Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“Je suis Quebecois, M. le chef d’etat. I’m from Montréal.”

XVI

Five minutes later we were out on the street again. For some tense moments it seemed that we were going to be hanged or shot or at least locked up forever in their deepest dungeon for the crime of not being Californians. But cooler counsel prevailed when Warwhoop’s leading legal eagle convinced him that it was better to let us go than it was to risk a trial, even one in chambers-the Quebecois Consul General might cooperate but buying his whole staff could be horribly expensive.

That was not quite how he put it but he did not know that I was listening, as I had not mentioned enhanced hearing even to Georges. The Chief’s chief counselor whispered something about the trouble we had with that little Mexicana doll after all those other greasers got aholt of the story. We can’t afford another mess like that one. You wanta watch it, Chief, they gotcha by the short ones.

So at last we passed the Palace and went to MasterCard main California office, forty-five minutes late . . . and lost another ten minutes shucking off our false personae in a rest room of the Califonnia Commercial Credit Building. The rest room was nondiscriminatory and democratic but not aggressively so. There was no charge to get in and the stalls had doors on them and the women used one side and the men used the side that had those vertical bathtub things that men use as well as stalls, and the only place they mingled was in a middle room equipped with wash trays and mirrors and even there women tended to stay on their side and men on the other. I’m not upset by co-ed plumbing-after all, I was raised in a crèche-but I have noticed that men and women, given a chance to segregate, do segregate.

Georges looked a lot better without lip paint. He had used water on his hair, too, and slicked it down. I put that noisy scarf into my jumpbag. He said to me, “I guess I was silly, trying to camouflage us this way.”

I glanced around. No one near and the high noise level of plumbing and air conditioning-“Not in my opinion, Georges. I think that in six weeks you could be turned into a real pro.”

“What sort of a pro?”

“Uh, Pinkerton, maybe. Or a-” Someone came in. “Discuss it later. Anyhow, we got two lottery tickets out of it.”

“So we did. When is the drawing on yours?”

I took mine out, looked at it. “Why, it’s today! This very afternoon! Or have I lost track of the date?”

“No,” Georges said, peering at my ticket, “it’s today all right. About an hour from now we had better be near a terminal.”

“No need,” I told him. “I don’t win at cards, I don’t win at dice, I don’t win lotteries. When I buy Cracker Jack, sometimes the box doesn’t have a prize in it.”

“So we’ll watch the terminal anyhow, Cassandra.”

“All right. When is your drawing?”

He took out his ticket; we looked at it. “Why, it’s the same drawing!” I exclaimed. “Now we have much more reason to watch.”

Georges was still looking at his ticket. “Friday. Look at this.” He rubbed his thumb across the printing. The lettering stayed sharp; the serial number smeared heavily. “Well, well! How long did our friend have her head under the counter before she ‘found’ this ticket?”

“I don’t know. Less than a minute.”

“Long enough, that’s clear.”

“Are you going to take it back?”

“Me? Friday, why would I do that? Such virtuosity deserves applause. But she’s wasting a major talent on a very minor scam. Let’s get along upstairs; you want to finish with MasterCard before the lottery drawing.”

I went back temporarily to being “Marjorie Baldwin” and we were allowed to talk to “our Mr. Chambers” in the main office of California MasterCard. Mr. Chambers was a most likable person- hospitable, sociable, sympathetic, friendly, and just the man, it appeared, that I needed to see, as the sign on his desk told us that he was Vice-President for Client Relations.