“But I don’t want it at this particular time, not even with you. I’m a one-man-at-a-time gal, and right now that man can be you. But you must understand that while I’d be yours and yours only, I don’t know for how long. A week, a month, five years - maybe forever; how can either of us tell? You notify me when you want out, and I’ll do the same.” Was he, could he really be, in love with her?

  Dane began to pace, and Sheila sat back and watched him with that same trace of anxiety. Did this mean she was giving the old man the gate?

  Or was she playing some sort of game with both of them? Damn this development! It had really fouled everything up. (How could love foul up anything? So maybe he wasn’t in love with her after all.) He stopped before the ottoman and took her hands in his. “All right, baby, we’ll let the plot write itself. On your terms. Maybe I’ve escaped a fate worse than death. Lovers, is it? Let’s get started.” Her arms tugged, and he let himself fall.

  * * *

  The next morning he was in a more comfortable frame of mind.

  Having savored the taste and depths of her, he could not doubt her. It was not a game - however brief it might turn out to be, it was not a game. He was convinced that she had told him the truth.

  So Sheila was a one-man-at-a-time woman, and he had accomplished his purpose. In her forthrightness, Sheila would certainly have told his father, at the start of their affair, what she had told Dane; so it could come as no surprise to him when she broke it off.

  This should send his father back to his mother, with no need for a confrontation - no need, when it came to that, for either of his parents to know how the trick had been accomplished. There was no reason for the elder McKell to learn that Sheila’s new lover was his son; and let Lutetia think her husband had settled back in the nest of his own volition. It would comfort her.

  But something was - not exactly wrong; off-key, perhaps. He offered Sheila a key to his apartment, and she refused it. “Not yet, darling. I’m still enjoying my illicit status.” Instead, she offered him a key to hers.

  And when the following Wednesday came, he could not see her. “I’m only human, darling,” she said over the phone, a smile in her voice. “Not tonight. Tomorrow night?”

  That Wednesday night, as usual, Ashton McKell did not come home at his other-weekday hour. He was gone all evening.

  Sheila had lied to him. It must be that. Yet how could it be? Or was she easing his father off? That was it. He was probably taking it hard, and she had decided to let him down gradually. Still, it meant that he and his father were sharing Sheila’s circular Hollywood bed. It left him with a vile taste.

  Until Wednesday, September 14th. On that day Dane phoned his mother to ask how she was. She was fine, Lutetia said, although disappointed.

  “Your father and I were planning to lunch together downtown,” Lutetia said. “While we were discussing it at breakfast, there was a phone call from Washington. It was the President’s appointments secretary. The President wanted to see Ashton today, so there went our plans.” She laughed her tinkly laugh. “I must say Father didn’t seem to appreciate the honor. He was actually annoyed. Almost balked at letting me pack his overnight bag. In the end, of course, he went. You don’t turn down the President of the United States.”

  Overnight bag…

  “Sheila.”

  “Dane? Hi, darling!”

  “See you tonight?”

  “Well… “

  “How about dinner at Louis’s?”

  “All right, dear, but let’s make it early. I’ll have to be back before ten.”

  “How come?”

  “I still have gobs of work to do on my designs before the collection is finished.”

  He could not help wondering what she would use as an excuse after her collection was completed. At the same time, he was puzzled.

  Overnight bag… Had the whole story of the presidential call been a put-up job? Or just the part about overnight?

  They had Louis’s special salad, which was not on the menu, but Sheila ate it as if it had been prepared by a diner chef. He was asked please not to dawdle over his coffee. They were on the sidewalk at 9:30.

  “How about a nightcap, Sheila? A quick one?”

  She apparently could not find a plausible way to refuse. Upstairs:

  “Would you make it yourself, darling? Nothing for me. I’ll just change into my working clothes, then you’ll have to go.” Calmly Dane said, “I’m not going.”

  Sheila laughed. “Come on, pardner, have your drink and skedaddle.”

