"It sounds like one damned good idea!" he said. "At least I'd have something decent, or indecent, to write about!"
"What can you mean?" she asked, tilting her head back and thinking. "Why can't you write? There are just oodles of things I can think of that are readable."
Something like a tear rolled down Samuel's cheek. "No more gangsters, no more bank robberies, no more holdups, no more good, old-fashioned burglaries, no more vice gangs!" His voice grew lachrymose as he proceeded down an infinite line of 'no mores'. "No more sadness," he almost sobbed. "Everybody's happy, contented. No more strife and hard work. Oh, for the days when a gangland massacre was headline scoop for me!"
"Tush!" sniffed Bella. "Have you been drinking again, Samuel?"
He hiccoughed gently.
"I thought so," she said.
"I had to do something," he declared. "I'm going nuts for want of a plot."
Bella Stern laid her knitting aside and walked to the balcony, looked meditatively down into the yawning canyon of the New York street fifty stories below. She turned back to Sam with a reminiscent smile.
"Why not write a love story?"
"WHAT!" Stern shot out of his chair like a hooked eel.