He was with her every night and, before her rehearsals started, they met for lunch and drank martinis and he was out of his office for two hours. On weekends he made picnic lunches and drove with her to the ocean. The water was cold, but the sun was warm and they wore sweatshirts and sat on the beach. At night they ate in restaurants and they made love and slept in her apartment or his. When she started rehearsals, she did not have time for lunch, and all day as he worked, he waited to see her. “I’m easy,” she had said, and when he imagined her living in New York, working as a waitress, rehearsing with men, he could not bear it. He knew she loved him and he believed she wanted to be faithful to him; but she was beautiful and a hedonist and there would be men trying to make love with her, and she would feel something for some of them. Without telling her, he tried to give her license, tried to imagine a situation he could accept: if she were drunk one night in New York and it happened only that night.

But it would not be one night with one man. By now he had seen her in the new play. [...] Susan made Beth erotic and lonely and brave, and you knew she would have a lover, in time, when she was ready, when she chose to; and Ted knew that, unless Susan was very unlucky, she would work in New York and in Hollywood. So it would not be one night drunk with one man; Susan was going on the road for the rest of her life.