Virginia Simmas threw the women's magazine to the floor in disgust and lit a fresh cigarette, the last one still burning in the ash tray. She puffed on the cigarette with a vengeance, picked up the dainty teacup on the end table, and tossed the cold, black liquid down.

She grimaced. It was a lousy drink, half cold coffee and half vodka. A lousy way to get through life, too, she thought, but being a little tight seemed to make it easier.

Virginia knew there was something missing, something that vodka and cigarettes wouldn't replace yet, to go out and get involved with life again seemed like too much of a chore. She was too old to go back to school; besides, she didn't want to, and she sure as hell didn't want to get job. Still, she had to do something; her unrest was growing by the day.

She was thirty-eight years old, married almost twenty years, and had a grown daughter. The most charitable thing she could say about her marriage was that it was dull.

She got absently to her feet and trudged up the three stairs to the bedroom level. Her head felt light and she staggered just a trifle. Another vodka, she thought, and she could sleep the rest of the day away. The thought was tempting, but she knew she had to get busy or lose her mind. She slid open the closet door, only to shrink back. Cleaning that out was too formidable a job in her condition; to leap in there cold turkey was just too much to ask. She would start by cleaning out the drawers in the dresser, starting with her husband's one drawer. She had four.

God, what men accumulated. Two worn-out undershirts, one red sock, no mate, and… what in the hell was a big brown envelope doing in his clothes drawer under all of his other paraphernalia? She realized that it had been years since she had opened his drawer except to pile his clean things on top of what was already there, and God knew what a man would stuff in it in that length of time.