“All right, Tom, what does Eunice want us to do? Stand here crying? I see tears in your eyes; I’m not the only one crying. Would Eunice have us spoil a picnic?”
“Uh—She’d say, ‘Sit down and eat.’
“That she would!” Shorty agreed. “Eunice would say, ‘Don’t let hot things get cold and cold things get hot—eat!”
“Yes,” agreed Joan Eunice, sitting down, “as Eunice was never a spoilsport in all her short and beautiful life and wouldn’t let anyone else be. Especially me, when I was cranky. Reach me a drumstick, Fred—no, don’t pass it.”
Joan took a bite of chicken. (Twin, what Shorty said sounded like a quotation.) (It was, Boss.) (Then you’ve eaten with him before.) (With all of them. When a team drove me late at night, I always invited them in for a bite. Joe never minded, he liked them all. Shorty he was especially glad to see; he wanted Shorty to model for him. At first Shorty thought Joe was making fun of him—didn’t know that Joe rarely joked and never about painting. They never got to it, though, as Shorty is shy—wasn’t sure it was all right to pose naked and scared that I might show up while he was posing. Not that I would have.) (Not even once, little imp? Shorty is a beautiful tower of ebony.) (Boss, I keep telling you—) (—that nudity doesn’t mean anything to your generation. Depends on the skin, doesn’t it? I would enjoy seeing our black giant—and that goes for Johann as well as for Joan.) (Well—) (Take your time thinking up a fib; I’ve got to make conversation.) “Tom, do you have those mustard pickles staked out, or may I have some? Shorty, you sounded as if you had sampled Eunice’s cooking. Could she cook?”
Finchley answered, “You bet she could!”
“Real cooking? Anybody can flash a prepack—and that’s what kids nowadays seem to think is cooking.” (Boss, I’ll spit in your soup!) “But what could she have done faced with flour and lard and baking powder and such?”
“Eunice would have done just fine,” Shorty said quietly. “True, she mostly never had time for real cooking—but when she did—or whatever she done, anyways—she done just perfect.”
(My fan! Boss—give him a raise.) (No.) (Stingy.) (No, Eunice. Shorty killed the vermin who killed you. I want to do something for him. But it can’t be money; he would not accept it.)
“She was an artist,” agreed Fred.
“You mean ‘artist’ in the general sense. Her husband was, I recall, an artist in the usual sense. A painter. Is he a good one? I’ve never seen any of his work. Do any of you know?”
Finchley said, “I guess that’s, a matter of opinion, Miss Smith. I like Joe Branca’s paintings—but I don’t know anything about art; I just know what I like. But—” He grinned. “Can I tell on you, Shorty?”
“Aw, Tom!”
“You were flattered, you know you were. Miss Smith, Joe Branca wanted to paint that big ape on your right.”
(Bingo.’) (Trouble, Eunice?) “And did he, Shorty?”
“Well, no. But he did ask me. He did.” (Don’t you see, Boss? This is that clincher. A fact you first learned from me and nowhere else . . . and then had confirmed to the hilt. Now you know I’m me.) (Oh, piffle, darling.) (But Boss—) (I’ve known you were you all along, beloved. But this isn’t proof. Once I knew that Joe and Shorty had met, it was a logical necessity that Joe would want him to model—any artist would want to paint him.)
(Boss, you make sick! It’s proof. I’m me.) (Beloved darling without whom life would not be worth living even in this beautiful body, I know you are you. But flatworms don’t matter, coincidences don’t matter, no mundane proof matters: There is no proof that some cocksure psychiatrist could not explain away as coincidence, or déjà vu, or self-delusion. If we let them set the rules, we’re lost. But we shan’t. What does matter is that you have me, and I have you. Now shut up; I want to get them all so easy with me that they’ll call me Eunice. You say they used to kiss you?)