Sleeping afterward was part of the purging of his self-hatred. Always, when he called to tell her to get a hotel room, he told her when he had to be gone again, and she calculated the time of the jolting wake-up call accordingly. But now something had awakened her before the operator rang. Daylight—it was still only afternoon. The young woman sat up and looked to the door to the hall, wondering if she had imagined the knob turning. Maybe she had dreamed it. The man was asleep, and she arranged herself in the crook of his body, her backside against his belly, her head on his bicep. Nothing to worry about. This wasn’t simply a good hotel, but one of the world’s greats—and the men she had seen in front of one of the other rooms when she’d arrived looked permanent, like security men or bodyguards.…

Safe. Safe with this sadly flawed, potentially great man. She did not like to think of how he dealt with the marks on his body in his wife’s presence. His problem went back to his parents, of course, truly crazy people, the young woman surmised. Whatever the truth, she knew he shared his secret with no one but her. Anything else wasn’t possible. She had kept the letter. He didn’t know that. The way the world was going, the letter might be worth a fortune someday, and no one would—

There! Someone was at the door! The young woman sat up again, pulling the sheet up about her breasts, and watched the doorknob turn.…

5:04 P.M. …

5:04 P.M. …

“Come on, don’t hold back this time!”

“I want it to last!”

“I can’t!” Eileen cried. She bucked her hips harder. “Come with me, baby! Let it go!”

Frank Devlin did, his lips finding her lips to muffle their cries. Little kids were playing on the sidewalk just one flight down. He loved this woman as he had never loved anyone before. In another moment, between breaths, he told her so, taking another moment to add, “You make me feel like a teenager again.”

Eileen laughed. Grinning, she gently pulled the hair on the back of his head so she could look into his eyes. “You’re just some kind of freak of nature. Will you ever act your age?”

Devlin thought of Satchel Paige’s teaching—How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?—but the telephone rang before he could voice it. “I stopped worrying about that eighteen months ago.”

The telephone rang again, but neither of them moved. Devlin was off-duty today and meant to stay that way. The upcoming Liberty Weekend and unveiling of the statue meant nothing to him but overtime he didn’t want or need. The telephone rang a third time.

Eileen said, “Thank God it didn’t start two minutes ago. It would have ruined me rhythm.”