Nothing was heard from the agent for two weeks. At the end of this time, Moira received an astonishing document, exquisitely printed and bound in imitation leather, thirty-two pages including the index, containing three times as many clauses as a lease.
This turned out to be a book contract. With it came the agent's check for nine hundred dollars.
en tilted his mop-handle against the wall and straightened carefully, conscious of every individual gritty muscle in his back. How did women do housework every day, seven days a week, fifty-two goddam weeks a year?
It was a little cooler now that the Sun was down, and he was working stripped to shorts and bath slippers; but he might as well have been wearing an overcoat in a Turkish bath.
The faint whisper of Moira's monstrous new electrical typewriter stopped, leaving a fainter hum. Len went into the living room and sagged on the arm of a chair. Moira, gleaming sweatily in a flowered housecoat, was lighting a cigarette.
"How's it going?" he asked, hoping for an answer. He hadn't always received one.
She switched off the machine wearily. "Page two-eighty-nine. Xanthes killed Anaxander."
"Thought he would. How about Ganesh and Zeuxias?"