broke up at about two in the morning, George and Monika returned to the lower East Side, while Abel felt he had earned Clara. He smuggled her through the service entrance of the Plaza and up to his room in a laundry lift. She did not require much enticement to end up in bed, and Abel set about her with haste, mindful that he had some serious sleeping to do before reporting for breakfast duty. To his satisfaction, he had completed his task by twothirty and sank into an uninterrupted sleep until his alarm rang at six a.m. It left him just time enough to have Clara once again before he had to get dressed.
Clara sat up in his bed and regarded Abel sullenly as he tied his white bow tie, and kissed her a perfunctory goodbye.
'Be sure you leave the way you came, or you'll get me into a load of trouble,' said Abel. 'When will I see you again?'
'You won't,' said Clara stonily.
'Why not?' asked Abel, surprised. 'Something I did?'
'No, something you didn't do.' She jumped out of bed and started to dress hastily.
'What didn't I do?' said Abel, aggrieved. 'You wanted to go to bed with me, didn't you?'
She turned around and faced him. 'I thought I did until I realised you have only one thing in common with Valentino - you're both dead. You may be the greatest thing the Plaza has seen in a bad year, but in bed I can tell you, you are nothing.' Fully dressed now, she paused with her hand on the door handle, composing her parting thrust. 'Tell me, have you ever persuaded any girl to go to bed with you more than once?'
Stunned, Abel stared at the slammed door and spent the rest of the day worrying about Clara's words. He could think of no one with whom he could discuss the problem. George would only laugh at him, and the staff at the Plaza all thought he knew everytl - ,Ling. He decided that this problem, like all the others he had encountered in his life, must be one he could surmount with knowledge or experience.
After lunch, on his half day, he went to Scribners bookshop on Fifth Avenue. They had solved all his economic and linguistic problems, but he couldn't find anything there that looked as if it might even begin to help his sexual ones. Their special book on etiquette was useless and The Nature of Morals by W. F. Colbert turned out to be utterly inappropriate.
Abel left the bookshop without making a purchase and spent the rest of the afternoon in a dingy Broadway cinema, not watching the film, - but thinking only about what Clara had said. The film, a love story with Greta Garbo that did not reach the kissing stage until the last reel, provided no more assistance than Scribner's had.
When Abel left the cinema, the sky was already dark and there was a cool breeze blowing down Broadway. It still surprised Abel that any city could be as noisy and light by night as it was by day. He started walking uptown towards Fifty - ninth Street, hoping the fresh air would clear his mind. He stopped on the comer of Fifty - second to buy an evening paper - 'Looking for a girlT said a voice from behind the newsstand.
Abel stared at the voice. She was about thirty - five and heavily made up, wearing the new, fashionable lipstick. Her white silk blouse had a button undone, and she wore a long black skirt with black stockings and black shoes.
'Only five dollars, worth every penny,' she said, pushing her hip out at an angle, allowing the slit in her skirt to part and reveal the top of her stockings.
'WhereT said Abel.
'I have a little place of my own in the next block.'
She turned her head, indicating to Abel which direction she meant, and he could, for the first time, see her face clearly under the street light. She was not unattractive. Abel nodded his agreement, and she took his arm and started walking - 'If the police stop us,' she said, 'you're an old friend and my name's Joyce!
They walked to the next block and into a squalid little apartment building, Abel was horrified by the dingy room she lived in, with its single bare light bulb, one chair, a wash basin and a crumpled double bed, which had obviously already been used several times that day.
'You live here?' he