Fifty-seven years old. Look at me, I said. Fifty-eight after the next fifty drinks. Fifty-eight and a fraction. Old, old, old. Fire me. Didn't get the facts straight. Little straight facts in a big important article. Facts ... facts. What are a few frigging facts anyway? I can still write well, can't I? _Can't I?_ Good strong ... strongstraightforward writing. Drink too much. Drink all the time. Always polluted. Who am I to deny it? I'll tell you who I am. Graduate Columbia School of Journalism. Twelve years on the _New York Times_, seven _Herald Tribune_, five.... Sish to all that. Switch to magazines. Big mistake. Big mistake ever to switch. Newspaper man. First, foremost and always. Should never have switched. That guy down in Florida. Miami? No, hell no. Somewhere in Florida. Palm Beach? No, no, no. Where then? What's it matter? Important writer, wonderful guy, Pulitzer Prize winner. Think of it--Pulitzer Prize winner. Older 'n I am. Sixty-five, maybe seventy by now. Couldn't keep away from the stuff. Drank, drank, drank--always polluted. Now he's asking for handouts. Sitting by yacht basin. Watching the big ones--half-million-dollar yachts. Never own a flat-bottomed skiff. Neither will I.... Ellers got swayingly to his feet, pushing the chair in which he'd been sitting back so violently that it toppled over with a crash that caused him to shudder and cry out, as if a leather thong had bitten cruelly into his flesh. He grasped the desk edge with one hand and with the other made circling motions in the air. All her fault! Vicious inhuman.... "Don't! Don't come near me, you bitch. Don't touch me!" He continued to sway and gesture, his voice rising shrilly. "Bitch, bitch, _bitch_!" * * * * * Ruth Porges heard the scream and stopped typing. She sat very still, her hands tightening into fists. After a moment she swayed a little, but she made no attempt to rise. The old fear of facing anything even possibly harsh kept her glued to her chair. It was a fact, a hard fact, that most men found Ruth Porges difficult and cold and thought of her as unemotional. But she wasn't that way now and hadn't ever been and never could be that way. It was a lie, a falsification which she had never quite known how to refute. She had seen Lathrup refute it for herself when she was not in one of her moods, when she wanted a man to grab hold of her and bring his lips down hard on hers. How often Ruth Porges wanted that too--and more. How often she'd wished herself dead, not having that, being forced to pretend that it wasn't important, to lie to herself about it and go on, day after day, living a lie. To go on knowing how men felt about her, and how horrible it was that they should feel that way, and how deeply, sincerely, terribly she wanted them not to look upon her as a reluctant virgin with ice in her veins.