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Bill knocked the sugar bowl over in his eagerness to reach across the table to clasp her hand in his and assure his overwrought daughter that he was not angry at all, that he simply had a superanalytical mind that liked to dig and delve into the whys and wherefores of things.

His apologies humbly proffered, plus kisses, hugs, and a hundred tiny endearments, Bill excused himself and went upstairs to shower, shave, and dress, leaving a happy, fully restored Ivy to tussle over the morning’s programme in TV Guide and a frightened, totally confused Janice to clean up the spilled sugar and clear the breakfast dishes.

Janice sat in her rocker, immobile. She had the fixed, intensely vacuous look of a person caught in a witch’s spell. Her eyes, unblinking, seemingly focused on a pinpoint of dust halfway across the room, were in reality turned inward, into the churning depths of her own stunned brain.

Bill had not bought the gift.

This single stunning thought was the sole subject of her entire concentration.

The sounds from above of smothered laughter and subdued girl talk between Ivy and Bettina Carew could not penetrate the tough shield of privacy she had built around herself. Not even Bill’s softly querulous admonition to the children to ‘keep it down a bit’ so that he could grab a couple of hours before dinner, managed to pierce the vacuum of her seclusion. Bill had not bought the gift.

Janice could have known immediately if she had allowed herself. The air had been humming with signs and hints - a thousand little giveaways. Bill’s odd, puzzled look when she showed him the gift. His eagerness to see what it contained as Ivy undid the wrappings. His strange, sullen behaviour at dinner, hardly touching his steak. And pretending to be asleep when she crawled into bed beside him. He was in no mood for her, obviously. His mind was fully taken by other matters. Which kept him awake until almost dawn. And then the weird inquisition at breakfast, those paranoid questions, cruelly scaring the wits out of Ivy.

What she had considered abnormal behaviour, totally alien to Bill’s nature, was in actuality completely normal when put in its proper context. He was simply reflecting the concerns of a sane and reasonable parent, seeking the source of an unsigned gift his daughter had received, worried about who the sender was and how it had got into his food parcel.

Janice hated herself for not having told Bill about the man. She could have spared him all this anguish. For as certain as she was that Bill hadn’t bought Ivy’s gift, she knew who had.

She must tell Bill about the man.

Now. As soon as he awakened. Before the Federicos arrived.

*

Russ Federico did the honours at the liquor cart, measuring out exact amounts of gin and vermouth in a twelve-to-one ratio, while Bill still slept upstairs.

Janice, camouflaging her mood in a gay and festive ruffly-sleeved peasant blouse and evening skirt with flower applique, was in the kitchen. She finished basting the huge sirloin roast, then carefully peeled back the foil from chicken segments of Ivy’s TV dinner to allow it to crisp. Ivy preferred dining in her room whenever the Federicos came, and Janice didn’t mind. Opera talk bored Ivy almost as much as the music did.

Bill awoke to a crisp, ice-cold dry martini, lovingly placed in his hand by Janice.

‘A Federico special,’ Janice said, kissing the tip of his nose.

Bill yawned deeply and took a sip of the drink.

‘I’ll be right down.’

Don’t bother getting dressed,’ Janice advised as she left the room. ‘He’s wearing a jump suit.’

She would tell Bill about the man after the Federicos went home.

The dinner followed its usual familiar pattern. Like one of Russ’ records, the conversation held no surprises as they tracked across the same wearisome grounds of opera, bridge, the charm of the old Met, and its graceless replacement.

After dinner, they decided to forgo bridge for Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, a recent RCA recording featuring Robert Merrill as Figaro, in excellent voice. Janice sensed it would be an early evening and was happy about it. Russ and Carole left soon after ten.

Usually, Bill helped Janice collect the dishes while she arranged them in the dishwasher, but tonight he excused himself.

It would have been a good time for them to have talked. By the time Janice loaded the dishes, looked in on Ivy, and entered their bedroom Bill was already asleep. Or pretended to be.

Janice sat on the edge of the bed beside him and softly touched his face.

‘Bill,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve got to talk to you. It’s important’

His eyes remained closed.

‘Dear,’ she said, a bit louder.

The rhythm of his breathing remained even, uninterrupted.

He really was asleep.

*

Janice’s face was flushed and perspiring.

Eyes open, lips parted.

