And who was always on the dance floor mamboing with a different partner every fifteen or twenty minutes? Who had to be pushed out of the nightclub by his exhausted trainers long after closing time? Who was always the last one seen disappearing into the rising sun with at least two or three boxing groupies in tow?

The European heavyweight champion of the world.

The Swede.

After making sure Vera Bundle was safely in her room, John J. Sughrue went to his suite.

He shook out his hat and overcoat and hung them on hooks by the door. He walked into the suite’s living room, sat down in an armchair, and thought about his disappointing wait at the Essex House bar. Sughrue was crushed. The beautiful woman he had met earlier on the plane had led him on and most likely never intended to come to the Essex House at all.

Their paths crossed on the red-eye flight from Los Angeles to New York. The beautiful woman had a handsome man friend, a swarthy, good-looking foreigner, possibly in his late forties or early fifties. Sughrue assumed the man friend was a foreigner. He wore his topcoat over his shoulders. Isn’t that what foreigners did, wore their topcoats over their shoulders? The man friend even walked the beautiful woman onto the plane and to her seat. She had the first-class seat by the window. Sughrue had the aisle seat next to her. Sughrue stood to let the beautiful woman pass by. She had wonderfully soft blond hair that smelled freshly shampooed, and when she smiled and said thank you to Sughrue, he was besotted.

Not long after the plane took off, the beautiful woman and Sughrue began talking to each other. They talked all through the night, intimately and suggestively. Sughrue didn’t see a wedding ring on the beautiful woman’s beautiful hand. He himself had been widowed for five years and realized that he had fallen head over heels in love. It was the first time he had experienced the sensation since Susan died. The woman beside him on the airliner did have a man friend, but then wasn’t everything fair in love and war? Sughrue asked the woman if she would meet him at five that evening at Journeys, the bar in the Essex House Hotel on Central Park South. She said she would.

It was during his disappointing reenactment of events that Sughrue heard the violent pounding on the door of his suite.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Startled and concerned, Sughrue walked briskly across the room.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

The violent pounding continued until Sughrue arrived at the door and pulled it open with a jerk.

There in the hallway stood Vera Bundle in her I ? NEW YORK

T-shirt, moaning, “I love you, John. I love you. I’m so lonely. Please let me stay. Please let me feel the warmth of a man’s body beside me again. Please, John. I beg you. Let me stay with you. Please.”