after one short breath of air, came up in a turmoil of chopping, swirling water.

The board was gone, but he could breathe now, careful to duck when the waves broke on him and hurled him toward the bottom. Calmly, knowing that if he worked too hard now, he would exhaust himself quickly and never make it, he began swimming, feeling the pull of the undertow, catching a wave when he could to take him a few yards inshore then going along with the current, parallel with the shore, not resisting the ebb tide, until another wave pushed him a little closer toward the rim of beach. If there had been anyone in sight, he would have waved for help, but the beach was deserted.

It took, him a full half hour to get in and as he crawled onto the beach, he was sure that he couldn't have lasted another two minutes. Then he did something that he knew was crazy even as he did it. He threw his arms up into the air wide above his head and, with fists clenched, shouted hoarsely, wordlessly into the gray, empty mist, shouted with joy.

His clothes felt soft and warm against his skin as he drove down the Pacific Coast Highway until he reached a bar. He went in and ordered a whiskey and looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar. His face was scratched from the sand and a little bloody and his sun-streaked hair, now dark with salt water, was tangled and thick with seaweed and sand. Neptune's lucky child, he told himself, grinning at his frightening reflection, what a marvelous day. Another day, another death challenged and overcome. Mother, dear, if you could see me now.

•

Tracy was sitting looking at the news on television when he got home from California. She kissed him reservedly without getting up when he came into the room.

"Anything important tonight?" he asked alter he had told her his trip had been successful.

"Nothing much," she said. "The world is crumbling, as it does every evening at seven. Nothing to worry about. I was too busy to make dinner. I thought it might be nice to go out your first night home."

"That's a good idea," he said, though he was tired and looking forward to a quiet evening.

They did not have much to say to each other during dinner and it was only while they were having their coffee that Tracy said, "I tried to call you Saturday night." She looked at him squarely, without emotion. "Several times."

"Did you have anything special to say?"

"No." She shrugged. "Just that I missed you. There was no answer."

"I was invited out to the beach for the weekend. I should have left the number at the hotel."

"Yes," she said, "you should have."

He was sure she knew he was lying.

It isn't going to last much longer now, he thought. He wanted to get up and fold her in his arms and hold her tight, but it wasn't something you could do in a restaurant, so he merely ordered another coffee.

•

That weekend, Michael drove out to the Hamptons with Tracy. Saturday was raw and windy, but he and Phil Lawrence, Tracy's father, had planned to go sailing in the morning and they got into the car and drove down to Three Mile Harbor, where the 25-foot sloop, named Tracy, was berthed. The long, protected, ordinarily placid harbor was ruffled with small whitecaps. Michael looked across the water doubtfully. "Don't you think it's a little rough, Phil?" he said.

"Been out in stuff a lot worse than this," Lawrence said. He was an ardent and skillful sailor and he was always hunting for people to help him crew the boat.

"If you say," Michael said, still doubtful.

They cast off and Lawrence deftly got the boat away from the dock and into the harbor proper, using the outboard motor. Once they were in the channel leading out to the wide reaches of the sound, Lawrence cut the motor and they raised the mainsail, and then Michael put up the jib. The boat heeled over sharply and sped toward the mouth of the harbor. Michael saw that it looked rough out on the sound and said, "Maybe we just ought to cruise around a bit inside the harbor, Phil."

"Nonsense," Lawrence said. "This boat has handled seas five times as bad as this." He was not by nature a vain man, but he was touchy when matters of seamanship came up. "I'm not a fair-weather sailor. If all you did was go out and flap around when the sea is as flat as a pancake, there'd be no sense in owning a boat."

"You're the skipper," Michael said. He could see that the old man, his long gray hair streaming in the wind and his face highly colored and wet with spray, was enjoying himself hugely.

Out on the sound, the wind caught hold and the sails were taut and straining and the boat, heeled over more steeply now, with the rail in the water, bounced sturdily through the waves, the curl at their bow impressive because of their speed. Michael sat crouched in the cockpit, leaning to port to balance the starboard heel. Lawrence sat next to him, bent over, putting his full weight on the tiller to keep them on course.

"This is the life, Mike, isn't it?" Lawrence grinned at him. "Better than bird watching. And there isn't another damn fool out today." It was the closest Michael had ever heard the old man come to gloating.

"Michael," Lawrence said, his tone changed, "there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about and there's no way of getting you alone in the house."

"What is it?" Michael said, bracing himself for what he expected was coming.

