Les sighed and dropped the pic into his file case. Then he stopped. His face went blank. He pulled the pic out and looked at it again. He felt as if some nagging thought were trying to come to the surface, but nothing clicked, so he dropped the pic back into the file and went to the cooler where he opened an early-morning can of beer before sacking out. A hell of a life, he thought, wandering through nighttime Manhattan watching for people to take their mental pants down so he could get shots of their naked inner backsides. He finished the beer and went in to take a shower. Funny about that hit case. The guy had the damnedest expression on his face. Kind of like he was thinking, _Okay, so what do I do now?_ Fifteen minutes later, Les was asleep. * * * * * There was always a certain tension involved in Frank Corson's visits to Rhoda Kane's apartment, with Rhoda usually slightly on edge, waiting for one of Frank's outbursts. An outburst consisted of his suddenly springing to his feet with a scowl and announcing: "Goddamn it, I don't belong here!" Rhoda always followed the same script at the beginning of these traumas by inevitably asking, "Why, darling? Why must you say that?" "Oh, hell, Rhoda! I don't want to hurt you but--" "Darling, you know I'll go to your room with you if you'd be more comfortable there." He strode to the window angrily and, for Rhoda, there was that indescribably sweet and exciting reaction she always got from his nakedness. _Like a Greek god standing there, she thought_, and it thrilled her even though she knew she was being a little subjective about it. She smiled with tender, understanding amusement as she realized Frank's pattern never varied. His outbursts never came until the first fierce need of her had been assuaged; this was to her liking because her need was as great. Reacting according to current, "broad-minded" thinking and Manhattan sophistication, she regarded herself and Frank as having a "good physical relationship." Which individual need was the greatest, she had never been able to say. But there certainly was something extraordinary about it. In analyzing it, she'd arrived at the conclusion that they'd been able, on the basis of personal rapport, to function in a completely uninhibited manner; thus, some of their love-making, when lifted out of context and surveyed objectively, might have been called abnormal. Rhoda did not think so, however; or, if she did, she blocked the idea successfully by telling herself that whatever she and Frank did together was all right because _they_ did it. She told herself it was good for them because they looked at it with a healthy attitude. She could, of course, have gotten this opinion, or one in complete opposition to it, from two different psychologists, but she preferred to play it as she saw it.