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truculent and embarrassed, like a boy who has just been taken out of a football game by the coach for allowing himself to be blocked out of a play. “Honest friends,” he said ramblingly, “in this day and age …” He put his head in his hands.
    Archer stood up. “I’m going home,” he said. “I’ve had enough fun for one night. Can I give you a lift?”
    “No,” Emmet said, still with his head in his hands. “I’m going to stay here and drink. I’m having a fight with my wife and I’m waiting for her to fall asleep.” He picked up his head. “Sometimes,” he said unsmilingly, “I wish I was back in the Marines. On Guam.”
    “Good night,” Archer said. He patted O’Neill’s shoulder lightly. Archer went out. O’Neill, sitting alone in the dark and empty restaurant, ordered a double Scotch.

3
    F IFTEEN MINUTES LATER ARCHER OPENED THE DOOR OF HIS HOUSE. He saw that there were lights on upstairs and he knew that Kitty was awake.
    “Kitty,” he called from the hallway, closing the door behind him. “Kitty, I’m home.”
    “Clement.” Kitty’s voice floated softly down the stairwell. Even in merely calling his name, there was the private tone of pleasure and welcome with which she always greeted him. “I’m in bed, darling.”
    “Do you want anything?” he asked, throwing his coat and hat over a chair in the hall. “Before I come up?”
    “Well …” He could picture her sitting in bed, pursing her mouth, slowly making up her mind. “Well … There’re some fresh cookies in the jar. And a glass of milk. Half a glass.”
    “On the way up,” Archer said. He went through the living room to the kitchen. There were some freesias in a bowl, a tropical, summer scent, and the maid had fixed the room before she had left for the night and all the cushions were crisp and perfect on the couch and chairs. The room was a pleasant hodgepodge of furniture styles, with some early American tables and Victorian chairs in bright silk upholstery and you could tell that an interior decorator had never been allowed past the front door. Home, Archer thought comfortably, home. He could feel himself relaxing, forgetting O’Neill, forgetting the program, forgetting the folded galley sheet in his pocket.
    When he entered the bedroom, carrying the milk and cookies, Kitty was sitting up in bed, the pillows piled behind her, her head in a blue bandana, because she had washed her hair during the evening. She looked absurdly young with her bare, full shoulders and the brilliant handkerchief tied in a bow around her hair, like the pretty girls driving through vacation towns in the summertime on the way to the beach. Archer put the tray down and leaned over and kissed her shoulder. “That’s for lying in bed half-naked,” he said.
    “Ummn,” Kitty said, patting the bed beside her, indicating that she wanted him to sit there. “The service in this establishment is getting better every day.”
    Archer took off his jacket and tossed it over a chair and opened his collar and took off his tie before he sat down on the bed. Kitty sipped her milk, looking like an obedient little girl at early dinner. “I’m gluttonous,” she said. “I’ve been lying here all night, thinking of food. You know what I kept hoping?”
    “What?”
    “I kept hoping somebody would have a flash of inspiration and go into Schrafft’s and buy a pint of ice cream. Coffee ice cream.”
    Archer laughed and patted her knee under the quilt. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I promise tomorrow.”
    “I kept using mental telepathy,” Kitty said, crunching on a cookie. “I said to myself, Now he is walking down the street and he is passing Schrafft’s and the message stops him in his tracks. ‘I hear a voice,’ he says to himself. ‘It says coffee-flavor.’ ” She giggled. “I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds before this is over.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” Archer said. “You never looked better in your whole life.”
    “I’m