"It's about you and Tracy." The old man took a long breath, as though he would need fresh oxygen for what he was going to say. "You're not getting along very well together, are you?"

"Well enough."

"I like you, Michael. You know that."

"I know."

"And I love Tracy. The best of my three daughters. She's a tremendous girl."

"Tremendous."

"You're both putting on an act for the old folks," Lawrence said somberly. "The loving smart young couple, living the glamorous New York life. Only you're not the loving smart young couple and you're not living the glamorous life, are you?"

"Not completely," Michael admitted.

"You treat each other as though you're both made of glass. As though if either of you made one wrong move, one or the other would crack into a thousand pieces. She's a sad girl now, Michael, and she wasn't made to be a sad girl."

"I know," Michael said.

"What is it? You got somebody else?"

"No." Go back as far as a year and that was no lie.

"She have another fella?"

"Not that I know of."

"You travel too goddamned much, Michael," Lawrence said harshly.

"Not anymore."

"Not anymore." Lawrence nodded, his long wet hair swinging over his eyes, like a shaggy old English sheep dog. "In the past, though?"

"Perhaps."

"You don't mean perhaps," Lawrence said belligerently. "You mean yes."

"I mean perhaps. It goes deeper than that." He could have said that it went back to a downhill ski race, two men colliding and dying in mid-air, himself nearly being drowned a couple of times while surfing, almost being killed because he was driving too fast. But he didn't offer anything more. He would not complain to his wife's father about her, would not say that if they both had known about themselves and each other before they were married, they would never have been married. All he said was, "There are certain things on which we don't see eye to eye."

"One year after I was married," Lawrence said, "I was ready to leave her mother. Luckily, it turned out she was pregnant. How is it you haven't had any children?"

"That's a question you'd better ask Tracy," Michael said.

"She wouldn't tell me, either," Lawrence said sadly.

There was another, stronger gust of wind and the boat shuddered and dipped its bowsprit into a wave.

"The wind's freshening a bit, Michael," Lawrence said. "You'd better pull down the mainsail. It's getting a little rough, so remember the old maxim--one hand for the boat and one for yourself. But first go into the cabin and bring out the life jackets," he said almost casually. "I do believe we're in for something of a squall."

Michael went forward to the cabin. He came out with one life jacket. "There's only this one," he said, putting it at Lawrence's feet. Before Lawrence could say anything, he went forward, holding on with difficulty as the deck bucked beneath him. It took him a long time and all the strength he could muster to take down the mainsail and furl it, with the wind snapping at the sail like a pack of malicious dogs.

"Well done," Lawrence said when he got back to the cockpit.

"I've sailed before," Michael said.

Lawrence looked up, squinting at the darkening, violent gray-and-black sky. "I guess I misread the weather. Hubris. We're going back. Get over to the other side last when we go around. Ready?"

"Ready."

Lawrence put all his weight onto the tiller and the boat swung around, groaning and creaking, every plank protesting, the wind screeching through the stays. Both of them scrambled, the old man surprisingly agile as he switched his position. Now they were heeling over more than ever, even with only the jib up, and Lawrence was whistling through his teeth a tuneless, abstracted sound.

"We're in trouble," Michael said.

"A person might say that." Lawrence kept up the same tuneless whistling, slacking off as much as he dared. "Sorry about that."

"Put on the life jacket," Michael said.

"Do you think you could hold her on course while I went and looked for the other jacket?"

"I'll hold her," Michael said. "But you're wasting your time."

"Here, take it."

Michael slid over and grabbed the tiller. It nearly pulled out of his hand and he had to lean his full weight on it. The old man must be a lot stronger than he looks, he thought, as he watched Lawrence go crablike to the cabin.

In a little while, Lawrence came skittering back. "Those goddamn kids," he said, as he took the helm. "Little wharf rats. They steal everything they can lay their hands on. It's my fault. I should have looked before we took off. Put the jacket on," Lawrence said sternly.

Michael stared landward. The low bluffs that bordered the eastern side to the entrance of the harbor were at least two miles away. "If it comes to the sticking point," he said, "I can swim for it. Christ, I could swim from here to Connecticut if I had to."

"I'm not in the mood for youthful boasting. Put the goddamn thing on. This is an order from the captain of the vessel."

"If you don't put it on, I'm going to throw it overboard. I have no desire to float into shore and tell your family that I left you to drown."

"Nobody's drowning," Lawrence snapped.

