Paul Joyner thinks he's next. His door has been closed all morning. Hallie said he's been calling everybody he's ever known since high school. But he's been saying he's next for the last eight years. I guess he figures if he says it, it won't happen. Reverse jinx. The last few weeks have been hell on wheels. I've been in the office every weekend this month. If there's no letup soon, my child bride says she's going home to mother. Did you read where MBO is using recons for the depth skeds? I ran into Jones Perkins on my way down. He said Warburton's got some kind of rare fatal blood thing. I'd love to go to Aspen for the holidays but I don't see how I can swing it. My secretary's going though. I don't know how they do it. Hallie's going to Europe again in the spring. Have you heard what Merrill did, that perfect ass? Which reminds me. Blaisdell told me he saw Chandler Bates' wife in San Juan last weekend. Hanging around El Convento with some tacky scuba type. Isabel, those are the most stunning gloves. If I don't take a vacation soon, you're going to walk into my office and see nothing there but a heap of ashes. What's everybody drinking?

We went back to the office. In the early afternoon it was always quiet, the whole place tossing slowly in tropical repose, as if the building itself swung on a miraculous hammock, and then the dimming effects of food and drink would begin to wear off and we would remember why we were there, to buzz and chime, and all would bend to their respective machines. But there was something wonderful about that time, the hour or so before we remembered. It was the time to sit on your sofa instead of behind the desk, and to call your secretary into the office and talk in soft voices about nothing in particular- films, books, water sports, travel, nothing at all. There was a certain kind of love between you then, like the love in a family which has shared so many familiar moments that not to love would be inhuman.