She put her hands on her hips. "What the fuck did you contact Aubrey for? How dare you! How fucking dare you!!"

"I didn't contact Aubrey. He got in touch with me."

"I hired you. I did. You had no right to talk to him and no right to discuss my business behind my own back! You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sue you for this!"

I wasn't worried she'd sue me. I was worried she'd pull a pair of scissors out of her purse and cut me up like patches for a quilt.

By now, she was leaning over my desk, stabbing a pointed index finger into my face. Shout lines appeared to come out of her mouth as in a cartoon. She thrust her chin forward, cheeks pink, bubbles collecting in the corner of her mouth. I wanted to slap the shit out of her, but I didn't think it'd be smart. She was beginning to hyperventilate, chest heaving. And then her mouth began to tremble and the fiery blue eyes filled with tears. She sobbed once. She dropped her handbag and put both hands to her face like a little kid. Was this woman nuts or what?

"Sit down," I said. "Have a cigarette. What's going on?" I glanced down at the ashtray. Aubrey's telltale pile of shredded tobacco and a scrap of black paper were still sitting in my ashtray. Discreetly, I removed it, tipping the contents into my trash. She sat down abruptly, her anger gone, some deep-seated grief having taken its place. I'm sorry to report myself unmoved. I can be a coldhearted little thing.

While she wept, I made coffee. My office door opened a crack and Vera peered in, making eye contact. She'd apparently heard the ruckus and wanted to make sure I was all right. I lifted my eyebrows in a quick facial shrug and she disappeared. Beverly fished out a Kleenex and pinched it across the bridge of her nose, pressing her eyes as though to extract the last few tears. Her porcelain complexion was now mottled and her glossy black hair had taken on a stringy look, like a fur muff left out in the rain.

"I'm sorry," she breathed, "I know I shouldn't have done that. He's making me crazy. He's driving me absolutely insane. He's such a son of a bitch. I just hate his guts!"

"Take it easy, Beverly. You want some coffee?"

She nodded. She got a compact out of her bag and checked her eye makeup, mopping up a run of mascara with Kleenex folded over her finger. Then she tucked the compact away and blew her nose without making a sound. It was just a sort of squeezing process. She opened her bag again and searched for her cigarettes and matches. Her hands were shaking, but the minute she got her cigarette lighted, all the tension seemed to leave her body. She inhaled deeply as though she were taking in ether before surgery. I wish cigarettes felt that good to me. Every time I've had a drag, my mouth has tasted like a cross between charred sticks and spoiled eggs. It's made my breath smell about that good too, I'm sure. My office was now looking like the fog had rolled in.

She began to shake her head hopelessly. "You have no idea what I've been through," she said.

"Look," I said, "just to set the record straight-"

"I know you didn't do anything. It's not your fault." Her eyes filled with tears briefly. "I should be used to it by now, I guess."

"Used to what?"

She began to fold the Kleenex in her lap. She recited slowly, fighting for control, sentences punctuated with silences and little humming noises when the weeping closed off her throat. "He… um… goes around to people. And he tells them… um… that I drink and sometimes he claims I'm a nymphomaniac or he says I'm undergoing shock treatments. Whatever occurs to him. Whatever he thinks will do the most harm."

I wasn't sure what to do with this. He had told me she was an alcoholic. He'd told me she went off on three-day toots. He'd told me she attacked him with a pair of scissors and had possibly murdered her sister in revenge for an affair he was having with her. Now here she sat, sobbing her tiny heart out, claiming that he was the perpetrator of this weird pathological stuff. Which of them was I to believe? She composed herself, giving her nose the old silent squeeze. She looked at me, the whites of her eyes now tinted with pink.

"Didn't he tell you something like that?" she asked.

"I think he was just concerned about Elaine," I said, trying to hedge until I could decide what to do. "We really didn't discuss anything personal so don't worry about that. How did you find out he'd been up here?"

"Something came up in conversation," she said. "I don't even remember what. That's how he handles these things. He gives me these clues. He leaves the evidence around and waits for me to discover it. And if I don't stumble across it accidentally, he points me right to it and then sits back and pretends to be contrite and amazed."