"Will you put that in writing?"

Lawrence looked stern for a moment, then smiled, a thin-lipped Yankee old man's smile. "I didn't think I could convince you," he said.

Michael held the tiller while Lawrence struggled into the jacket. The wind was howling now and the waves were breaking completely over the craft, the water sluicing through the cockpit. "Have you got a radio on board?" he asked.

"No. Never needed it before. I'm rarely out of sight of land."

"We're in sight of land now," Michael said, "and we could use a radio."

"You should have been around when I outfitted the Tracy. You're a few years too late with your excellent suggestion."

Michael stared at the old man, struggling with the tiller, his lips bared in a crazy grin. By God, he thought, the old lunatic is enjoying it.

Then the jib split, with a noise like a cannon going off. In a few seconds, it was in shreds and the boat broached to. Hastily, Michael tore off his tennis shoes and threw off his wet-weather gear and sweater, then his pants. If he was going to have to swim for it, he wasn't going to do it dressed as though for a winter in the Alps.

A few seconds later, the Tracy capsized and they were both in the water. The boat lay on its side, heaving up and down wildly. Lawrence was a few feet away from him, appearing and disappearing in the waves. Michael grabbed him by the life jacket and, both of them swimming furiously, they reached the boat. As it swept down upon them, they both grabbed onto the rail.

"Can you hold on?" Michael gasped.

"I'd better," Lawrence said. He swallowed a lot of water, but he held on. From then on, he didn't say anything as, side by side, they wallowed in the turmoil of the sea.

After a while, Michael could see that Lawrence's grip was getting weaker and he decided that if the old man let go, he would let go, too, and take a chance that he could keep them both afloat.

Then, as suddenly as the squall had come up, it passed over them, howling westward. The sea calmed magically and it was a lot easier to hang on. But a mist thickened around them and soon Michael couldn't see land and knew that if he had to swim for it, he'd have to guess in which direction to go.

There was no way of telling how long they had been in the water. Both of their watches had stopped when they had been hurled overboard and there was no sun to indicate how late it was getting. Lawrence was getting blue from the cold and his hands were becoming a numb, frozen white on the rail. What seemed like many hours later, they heard the sound of a helicopter overhead. Lawrence finally spoke. "They must have phoned the Coast Guard at Montauk," he said.

But the mist was too thick for anyone to see them from a helicopter and they listened as the sound of the engines dwindled in the distance.

One of Lawrence's hands slipped and Michael lurched and put an arm around him to hold him steady. Lawrence grinned weakly at him. "I thought you'd be in Connecticut by now," he said.

Then they heard the sound of powerful motors approaching them. The men in the helicopter must have seen them, after all. A shadow loomed in the mist, grew closer, darker, as Michael waved and shouted. The engines slowed and a moment later the Coast Guard vessel glided up to them and figures on board were throwing ropes down to them. Stiff-fingered, Michael tied one of the ropes under Lawrence's armpits and he was hoisted aboard. Then, with his ultimate effort, he tied a sling for himself and was hauled aboard.

As the coastguardmen were putting a line on the Tracy to tow her behind the cutter, they were hustled down below decks and toweled off and given blankets and hot coffee. "What time is it?" Michael asked the captain of the ship, who had come down to see how the two men he had rescued were doing.

"Four ten," the captain said. "What time did you go into the drink?"

"About eleven A.M."

The captain whistled. "Five hours in the water." He looked with admiration at Lawrence, whose hands were trembling as they held the steaming mug of coffee. "You have a tough old friend."

"You can say that again."

Lawrence seemed too stunned to understand that they were talking about him, shivering and holding on to the mug with his two hands as though that, too, might be in danger of sliding away from him.

"You were lucky, pal," the captain said to Michael. "We got messages that two other boats foundered and we haven't found any survivors yet. You're also lucky that we've had a hot spell these last ten days and the sound is warmer than it usually is this early in the season. Water sports." He shook his head.

•

Dressed in a sailor's pants and sweater that had been lent to him, Michael was on deck as they came alongside the dock at Three Mile Harbor. Tracy and her mother and her sisters were on the dock. They were dressed in sweaters and they were all wearing scarves that twisted in the wind and to Michael they looked like the womenfolk of fishermen, waiting to see which of their men were safe and which ones had been lost on the last voyage. He waved to them and Tracy's sisters and her mother waved back, but Tracy kept her hands at her sides, plunged into the pockets of her sweater.

