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there would have to be changes. There needed to be alterations in tone and mood, differences in language to make the book read like a Bryce Proctorr novel, and also a general tightening to increase the tension, since it seemed to him that one of Wayne's failings was a tendency to write flat, as though it were just a report he was making and not incidents ripe with drama.
    Also, the main characters would have to be recast. The senator, for instance, who was our hero's main problem, would have to become someone else entirely. Wayne had written him sort of like a college dean, academic, tough but with gloves on, while Bryce would make him more of a movie director type, more obviously tough and self-assured, and a showboat as well. He'd be fun to write.
    The first time through the manuscript, though, he'd concentrate on language. He noticed, for instance, whenever the characters reacted to something they didn't like, they 'winced.' 'Winced' wasn't a word he liked, nor would ever use, so an early order to the computer would be to change every 'winced' to 'twinged.'
    The other question was the title. Even if he liked
The Domino Doublet,
which he didn't at all, he wouldn't be able to use it, because Wayne's agent and his former editor had both seen the work under that title. His own third book had been called
An Only Twin,
which would be perfect for this one, given the relationship between the businessman and the senator; too bad he'd already used it up.
    A lot of people got off at the two Wilton stops, and then the countryside in the late afternoon light began to look more and more familiar, more and more comfortable. Isabelle would already be there, at the house, when he arrived, and they'd have the weekend.
    He felt himself relaxing. He wasn't even thinking now about whether Wayne Prentice would do, he was only thinking about whether his novel would do, and the answer was yes.
    Two Faces in the Mirror
. He made a note.
     
6
     
    Wayne had been trying to work on a new novel. He had an idea about a man whose brother disappears in Central America, and he goes looking for him. The brother was supposedly a stock-broker in New York, but as the hero searches, more and more ambiguities arise. Was his brother really CIA? Was he a money launderer for the drug cartel? Was he involved with right-wing generals? Wayne hadn't decided yet, and felt the character of the hero would eventually lead him to the character of the missing brother. He was calling it
The Shadowed Other,
but he was having a hell of a time getting into it.
    In the first place, what was it for? Who was it by? Would he spend all the time and research and effort, and then sell it to some minor house for five thousand dollars? Or to nobody at all? Would he try to create a
third
name? The effort seemed too much, and what good would it do?
    Was he a hobbyist now? Was he one of those people who do their writing on weekends and spend ten years finishing a novel and then nobody cares? Even if…
    Well. Even if he got the money from Bryce and
The Domino Doublet
was published under Bryce's name, what good would that do him in the long run? Bryce wouldn't be blocked forever, and wouldn't need a ghostwriter any more. Sooner or later, the money would be gone, and then what would Wayne do?
    The money wasn't the point, anyway, the writing was the point. He wanted to sit at his computer, the same as ever, unreel the stories, but he didn't want it to be meaningless, spinning his wheels, a mockery. He didn't want to be foolish in his own eyes.
    And the other problem, of course, was Lucie Proctorr. He started
The Shadowed Other
on Monday, but Thursday just kept looming in his mind, distracting him, forcing him to invent scenarios about Lucie Proctorr rather than Jim Gregory, the hero of his novel.
    By Wednesday, he was pacing the apartment more than he was seated at his computer, and Thursday was worse, made even more so by the fact that Susan wasn't coming home from work. She was going