“And prosperity even shorter.” But he placed the package of bills back in his inside coat pocket, smoothed away at the lump it created in his otherwise perfect suit. “I wanted to buy you something with it,” he said. Actually the idea had just come to him now; what he had planned to do with the money was something a little different: he intended to take it to Las Vegas, to the blackjack tables. As a six he could—and did—always win at blackjack; he had the edge over everyone, even the dealer. Even, he thought sleekly, the pit boss.

“You’re lying,” Heather said. “You didn’t intend to get me anything; you never do, you’re so selfish and always thinking about yourself. That’s screwing money; you’re going to buy some big-chested blonde and go to bed together with her. Probably at our place in Zurich, which, you realize, I haven’t seen for four months now. I might as well be pregnant.”

It struck him as odd that she would say that, out of all the possible retorts that might flow up into her conscious, talking mind. But there was a good deal about Heather that he did not understand; with him, as with her fans, she kept many things about her private.

But, over the years, he had learned a lot about her. He knew, for example, that in 1982 she had had an abortion, a well-kept secret, too. He knew that at one time she had been illegally married to a student commune leader, and that for one year she had lived in the rabbit warrens of Columbia University, along with all the smelly, bearded students kept subsurface lifelong by the pols and the nats. The police and the national guard, who ringed every campus, keeping the students from creeping across to society like so many black rats swarming out of a leaky ship.

And he knew that one year ago she had been busted for possession of drugs. Only her wealthy and powerful family had been able to buy her out of that one: her money and her charisma and fame hadn’t worked when confrontation time with the police came.