So be it, he thought, and went down to wake Lawrence, who had been sleeping, and to help him get into a pair of dungarees and a peacoat. There was no comb in the cabin and there was nothing Michael could do about Lawrence's hair, which hung stiffly in all directions and gave him a wild and baleful appearance, like that of a malevolent, senile pirate. When they climbed to the deck, Lawrence waved once to his family, then went aft to look at the Tracy lying on its side, its sail tattered, low in the water. He shook his head sadly. "Poor betrayed Tracy."

Michael wished he had given the boat another name.

•

They debarked, and Mrs. Lawrence bundled her husband into the station wagon with the two girls, and Tracy and Michael walked to where the sedan was parked and got in, Tracy behind the wheel, all in silence.

Tracy put the car into gear and they moved off and followed the station wagon. Michael glanced over at his wife. Her hands were so tight on the wheel that her knuckles showed white and her face was rigid, her mouth set in a grim line, her eyes narrowed and glowering. Finally, she let it out. "It's not enough that you don't give a damn whether your wife becomes a widow or not, you have to drag my father along with you."

"I tried to insist ..." he began.

"I can just imagine how you tried to insist."

"You ask your father...."

"He admires you, he's told me he wished he had a son like you, he'd like to pretend he's almost the same age as you. I know you. Without even saying a word, you shamed him into it. He's a careful, peaceful man, a sensible sailor, it's the first time in his life he's ever done anything as suicidal as this. I wish I'd never brought you into the house."

"Let's continue this when you've calmed down a bit, shall we?" he said placatingly.

"I'm calm right now. And there's nothing to continue."

The rest of the drive they rode in silence until they reached the house.

Lawrence was coughing and looked feverish when he got out of the car and Mrs. Lawrence called a doctor and put her husband to bed, where he fell into a troubled sleep. When the doctor came, he said Lawrence would have to remain in bed for a few days and stay quiet. The atmosphere in the house was mournful and Michael felt that all four women kept looking at him accusingly and excused himself from dinner and took the car and went into Bridgehampton, where he had a hamburger at a bar and drank too much both before and after the meal.

•

Tracy was waiting for him when he got home. She stood against the door, looking at him coldly, as he sat down on a straight wooden chair in their room. The pallid rigidity of her face was incongruous with the soft, pretty wool robe she was wearing.

"For your own good, Michael," she said, "I suggest that when you're as drunk as you obviously are now, you leave the car outside the bar or wherever you happen to drink yourself senseless and get a taxi to drive you home. I know you don't mind killing yourself, but I doubt that you'd like to do it crashing un-heroically into a tree."

"I'm not drunk." He knew his speech was a little thick and that he had had some trouble climbing the stairs, but his mind felt clear, ready to make sensible decisions.

"In the last year or so, Michael," Tracy went on steadily, "you've become a drunkard. A solitary, pitiful drunkard."

"I won't argue with you."

"I don't intend to argue," Tracy said. "Waiting here tonight, I realized it was all over, Michael. It's too bad, but there it is. Today was the end."

"I told you I insisted ..." he said, feeling misused. "I know I've been guilty a lot of times before for many things...."

She laughed, without amusement.

"But today," he continued doggedly, "it wasn't my fault. You have to believe that."

"I don't have to believe anything. It's been coming on for a long time and I kept hoping that one day you'd wake up and see what you were doing to yourself, to me. I can't live anymore being afraid that every time you go out of the house the telephone will ring and somebody will tell me my husband is dead. If for over a year you haven't been able to bear even to touch me and you have to whore all over the country--don't think I haven't heard, I have good friends or not-so-good friends who are more than anxious to let me know what my husband is doing--and if you detest me so much you'd rather die than stand the sight of me, why in the name of God do you want to hang on?"

"I love you," he said, staring down at his hands.

Again she laughed, the same mirthless half-sob. "Maybe, in your own crazy way, you do. But if it is love, it's love that's destroying me. And just for your information, you're not the only one who's found consolation in other beds."

"What do you mean by that?" He looked up, genuinely surprised. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that she.... There had been no signs. Womanly deceit, he thought, hurt.

"You know what I mean," Tracy said. "What did you expect?"

He considered this for a moment. "I should have expected it," he said humbly. "I don't blame you."

"If it's of any use to your ego," she said, "it was never any good, it changed what I thought of myself, it erased me."

"Oh, darling," he mumbled sadly.

"It's too late for darlings."