  “I don’t want a drink. And I’m not going.”

  Her laugh turned uncertain. “Dane, I’m not sure I like this. I must get to work.”

  “You’re not going to work, and I’m not leaving.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me. I’m not going to be got rid of.” For a moment Sheila was quiet, as if weighing certain factors against her temper. Then she said in a light voice, “Listen to the man! Are you keeping me, O Lord and Master? I pay my own rent, buddy-boy, and you stay when I say, and you leave when I tell you to, and right now I want you to leave.” When he stood there, saying nothing, her face turned to ice. “Dane, leave now. I mean now. Or you’ll be sorry.”

  “My father will be here any minute, won’t he?”

  It was as if he had struck her. “You know!… I suppose you’ve known all along. I see, I see now. That’s why -”

  “That’s why I’m staying. Yes, sweetie pie, that’s why.” He was disgusted with her and with himself and with his father and even with his mother. He stripped off his jacket and laid it across the back of an armchair, and his silver cigaret case, a gift from his mother, dropped out of the pocket. He picked it up and took a cigaret and found his hands shaking so badly he could not light up.

  “I’m waiting for my father,” he muttered, tossing the case on the chair.

  “What’s more, I intend to tell him about you and me.

  With a smothered half-cry, Sheila went to the picture window, to the door, back to the middle of the room. “All right, Dane. Stay and be damned to you. I can’t very well put you out by force.”

  “You didn’t have the guts to tell him. Or maybe you never meant to?”

  “That’s foul, Dane. That really is!”

  “One man at a time, I believe you said. Didn’t you mean one family at a time?”

  To his stupefaction, she burst out laughing. “This is very funny.

  Funnier than you could possibly imagine!”

  “You have a peculiar sense of humor!” Every speck of the love he had felt for her was vanishing with the speed of light. Dread began heavily to build up, and with it the insane rage he had been guarding against.

  “You think I’ve been sleeping with your father?” Sheila cried. “Let me tell you something, little boy - we aren’t lovers; we never have been.

  There’s nothing in the least physical about our friendship. Yes, and that’s exactly what it is - friendship! We like each other. We respect each other.

  We enjoy each other’s company. But that’s all. Of course you won’t believe it. Maybe nobody would. But, so help me, Dane, it’s the truth. For your own sake, if for no one else’s, you’d better believe that.” He could see his own fists, hear his own shout. “Can’t you think of a more convincing story than that? Friendship! Don’t you think I know the old man’s been parking his shoes under your bed every Wednesday night?

  I’ve seen some of his clothes in your bedroom closet!”

  “He’s been coming here, yes, and he keeps a change of clothing - some comfortable things -”

  “To talk over the little events of the week, I suppose, over a tea cozy?

  In slacks and a dressing gown? What kind of triple-headed idiot do you take me for? For God’s sake, don’t you have the decency to admit it when you’re caught with your pants down?”

  He choked; there was a roaring in his ears. He became faintly aware that her lips were moving.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Dane. I don’t want to say things about-”

  “You’d better not,” he heard himself growl.

  “- about your mother. But apparently I offer your father a… a scope, an experience, that makes it possible for him to talk to me in a way in which he could never talk to his wife.

  We have a very special and wonderful relationship. It helps him to come here every Wednesday night, Dane. And I’m terribly fond of him.”

  “Why am I bothering? Helps him! How? Come on, spin a few more of your lies to me!”

  She flared up at that. “It helps his feelings about himself as a man, if you must know - a man in relation to women. I tell you, Dane, he’s my friend, not my lover! He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to!

  There! Are you satisfied now? Now do you understand?” Dane stood dumb. He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to…

  “You mean you won’t let him be? Is that your yarn?” She said, white-lipped, “I mean he’s physically incapable of it. Now you know.”

  He could not - could not - believe it. Ashton McKell, big, hairy, strapping, vigorous, virile Ashton McKell, incapable of physical relations with a woman?

