Can I offer you a cognac, Didi?” Pete asked.

Didi? Ted looked at Dorothy Parker to see her response to the strange nickname, but it didn’t seem to register.

“I certainly hope so,” she said.

Pete went into the bathroom to rinse out another glass and Ted leaned in toward her. “Why did he call you Didi?”

“Get rid of him and I’ll explain.”

“I’d rather get rid of you,” he said, though he didn’t exactly mean it. For the moment, at least, he was glad for the company.

“Sorry we have to use bathroom glasses,” Pete said, coming back into the room. “Next time I’ll bring snifters.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Ted said. “She’d drink straight from the bottle if she had to.”

“True,” she said. “I’ve sipped whiskey out of everything from a gold flask to a stained teacup. I’ll drink from anything but a slotted spoon.”

Pete poured a glass of cognac and handed it to her. “Did you know that during Prohibition people in speakeasies hid their liquor by drinking it from teacups?”

Ted leaned back and smirked, curious to see how Dorothy Parker would handle Pete’s misapprehension.

“You don’t say,” she muttered, her expression unchanged.

“It’s true.”

“Why, the poor things. How awful it must have been for them.”

Pete pulled out the desk chair and sat, and Ted could tell he hadn’t picked up on the sarcasm. And why would he? As far as Pete was concerned, she was just an ordinary woman.

“I imagine it was pretty exciting,” Pete said.

“Like being tied to the railroad tracks,” Mrs. Parker responded.

“I take it you don’t romanticize the Prohibition era?”

“My dear Mr. Salzberg,” Dorothy Parker said as she sipped her drink, “there is nothing romantic about living with the constant fear of having your skull cracked open by a billy club during a raid.”

“Come on—it was postwar and pre-Depression. There’s plenty of photographic evidence to suggest the revelers were having a grand old time.”

“They were drunk, dear, there’s a difference.”

“What do you think, Ted?” Pete asked. “Are drunk and happy mutually exclusive?”

“Life and happy are mutually exclusive,” he said, rubbing his head. At the moment, speaking took more energy than he could comfortably manage. Still, he hoped they would stay awhile. It wasn’t that he was hungry for company, but sometimes he felt like the quiet would swallow him whole.

“There’s my boy,” Dorothy Parker said.

Pete shook his head. “I’m outnumbered by cynics.”

She put down her drink. “The best thing I can say about Prohibition is that poisonous gin didn’t always blind you. Sometimes it finished the job and killed you.”

Pete laughed. “Isn’t there anything about the Roaring Twenties you admire?”

“Admire? I admire a poem that leaves me speechless. I admire New York on a shiny blue and white autumn day. I admire the simple love of a dumb animal . . . especially if he dresses well and picks up the tab. But I most certainly do not admire a ten-year party filled with fools who were overly impressed with themselves.”

“But the writers,” Pete said.

“The worst of the lot.”

“I have to disagree with you,” Pete said. “A lot of brilliant authors came out of that era.”

Dorothy Parker took a pack of cigarettes from her bag. She pulled one out, put it to her lips, and placed a lighter on the table in front of Pete. “Far outnumbered by ghastly ones, I assure you,” she said.

Pete picked up her cue and lit the cigarette for her. “You have the most interesting friends,” he said to Ted.

“She’s not my friend.”

“Nevertheless,” Pete said, finishing his drink. “I’d better be going.” He stood. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Ted.”

After Peter Salzberg left, Dorothy and Ted sat in silence for several minutes.

“I suppose you want me to explain why he called me Didi,” she said.

Ted shrugged. “My curiosity has waned. You can leave now, if you want.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.”

“I’m not signing that book. And I’m certainly not going on that talk show. So we have nothing to discuss.”

“You know, Norah and I found your original manuscript, as well as the one Audrey altered.”

Audrey. Her name was a storm and its aftermath. That was how he thought of her—like dark, angry clouds and hurricane winds. Like a home with its roof blown off. Like the frail kitten found shivering under a chair.

The worst part of it—the part he tried so hard to capture in the novel Pete had read—was his own black heart. Aviva found his boozy callousness despicable. She assumed that getting blind drink for days and cheating on Audrey again and again was selfish and irresponsible. But it was worse than that. His real crime wasn’t indifference—it was cruelty. He had hurt Audrey intentionally. He wasn’t aware of it at the time, but later, when he examined himself in the same harsh light he shone on his characters, he knew. Her pain had lit him up, made him feel alive. It excited him.

And for that, he had to be punished.

“So I heard,” he said.

“You understand what this means,” she said.

“Yes, you’re going to finish the job I started and destroy Audrey completely.” His head began to throb and he welcomed the pain.

“That is not our intent.”

“No? Didn’t you pay her a visit that nearly scared her to death?”

“I think you got that backward, my dear.”

“Aviva told me. But what did you expect? You can’t ambush someone who’s that unglued and assume they’re going to keep it together.” Ted closed his eyes, picturing Audrey as that kitten trembling under a chair. Only, he was the storm that blew the roof off the house. And now these women were stomping through the wreckage without watching where they planted their feet.

“You don’t understand her,” he continued. “You don’t even know how frightened she felt. She’s been carrying the secret for a long time.”

“You think I don’t understand desperation?”

“Is that how she seemed? Desperate?”

“Indeed. She thought we had come to offer her work. Apparently, she is in need.”

So Audrey was out of work and probably strapped. Ted finished the last drops of cognac in his glass and poured more. He wished there was some way to get her to cash the post-alimony checks he had sent. She didn’t need to be broke on top of everything else.

“Can’t Aviva help her find work?”

“I suspect she has tried.”

God. How he’d ruined her. And now everyone was trying to convince him to stick around for Audrey’s sake, when the best thing he could do for her was vanish forever.

He imagined what it must have felt like for Audrey to open the door for these women, assuming they were there to offer her a job, only to discover they had come to tell her they knew the terrible secret she had been keeping.

Then another thought occurred to him and he looked around, confused. “How did you get in here? I thought you couldn’t go anywhere without that guest book.”

She held up the tote bag. “It’s in here,” she said. “I can’t carry the book itself, but if it’s inside something, I can bring it with me. In a manner of speaking, I’ve been liberated. I can now cross a threshold from room to room.”

“And this is where you choose to be? Of all the places in the world?”

“Teddy dear, consider what this could mean for you. Audrey is going to fall to pieces once the story of her plagiarism comes out. And where will you be? Dead and gone—of no use to her or anyone else. And she will never stop blaming herself. But if you sign the book—”

“Stop,” he said.

“If you sign the book, you can go see her.”

He sighed. “This conversation is over.”

“Think about it, Ted.”

“Time for you to leave.”

“What about Norah’s television show?”

He rose, grabbed the tote bag, and headed toward the door.

“I’ve been thrown out of better places,” she said, following him. “But I’ll leave you with this to think about: Why abandon her now, when she needs you the most? Haven’t you hurt her enough?”

“The best thing I can do for her,” he said, “is drop dead.” Then he opened the door, threw the tote bag into the hallway, and Dorothy Parker disappeared from his room in a cloud of dust. He watched for a moment as the particles hovered outside his room, but before they could take form again, he slammed the door.