At Binx’s office, work is slow in the days before Mardi Gras. Bin introduces his secretary Sharon Kincaid, “a good-sized girl, at least five feet six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds—as big as a majorette” (65), with whom he feels he is in love. Binx takes calls from Aunt Emily and Kate while at work, and he admits that he feels worried about Kate, who has broken off her engagement to Walter.

Binx makes a thorough but surreptitious physical examination of his secretary, noticing her dress and admiring her beauty. He notices that she is reading Peyton Place, and in a moment of possessiveness, he states that “[m]y Sharon should not read this kind of stuff” (67). Binx notes that Sharon is a better secretary than his previous ones, “quicker to learn than either Marcia or Linda” (68). She appears completely unaware of Binx’s desire for her, until she admits to Binx that she forgot to mention that Mr. Sartalamaccia called earlier, and “it crosses [Binx’s] mind that she may not be entirely unselfconscious: she tilts her head and puts her pencil to her cheek like the secretary in the Prell commercial” (70). When Binx asks Sharon to accompany him to St Bernard Parish tomorrow, in order to locate some details of a parcel of land that is part of Binx’s patrimony and Mr.