  He sank onto the ottoman, dazed. The very shock of the thought generated its own believability. Nobody, not even a witch, would invent a story like that about Ash McKell. It had to be true. And suddenly he saw how far this went toward explaining the thrusting McKell drive in business, his tapeworm hunger for commercial expansion. A compensation!

  But if that were the case, why hadn’t his mother said anything? The question answered itself. Lutetia McKell could not have brought herself to mention a thing like that, to her son above all people.

  “So now you know the truth,” Sheila was saying, and she sounded urgent. “Dane, please, won’t you go? I’ve been trying to find a way to tell your father about you and me without hurting him. Let me work this out my own way. Help me spare him.”

  He shook his head violently. “I’m going to tell him myself. I’ve got to know whether this is all true or not.”

  She clapped her hands in sheer exasperation. “You’d do that? You’d leave him not one shred of self-respect? His own son! Don’t you know how ashamed he is of his impotence? Dane, if you do that, you’re a rotten, despicable -”

  He flung out his arm. “You bitch! Don’t call me names!”

  “Bitch?” Sheila screamed. “Get out of my apartment! Now!”

  “No!”

  She slapped him with all her might.

  And then it came. With a rush.

  She was not aware at first what her slap had loosed. For she had started for the house phone. “You leave me no choice. I’m calling John Leslie up here to get you out. I never want to see you again.” From childhood the great flaw in his make-up had been his temper. It had been a hair-trigger thing, exploding at his governess, the servants, other children, his mother - although never his father. Ashton had blamed Lutetia (“You’ve spoiled him”) and hoped that the other boys in boarding school would whip him regularly enough to cure him. But his rages had seemed to feed on violence; and it was not until he was an upperclassrnan at college that Dane had taught himself restraint. But the lava of his temper was always boiling under his skin.

  Now Sheila’s hot words, his own guilts, the underlying fear of the confrontation with his father, made him erupt. He leaped at Sheila, whirled her about, and seized her by the throat. He felt, rather than heard, his own voice rumbling, jeering, cursing, choking with hate.

  Sheila struggled; her resistance fed his fury. His fingers tightened…

  It was not until her face turned livid, her cries became gurgles, her eyes glassed over and she went suddenly sodden under his hands - it was not until then that a shudder shook him and awareness returned.

  Sheila lay collapsed on the floor, barely able to support herself on her forearms, breathing in great gasps. But breathing. Dane stared down at her. There was nothing he could say. It was all over between them. How could she ever look at him again without fear?

  His plans - to help his mother - punish his father - marry Sheila… all, they were all strangled by that single burst of homicidal fury. What was any of them worth now?

  She was alive. He could at least take satisfaction in that.

  Dane seized his coat and ran.

  * * *

  Sheila got to her knees, pulled herself erect, toppled onto the ottoman.

  She spent some time learning to swallow again, her hands trembling on her bruised throat. She felt cold and sick; her body was racked with shudders. Gradually they subsided, her gasps became normal breathing, her racing heart slowed down.

  The thought kept hammering in her head: He almost killed me. He wanted to; it was in his murderous eyes… Little things came back to her.

  Hadn’t there been signs? His unnatural sulkiness when thwarted? His easy excitability? His inexplicable silences?

  Quivering, Sheila scrambled up and went to the bathroom and turned on the cold-water tap. She was drying herself when she heard a key in her door.

  It was Ashton McKell.

  He looked tired. But his face lit up as he saw her.

  “Well, the nation’s fate is secure for tonight, anyway,” he said. “Old Ash McKell has given the President - good evening, Sheila” - he kissed her, sank onto the ottoman -”the benefit of his advice. Now all he has to do is take it. Sheila? Something wrong?”

  She shook her head. Her hand was on her throat.

  He jumped up and went to her. “What’s happened? Why are you holding your throat?”

  “Ash… I can’t tell you.”

  “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No. No.”

