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“Remember that Tugboat Annie movie with Beery and Dressler? Do you think Annie ever went to bed with her husband?”
    “Sure!”
    “They were always fighting. He lied to her every chance he got—and most of the time he was drunk.”
    “But in their own way they loved each other,” Connie said. “They couldn’t have been married to anyone else.”
    “I wonder what it was like for them. He was such a weak man, and she was such a strong woman.”
    “Remember, though, he was always strong when the chips were down: right near the end of the picture, for example.”
    “Some good in all of us, huh?”
    “He could have been strong from the start. He just didn’t respect himself enough.”
    Graham stared at the fire. He turned the brandy snifter around and around in his hand.
    “What about William Powell and Myrna Loy?” she asked.
    “The Thin Man movies.”
    “Both of them were strong,” she said. “That’s who we could be. Nick and Nora Charles.”
    “I always liked their dog. Asta. Now that was a good part. ”
    “How do you think Nick and Nora made love?” she asked.
    “Passionately.”
    “But with a lot of fun.”
    “Little jokes.”
    “That’s it.” She took the brandy glass out of his hand and put it on the hearth with her own snifter. She kissed him lightly, teasing his lips with her tongue. “I bet we could play Nick and Nora.”
    “I don’t know. It’s such a strain making love and being witty at the same time.”
    She sat in his lap. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him more fully this time and drew back and smiled when he slid a hand beneath her sweater.
    “Nora?” he said.
    “Yes, Nicky?”
    “Where’s Asta?”
    “I put him to bed.”
    “We wouldn’t want him interrupting.”
    “He’s asleep.”
    “Might traumatize the little fella if he saw—”
    “I made sure he’d be asleep.”
    “Oh?”
    “I drugged his Alpo.”
    “Such a smart girl.”
    “And now we belong in bed.”
    “Such a very smart girl.”
    “With a lovely body,” she said.
    “Yes, you’re ravishing.”
    “Am I?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “Ravish me, then.”
    “With pleasure.”
    “I would hope so.”

5
    An hour later he was asleep, but Connie was not. She lay on her side, studying his face in the soft glow of the bedside lamp.
    His experience and attitudes were stamped on his features. His toughness shone through clearly, yet there was the boyish quality too. Kindness. Intelligence. Humor. Sensitivity. He was a deep-down good man. But the fear shone through as well, the fear of falling, and all of the ugly things that had grown from it.
    During his twenties and early thirties, Graham had been one of the best mountain climbers in the world. He lived for the vertical trek, for the risk and the triumph. Nothing else in his life mattered half so much as that. He had been an active climber from the age of thirteen, year by year setting higher and more difficult goals for himself. At twenty-six he was organizing parties to scale the most taxing peaks in Europe, Asia and South America. When he was thirty he led an expedition up the South Col route of Everest, climbed the West Ridge to traverse the mountain, and returned down the South Col. At thirty-one he tackled the Eiger Direct with an Alpine-style single push up the hideously sheer face without using fixed ropes. Accomplishments such as these, his good looks, his wit, and his reputation as a Casanova (exaggerated by both his friends and the press) made him the most colorful and popular figure in mountaineering at that time.
    Five years ago, with only a few challenging climbs remaining, he put together a team to assault the most dangerous wall of rock known to man, the Southwest Face of Everest, a route that had never been taken to the top. Two-thirds of the way through the climb, he fell, breaking sixteen bones and suffering internal injuries. He was given first aid in Nepal, then flown to Europe with a doctor and two friends at his side in what