Sundays to boot—but my hair was, so help me God, whitening, and the oculist said all the paperwork had played Hellwith my eyes. I was sick to tears of the thing, but it was me all the way, and if I didn’t play it right mergers might notmerge, commitments might not be committed, and John Weiler might find himself on the outside.Mornings on the train were a headache and a nightmare. Faces blurred into one runny grey smear, and theclickety-clack didn’t carry me back. It made my bead throb and my bones ache and it made me bate the universe. Notjust the world—the universe! All of it.

I unzipped my briefcase and opened it on my lap. The balding $25,000-a-year man sharing the seatharrumphed once and gathered the folds of his Harris tweed about his paunch. He went back to the Times with anasty side glance at me.

I mentally stuck my tongue out and bent to the paperwork.

I was halfway through an important field agent’s report that might—just barely might—provide the loopholeI was seeking to stop the gobbling by the Gillings Mills, and I walked out of the station with my briefcase under myarm, my nose in the report, with a sort of mechanical stride.

About halfway down the subway ramp I realized I didn’t know where the bloody Hell I was. Hurrying menand women surrounded me, streaming like salmon heading to spawn. I was somewhere under Grand Central’steeming passageway labyrinth, heading for an exit that would bring me out into the street somewhere near mybuilding.

But where the devil was this? I’d never seen any of the signs on the tiled walls before. They were all ingibberish, but they seemed to be the usual type thing: women, big bold letters in some foreign language, packagedgoods, bright colors.

I lost interest in them and tried to figure out where I was.

I’d gone up through the Station and then down again into the subway. Then there’d been a long period of