“I don’t know where he lives,” she said. “Nobody does.”

“Nobody?”

“None of his girls. That’s the big guessing game if a couple of us should happen to be together and he’s not in the room. Trying to guess where Chance lives. One night I remember this girl Sunny and I were together and we were just goofing, coming up with one outrageous idea after another. Like he lives in this tenement in Harlem with his crippled mother, or he has this mansion in Sugar Hill, or he has a ranch house in the suburbs and commutes. Or he keeps a couple of suitcases in his car and lives out of them, just sleeping a couple hours a night at one of our apartments.” She thought a moment. “Except he never sleeps when he’s with me. If we do go to bed he’ll just lie there afterward for a little while and then he’s up and dressed and out. He said once he can’t sleep if there’s another person in the room.”

“Suppose you have to get in touch with him?”

“There’s a number to call. But it’s an answering service. You can call the number any time, twenty-four hours a day, and there’s always an operator that answers. He always checks in with his service. If we’re out or something, he’ll check in with them every thirty minutes, every hour.”

She gave me the number and I wrote it in my notebook. I asked her where he garaged his car. She didn’t know. Did she remember the car’s license number?

She shook her head. “I never notice things like that. His car is a Cadillac.”

“There’s a surprise. Where does he hang out?”

“I don’t know. If I want to reach him I leave a message. I don’t go out looking for him. You mean is there a regular bar he drinks in? There’s a lot of places he’ll go sometimes, but nothing regular.”

“What kind of things does he do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does he go to ball games? Does he gamble? What does he do with himself?”

She considered the question. “He does different things,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Depending who he’s with. I like to go to jazz clubs so if he’s with me that’s where we’ll go. I’m the one he calls if he’s looking for that kind of an evening. There’s another girl, I don’t even know her, but they go to concerts. You know, classical music. Carnegie Hall and stuff. Another girl, Sunny, digs sports, and he’ll take her to ball games.”

“How many girls has he got?”