Gary knew that he'd broken the sibling code of honor. But he was glad he'd broken it. He was glad Denise was taking heat again from Enid. He felt surrounded, imprisoned, by disapproving women.

There was, of course, one obvious way of breaking free: he could say yes instead of no to one of the dozen secretaries and female pedestrians and sales clerks who in any given week took note of his height and his schist- gray hair, his calfskin jacket and his French mountaineering pants, and looked him in the eye as if to say The key's under the doormat. But there was still no pussy on earth he'd rather lick, no hair he'd rather gather in his fist like a golden silk bellpull, no gaze with which he'd rather lock his own at climax, than Caroline's. The only guaranteed result of having an affair would be to add yet another disapproving woman to his life.