“Jesus,” Billy told Jimmy Joel Jenks on the telephone, “if you figure in foreplay—”

“What?”

“Foreplay. It’s what you do first. If you figure in foreplay, the shtuppin’ part—”

“The what? Stoopin’? What the hell’s stoopin’, Billy?”

“Shtuppin’, JJ. That’s Jew for screwin’.”

“Is Rosie a Jew?”

“Yeah. Anyway, if you figure in foreplay an’ shtuppin’ an’ post-whatever-you-call-it snugglin’, Rosie Feinstein is more time-consumin’ than overseein’ the trainin’ camp.”

Billy Constable began to commiserate with the heavyweight boxing champion of Europe, who was sparring and jogging less and less every day. Keeping Rosie Feinstein happy didn’t come close to the champ’s great numbers of young women he was servicing. But Billy did begin to wonder if it was a good or bad thing that Rosie Feinstein took such a liking to him.

Between the pushy waiters and Rosie’s sexual appetite, Billy Constable wondered if he’d ever get away from the Catskill Mountains alive.

The producer’s Lincoln Continental arrived in front of Umanov’s Guitar Store at exactly eight P.M. The driver stepped out, walked around the car, and opened the rear door.

The cripple thanked the driver.

The driver didn’t say, “You’re welcome.”

The driver was a stout white man wearing a black chauffeur’s hat with a shiny brim, white shirt, black tie, and black suit. The cripple managed to get his useless body into the limo’s backseat. The driver didn’t help. He preferred to stay as far away from the cripple as he could. As if the cripple were a carrier of some horrible European disease.

The limousine drove to 1 Beacon Court, a luxury high-rise on the Upper East Side of New York. The Beacon Court doorman helped the cripple out of the limousine. The driver remained seated behind the wheel.

The elevator rose seventy-two floors in less than thirty seconds.

A butler dressed in black tie and tails greeted the cripple at the front door of the producer’s apartment and led him down the long main hallway filled with paintings on the walls and sculptures on marble pedestals. At the end of the hallway was the apartment’s living room with floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows that overlooked the world. The producer was standing with his back to one of those windows, watching the cripple approach. All the lights of New York City twinkled behind the producer.

The producer was wearing a green and yellow foulard smoking jacket over a white dress shirt open at the neck and a crimson ascot tucked into his shirt. Black slacks and black Gucci loafers minus socks completed the outfit. The producer’s arms were folded across his chest. He acknowledged the cripple’s presence by one nod of his head.

A second man was sitting in front of and to the side of the producer. The man was staring at the city’s lights. The back of the man’s large head and the back of his equally large leather armchair faced the cripple. The man in the armchair didn’t stand to greet the old cripple. As far as the stranger was concerned, the cripple didn’t exist.