“No one, Bill.”

“Clearly he’s not ‘no one.’ He’s in your apartment. He has a key.”

“He stole it,” Charlie said dismissively.

“Even worse,” Bill Whoever said.

“This doesn’t concern you.”

“The hell it doesn’t.”

She glared at him. “Let me handle this, okay?”

Whitman walked toward Bill Whoever. “Hey, Bill,” he said, “d’you work for IBM?”

Bill turned to him. He wasn’t belligerent, as Whitman himself would have been if their places had been reversed. His expression was pure bewilderment. Poor thing.

“No,” he said automatically. “AT&T.”

“Christ, it’s even worse than I thought,” Whitman said.

“What does that mean?”

Charlie, intuiting where their conversation was headed, quickly stepped in front of Bill and, before Whitman could antagonize him further, said, “Bill, it’s time for you to go.”

“What? Just because this sonuvabitch is here uninvited I have to—”

“Just go,” Charlie said in a low voice that conveyed in emotion what it lacked in volume.

Whitman knew from experience that when her voice got low it was time to cover your genitals, and quickly.

She began to push Bill gently but firmly back over the threshold. “I’ll call you.”

“When?” Bill AT&T said. “When will you call me?”

“When I’m good and goddamned ready.”

She never did like anyone closing in on her. Bill was in the hallway now, though not liking any of this. Too bad for him.

In a carefully manufactured softer tone, she persisted. “Bill, please just go home. I’ll take care of this. I promise.” Then she closed the door, locked it, and turned, pressing her back against it. This did wonders for the halves of her breasts revealed so artfully by the Valentino. She was the most unselfconscious person he had ever come across. She could as easily use her body as a lure or as a weapon, as she saw fit.

Glaring at him, she said, “Your brass balls have grown.”

“So have yours.”

Without another word, she crossed to an Italian sideboard, poured a generous dollop of Pappy Van Winkle whiskey into one of her man-sized cut-crystal glasses. How in the world did her breasts stay inside that dress? Whitman wondered. Those Valentino tailors were goddamned wizards.

“I don’t see any añejo tequila,” he said.

“No need. You were gone.” She approached him on little cat feet, gave him a nudge with her elbow in the precise spot where she had hit him three years ago. “Just Pappy.”

She unlatched the sliding door and went out onto the terrace. Whitman followed. There was no use fighting it, or even pausing, to give himself a modicum of satisfaction. He knew it would be fleeting; worse, it would be petty, and petty was one thing he never was with her.

He stepped out. Beyond the ornamental cement balustrade a light mist was falling, turning the night into a pointillist painting by Seurat. Droplets had silvered her hair, the tip of her nose, where the spray of freckles lay most delectably, and her lips, which were half parted, shiny with liquor. She was like a candy cane. He felt like eating her up.