“You got it,” Merrill said, as he made it personal for Benny and Al from their Grandma and Sam Merrill in the room he had left for that, too. “We’ll see what there is to do,” he said for the woman’s benefit. “I haven’t had a chance to look at the brochure.”

“There’s a bridge tournament at five o’clock,” the woman said.

Amy had understood him. She rolled her eyes. “We’re much too young for that.”

The woman shot Amy a frosty look. “Well, they have a very nice casino,” the woman said to him. She drew herself up. “Anyway, I’m sure your mother must be very proud.”

“His mother wanted a girl!” Amy snapped, and got up from the table. She tossed her shirt over the back of her chair in a single, fluid gesture. Having to smile politely at his fan robbed Merrill of the moment that would have let him put a smile on Amy’s face. Crossing his eyes – -anything. All he could do was ogle to her plump, curvy behind as she dove neatly, silently, into the unoccupied pool.

Casino? No casino for him – no gambling for heroes. No ordering an X-rated movie on the hotel’s cable system, no leaving the window open for the breeze when they made love again. After all the network news interviews, satellite hookups, post-midnight talk radio, the television talk shows morning, noon and late night, it was the miracle of their relationship that had allowed them to kick into automatic last night and this morning.

Senator Ward – - Senator What’s-His-Husky, Merrill thought of him now – - hadn’t helped, looking at Amy as if he expected Merrill to tell him if she was a natural blond. Merrill knew she wasn’t angry with her husband – yet. She would be if he didn’t figure out a way to draw the line on this crap. His fifteen minutes of fame were over now, weren’t they? The more Merrill had looked at her in these past weeks, the more he saw the terrible logic of his month-long estrangement from her as self-inflicted retribution for wallowing in all the phony idolatry. It wasn’t even the real idolatry – that was the worst of it.

Maybe that was really the best of it. He didn’t know what a hero was. He hardly knew who he was anymore. He didn’t know where he was going with all this baloney. He was ready to believe that in some way he was really being fitted for a clown suit. It was just a matter of time before he found himself wearing it.