seen her only twice, and she was easy to look at, with just enough round places, just round enough, properly spotted on her five-foot-four getup, and her warm dark skin just right for her quick brown eyes. Her dark-brown hair was bunched at the back. Her name was Amy Denovo and she had got a diploma from Smith in June. Lily had hired her ten days ago, at a hundred a week, to help her find and arrange material for a book a man was going to write about Lily's father, who had made a pile building sewers and other items and had left her enough boodle to keep a dozen penthouses.

She answered a couple of questions Lily asked, and left, and we talked baseball, concentrating on what the Mets had, if anything, besides Tommy Davis and Bud Harrel-son and Tom Seaver, and what they might have if we lived long enough. We dawdled with the drinks, and at six o'clock I got up to go, leaving Lily plenty of time to change for a dinner she had been hooked for, where people were going to abolish ghettos by making speeches. I had a date, later, where I intended to abolish the welfare of some friends of mine by drawing another ace or maybe jack.

But down in the lobby I was intercepted. Albert, the doorman, was moving to open the door for me when a voice spoke my name and I turned, and Amy Denovo left a chair and was coming. She gave me a nice little smile and said, "Could you give me a few minutes to ask you something?"

I said, "Sure, shoot," and she glanced at Albert, and he took the hint and went outside. I said we might as well sit and we went to a bench at the wall, but the door opened again and a man and woman entered, crossed to the elevator, and stood.

Amy Denovo said, "It is rather public, isn't it? I said a few minutes, but I suppose… it might be more than just a few. If you could? And I… it's very personal… I mean personal to me."

I hadn't noticed the dimples before. They are always more taking on a dark skin than on a light skin. "You're twenty-two," I said.