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can possess one of these, to the extent that any of them can be truly possessed, they are the incomparable reward. They love with a savage, surpassing joy. They have passion without limit. They are so far beyond any restraint that it becomes a special innocence, touching and beyond price.
    Judy was one of that unique sisterhood and she was, of course, a status symbol. And she could not avoid or prevent those things that weigh so heavily on the other end of the scale.
    You find yourself so unashamedly adored that the bright hot light of that adoration constantly illuminates your own unworthiness.
    And the status symbol works both ways. You must be her symbol also. Defeat is unforgivable, because she equates defeat with weakness. She who is destined to belong to kings can never scrub cottages. She goes with success, and she leaves with it also.
    And once you have been showered by that special bounty, you can never fit yourself comfortably back into that world from which all magic has fled. She is in your nerves and your blood and your flesh forever.
    All you can do is try to avoid comparison, because it can be a knife in your heart. I kept her out of my mind when Iwas with Sis. But there was one time when she slipped past my defenses, and suddenly I was in the midst of a coarse, meaningless, doughy frolic with some strange dull girl, and it all stopped within a single heavy beat of my heart. I had to plead a sudden illness—wondering aloud about food poisoning, knowing I could not speak of the poisoned heart. I went alone into the night and stood on my dock and looked at the stars and told all the smiling ghosts of Judy that it wasn’t fair to take everything away. She must have relented, because it was once more the way it should be with Sis when we were together again.
    I checked the freshly battered junker in town, and so it was a little after seven on that August evening when I got back to the cottage. Charlie had just finished off a fried slab of the morning snook. He said he had slept until six, when the alarm had awakened him. He did not think the phone had rung again, or that anybody had knocked at my door. He said he was ready to go as soon as it was dark enough.
    “You certainly seem calm, Charlie.”
    “When you know what you’re going to do, there’s no point in worrying any more. You can start worrying again if it doesn’t work.”
    “About the gun, I hope you’re not going to ask me if you can please borrow the gun.”
    “I won’t need a gun. Sam, are you trying to find out what I’m going to do?”
    “I don’t think I want to know what you’re going to do. I have the feeling that already I know more than I want to know. You were picked up when you were working on the safe out at the Weber house on the Key. You got pretty bitter about Charity Weber. I can think of all kinds of things that could have been going on, and I don’t want any more clues.”
    He opened a fresh pack of cigarettes I had brought himand said, “I guess you don’t want to get mixed up in anything, Sam.”
    “What do you mean?”
    He shrugged. “You got it the way you want it, I guess. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s like you got a hole and you pulled it in after you. That’s another reason I came here. I knew you’d live quiet and keep your head down. I guessed you wouldn’t turn me in, and I guessed you wouldn’t try to help me, either. I don’t want any help. I can tell right now how anxious you are to be rid of me, so you can forget you had anything to do with it.”
    “It sounds as if you—”
    “I’m not criticizing you, Sam. It’s your life and your choice, and maybe a hell of a lot of people would be better off if they just stepped aside the way you have. You’ve got the books and the records and that little boat tied up to your dock down there, and a job that doesn’t get you too involved. I guess I envy you.”
    He stepped over to the sink and began to scrub the frying pan.
    “I’ll do that