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guest. I am your bottomless pit of receptivity. Was the poor devil interpreting my modesty as indifference? I would force myself to be more demonstrative. Lucky Claude. Help was on the way.
    I killed my last cigarette of the day and must have dozed off almost immediately. As soon as Claude slipped in beside me, I was electrically alert. Dawn was seeping through the burlap drapes.
    “What time is it?” I whispered, since I never use blunt conversational tones in bed.
    He wasn’t divulging classified information. He turned on his side and pretended to drop into a deep sleep. I nestled along his warm back. It stiffened. I blew a breath of soft air on his neck.
    “Don’t,” he said in an agonized whisper.
    Since it was already the next day, I decided I had coped enough for one night.

3
    T HAT NIGHT I had my usual dreamless sleep. I hardly ever dream, which is probably a reflection of the fact that I live my life fully and consciously. I solve my problems while awake and, as a result, spend my sleeping hours resting, not receiving inane messages. My ex-best friend, Rhoda-Regina, who has squandered her last ten years of earnings on analysts, due to her incredible vanity regarding her dreams, used to give me a daily recounting of the marvels she had produced during the night.
    How often I would tell her—”Rhoda,” I would say, “do yourself a favor. Go to bed with a real man and you won’t need to waste your time on nightmares.”
    Naturally this sensible advice was resented, because Rhoda-Regina expected me to break into rapturous applause and shouts of Bravo, as if each of her dreams rated four stars.
    Rhoda-Regina would stagger around her apartment for hours, stupefied, eyelids glued together, from the dissipation of her private orgy.
    Ideally I like to begin my day with a stimulating quiz show. I turned on the set and got Concentration, which is a show that doesn’t require brains, but is nevertheless a pleasant warm-up for Sale of the Century, which immediately follows. The drama of my day begins to build as the stakes go up, the questions get tougher, and the opponents confront each other with polite envy and rage.
    I couldn’t concentrate on Concentration and remembered, as if I had recorded the entire scene, Claude’s incredible breakdown of the previous evening.
    “Claude,” I hollered. “Claude, are you here?”
    No answer.
    I untangled myself from the mess of crumpled sheets and dived into a bundle of rags piled high on the bentwood rocker. My Japanese kimono, looking more and more like a captured flag, bled and spat upon, was right on the top where I’d placed it. I tied it securely around my hips and went directly to the air conditioner. Sure enough, it wasn’t in operation.
    “Leave that thing off,” an order came floating out of the bathroom. “I don’t want to catch cold.”
    Claude had more theories about the hazards of air conditioning than your vegetarians have about meat. I went into the kitchen, and for a change, there was no lovingly prepared Chemex of fresh-brewed coffee. I filled the kettle and put it on the stove. Another slave day had begun.
    I found Claude submerged to his neck in gray water. “Get out of here,” he said. “I’m taking a bath.”
    “Well, it’s a relief to know I’m not interrupting your baptism. Don’t you believe in answering a person?”
    “Don’t start on me, Harriet. I’m tired.”
    “You know, seeing you in the tub like that reminds me of a drama I saw on One Step Beyond. It was about this murderer, a doctor, who killed five of his wives before justice caught up with him. The thing that made justice suspicious was that all five of his five wives died in the bathtub, which struck them as too much of a good thing, since the doctor didn’t exactly marry paupers. You want to know how he did it?”
    “Finish what you’re doing and get out of here.” Claude pulled himself up in the tub, the black ringlets on his chest straightened by the water. “I