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pits." He
realized he was incoherent.
    "King Coal is coming back. Where's the dancing in the
streets?"
    "I called it like I saw it," he said defensively,
the old anger returning. When you're out of favor, the vultures like to pick at
the carcass. He took refuge in the thought. They were edging him out, he
decided, culling the ranks of the disgruntled.
    "Don't get paranoid. I'm trying to be constructive.
We're rewriting. I'm the salvage team."
    He felt the blood beat in his head. Barrows was an editor
on the national desk, a company man. "You? Don't touch a goddamned word.
You'll mangle it."
    "Watch it, Martin, your hotshot days are long
gone."
    "Shove it up your ass."
    "Listen, wise guy." He could hear Barrows's heavy
breathing and wished it would stop. "The word's out on you. If you got a
complaint, take it up with Webster. Hell, I'll do it for you."
    "You do that." The mention of Webster inflamed
him even more. "And don't touch one word of that copy or my name comes off
the by-line."
    "Big deal. Your name on a story doesn't mean shit
anyhow," Barrows said, clicking off. Prima donna! The insult rang in his
ears, knowing that Barrows would indeed tell Webster. It was all changing
anyhow, he told himself. He lay back, watching the ceiling, seeing its flaws
and flakes. The focus had changed. They were into other things now, trivia. Who
boffed whom? That wasn't reporting. Remembering, he looked at the girl, curled
like a fetus, oblivious to his rage.
    "They want that kind of trivia," he hissed,
considering her sensuous form, "bet you could give them a snootful."
He patted her bare arm, the idea slowly taking shape, growing inside him. She
didn't stir.

III
    Fiona drew the draperies, then lit the double candles in
their creamy Irish glass holders, a gift from her mother years ago. Being
Irish, according to her, required the possession of Irish things and this glass
was one of them. She had made a pâté from a recipe in a French cookbook and
bought a loaf of French bread and a good Bordeaux for the steak au poivre.
Asparagus with hollandaise sauce was boiling in a plastic bag. The table was
set in her two place Irish china bought piece by piece, placed carefully on the
tablecloth of Irish lace, still faintly camphory from its long slumber in a
bottom drawer. Lord knows there was little enough romance in this life, she
told herself, composing an image of Clint in her mind, a face pink and
smile-crinkled under a cascade of prematurely gray, curly hair. She was beyond
guilt now, eschewing sorrows and self-pity, taut with expectation. Nor did she
care what subterfuge he used to free his Monday night. That wasn't her
business. The memory of Dorothy Curtis had prodded her. Tonight was high noon.
    The mind computed its own rationalizations. She had never
considered herself a mistress in a technical sense. Not as she was now, the
lover of a married man, Clinton Chase. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, she had
concluded finally, when it became evident that she was, all protestations
notwithstanding, hooked.
    She met him as she had met all her men in the last few
years, through an investigation. The reverse twist was that he had been
investigating her investigation. He had worked then for the Detroit News ,
Washington bureau. To make matters more steamy, she detested having to do her
work under the scrutiny of media people, unless she was passing information for
a specific purpose. It inhibited her. Besides, all media dealings were
covetously usurped by the eggplant. Because it was a Detroit paper, she decided
to go along with it. Anyway, she had learned, it was one of his last
assignments. He was about to accept an appointment as undersecretary of
transportation, in charge of public information.
    The case involved a young man, son of a prominent Detroit lawyer, who had run over a prostitute with whom he had just had sexual relations
in his car. He was drunk as well. It was purely accidental, but it made a juicy
story for Detroit. To