"Do you want a divorce?"

Standing rigidly, her back against the door, a prosecuting attorney nearing the bitter end of a long trial, she sighed. "I don't know what I want except that tomorrow I want you to take the car--it's your car, anyway, and----"

"Our car," he said.

"There is no more our. There's only yours and mine from now on. And tomorrow you take your car and drive in to the city and take every last thing of yours out of my apartment."

He looked at the big double bed. He knew that he couldn't lie side by side with her for one last time for the rest of the night. Finally, he stood up. "In that case," he said, taking great trouble to speak clearly and intelligently, "in that case, there's no sense in waiting till morning. I'll pack my bag and get out right now."

He quickly packed a bag, left the house, got into the car and started the engine. He looked up at the second story, where the one light shone. Then the light went out and the house was dark. He drove carefully out through the front gate and onto the road, the fog swirling low on the glistening road in the diffused glare of the headlights. Tears clouded his vision again and again, and he drove slowly and with care, but even so, he was alarmed when he saw the flashing lights of a police car speeding out of the mist behind him. But the police car swept past him, the officer not interested in a weeping drunk going 40 miles an hour, hugging the edge of the highway, hurrying to an accident, a murder, a fire, to any one of a thousand disasters that could happen in the middle of the night 100 miles from the city of New York.

•

Some time later, on his 35th birthday, Michael dialed Tracy's office. He didn't know what he wanted to say to her and they hadn't spoken since the morning he had cleaned his things out of the apartment, and lie had to catch his breath when he heard the familiar low voice saying, "Tracy Lawrence," over the wire.

"Michael," he said.

"Michael." He could hear the sharp intake of breath over the phone. "Happy birthday."

"Time marches on," he said. She had remembered.

"I'm glad you called. There are some things I must talk to you about."

"Today's as good a day as any. Dinner tonight?"

She hesitated for a fraction of a second. "All right," she said.

"Shall we meet at the bar of the Oak Room and then go on someplace for dinner?" One thing was certain--he wasn't going to pick her up at her apartment. Birthday or no birthday, the apartment was one place he was not going to visit.

"Fine," she said briskly.

"Seven thirty."

"Seven thirty it is." She hung up.

He walked slowly to his office, wondering what she wanted to talk to him about and dreading what it might be.

•

She came into the bar of the Oak Room, cool and splendid, in control of the city, the men, as usual, staring at her as she made her way to the table near the window where he was sitting. She was wearing a new dark fur coat, not the one he had bought her as a wedding gift. Whose gift was this? he thought as he stood to greet her. Unworthy thought. A girl who looked like Tracy had a right to as many fur coats as she could lay her hands on.

She didn't make a move to kiss him as they said hello and they stood facing each other awkwardly for a moment and then shook hands, which made Michael feel absurd, especially since they both moved in circles in which people kissed each other on the cheek at the most casual meetings.

Over their drinks, the conversation was impersonal. Tracy was tanned and had been in the Bahamas for ten days, where it had been warm and the weather perfect. Her father and mother were well. Her father had sold the Tracy some time ago. Her middle sister was living in California and had married a newspaperman in San Francisco. Her own business was doing well and they had had to move to larger quarters on Upper Madison Avenue, which was convenient for her, because she could walk to work in five minutes. They had both seen two of the same plays, on different evenings, and they disagreed politely on their merits. No, he had not had the time last year to do any skiing, but he had taken up hang gliding last summer and liked it. She looked at him coldly after he told her that and abruptly changed the subject and asked him how he was doing at the office. He was doing fine, he said, but no one at Cornwall and Wallace had resigned or been fired and Cornwall's promise that Michael was going to be made a partner had not been realized so far.

There was no mention of the fact that she had said over the phone that afternoon that there were some things she had to talk to him about.

When they finished their drinks, Michael said he was taking her to a new, very good Italian restaurant on 61st Street. He had carefully chosen it because they had never been there together.

The small talk continued over dinner. Let her tell me what was on her mind, he thought; he would not ask. Then, over coffee, she said, abruptly, "Michael, I think it's time we got a divorce. I can't go on hanging in limbo like this forever."

"Whatever you say," he said. Unreasonably, he was shocked. Living together or living apart, he still thought of her as his wife. A wife was a permanent fixture. "If that's what you want."

"That's what I want," she said. "There's a man I've met and I like him and he wants children, too. I'm getting too old to wait much longer."

"What sort of man is he?" he asked. "What does he do?"

