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her hands.

'I'm not going to sit here and watch you moulder,' she said.

'Then get the fuck out!' he said; and as she stuffed wallet and compact into a leather purse, he told her that her skin looked like pink paint, that twenty dollars a night was probably too high but she should try for it, and - as she slammed the door - that she could go straight to Hell and give her goddamn disease to the Devil. He wished she would stay gone, but he knew she'd be harassing him again before lunchtime.

His lunch tray, however, was brought by the orderly who sang, and when Donnell asked about Jocundra, he said, 'Beats me, Jim. I can't keep track of my own woman.'

Donnell was puzzled but unconcerned. Coldly, he dismissed her. He spent the afternoon exploring the new boundaries of his vision, charting minuscule dents in the wallpaper, composing mosaic landscapes from the reflections glazing the lens of the camera mounted above the door, and - something of a breakthrough - following the flight of a hawk circling the middle distance, bringing it so close he managed to see a scaly patch on its wing and an awful eye the color of dried blood and half filmed over with a crackled white membrane. An old, sick, mad king of the air. The hawk kept soaring out of his range, and he could never obtain a view of its entire body; his control still lacked discretion. It was a pity, he thought, that the visual effects were only temporary, though they did not suffice of themselves to make life interesting. Their novelty quickly wore off.

The orderly who brought his dinner tray was tanned, fortyish, with razor-cut hair combed over a bald spot and silken black hairs matting the backs of his hands. Though he was no more talkative than the singing orderly, Donnell suspected he could be drawn into a conversation. He flounced pillows, preened before the mirror, and took inordinate pleasure in rubbing out Donnell's neck cramp. Gentle, lissome fingers. On his pinky he wore a diamond ring, an exceptionally large one for a person earning orderly's wages, and Donnell, seeking to ingratiate himself, to learn about Jocundra, spoke admiringly of it.

'It belonged to my grandmother,' said the orderly. 'The stone, not the setting. I've been offered eighteen thousand for it, but I held onto it because you never know when hard times might snap you up.' He illustrated the snapping of hard times by pinching Donnell's leg, then launched into an interminable story about his grandmother. 'She had lovers 'til she was sixty-seven, the old dear. Heaven knows what she did after that!' Titter. He put on a dismal face. 'But it was no picnic being raised by a dirty old woman, let me tell you.' And he did.

Donnell had been hoping to weasel information about Jocundra during the course of the conversation, but the orderly showed no sign of allowing a conversation, and he was forced to interrupt. The orderly acted betrayed, said he had no idea where she was, and swept from the room with a display of injured dignity that evoked the angry rustle of taffeta.

Then it dawned on Donnell. She wasn't coming back. She had deserted him. How could she just go without telling him, without arranging a replacement? Panicked, he wheeled out into the hall. As he headed for the foyer, hoping to find Edman, a ripple in the carpet snagged his wheels and canted him into one of the potted ferns; the brass urn toppled and bonged against the floor. The door beside it opened, and a thin blond woman poked out her head. 'Shh!' she commanded. She knelt by the fern, her nose wrinkling at having to touch the dirt. She had the kind of brittle prettiness that hardens easily into middle-aged bitchdom, and as if in anticipation of this, her hair was done up into a no-nonsense bun and tied with a dark blue ribbon.

'Have you seen Jocundra?' asked Donnell.

'Jocundra?' The woman did not look up, packing down the dirt around the fern. 'Hasn't she left?'

'She's left?' Donnell refused to accept it. 'When's she coming back?'

'No, now wait. I saw her on the grounds after supper. Maybe she hasn't gone yet.'

'Laura!' A querulous voice leaked out the open door; the woman wiggled all five fingers in a wave, a smile nicked the corners of her mouth, and she closed the door behind her.

It had been easy to tell Jocundra to leave