The newfound prosperity was a boon in that it enabled him to indulge in equipment: the secret room held new cross-country skis waiting for snow, a graphite tennis racquet waiting for an impulse, a professional heavy punching bag and gloves, a stationary exercise bicycle, a gimmick called Bullworker, Bobby Hinds Lifeline Gym—an isokinetic rubber gimmick, a hatha-yoga book, two dumbells, and so on. And Warlock was not neglecting his mind: there were stacks of books on birds, flowers, trees, the ocean, the weather, and even a few on that perennial favorite, sex. His body was not yet as finely honed as steel but a succession of nasty diets from the Scarsdale to Craig Claiborne’s low sodium masterpiece had chipped off thirteen pounds and brought him down to one eighty-seven. And not that there weren’t hitches to the struggle for all around health; one day at the IGA he had spotted a cask of salt herring and hunger had flared wildly like a California brush fire. Back home he put these lovely, if ugly, fish in a big bowl of water to leech as Mom had done, then prepared in another bowl the onions, vinegar and pickling spices. The whole works were secreted in the basement room, and he counted off the forty-eight hours it took for the dish to reach maturity. He had mistakenly asked Diana to monitor his diet and she had done so with an especially inquisitive eye.

“Your breath smells like pickles and vinegar. You know pickles are sodium rich, strictly taboo. ‘Fess up.”

“I haven’t eaten a pickle in months.” He had forgotten to brush his teeth after a later afternoon herring gorge.

“Johnny, do you have pickles hidden in your room?”

“Scout’s honor, no. It must be ketosis. The breath of starving people becomes foul. I read about it. India is chock full of bad breath.”

“You’re making such progress. I hate to see you backslide.” Diana had wondered aloud at the new sexual athleticism his shaping up program had caused.

“I’ll swear on a Bible that I haven’t eaten a pickle. Get the Bible.”

“We don’t have a Bible. You know that.”

“Every home should have a Bible.”

“Of course, darling. I’ll swipe one out of a hospital room.” His lame departure from the topic convinced her of a coverup. She easily imagined a shelf of delicacies in his room, though his admittedly strenuous workouts were audible through the heat registers.

The minute she left for work the next morning he destroyed the evidence, throwing away the last, somehow symbolic, piece of herring, though eating a bunch of the remaining pickled onions didn’t seem central to the issue.