as Roy Baker, and if he went there he would be identified as Roy Baker and arrested as Roy Baker, and that would be the end of it.

“Better turn around,” he told the cabdriver. “Take me back to the hotel. I changed my mind.”

He spent another two weeks in the hotel, trying to think things through, looking for a safe way to live Roy Baker’s life again. If there was an answer, he couldn’t find it. The casual life of the Village had to stay out of bounds.

He took an apartment uptown on the East Side. It was quite expensive but he found it cold and charmless. He took to spending his free evenings at midtown nightclubs, where he drank a little too much and spent a great deal of money to see poor floor shows. He didn’t get out often, though, because he seemed to be working late more frequently now. It was harder and harder to get everything done on time. On top of that, his work had lost its sharpness; he had to go over blocks of copy again and again to get them right.

Revelation came slowly, painfully. He began to see just what he had done to himself.

In Roy Baker, he had found the one perfect life for himself. The Christopher Street apartment, the false identity, the new world of new friends and different clothes and words and customs, had been a world he took to with ease because it was the perfect world for him. The mechanics of preserving this dual identity, the taut fabric of lies that clothed it, the childlike delight in pure secrecy, had added a sharp element of excitement to it all. He had enjoyed being Roy Baker; more, he had enjoyed being Howard Jordan playing at being Roy Baker. The double life suited him so perfectly that he had felt no great need to divorce Carolyn.

Instead, he had killed her—and killed Roy Baker in the bargain, erased him very neatly, put him out of the picture for all time.

Howard bought a pair of Levi’s, a turtleneck sweater, a pair of white tennis sneakers. He kept these clothes in the closet of his Sutton Place apartment, and now and then when he spent a solitary evening there he dressed in his Roy Baker costume and sat on the floor drinking California wine straight from the jug. He wished he were playing chess in the back room of a coffeehouse, or arguing art and religion in a Village bar, or listening to a blues guitar at a loft party.

He could dress up all he wanted in his Roy Baker costume, but it wouldn’t work. He could drink wine and play guitar music on his stereo, but that wouldn’t work, either. He could buy women, but he couldn’t walk them home from Village parties and make love to them in third-floor walk-ups.

He had to be Howard Jordan.

Carolyn or no Carolyn, married or single, New Hope split-level or Sutton Place apartment, one central fact remained unchanged. He simply did not like being Howard Jordan.

RIDE A WHITE HORSE

ANDY HART STARED UNBELIEVINGLY at the door of Whitey’s Tavern. The door was closed and padlocked, and the bar was unlighted. He checked his watch and noted that it was almost 7:30. Whitey should have opened hours ago.

Andy turned and strode to the candy store on the corner. He was a small man, but his rapid walk made up for his short legs. He walked as he did everything else—precisely, with no wasted motion.

“Hey,” he asked the man behind the counter, “how come Whitey didn’t open up yet?”

“He’s closed down for the next two weeks. Got caught serving minors.” Andy thanked him and left.

The news was disturbing. It didn’t annoy him tremendously, but it did break up a long-established routine. Ever since he had started working as a bookkeeper at Murrow’s Department Store, eleven years ago, he had been in the habit of eating a solitary meal at the Five Star Diner and drinking a few beers at Whitey’s. He had just finished dinner, and now he found himself with no place to go.

Standing on the street corner, staring at the front of the empty bar, he had a vague sensation that he was missing something. Here he was, thirty-seven years old, and there was nowhere in the city for him to go. He had no family, and his only friends were his drinking companions at Whitey’s. He could go back to his room, but there he would