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that his seniority and devoted service in that firm's business meant little in actual terms of pension or retirement benefits. In fact, it meant absolutely nothing at all, except maybe a thousand dollar kissoff when he reached the age where he'd be too old to work.

Therefore, the next week was going to be his last at that house, and he'd be getting a lot more pay, future benefits and an executivelevel managerial position where he wouldn't have to take all the orders, but give some of them, when he made the move to the new brokerage business owned by his Greek friend who he was sure would do right by him. "Good!" Emmett said to his father, and he was very glad that he might just be catching a break for once in his life.

He left shortly after that with a kiss for his sister, who said she'd be out to the West Coast soon, which for some reason didn't make Emmett happy at all, but he didn't have time then to discuss it with her. His parents walked him to the elevator and asked that he return soon and maybe stay awhile. They waved to him and shouted "Goodbye!" through the small window of the door as it closed and the car began its descent to the ground floor. It didn't matter to his mother and father that the window wasn't the porthole of a ship carrying him out to sea or the rear windshield of a taxi driving him to some air or bus terminal. It was still the window of a vehicle that was again taking their son away from them, and they couldn't care less that it was just an elevator bringing him downstairs. It was still taking him away, so they waved and said goodbye, and his mother began crying as she walked the few yards back to the apartment with the man who still made love to her in the same beautifully gentle way he had when he sired their son who, once again, was gone.

It was nearing five o'clock when Emmett entered the Park Avenue building, and the doorman showed him the way to the velvetlined private elevator that would take him where he wanted to go. The difference between the funky, graffiti-scratched, slow-running elevator that his parents had to use every day, all the time, and the fine, delicately exquisite, smooth flowing quickness of the elevator in which he was now ascending, was maybe what it was all about: the difference between the way the inherited or chosen few live and the way most of the rest are made to live their lives. It was definitely one of the differences that Emmett wanted to eliminate somehow not only from his life, but from life itself.

The double steel outside doors rolled silently open, and Emmett gently slid apart the two glass-windowed, wooden doors of the car's [end page 421]