To climax this explosive surge from despair to assurance which was his main strength and weakness, he turned north and walked to a particular spot that he loved in lower Central Park. It was on a slight hill overlooking the pond and the Plaza. It was his own Exhilaration Point. There were thousands like it ... private mastheads where the pirates stood alone and exulted over the plunder before them. As Lennox walked up the path, he was annoyed to see that his very own lookout was already occupied. He resented the intruder until he looked closer and saw that it was Gabby Valentine. When he finally let her go, he bent down to pick up her hat and purse and his script. "Have you got a jack-knife?" he asked. "I want to carve something appropriate on a tree." "I can just see you cutting lovers' knots," Gabby laughed. Lennox winced. "What's the matter?" she asked quickly. "It was the idea of lovers' knots. Mawkish. I was thinking of something really impressive, like: D. Boon cilled a Bar on this tree year 1760." "You're the bear," Gabby said, feeling herself tenderly. "Don't come near me again. I've got a gun." "But what were you doing here, darling?" "You told me about your favorite spot. I had to see it." "Go ahead and shoot," Lennox said, but this time he was gentler. He was right when he told Robin that this love affair was backwards. Most people meet, get friendly, turn serious and become intimate. Lennox and Gabby had started intimately and were working their way back. They'd already been serious enough for a violent quarrel. Now they were getting friendly. They spent an hour together in that blissful past tense of all couples who are exploring each other.... "Did you?" and "Were you?" and "Had you?" They agreed, they compared, they disagreed. They matched experiences, tastes, habits, friends. Gabby asked about Cooper and Lennox tried to describe what the friendship meant to him. "Sam's a whole man," he said. "Most men are only part men ... like sections of a tangerine. All split up. You have to put a lot together to get a whole." "Do you mean F. Scott Fitzgerald's ideal? The entire man in the Goethe-Byron-Shaw tradition?" "I don't think so. Fitzgerald was obsessed with the idea that a man had to explore all his potential for good and for evil. I think he was trying to justify his own evil. I won't buy that. There's never any excuse for being bad." "There's being human." "That's an explanation, not an excuse." "Tell me more about Sam." "Well ... most men are overspecialized, only interested in one thing. The friend you like to fish with is a nuisance on a date. The friend you double-date with is a noodnick about ball games. The friend you go to ball games with can't understand books. And so on and so on. You have to make a dozen one-twelfth friends." "Maybe you demand too much."