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door, she turned to me. “Lloyd, you still want me to do it, go through with this?”
    “Hortense, it’s you who wants to do it!”
    “Then, okay, I will.”
    “You want a bump on the backside?”
    “I’ll stop by your place in the morning, at ten sharp. Please be out front, so I don’t have to get out or go in that lobby.”
    “I’ll be there waiting.”
    “I’ll call Richard when I get upstairs. On the way to Wilmington tomorrow, I can tell you what he said.”
    “Then we’ll be together on it.”
    “Goodnight.”
    And she dived through the door without looking back.

5
    I SPENT A BAD night, though the beginning of it was nice as I lay there in the dark thinking how well the day had turned out. I even snickered now and then at the way her conscience was working, how, in order to neutralize danger, she was doing the one thing she knew and then blaming it on me. For awhile that seemed pretty funny. Then, down in my gut, something started to twist. I suddenly asked myself if that was how things were, if that was how they really were, if there wasn’t perhaps a little more to it. At long last the question popped out in the open: Where did I come in? How did I come in? At first, it had seemed to be her doing, the idea of telling Richard that she had switched. But now I made myself face the truth that there was more to it than that, that maybe my eyes were telling her things I hadn’t guessed yet even about myself. In other words, deep down inside, I began to suspect that I would take advantage of her, that I would somehow think of a way; that being the case, the way she was acting made sense. But often, when you realize something, you realize it all at once, so that it hits you in the face and things aren’t the same anymore. All of a sudden it wasn’t quite so funny, what she was about to do. Then out of the dark a hot flash shot at me. It said we were playing with fire, that however the thing turned out, it couldn’t turn out well. After a couple of these, I lay there asking myself: Should I go to Wilmington with her? Get out from under, the flashes said, get out while the getting is good, or it’s going to explode in your face in a way you’ll never forget. I’m human, and all this shook me. Then I thought: nothing risked, nothing gained. In a poker game there comes a time when you shove in your stack or quit with what you’ve got. And this was like poker, wasn’t it?
    Then I slept. I knew what I was going to do.
    In the morning I spent ten minutes finding keys to give her—to the back door and to the apartment—and putting the keys on a ring. Then I went downstairs and stood under the marquee, feeling like a fool, sure that she wouldn’t come.
    A bright-green Cadillac turned the corner and came to a stop beside me, and then she was leaning over, unlocking the door so I could get in. She played it straight, saying “Good morning” and commenting on a “beautiful day.” I played it the same way, making a point of the car and how nice-looking it was. She said: “It’s just a car my husband runs around in.” And that seemed to exhaust the subject.
    We had gone through the tunnel under Baltimore Harbor before she brought up the call, and when she did, she made it quick: “I simply couldn’t say that I had changed my mind. It would have sounded so phoney. I said that you had hinted that you had some idea—an inspiration, you called it, that you would tell him and, of course, me—which would make me change my mind, or at least, so you thought. Then I spent half the night trying to think what your idea was—or is. Whatever. Anyway, I called him at home just now to say that curiosity was killing the cat, that I would bring you back with me to let us hear it in person. Now all you have to do is think up an idea. But if you can’t, it’s all right with me. You can just get out, thumb a ride back, and forget the whole thing.”
    “Afraid I couldn’t do that.”
    “I did, it so happens, come up