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for that. I don’t know. Maybe I slept because I was afraid to stay awake.
    I was dreaming, but it was one of those dreams you forget the minute you come awake. The knocking at the door woke me up and the dream slipped away from me. I opened my eye very tentatively. I wasn’t hungover and I felt fine. At least I would have, given a few hours more sleep.
    The knocking began again.
    “Who is it?”
    “Chambermaid.”
    “Go away.” Great hotel, when the chambermaids wake you up in the middle of the morning. “Come back next year.”
    “Open the door, Mr. Blake—”
    “Go play in traffic. I’m tired.”
    The voice changed to a coo. “Lennie,” it said, “ please open the door.”
    For a minute I thought the dream was back again. Then I jumped out of bed and wrapped up in a sheet. She looked cool and fresh in a white cotton blouse and a pair of sea-green clam-diggers. She came right on in and I closed the door.
    “You’re nuts,” I said. “For coming here. But of course you know that.”
    “I know.”
    “He could have seen you. He’ll wonder where you went. It wasn’t too brilliant of you.”
    She was smiling. “You look silly,” she said. “Wrapped up in that sheet like an Arabian sheik. Were you sleeping?”
    “Of course. It’s the middle of the night.”
    “Middle of the day, you mean.”
    “What time is it?”
    “Almost noon,” she said. “And he couldn’t have seen me, anyway. He was out of the hotel at the crack of dawn. Business, he said, something unexpected. Even in Atlantic City he has business. Business before pleasure. Always.”
    I knew what business he had. A whole boxful of business that had neatly disappeared.
    She pouted. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
    “You know the answer to that one.”
    “You don’t seem glad. You didn’t even kiss me hello.”
    I kissed her. And then it all came back, all the way back, and it was the night on the beach all over again. One kiss did that. She was that kind of woman.
    “That’s better.”
    “Much better.”
    Very deliberately she removed the blouse and the clam-diggers, kicked her shoes under my bed. She wasn’t wearing anything else. I couldn’t stop looking at her.
    Her eyes were laughing. “You silly man,” she said. “You don’t need that silly sheet, do you?”
    I didn’t.
    Much later I opened my eyes. She was curled up like a sleeping kitten with her blonde hair all disorganized on the pillow. I reached out a hand and ran it over her body from shoulder to hip. She didn’t stir.
    I reached over for the pack of cigarettes on the table at the side of the bed. I found a match and lit a cigarette. When I turned back to her she had her eyes open.
    She smiled for an answer.
    “You’re pretty great, you know.”
    Her smile widened.
    “I’m going to miss you.”
    She bit her lip. “Lennie—”
    I waited.
    “Remember what I told you on the beach? That I couldn’t give up the money?”
    I remembered.
    “I found out something today. Here. With you.”
    I waited some more.
    “I … still can’t give up the money.”
    The cigarette didn’t taste right. I took another drag and coughed on it.
    “But I can’t give you up either, Lennie. I don’t know where we go from here. I want the money and I want you and I can’t have both. I’m a spoiled little girl. I can’t do anything. All I can do is want.”
    I knew what the answer was and I knew that I was scared to hand it to her. But the die was cast. I couldn’t see the spots, couldn’t tell whether we had come up with seven or whether we had crapped out royally. Either way, the pattern was there already. It couldn’t be changed from here on in.
    “How old is Keith?”
    She shrugged. “Fifty,” she said. “Fifty-five. I don’t know. I never asked him. That’s silly, isn’t it? Not knowing how old you own husband is. Fifty or fifty-five or something around there. I don’t know. Why?”
    “I was just thinking.”
    She looked at me.
    “I mean … he’s not a