The dark silhouette of Bill’s head and shoulders moved rhythmically above her. Playing peekaboo with the painting on the ceiling. Lush, heady, fulsome nudes cavorting merrily in the sparkling woodland stream. Ripe breasts. Rosy nipples. Wet, sensuous lips forming an O of ecstasy. Appearing and disappearing in staccato motion. Gaining in rapidity as the crisis nears.

Janice felt herself coming. Quickly veered her thoughts to neutral matters. Bridge. Rigoletto. It was too soon. Too soon. They mustn’t let it end. Bill moaned softly and decreased his stroke. He was holding back, too. Good, Bill. Think, Bill, think! Consider. The essence here is not mere sexual gratification. It has a dimension over and above this. It is catharsis. An act of desperate necessity. The antidote to fear. Yes, fear. Think fear, Janice. Think the man. The man…

She hadn’t told Bill. There hadn’t been the chance. He had come down late. Ivy plagued him with her maths. All the morning. There had been no chance.

A pause. A shift of position. The pillow scratches the buttocks. Needlepoint pillow. Tiger-head pillow. Her artwork. Twenty-six dollars the entire set, including silk-screen canvas, varicoloured yarns, and directions. It scratches during love-making. A statement of pure fact. There had been no time to improve matters. Bill had taken her on the floor at once, beneath the painting, the moment that Ivy left to play with Bettina. It was essential they sate their hungers at once. Both knew it. As birds know. There was no time. No time. Bill in robe, she in smock. No loveplay. No touching. In at once! An emergency operation! By royal decree. A command performance. The will of God!

He was coming. Damn, Damn! His moans were escalating with each deep, penetrating thrust. Yes, he was coming. It would soon be over. The end of sanity. The end.

The telephone rang.

Reprieved! They would stop. He would answer it. But no. Too late. He was past the point of no return. Panting, whistling, urging, pounding … Too late for Bill. Too late for Janice. Too late.

The telephone rang.

Her fingers clutched his skin. Her tongue sought his. Their breaths exploded into each other’s mouths.

The telephone rang.

Shrill, piercing, strident, jangling, jarring, merging, and mingling with their own percussive love sounds, tagging along with them on their swift, sweep leap into heavenly space, keeping them company each pulsating moment of their feather-soft fall back to earth. A cavatina decrescenda with bells…

The telephone stopped ringing.

The sounds of their breathing dominated the room again. They clung to each other, on the floor, unwilling to concede an inch to the enemy. Bill played with her body. She followed in kind. Each strove to restimulate the other. Afterplay. Recommended by Allen & Martin. But somehow the nerve endings wouldn’t cooperate. They kissed without passion and separated.

Bill put on his robe. Janice went upstairs to shower.

*

He was standing in the far corner of the room, next to the ample autumnal spray. The telephone was at his ear, but he wasn’t speaking. A slant of sunlight heightened the stricken expression on his face.

‘What is it?’ Janice murmured in a small, quavering voice as she took the last step down into the living-room and came to a dead stop.

‘There’s no answer at Bettina’s.’ Bill spoke the sentence almost dully - a stark statement of simple fact.

‘What?’ Janice could not quite take in the meaning of what he had said.

‘I thought it might have been Ivy calling before. But there’s no answer.’

‘That’s impossible. They’ve got to be there.’ Janice felt her scalp tightening - the prelude to panic.

‘Twelve rings, no answer.’

‘Dial again.’

‘I did. Get your coat.’

Bill hung up the phone and propelled himself into action, while Janice remained rooted, dazedly watching Bill in rumpled Levis and a black turtleneck pullover thread his tennis sneakers onto his feet. She was unable to move or think.

Bill glanced at her and crisply commanded, ‘Move, Janice!’

The words seemed to work. Somehow Janice found herself going through sensible motions in spite of her pounding heart and the floating watery sensation in her limbs. She was even surprised to find her purse in her hand as they charged down the dimly lit hallway to the elevators.

A sad, retiring widow, Mrs Carew had resisted all offers of friendship, preferring a life of quiet isolation for herself and her daughter. Standing in the hallway, enveloped by the sound of a slowly ascending elevator, Janice recalled the image of Mrs Carew’s sweet, gentle face. Now there was a distinct malevolence behind the patient, kindly smile.

‘Did you take Ivy down, Dominick?’ asked Bill while the door was still in motion.