"He's forty," she said. "A widower. He manufactures fabrics. He's very well off."

"Your parents will be pleased."

She ignored that. "Naturally, I won't ask for alimony or anything like that and there's nothing we have to divide," she said, crisply businesslike. "But we'll both have to get lawyers."

"Of course," he said. "There's a law firm that does the work for our office. I'll put them on notice."

"It shouldn't be too much trouble," she said. "Thank God we don't live in Italy or Spain, where they make such a fuss."

"Thank God," he said.

She looked at him harshly. "Don't be ironic."

"This is my first divorce. I don't know what the proper reaction should be."

"Not irony."

"I'm just trying to be civilized and modern," he protested, willing to hurt her now, because he was hurt. "I don't suppose I've met your friend jumping out of airplanes or sailing or hang gliding or anything like that, have I?"

"No, you have not. Now you're turning ugly. It isn't like you." Her voice was trembling as she spoke.

"Give me time to get used to the whole thing and I promise to improve. I may even turn out to be the perfect divorced husband as matters progress."

"I'm taking my maiden name," she said, "and I'll keep it after I'm married."

"Go with the times," he said.

"It's my firm's name, anyway," she said. "Why not?"

"I shall introduce you from now on as Ms. Lawrence."

"Introduce me as anything you wish," she said. "Are we finished here?"

"Finished," he said, and waved for the waiter and the bill.

Outside the restaurant, she surprised him. Just as he was about to hail a taxi to take her home, she said, "It's early yet. I'd love to hear some music. And Antoine's place is just around the corner." Antoine was an old friend whom Michael had not seen in some time.

He looked at her speculatively. Was she trying to punish him, taking him to where Antoine's playing and singing would painfully remind him of all the good times they had had together? But all he said was, "I'm sure Antoine will be most pleased to see you." He took her arm and they walked down the street, arm in arm, like a sedate married couple.

Antoine greeted them warmly, kissed Tracy when they went in and made them sit at a table next to the piano. Michael noticed that at the bar were three large men who were speaking loudly in what Michael guessed were the accents of Texas.

Antoine began to play C'est Triste, Venise in Tracy's honor and made a small bow to her from the piano. Tracy smiled widely, like a little girl who had just received a present.

Then he began to sing the words. Sentimental French bastard, Michael thought, displeased with the way Tracy was leaning forward, intent, singing softly, in her nice American French, along with Antoine.

The loud men came away from the bar, marching three abreast toward the piano. "Hey, listen to that, will ya?" One of the men said. "He's singing frog."

"I do believe he is. Frog," one of the other men said.

They were standing at the piano now. "Hey, lissen, pal," said the first man, his voice booming, "you're in the good old U.S. of A., taking our money in dollar bills; the least you could do is learn the language."

Somewhere in the room, a woman hissed. The three men ignored her. Michael could feel his body tensing and Tracy, almost instinctively, put out her hand and touched his arm.

"Venice," said the third man, who had not spoken yet, "he's singing about Venice. I was there once and it smelled like a sewer."

"Come on, pal," said the first man to Antoine, who was bravely smiling as he sang, "give us a little Yankee Doodle Dandy."

"Sit still," Tracy said, gripping Michael's arm because she could see his fists clenching.

"Well, then," said the first man, who was the largest of the three of them, "if you won't, we will." He started bawling, " 'The eyes of Texas are upon you...'" and the two other men joined him, completely drowning out Antoine's faltering voice.

Michael jumped up, tearing away from Tracy's grip on his arm. "Shut up, you fucking, shit-kicking drunks," he shouted.

Grinning, the three men sang on. "Join in," the first man said to Michael. "We'll make it a quartet. You sing soprano." He put his arm around Michael's shoulders, the feel of his hand on Michael's arm not at all friendly.

Roughly, Michael pushed the man's arm away. The man swiveled and pushed Michael, hard, under the chin, with the heel of his hand. Michael hit him on the jaw, with a wild, intense pleasure as he saw the man's eyes go momentarily blank, Joseph Ling in the schoolyard all over again.

"OK, pal," the second man said, "you asked for it." He hit Michael in the stomach and Michael doubled over. Then, while the first man, who had recovered by now, held Michael's arms from behind, the two others hammered at his face, his ribs. Michael dropped to the floor. Dimly, from somewhere in the room, he could hear a woman screaming. Then he went out, as the first man knelt over him and clubbed him with the side of his clenched fist twice more.

