"I can"t even talk to you on the telephone without my c.u.n.t getting wet."

He laughed. "A lot of good that will do you back in Chicago."

"I"m not in Chicago," she said.

"Where the h.e.l.l are you?" he asked, knowing what her answer would be almost before he asked the question.

"Here," she said. "I"m at the Amba.s.sador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard. I have my own bungalow."

"You"re crazy."

"No, I"m not," she said. ""You are if you think I"m going to leave you alone for a week while your wife is in the hospital with all that movie p.u.s.s.y floating around."

"I"ve never seen any of it," he said.

"I"m taking no chances anyway. What are you doing for dinner? I"ve got a great setup here-dining room and everything."

""I have a date."

""I don"t believe you."

"*True," he said. "With George Browne, president of the LA. out here."

"Then come over after dinner," she said.

"No. I have to be at the hospital at seven in the morning."

"I"ll wake you up in time."

"No."

"I"ll play with myself all night and I"ll get crazy."

He laughed. "Think of me."

Her voice suddenly turned serious. "Daniel, your voice sounds different. Are you all right?"

"I"m fine," he said.

"Then what is it? Are you worried about Tess?"

"Yes," he said. "They"re doing a caesarian tomorrow morning."

She was silent for a moment. "Oh. But don"t worry about it. My older sister has had two babies that way. She said it"s a lot easier than having babies the regular way. And she"s just fine."

"I"ll be okay when it"s over," he said.

"I"m sure you will," she said. "Will you call me then?"

"Yes."

"Good luck, Daniel." She hesitated for a moment. "You know I really mean that, don"t you?"

"I know," he said.

"I love you, Daniel."

He was silent.

"Daniel?"

"Yes?"

"Call me tomorrow."

"I will," he said, and put down the telephone. He crossed the room into the dining area and took the bottle of bourbon from the sideboard. He poured himself a tumblerful and sipped it slowly, thinking. She was crazy, but there was one thing he could do with her that he never could do with any other woman. He could talk to her.

He rubbed his jaw reflectively. The stubble scratched under his fingers. He needed another shave. Taking the whiskey with him, he went into the bedroom and began to undress. In the bathroom, he stared at his face in the mirror.

He was thirty-seven years old and about to become a father. Being a father changed things. Already he found himself thinking more about the future. About where he was going, about what he was doing. It wasn"t going to be easy bringing up a kid on the kind of money he made. Sooner or later he would have to get Murray to give him a local of his own. At least, he could build from there. That was the way all of them did it. Lewis, Murray, Green; even Browne out here had a platform from which he could move. He had just been made a vice president of the A.F.L.

Also, it wasn"t good for a kid to grow up without a father around. Maybe Tess was right. If Browne came up with the right kind of deal, he should take it. It had to be better than getting his brains beat out the way he was going.

Or what Chris had said. Jump the fence. Many labor men had done that and were getting good money. He finished shaving, still thinking. Finally he washed the rest of the soap from his face, used a little talc to hide the understubble that always showed blue on his cheeks. He put on his shirt, still thinking, still undecided.

As the headwaiter led him to the table near the back comer of the restaurant, Daniel wondered why it was that so many of the customers seated at the tables seemed to be familiar to him. Then he understood why. Most of them were film actors and actresses, and he had seen them on the screen so many times. There were a few whom even he could recognize. At one table, Joel McCrea; at another, Loretta Young; the others had names he could not remember.

There were two men seated at the table. They got to their feet. The bigger man, slightly balding, held out his hand. "I"m George Browne. Say h.e.l.lo to Willie Bioflf, my executive vice president."

After they shook hands and sat down, Browne looked at him. ""I hear you"re a drinking man. Is that true?"

""I"ve never been known to turn one down," Daniel said.

"I"m a beer drinker myself," Browne said. "Ulcers. I can"t take the hard stuff. You go ahead and order."

"Thank you," Daniel said. He looked up at the headwaiter, who was still hovering over them. "Jack Daniels, please."

"Single or double, sir?"

"Neither," Daniel said. "A bottle. And bring a pitcher of water. No ice."

Browne stared at him. "If the rest of what I"ve heard about you is as true as that, you have to be quite a man."

"What have you heard?" Daniel asked.

"That you"re the best organizer Murray has with him. That he keeps you moving from trouble spot to trouble spot, pulling the locals together. That you as much as anyone are responsible for the success of the S.W.O.C."s recruiting drive."

"Not true," Daniel said. "We have good men everywhere. I just help coordinate their efforts."

"Also that you"re a big man with the ladies."

The headwaiter came back with the whiskey. Daniel didn"t reply until after the waiter had poured him a drink and had gone. He held up the gla.s.s of whiskey. "Cheers," he said, downed it and immediately poured himself another. "I heard a lot about you and your friend here too," he said, smiling.

"What"s that?" Browne asked.

*That you"re both on the take. That you kick back half to the boys back in Chicago. That you"d sell out your own grandmother for a dime." Daniel was still smiling.

""What the h.e.l.l-!" Browne started to sputter. Bioff"s hand on his arm stopped him.

""Did you also hear that our members are getting the highest salaries and job-protection benefits they ever got in their lives?" Bioff asked.

"Yes."

"Why didn"t you mention that?"

