“Good,” she said, “relax. Give in. I’m going to make us an old-fashioned.”

She was gone. I heard the apartment house’s elevator through the walls. I recalled our brownstone on Seventy-second Street and its porch directly off the bedroom, where I used to sleep nights under the summer sky. Then I found I was controlling myself. May my children forgive me, I didn’t like the place. I hated those big windows; they were bullies. The room under them looked cavernous. I like softly illuminated rooms. I knew I’d never print any pictures. Who has time for that in my line of work? As for unwinding, how the hell was I going to unwind when I had a long, unevenly shot film of dubious worth to edit, a most uncertain leading man to make look good, a composer, Manos Hadjidakis, whom I didn’t know well, on his way to New York to score the film, and—and the whole damned Repertory Theatre program, with its mess of unanswered questions and the choices I’d have to make with Bob.