Moira was leaning back with her eyes closed, looking very tired.
"How's the money?" she asked without moving.
"Lousy. We're down to twenty-one bucks."
She raised her head and opened her eyes wide. "We couldn't be! Len, how could anybody go through nine hundred dollars that fast?"
"Typewriter. And the dictaphone that Leo thought he wanted, till about half an hour after it was paid for. We spent less than fifty on ourselves, I think. Rent. Groceries. It goes, when there isn't any coming in."
She sighed. "I thought it would last longer."
"So did I. If he doesn't finish this thing in a few days, I'll have to go look for work again."
"Oh. That isn't so good. How am I going to take care of the house and do Leo's writing for him?"
"I know, but--"
"All right. If it works out, fine. If it doesn't--he must be near the end by now." She stubbed out her cigarette abruptly and sat up, hands over the keyboard. "He's getting ready again. See about that coffee, will you? I'm half dead."
Len poured two cups and carried them in. Moira was still sitting poised in front of the typewriter, with a curious half-formed expression on her face.
Abruptly the carriage whipped over, muttered to itself briefly and thumped the paper up twice. Then it stopped. Moira's eyes got bigger and rounder.
"What's the matter?" said Len. He looked over her shoulder.
The last line on the page read:
TO BE CONTINUED IN OUR NEXT
Moira's hands curled into small helpless fists. After a moment, she turned off the machine.
"What?" said Len incredulously. "To be continued--what kind of talk is that?"
"He says he's bored with the novel," Moira replied dully. "He says he knows the ending, so it's artistically complete; it doesn't matter whether anybody else thinks so or not." She paused. "But he says that isn't the real reason."
"Well?"
"He's got two reasons. One is that he doesn't want to finish the book till he's certain he'll have complete control of the money it earns."
"Yes," said Len, swallowing a lump of anger, "that makes a certain amount of sense. It's his book. If he wants guarantees...."
"You haven't heard the other one."
"All right, let's have it."
"He wants to teach us--so we'll never forget--who the boss is in this family."
"Len, I'm awfully tired," Moira complained piteously, late that night.
"Let's just go over it once more. There has to be some way. He still isn't talking to you?"
"I haven't felt anything from him for the last twenty minutes. I think he's asleep."
"All right, let's suppose he _isn't_ going to listen to reason--"
"I think we'd better."
Len made an incoherent noise. "Well, okay. I still don't see why we can't write the last chapter ourselves. It'd only be a few pages."
"Go ahead and try."
"Not me. You've done a little writing. Damned good, too. And if you're so sure all the clues are there--Look, if you say you can't do it, all right, we'll hire somebody. A professional writer. It happens all the time. Thorne Smith's last novel--"
"It wasn't Thorne Smith's and it wasn't a novel," she said dogmatically.
"But it sold. What one writer starts, another can finish."
"Nobody ever finished _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_."
"Oh, hell."
"Len, it's impossible. It is! Let me finish--if you're thinking we could have somebody rewrite the last part Leo did--"
"Yeah, I just thought of that."
"--even that wouldn't do any good. You'd have to go all the way back, almost to page one. It would be another story when you got through.
Let's go to bed."
"Moy, do you remember when we used to worry about the law of opposites?"
"Mm?"
"The law of _opposites_. When we used to be afraid the kid would turn out to be a pick-and-shovel man with a pointy head."
"Uh. Mm."
He turned. Moira was standing with one hand on her belly and the other behind her back. She looked as if she were about to start practicing a low bow and doubted she could make it.
"What's the matter now?" he asked.
"Pain in the small of my back."
"Bad one?"
"No...."