After hanging up, Richard gets up just before a huge tomato plant from the upstairs balcony crashes into his chair. Richard is disconcerted to hear that she ran into Tom MacKenzie, a writer of lurid romances, on the train to Maine, yet promises that he is following her advice. Helen chides Richard for imagining things in CinemaScope with stereophonic sound, then disappears, but before Richard can return to his manuscript, the real Helen telephones early. The vision of Helen continues to chuckle as Richard dramatically spins a tall tale about being romantically accosted by his secretary, Miss Morris a nurse and Helen's own best friend, Elaine. As Richard debates the matter, he imagines Helen sitting opposite him on the patio and hears her laugh when he states that he is attractive to other women.

Before long, however, Richard begins pondering Helen's intention to call him at 10:00 and decides that she must not trust him, even though he has been faithful during their seven years of marriage. Determined to enjoy a quiet evening, Richard resolves not to think about The Girl, whose name he did not learn, and returns to Brubaker's book. A stunning blonde enters and tells Richard that she is his new neighbor, as she is renting the apartment above his for the summer, and the awestruck Richard's neck cracks alarmingly as he cranes to watch her ascend the stairs. Ludwig Brubaker, when he is interrupted by the outside door buzzer.

After a bland, healthy dinner, Richard goes home and is about to work on a new manuscript, Of Man and the Unconscious by Dr. Richard returns to his office at Brady & Co., where his unusually vivid imagination helps in the designing the company's lurid covers of paperbacks. After agreeing to Helen's admonitions not to smoke or drink, Richard briefly joins the other 'summer bachelors' in ogling a pretty woman, but firmly tells himself that he will not be like other husbands who run amok while their families are away. One hot summer in Manhattan, book editor Richard Sherman escorts his wife Helen and son Ricky to the train station, from which they and numerous other families are leaving to escape the city's heat.

7 year itch actor