The man stood up and looked around the hushed room. "Anybody else here don't like our choice of music, just step up here and voice your objections."

Only Tracy moved. Sobbing uncontrollably, shouting, "Animals! Animals!" she sprang up, holding her glass, and threw her drink into the man's face.

The man grinned. "Sit down, you New York whore," he said and pushed her violently back onto the piano. Then the three men marched abreast, deliberately, toward the exit, with everyone between them and the door getting silently out of their way.

•

Michael woke up in the hospital. Tracy was sitting on a chair by the side of his bed. He tried to smile at her. "How do you feel?" she asked, tremulously.

"Someone is exploding giant firecrackers inside my head," he said in a voice that he couldn't be sure was his own. "And it is no great pleasure to breathe. Otherwise, I'm in tiptop shape." He began to feel himself sliding under again and he fought to remain conscious.

"You've been out for two and a half hours," Tracy said, "and you've got three broken ribs and a beautiful concussion. Otherwise, as you said, you're in tiptop shape."

Michael chuckled, then gasped as the ribs moved.

A nurse came in and said, "Oh, you've come to." She laid a cool hand on his head. "A little fever. Not too bad, considering. If you need anything, push the buzzer. I'm just down the hall at the desk." She went out, footsteps noiseless.

"Now sleep," Tracy said, taking his hand.

"Well, it was to be expected, winding up in a hospital, it being my birthday and all." He smiled brokenly. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Ssh. Sleep."

He closed his eyes and slept, clutching his wife's hand.

•

Tracy went in to visit him every day, but she saw that it was hard for him to talk, and she stayed only a few minutes and didn't say anything of importance and seemed in a hurry to leave.

By the end of the week, Michael felt ready to leave the hospital. The firecrackers had stopped going off in his head and he could eat solid food again and his ribs bothered him only if he laughed or happened to cough. He got the hospital barber to shave him and when he looked into the mirror afterward, he chuckled grimly at his reflection. The swelling had gone down, but the left side of his face or faces--there seemed to be two Michael Storrs in the mirror, with the ghost of a third--was streaked with a variety of colors, going from purple through yellow and a selection of sickly greens. The doctor assured him that his face would return to its normal color in due time but refused to discharge him. "You had a massive concussion," he said, "and you have to remain under observation for at least ten days before we know for sure that something nasty won't kick up in your brain."

Michael didn't tell the doctor that when he looked at him, he saw two or sometimes three doctors. If he had mentioned that interesting phenomenon, God knows how much longer they'd have kept him in the hospital. He was grateful to the barber. If he had tried to shave himself, he would have had to guess which of the two or three faces to lather.

Antoine, too, when he finally was allowed to visit, appeared in a multiple version, but Michael was glad to see the Frenchman just the same. He was tired of his own company and Antoine always cheered him up.

"How is it, mon vieux?" Antoine said.

"I'm bored. Otherwise splendid."

"You do not look splendid. Those barbarians."

"Did anyone ever find out who they were?"

Antoine shook his head. "The police came with the ambulance, but they said if nobody knew their names or where they were staying, there was very little the police could do. They were very insouciant about the matter. Les flics. Scum of society. What could be a question of life or death to a civilian is merely routine to a policeman. You know, they hit Tracy, too."

"They did?" Michael could feel something buzzing furiously in his head. Why?"

"She called them animals and she threw a glass of whiskey into the face of their leader. Didn't you know?"

"Tracy didn't tell me anything."

"A noble woman. I believe you were on the floor and unconscious when she did it. What a fatal evening." Antoine sighed mournfully. "Forgive me. I am not very cheery these days," he said. "I lost my job and I have had to move and the Immigration----"

"Oh. Have you heard from them?"

"Not yet. But they will come. I feel it in my bones. I can already hear the engines of the airplane warming up to take me to France. My life has turned into a sordid mess."

"Your bones don't know anything about the Immigration," Michael said. 'Don't be such an old lady."

"You can say that. You don't have to. have a work permit. I have moved in the utmost secrecy to a small hotel on the West Side. A perfectly horrid small hotel, which is used almost wholly to house pimps, whores, dope pushers and women who scream all night as though their throats are being cut. It has one advantage. The police do not dare approach it. I will give you its telephone number if you promise not to give it to anyone else. And if you ask for me, my name is now René Fernoz."

"It's a nice name," Michael said, smiling. He watched Antoine scratch his new name and the hotel's telephone number on a pad.

