She throws the snowball. That's good. So okay--her mitten sticks to it and soaks him square in the puss and instead of spitting out the mitten--which he gets in his teeth--he makes like it's a mustache! Hell! He's a football player, isn't he--not just an ice-man? Going to be a big-shot brain specialist someday, isn't he? Quick thinker. So okay. So he leaps and spears the mitten and the snowball like it's a long forward and he runs at her and tackles her and spills her--not real hard--but hard--and there's how they meet, the both of them lying down in the snow with her on her back and the guy on top. Is that good--or is it terrific? And there, so help me Christ, after eleven days, and twenty-three thousand dollars, is how they do meet. Wrong coast for Aglaia, I say? I'm sure I did. That morning's taste. The rest of them. The contract. The months. The arms and the lights and the bells became lost in the prospect and I stepped from the curb and brakes trilled. "Want a lift? You need one, pal." That was Dave. At my apartment, I made some coffee and later we went back together to the address in Beverly Hills--because he didn't know it, and he was a lonely guy, too. In fact he still is. The most brokenhearted guy in the world. You see nobody told him about the six-pointed star on the box he was shipped in--he had to find out for himself. And he wants to be sure, when he checks out, that he kept it bright while he had the use of it. Dave came in. "By God," he said, "Wylie! The old, articulate cryptogram in person, nude as a saint's stool!" It might have been a bracing autumn forenoon: "I'm glad to see you! I was saying to a friend only the other night--a jerk named Staunton--Staunton, the town's not the same--Wylie's not here. The old termite has moved to the country--turned himself out to pasture! And Florida in the winter! The son-of-a-bitch is chasing the analema! Where's the patient?" I pointed. Dave took a look and came back. "Shall we wake him up? I can take him to the office and get some of my minions looking for his wench. Private dicks, too. They won't find her. They couldn't find a luminous memorandum in a two-drawer filing cabinet. But it might wear him down a little." "Let him sleep, for now." Dave sat down. "This is swell! Send for a barrel of iced tea, will you--with a clear gin on the side? I had a hard night last night. A bunch of the super-big-shots came in on the Super-Chief and the Super-Century last night. Things in Hollywood are so bad that two of them stayed sober the whole damned evening." I phoned Room Service. "There's a depraved guest of mine up here who wants some neat gin and a lot of iced tea--" Dave had picked up one of my ashtrays and was looking at it intently. When I hung up he said, "Depraved? Depraved, you say? Me? Don't I detect not just one, but two colors of lipstick here?" "Callers from the other rooms," I answered. "Came in to consult the oracle."