“Sure.” Donny slammed the door as he left.

Three minutes later, Doug was in the Mercedes heading for the train station, Susan’s reproachful “Try not to be too late” ringing in his ears. Doug felt himself begin to unwind. Thirty-six years old and stuck with a fat wife, four noisy kids, a house in the suburbs. The American Dream. At twenty-two he’d thought he was making a smart move when he married Susan. Unfortunately, marrying the daughter of a wealthy man wasn’t the same as marrying wealth. Susan’s father was a tightwad. Lend, never give. That motto had to be tattooed on his brain.

It wasn’t that he didn’t love the kids or that he wasn’t fond enough of Susan.

It was just that he should have waited to get into this paterfamilias routine. He’d thrown his youth away. As Douglas Fox, investment banker, upstanding citizen of Scarsdale, his life was an exercise in boredom. He parked and ran for the train, consoling himself with the thought that as Doug Fields, bachelor artist, prince of the personals, his life was swift and secretive, and when the dark needs came there was a way to satisfy them.

III WEDNESDAY February 20

On Wednesday evening, Darcy arrived at Nona Roberts’s office promptly at six-thirty. She’d had a meeting with a client on Riverside Drive and phoned Nona to suggest they cab over to the restaurant together.

Nona’s office was a cluttered box in a row of cluttered boxes on the tenth floor of the Hudson Cable Network. It held a somewhat battered oak desk piled with papers, several filing cabinets, the drawers of which did not fully close, shelves of reference books and tapes, a distinctly uninviting-looking love seat, and an executive swivel chair which Darcy knew no longer swiveled. A plant which Nona consistently forgot to water drooped wearily on the narrow windowsill. Nona loved that office. Darcy privately wondered why it didn’t destroy itself by spontaneous combustion. When she arrived, Nona was on the phone, so she went out seeking water for the plant. “It’s begging for mercy,” she said when she returned.