Blinky hung up. Gabby made one last try and called me. When I answered the phone, Ned Bacon was in our living room, murdering our Bourbon and Lennox. Gabby could hear him cutting Jake to pieces while she gave me the message. I wanted to ask her up. I'd seen enough of her at the Rox Record party to be interested, and I had about twenty-seven questions to ask her, but there was no way of getting Bacon out of the house and we couldn't have the two of them there together. So I promised to deliver the message, if possible, and let her hang up. That was about seven o'clock. She wandered east to the 59th Street Bridge, cutting through some of the toughest sidestreets on The Rock. She went through those streets unmolested. Gabby had a miraculous quality of escaping the common dangers that make every woman think twice. Perhaps it was because she never thought of them once. Perhaps it was her candid, virginal manner that forced the world to give her extra special treatment ... the way men are reluctant to swear before a child, unwilling to be the first to teach it what they know it must inevitably learn. She went to a gloomy candle-lit restaurant under the bridge. It had _avant-garde_ murals on the walls, Puccini records on a phonograph, and hectographed menus. Half the waiters were enrolled with the Art Students League and were friends of Gabby's. Half the patrons knew her too. Nevertheless, she sat alone, consumed half a plate of pasta and half a bottle of California wine. She began to cry again, and had to snuff out the candle on her table. She was so upset that she wandered out of the restaurant without paying. No one made a fuss. They tucked her check in the cash register for another day. It was half past nine when she got home. She took the elevator up, trembling, aching, yearning for a hot bath and ten hours of sleep. As she stepped out of the elevator and glanced down the corridor, she stopped short. A man was squatting on the mat before her apartment door with crossed ankles, knees high, forearms draped on his knees. It was Lennox. He arose as she approached. "Didn't you get my message?" He nodded. "From Sam." "Please go away, Jordan. I can't see you now." "I've got to see you, Gabby." She was so weak she dropped her key. Lennox picked it up, unlocked the door and opened it for her. He followed her into the apartment, shut the door and switched on the lights with a practiced hand. Then he pulled up the giant shade that covered the studio window. Gabby sank down on a low, quilted bench before the cold fireplace and said nothing. "I wasn't parked here because I was jealous," Lennox said anxiously. "Please don't think that. I mean ... I am jealous, yes; but I trust you." Gabby didn't look at him. "I've loused myself beautifully today. I've been tramping around the Village waiting to see you." "I can't talk, Jordan."