‘Yes, sir,’ Dominick replied in his halting English. ‘Half hour ago. She went out with Mrs Carew and her daughter.’

Bill gripped Janice’s arm and ushered her into the car.

A bright, warm sun had drawn the autumn chill from the air, bestowing a clear, springlike day on the city. Leaving the building, Bill and Janice hurried towards Central Park West, having agreed on a specific course of action while descending in the elevator. They reasoned that Mrs Carew would have taken the children to either the park or perhaps the supermarket on Amsterdam Avenue, the only market in the neighbourhood open on Sunday. Since the day was so perfect and the park the closest, they decided to look there first.

Waiting for the light to change, Bill began to feel a vague, fluttering vibration emanating from Janice’s arm which he was lightly holding. She was trembling. Guardedly, he glanced at her face in a casual manner. Her eyes were pinpricks of intensity; a light film of sweat accented the pallor of her skin. She was truly terrified. Why? he wondered.

Crossing into the park, they all but ran up the narrow dirt path that led to the children’s playground. The awkward surrealist play forms which had, in a spurt of unthinking generosity from the Estee Lauder company, replaced the swings, seesaws and jungle gyms, were literally dripping with children of all ages and races, gamely attempting to wrest a modicum of fun out of the odd, demented shapes.

Janice and Bill separated at the gate, striking off in different directions in order to increase efficiency. Janice covered the eastern perimeter of the playground while Bill took on the western side. They would eventually join forces somewhere on the northern end unless one lucked in on the objective, at which point he or she would communicate to the other by shouting.

Janice moved through a maze of children-ridden monoliths, her eyes darting swiftly about, focusing, refocusing on, past, around galaxies of screaming, laughing, upright, sideways, upside-down faces, seeking, searching, probing the nightmare world for a telltale sign, an essential clue: vanilla boots, faded jeans, golden hair … Walking, stumbling, sidling, Janice felt herself drowning as she pushed through wee mad clusters along the western shore of Jabberwocky, hysteria rising, building, surging until screaming became the only possible antidote…

‘Janice!’

What?

‘Janice! Here!’

It was Bill’s voice, beautiful, powerful, strong, cutting through the mad, cacophonous wall, signalling success, coming to the rescue in the nick o’ time, standing tall, waving to her from the other side of no-man’s-land, and beside him, the smiling head of Airs Carew, floating, disembodied like a Dumbo balloon.

Janice collided with a gaggle of running children halfway across the playground and almost fell. Bill bravely ventured forth and collected her.

‘Ivy and Bettina went for a walk up the bridle path,’ Bill whispered urgently to Janice while maintaining a facade of calm for Mrs Carew’s benefit. ‘I’ll go find her.’

Janice found herself shaking uncontrollably as Bill walked quickly away from her, leaving her standing beside Mrs Carew, who smiled amiably up at her.

‘You shouldn’t have taken her out,’ Janice admonished in a taut, quavering voice.

‘I am sorry, dear,’ replied Mrs Carew. ‘I had no idea you’d be worried.’

‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ Janice importuned. ‘She’s been ill—’

‘Yes, Mr Templeton told me.’ Mrs Carew smiled. ‘I had no idea. But it’s such a warm, pleasant day. And we did call you. Apparently, you were out.’

‘Yes,’ Janice said.

They spoke no more.

In less than five minutes, Janice saw Bill’s head bobbing distantly througn a tangle of autumn growths, looming towards them. In the next moment, the bright, heart-clutching flash of Ivy’s yellow hair beside him assured her that all was right.

Ivy was safe.

The rest of Sunday was given to Monopoly.

Bettina came back to the apartment, and they played until supper-time, all four of them, seated across from one another at the dining-room table.

Bill played a ruthless, impassioned game and won nearly everything worthwhile - Marvin Gardens, Boardwalk, a green monopoly consisting of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Pacific avenues - collecting outlandish rentals on three houses and two hotels and winding up with something over twenty-seven thousand dollars.

They dined on pork chops with a tomato salad after Bettina left, watched television until nine thirty, saw Ivy to bed, and retired for the night to their own bedroom.

At ten twenty-six, Bill turned off the light. Lying on their backs, awake, under the green electric blanket, gazing up into the shadowy labyrinths of the plasterwork ceiling, their bodies separated by the width of their clinging hands, Bill and Janice finally talked.