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Tracey came in with a new batch of her own vivid compositions.
    “I think I've finished Michigan,” she said. “What state are you working on?”
    He read, “ ‘The Yukon Sheraton: charming, individual guest cottages constructed by native craftsmen of local materials; cozy interiors, domed ceilings, blubber heat. Year-round winter sports.’”
    She forced a faint, nervous chuckle, and then became pensive. “Do you mind if I ask you something? Don't you think what we're doing is kind of, uh, unethical?”
    “Think of yourself as a fiction writer.”
    “I just feel funny about it.”
    “Why do you think most of the senior staff is alcoholic?” This hard-boiled manner had become reflexive when he was talking with Tracey. He couldn't seem to be straightforward.
    An inner struggle was working havoc on Tracey's normally cheerful demeanor. Russell couldn't help admiring the contours of her sleeveless top. “It's just, you're so talented,” she gasped, as if delivering a horrible confession. She looked down at the floor. “I'm being a baby.” She turned and walked out of the office. Russell stared at the door long after she had gone, then left early for lunch.
    Lately, Russell had felt a great shroud of gauze enveloping him, preventing him from touching life and getting hold of it. He felt torpid and cloudy, but he didn't know whether this was a function of the oppressive weather, his decision to quit cigarettes or some subheading under “Changes of Life.”
    Nicotine withdrawal seemed to dull his mind and sharpen all his senses. The rancid smells of the summer streets had never seemed so acute. The vapors curling from mysterious apertures in the city streets were cruel reminders. Where there's smoke, he thought. He ate four or five times a day. Even his hearing seemed sharper: Noise bothered him, as if he were suffering from an extended hangover. And the women in their summer dresses on the sidewalks excited fantasies more detailed than any he'd experienced since adolescence.
    Heading back from the coffee shop, he walked two blocks out of his way to follow a redhead in a yellow halter top. He entertained the notion of striking up a conversation, but then she walked out of his life, slipping smartly into the revolving door of an office building.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” he said aloud, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, drawing scrutiny from several pedestrians who seemed ready to offer opinions.
    He absolutely had to have a cigarette.
    Outside the newsstand, he stopped and reminded himself that he had already betrayed Corrine once today, if only in his imagination. He walked on, smokeless and repentant.
    Waiting for a traffic light, he looked over the display of a sidewalk vendor, one of those West Africans he'd read about in the Times , and spotted among the wares a cigarette case made out of python skin. Tracey would be leaving soon to go back to school. He bought the case for ten bucks and took it back to work. Tracey was at her desk, eating a bowl of cottage cheese.
    “It's beautiful,” she said. “You're so thoughtful.”
    “It comes with strings attached,” Russell said.
    She looked up warily.
    “Give me a cigarette, for Christ's sake, before I die.” He smoked it in her cubicle, and they talked about her courses for the fall. Russell wished he were going back to college, wished that he were embarking on some open-ended adventure, as he savored what he told himself would be his last cigarette.
    One morning toward the end of August, Corrine woke up at five a.m. in a terrible state. She'd had a dream: The apartment had gone up in flames. Her breath was short, and she was trembling. At first she wanted to stay home from work, and wanted Russell to stay with her, but Russell pointed out that if the fire was in the apartment building, they were both better off in their offices.
    She called after lunch to see if he was okay. As he was leaving the office, he called to remind her about a