"There," Antoine said, laying down the pencil. "The new false Frenchman."

"Is there anything I tan do to help you? A little thing like money, perhaps?"

"You have helped me enough and have suffered enough." Antoine put on his noble lace, diminished in effect somewhat by the scar and his acne.

"Yes. I helped you get fired and maybe deported. Why don't you get down on your knees and thank me? Do you need any money?"

"Not for the moment," Antoine said. "If there arrives another moment, I will take advantage of your foolish generosity. It may be very soon. Thank you, my friend."

"Forget it. You'll pay me back."

"I never have paid anybody back in my whole life," Antoine said glumly. "It is an aspect of my character that I deplore."

Michael laughed. "All right. Then don't pay me back. I've just come into some money and I'll be able to eat, no matter how deplorable your character is."

"And you?" Antoine asked. "When you leave the hospital, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to quit my job and get out of the city," Michael said, surprising himself as the words came out of his mouth, because he hadn't thought of anything but fleeing the hospital.

"Where will you go? What will you do?" Antoine looked shocked.

"I haven't thought about it yet. Someplace, anyplace."

"Please, don't do anything hasty. Just because of an incident in a bar over a foolish little pianist."

"That has nothing to do with it. That just triggered it off. Something else--maybe a little less showy--would have triggered it off one time or another. I've been getting ready for it a long time."

"If you do go--and I implore you to think it over carefully, you are in no condition now to make grave decisions-- if you do go, will you let me know where I can find you? I have too few friends to see my best one disappear into the wilderness of America."

"Of course I'll let you know," Michael said gently. "I couldn't bear not hearing you play the piano from time to time."

"You are my tower of strength and goodness, Mike," Antoine said emotionally.

"Will you, for Christ's sake, stop sounding like a literal translation from Racine?" Michael said roughly, to hide how deeply Antoine had touched him. "And now get out of here, because the doctor said for my head's sake I should talk as little as possible."

Antoine stood up to leave.

"Au revoir, Monsieur Fernoz," Michael said.

He watched Antoine walk to the door and noticed that his walk was different, slower, less jaunty, as though he no longer heard the interior syncopated music to which he used to move.

Michael lay back wearily but contentedly. Antoine's visit had cheered him immensely, but not in the way he had expected. Actually, he had cheered himself. Antoine's questioning had brought him to a decision that he had too long postponed. "I'm going to quit my job and get out of the city," he repeated, whispering to himself, establishing it as a fact as he lay back on the pillow, thinking, elatedly, Better times ahead.

It was beginning to snow, large, wet, deliberate flakes. He smiled. Of course, he thought. That part of his decision was being made for him. Snow country. There was a lot of snow country in the world and he was in no hurry to decide which mountains he would favor with his presence.

Soothed, confident now that his life would sort itself out, a devotee of winter, he slept.

•

Three days later, he had decided. Looking back upon his past, it seemed to him the calmest and healthiest period of his life had been the four months he had spent as a ski instructor at Green Hollow in Vermont. Of course, it might have changed and probably had, as had he, but as a possible starting point on a new existence, it attracted him. For some reason, he had never gone back--fearing, perhaps, that his memories of a particularly pleasant segment of his young manhood would be spoiled by a later examination. Also, once he had started working for Cornwall and Wallace, he had been sent out often to the West, where the skiing was much more challenging and spectacular. Now, he told himself, he was no longer interested in that kind of challenge, at least for the time being.

When he called to tell Tracy of his decision, she said, her voice calm, "Have a nice, peaceful winter. You can use it. And call me if you need anything."

"Thanks," he said. "When I settle in, I'll give you my address, if you have to talk to me about--well," he said lamely, "well--about the divorce or something."

"I'm not going through with the divorce, unless you want to. I can't live with another man," she said, almost whispering. "At least, not for the time being. I cant live with you, either."

He was silent.

"Don't say anything now," she said. "Better to keep quiet and both go our separate wonderful ways."

•

Two days later, with most of his belongings packed into a trunk in the hotel basement, he got into his car and started north, on a windy, clear day. As he sped into the foothills of the mountains, there were patches of snow on the fields.

"He hadn't ever told her what other kinds of fun he had indulged in before they met."

"She did not make her usual move, and for the first night since they were married, they didn't make love."

"They were approaching a breaking point, but out of memory of happier times, postponed the moment."

The second part of "The Top of the Hill" will appear in the September Playboy