FOR US THE LIVING BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

Perry started to get up, then stopped. She noticed his hesitation and a troubled look clouded her face. “What is the matter? Are you still too weak?”

“No.”

“Sprain anything?”

“No.”

“Then come, please. Whatever is the matter?”

“Well, I—uh—you—see I—” How the hell do you tell a pretty girl who is naked as a jaybird that you can’t eat with her because you are naked too? Especially when she doesn’t seem to know what modesty is?

She bent over him with obvious concern. Oh, the hell with it, said Perry to himself, and climbed out of bed. He swayed a little.

“Shall I help you?”

“No, thanks. I’m OK.”

They sat down on opposite sides of the shelf table. She touched a button and a large section of the wall beside them slid up, exposing through glass a magnificent view. Across a canyon tall pines marched up a rugged mountainside. Up the canyon to the right some seven or eight hundred yards a waterfall hung a curtain of gauze in the breeze. Then Perry looked down—down a direct drop from the window. Vertigo shook him and again he hung poised on the palisade and stared over the hood of his car at the beach. He heard himself cry out. In an instant her arms were about him, consoling him. He steadied himself. “I’m all right,” he muttered, “But please close the shutters.”

She neither argued nor answered, but closed them at once. “Now can you eat?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“Then do so and we will talk later.”

They ate in silence. He examined his food with interest. A clear soup; some jelly with a meaty flavor; a glass of milk; light rolls spread with sweet butter; and several kinds of fruit, oranges, sugar-sweet and large as grapefruit, with a skin that peeled easily like a tangerine, some yellow fruit that he did not recognize, and black-flecked bananas. The dishes were light as paper but covered with a hard shiny lacquer. The fork and spoon were of the same material. Finally he dropped the last piece of rind and ate the last crumb of roll. She had finished first and had been leaning on her elbows, watching him.

“Feel better?”

“Immensely.”

She transferred the dishes to the tray, walked over to the fireplace, dumped the load on the fire, and returned the tray to its rack among the shiny gadgets. (Demeter swung obligingly out of the way.)

When she returned, she shoved the shelf-table back in its slot and extended a slender white tube.

“Smoke?”

“Thanks.” It was about four inches long and looked like some Russian atrocity. Probably scented, he thought. He inhaled gingerly, then drew one to the bottom of his lungs. Honest Virginia tobacco. The only thing in the house that seemed absolutely homey and normal. She inhaled deeply and then spoke.

“Now then, who are you and how did you get onto this mountainside? And first, your name?”

“Perry. What’s yours?”

“Perry? A nice name. Mine’s Diana.”

“Diana? I should think so. Perfect.”

“I’m a little too cursive for Diana,”—she patted her thigh—”but I’m glad you like it. Now how did you get lost out in that storm yesterday without proper clothes and no food?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“No. You see, it was this way. I was driving down the palisade when a car tried to pass a truck on a hill coming towards me. I swung out to miss it and my right front wheel jumped the curb and over I went, car and all—the last I remember was staring down at the beach as I fell—until I woke up in the snow storm.”

“That’s all you remember?”

“Yes, and then you helping me, of course. Only I thought it was a girl in a green bathing suit.”

“In a what?”

“In a green bathing suit.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “What did you say made you go over the palisade?”

“I had a blowout, I guess, when my wheel hit the curb.”

“What’s a blowout?”

He stared at her. “I mean that my tire blew out—when it struck the curb.”

“But why would it blow out?”

“Listen—do you drive a car?”