Forty-seven minutes into town on the train five days a week (and sometimes Saturday, which washappening all too frequently lately) and Lexington Avenue greets me. My health and the family’s is good, except foran occasional twinge in my stomach, so most 0f the agony in the world stays away from me. I don’t get worriedeasily, because I stay out of other people’s closets.

But this time I was worried worse than just,badly.

I drew a line and started writing in the liabilities column:

Item: Clark Da Campo has a million-tentacled staring plant in his garden that is definitely not of normalbotanical origin.

Item: There has never been a wisp 0f smoke from the Da Campo chimney, even during the coldest days ofthe Winter.

Item: Though they have been living here for six months, the Da Campos have never made a social call,attended a local function, shown up at a public place.

Item: Charlotte has told me she has never seen Mrs. Da Campo buy any groceries or return any emptybottles or hang out any wash.

Item: There are no lights in the Da Campo household after six o’clock every night, and full-length drapesare drawn at the same time.

Item: I am scared witless.

Then I looked at the sheet. There was a great deal more on the asset side than the other, but somehow, afterall the value I’d placed on the entries in that first column, those in the second bad suddenly become more impressive,overpowering, alarming. And they were so nebulous, so inconclusive, I didn’t know what it was about them thatscared me.

But it looked like I was in Da Campo’s closets whether I wanted to be or not.