Daniel sipped at his whiskey. "I figured that I didn"t have to. You would." He finished the drink and poured another. "Now that we"re finished with the compliments, maybe you can tell me why you want to see me."

"Let"s order first," Bioff said. "The spaghetti is very good here."

"FU have a steak," Daniel said.

They ate quickly, almost silently. Daniel cleaned his plate; the other men simply toyed with their food. At the end, when the waiter brought them coffee, Daniel took out a cigar. "Mind if I smoke?"

They didn"t object. He lit the cigar and leaned back in his chair. "Gentlemen, that was a fine meal. I usually don" git to fancy places like this. I git most of my meals in hash houses and greasy spoons. Thank you."

Biofflooked at Browne. "Mind if I talk?"

Browne nodded. "Go ahead."

Bioff turned to Daniel. "There are some seven thousand office workers in the film business. About three thousand of them here in the studios, the rest scattered in film exchanges around the country and the home offices in New York. We"ve just begun to organize them, but we have a lot of prejudice to overcome, a lot of it from the office workers themselves. They think that white-collar workers are above that. The companies know that and encourage them. We"re beginning to make a little headway, but it"s slow. Now we hear that District 65 is getting into the act and they have a lot of money to spend. They already have the screen publicists sewn up in New York, but that"s a Commie operation and we can handle it. We just don"t want them to go any further.""

""Why don"t you do what you did before? Put the squeeze on the theaters and they"ll get the companies to sign up the people for you?"

""We can"t do that," Bioff said. "First, we got contracts we got to respect and we can"t endanger our members there. Second, if we get pushed into an N.L.R.B. vote, we don"t have enough members signed to make it. That"s why we"ve come to you."

Daniel was silent.

"You"ve got a big reputation," Bioff said. "You"ve been a Lewis and Murray man all your life. You know how the C.I.O. and District 65 operate. If you come in with us, I"m sure we"ll sew the whole industry up."

"Exactly what are you offering me?" Daniel asked.

"The presidency of the National Film Office Workers Union, I.A.T.S.E,, A.F.L. Fifteen thousand dollars a year and expenses for openers."

Daniel looked at him. "You know how much I"m making now?"

"Six thousand a year," Bioff said.

"That"s right," Daniel said. He poured himself another drink. "I"d like to take your money, gentlemen. But I"m the wrong man for the job." He tossed the drink down his throat. "You"re trying to buy me for all the wrong reasons. Because I"m C.I.O. and I"ve got a good reputation. What you forget is that I have the reputation because I"m working with the same people I came from. The Hunkies and Polacks and mountain men I grew up with. I talk their language; they understand me. Comes to office workers, I"m a fish out of water." He emptied the rest of the whiskey bottle into his gla.s.s. "They wouldn"t know what I"m talking about and I wouldn"t understand a thing they"d tell me."

""Don"t you think we"ve thought of that?" Bioff asked. ""But we also know that you"re bright enough to learn. Anyone who can graduate that labor college in New York top man in the cla.s.s can"t be as plain as you make yourself out to be. I think you"re making a mistake."

"I don"t think so," Daniel said.

"Suppose we make it twenty thousand?"

"No. Your best bet is to find a man out of your own organization for the job. Someone they can look up to and respect. He"ll do a lot better than I can."

"We won"t take your answer as final," Bioflf said. "Why don"t you sleep on it? Tomorrow when you"re a father and you think about the advantages you can give your family with a job like this, maybe you"ll change your mind."

"I doubt it," Daniel said. He got to his feet. "Again, gentlemen, thank you."

Bioff looked up at him. "Sometimes you can be too smart."

"I agree with you," Daniel said in a flat voice. "But you can never be too honest."

She pressed his hand. "Tm glad you"re here."

""So am I," he said.

The nurse left the room, and they sat there silently for a while. Suddenly her eyes were open and she was looking at him. "Tm sorry," she said.

"There"s nothing to be sorry about."

"*I lied to you," she whispered, ""I knew I was pregnant six weeks before I told you."

""It doesn"t matter now," he said.

She closed her eyes again and rested for a moment. "I felt you were getting ready to leave me and I didn"t want you to go."

"I wasn"t about to leave you," he said. "But all of that is over now. Forget it."

"I didn"t want to have the baby without tellin" you the truth." She paused for a moment. "If somethin" happens to me up there, I wanted you to know that I loved you so much I couldn"t let you go."

"Nothing is going to happen up there except that you"re going to have a baby and you"re going to be all right."

She was looking at him again. "You"re not angry with me?"

"I"m not angry."

"I"m glad," she said, and closed her eyes. She slept until the nurse came back into the room, a male attendant pushing a gumey bed into the room behind her.

"Mrs. Huggins," the nurse said in a cheerful voice. "Time for us to go upstairs now."

Tess"s eyes opened. She saw the gumey, and a look of fear came into her eyes. "What"s that?"

"A rolling bed," the nurse said, moving the gumey against her bed. "We give you a first-cla.s.s ride upstairs." She moved behind Tess"s head. In a moment, she and the attendant had expertly moved Tess onto the gumey. Quickly, they wrapped the sheet over her and fastened the canvas straps that held her to the gumey.

Tess looked up at the nurse. ""Can he come upstairs with me?"