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of the load. I'm tired.
    How about this Considine kid? She does look like Karen, a little. Is that just an accident? I look like my sister, but we're totally different.
    She's not gay. She probably doesn't know it, just divorced and all, but she’ll be looking around for another husband. They always do.
    Here we are, right back where we started from. She reached out and throttled the alarm just in time to keep it from sounding off. That's a good start for the day, she told herself cheerfully, getting out of bed and standing tall and white on the chenille throw rug. At least I don't have to listen to that awful racket.
    Today she would make her own coffee. She'd have a good breakfast before she started another day of earning a living, building up Stan's ego, and learning to live alone. Plus getting acquainted with Betsy Considine, that soft, faced blonde.
    She made her way to the kitchen, still naked.
    Betsy might very well be what Stan was looking for. When a man was that hungry, any decent-looking female had a chance. He could see her every day without trying to figure out a way to get free from his mother, that human octopus.
    Somebody might as well be happy. There's so little happiness lying around, it's a shame to waste any.
    She found a clean dish towel and wiped the dust from the percolator. The kitchen linoleum needed scrubbing; she should have spent the weekend cleaning instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself. So Karen wasn't around to keep things in order. So all right, she'd have to get used to the idea.
    Somebody had to look after poor old Stan, the nebbish. If this little blonde turned out to be what he was looking for, she'd try to be happy about it.
    The old lady across the back court was looking out, peeking around the edges of her cafe curtains. Let her look, Jo thought with a grin. She pulled her own curtains shut to hide her nakedness, and whistled softly as she measured coffee into the percolator basket. She was young yet. Anything could happen.

CHAPTER 4
    Stan was doing all right for himself. He had managed to get to the office before nine, for the first time in three years. When Jo walked in he was leaning over the new assistant's desk, showing her a copy of the magazine and looking down the front of her blouse. He straightened up, looking flustered, at the sound of Jo's heels in the hall. She said "Good morning," in a cooler voice than usual, and walked past to her own cubicle. It didn't seem so welcoming this morning.
    She'd grown accustomed to a certain amount of faking where Stan was concerned. A smart woman working with a not-so-smart man always had to pretend. The authors of popular sociology books insisted that the United States was a matriarchy, with women holding eighty per cent of the buying power and making all of the domestic decisions. Maybe so. But in the business world, where protocol had been shaped about the time Bob Cratchit sat stoop-shouldered over his ledgers, the myth of male superiority still held.
    She and Stan divided their duties about equally. Several times she'd caught him up on blunders that might have been disastrous. But he got seven thousand a year, while her salary was about four before deductions, and he was the boss. That was because he wore pants and she came to the office in a skirt.
    The moms of America might regard their men as big lovable boys, but in the office world men got their own back, so far as money and prestige were concerned. The vice president of a bank might be a woman, but the president was always a man. Hospitals included women doctors on their rosters but didn't seem disposed to make them chiefs of staff. The pattern was set in high school, where the girls voted for some popular boy as class president and then allowed a girl to be elected secretary. By the time you got old enough to earn a living you were supposed to be adjusted to it.
    Stan was better than some men she'd worked for. He was damn competent, and he recognized her