(Eunice, I’m relieved. But he was entitled to the lagniappe if he wanted it.) “I’m your Galatea, Dr. Boyle; I owe you anything you care to name—short of sawing off my skull. The debt remains on the books. All I was offering was symbolic down-payment. But you don’t respond like a typical Australian—nor sound like one, either.”
“Oh, that. I’m a fake, dear. From the Sydney slums into a sadists’ finishing school—a stylish British boarding school, a ‘public’ school right out of the second drawer. Then on to the University of London and the best surgeons in the world. Put your pretty robe on and I’ll be going. I say, would you mind having that extraordinary slow-motion somersault filmed in stereocinema for my archives?”
“Where shall I send it, Doctor?”
“Jake Salomon knows. Keep your pecker up, m’dear, and try to live a long time; you’re my masterpiece.”
“I’ll certainly try.”
“Do. Ta ta!”
An unidentified flying object roughly disc-shaped was reported to have landed in Pernambuco and its humanoid crew to have visited with local yokels; the report was denied officially almost faster than it reached the news services. The number of licensed private police in the United States reached triple the number of ‘public peace officers. Miss Joan née Johann Smith received over two thousand proposals of marriage, more than that number of less formal proposals, one hundred eighty-seven death threats, an undisclosed number of extortion notes, and four bombs—not any of which she received in person as they were diverted to Mercury Private Courier Service under procedures set up years earlier. The waldoes of one package-opening bunker had to be replaced; the other bombs were disarmed.
The Postmaster General died from an overdose of barbiturates; the career Assistant Postmaster General declined an interim appointment and put in for retirement. A woman in Albany gave birth to a “fàun” which was baptized, dead, and cremated in eighty-seven minutes. No flowers. No photographs. No interviews—but the priest wrote a letter to his seminary roommate. The F.B.I. reported that recidivism was up to 71%, while the same rate figured only on major felonies—armed robbery, rape, assault with a deadly weapon, murder, and attempted murder—had climbed to 84%. The paralysis at Harvard University continued.
“Jake, the last time you refused to marry me, you did promise me a night on the town if we won.”
Mr. Salomon put down his cup. “A delightful lunch, my dear. As I recall, you told me at the time that a nightclub check was no substitute for a marriage license.”
“Nor is it. But I haven’t nagged you about marrying me since you accorded me the honor of first concubine. Uh… erase ‘first.’ I have no idea what you do with your time when you’re not here. Well, I don’t have to be ‘first.’”
(Twin, never crowd a man about sex. He’ll lie.) (Pussy cat, ‘I’m not crowding Jake about sex; I’m confusing the issue. He’s going to take us nightclubbing and we’re going to wear that lush blue-and-gold job—it’s meant to be seen, not just modeled for Winnie and put away.)
“Eunice, surely you don’t think I have anyone else?”
“It would be presumptuous of me to have an opinion, sir. Jake, I’ve stayed close to home all during this hearing—a little shopping, mostly with Winnie along. But now we’ve won and I see no reason to be a prisoner. Look, dear, we can make it a party of four—a girl for you and a boy for me—and you can come home early and not lose any sleep you don’t want to.”
“You surely don’t think that I would go home and leave you at a nightclub?”
“I surely think I can stay up all night and celebrate if I want to. I’m free, over twenty-one—my God, am I over twenty-one!—and can afford a licensed escort. But there is no reason to keep you up all night. We’ll call Gold Seal Bonded Escorts and fill out our party. Winnie’s been teaching me what the kids call dancing—and I’ve been teaching her real dancing. Say, maybe you’d rather escort Winnie than some dollikin picked out of a catalog? Winnie thinks you’re wonderful.”
“Eunice, are you seriously proposing to hire a gigolo?”