  “Did someone hurt you?”

  “Ash. Please -”

  “Let me see your neck.”

  “Ash, it’s nothing, I tell you.”

  “I don’t understand.” He was distressed and bewildered.

  “Ash, I don’t feel well. Would you understand if… ?”

  “You’d like me to leave?”

  Weeping, she nodded. He hesitated, patted her shoulder, picked up his bag and hat, and left.

  * * *

  Sheila looked out her window at the nighttime city for a few minutes after Ashton McKell’s departure. All at once she turned away and hurried into her workroom. She pushed a pile of unfinished fashion sketches aside, took a sheet of note-paper and envelope from a drawer, sat down. She wrote rapidly:

  Sept. 14th Dane McKell tonight asked if he could come up to my apartment for a nightcap. I told him I had work to do, but he insisted. In the apartment he refused to leave and nothing I could say made him do so.

  I lost my temper and slapped him. He then tried to strangle me. This is not hysteria on my part - he actually tried to strangle me. He took my throat in his hands and squeezed and seemed to be out of his mind with an insane rage. As he choked me he screamed that he was going to kill me and he called me many obscene names. Then he dropped me to the floor and ran out of the apartment. In another minute I would have been dead of strangulation. I am convinced that he is a dangerous person and I repeat his name, Dane McKell. He definitely tried to kill me.

  (signed) Sheila Grey She did not even bother to reread it. She thrust it into an envelope, moistened the gum, sealed it securely, and on the envelope wrote: To be opened only in the event I die of unnatural causes. Now she searched her drawer, found a larger envelope, inserted the first envelope into it, sealed the outer one - heavy and yellow - and on its face wrote: For the Police. She hesitated, slipped the envelope into a bottom drawer of her desk, bit her lip, shook her head, took the envelope from the drawer, and dropped it on her desk. I’ll find a better place for it in the morning, she told herself.

  Sheila sat back now, exhausted to the point of nausea. After a moment she got up and went over to an easy chair in a half-stumble and sank into it. Dizzy, sick to her stomach, shocked to the core, she felt as she imagined people feel when they are dying. If I died right here and now, she thought, I wouldn’t care.

  Her eyes closed…

  * * *

  Later, she could not imagine at first why she was in the easy chair. All of a sudden it came back to her. A glance at her watch told her that less than ten minutes had elapsed.

  She visited the bathroom again, dipping a washcloth in cold water, bathing her eyes and neck. My God, what a nightmare, she thought.

  Sleep was out of the question, creative work. Yet it was either back to her drawing board or to bed with a sleeping pill, unless… Routine, that was it. There were always mindless matters to lose oneself in, rituals of invoice checking, sample matching, note jotting…

  It was as if she had reached a refuge on her hands and knees. Sheila sat down once more at the desk in her workroom.

  This affair had turned out monstrously, monstrously. The best thing to do was to forget it (could she ever forget the clutch of those fingers on her throat?). And she reached for a pile of papers in the desk bin.

  Her hand remained in midair.

  Someone was in her living room.

  Her hand felt paralyzed. She forced it - a sheer act of will - to move toward the telephone, watching it as if it were part of someone else’s body. One fingertip clawed at the dial, pulled.

  Whoever it was moved stealthily. From the living room into the bedroom.

  Far off, a voice spoke. Sheila started. It was in her ear.

  “Operator.” She tried to keep her voice steady in its whisper. “Police.

  Quick.”

  “Is this an emergency?”

  “Yes.”

  Sheila’s teeth chattered on the sibilant. Then there was no sound but the air-conditioner. Then a man’s voice said, “Seventeenth Precinct, Sergeant Tumelty.”

  “Someone is in my apartment”

  “Who is this, please? What’s your address, phone number?” Sheila told him. “Just hurry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t panic, Miss Grey. Lock the door of the room you’re in. We’ll have somebody -”

  “It’s too late!” screamed Sheila. “No-no - don’t shoot - I”