All at once she burped; her hand, then, flew to her mouth. "Pardon me," she said.

He flew back to Washington, D.C. the next morning. She had returned to her barren apartment that night, but the matter was moot anyhow because of her period. A couple of times she men- tioned-he thought unnecessarily-that she always had severe cramps during her period and had them now. On the return trip he felt weary, but he had closed a deal for a rather large sum: Linda Fox had signed the papers ordering a top-of-the-line stereo system, and, later, he would return and supervise the installation of video recording and playback components. All in all it had been a profitable trip.

And yet-his ultimate move had fallen through because Linda Fox . . . it had been the wrong time. Her menstrual cycle, he thought. Linda Fox has periods and cramps? he asked himself. I don't believe it. But I guess it's true. Could it have been a pre- text? No, it was not a pretext. It was real.

When he arrived back home his wife greeted him with a single question. "Did you two fool around?"

"No," he said. Worse luck.

"You look tired," Rybys said.

"Tired but happy." It had been a satisfying and rewarding experience; he and the Fox had sat together talking for hours. An easy person to get to know, he thought. Relaxed, enthusiastic; a good person. Substantial. Not at all affected. I like her, he said to himself. It'll be good to see her again.

And, he thought, I know she'll go far.

It was odd how strong that intuition was inside him, his sense about the Fox's future success. Well, the explanation was that Linda Fox was just plain good.

"What kind of person is she?" Rybys said. "Nothing but talk about her career, probably."

"She is tender and gentle and modest," he said, "and totally informal. We talked about a lot of things."