Was it too late for him to change? To undergo one final metamorphosis? I am not what I am! That was Haffner's constant wish, his mantra. He was a man replete with mantras. He would not act his age, or his Age. He would not be what others made of him.

And yet; and yet.

In 1974, in the last year of his New York life, when Barbra -- who was twenty-nine, worked in the Wall Street office as his secretary and smoked Dunhills which she kept in a cigarette holder, triple facts that made her desirable to Haffner as he passed middle age -- asked him why it was he still went faithfully back every night to his wife, he could not answer. It didn't have to be like that, she said. With irritation, as he looked at Barbra, the steep curve between her breasts, he remembered his snooker table in the annexe at home, its blue blaize built over by Livia's castles of unread books. He knew that the next morning he would be there, at home: with his breakfast of Corn Chex, morosely reading the Peanuts cartoons. He knew this, and did not want to know it. So often, he wanted to give up, and elope from his history. The problem was in finding the right elopee. He only had Haffner. And Haffner wasn't enough.