(Drop it, Boss!)

"Oh, I believe you, now that you've explained it."

"A comparison photo might be a good idea. Make you more careful. I was not implying any criticism of Mrs. Branca; I was simply warning you that the baby-baking apparatus you inherited from her is in prime shape and ready to be triggered each lunar month. Say about ten days from now."

"I'll be careful."

"Want a lecture on contraception?"

"No." Johann smiled wryly. "Apparently I have at least a week before I need a chastity girdle."

"Approximately, by statistics. But, uh, Johann. No, ‘Miss' Smith—do you know the technical term we physicians use to describe girls who depend on rhythm?"

"No. What?"

"We call them ‘mothers.'"

"Oh. Oh!"

"So don't wait too long. Next question?"

"Uh... no more today, Doctor; I need to digest what you've told me. Thank you."

"Not at all, Miss Smith. Shall I have them switch beds now?"

"I'll send for Cunningham later; I'd like to rest. Doctor? Could you stick that dingus on my ribs? Then have the nurses stay out a couple of hours?"

"Certainly. If you'll let me raise the safety rails, as this bed is not only ten inches from the floor."

"Oh, of course."

10

(Well, Eunice?) (So you want to hear about my little bastard? Boss, you're a dirty old man.) (Sweetheart, I don't want to hear anything you don't want to tell. You could have quintuplets by a Barbary ape and it wouldn't affect how I feel about you.) (Mealymouthed old hypocrite. You're dying of curiosity.) (I am like hell ‘dying of curiosity.' It's your business and yours alone.) (Oh, don't be so mean, Boss. My business is your business. How else? Seeing the close relationship we have...and which I like, if there is any doubt in your dirty old mind. You brought me back to life... when I was as dead as folk songs. And now I'm happy. So coax me a little, I'll give.) (All right, dearest—how in the world did you manage to have a baby? When did you find time? Your snoop sheet traced you clear back through high school.)

(Boss, did that security report mention the high school semester I lost from rheumatic fever?) (Let me think. Yes, it did.) (Misspelling. Spell it ‘romantic' fever. I was fifteen and a cheerleader. Our basketball team won the regional conference... and I felt so good, I got knocked up.) (Eunice, ‘knocked up' is not an expression a lady uses.) (Oh, Boss, sometimes you make me sick. By your rules I'm not a lady and never was—and I've got as much right to be inside this skull as you have and maybe more—so you haven't any business trying to force me to talk the way your mother did. Not when I no longer have Joe to turn to when I get tired of your prissy ways.)

(I'm sorry, Eunice.)

(‘Sail right, Boss. I love you. But you and I are cuddle up pretty close; we ought to relax and enjoy it. I can teach you a lot about how to be female, if you'll let me. But right now you listen. Don't interrupt.) The ghost voice started reciting a string of monosyllables, all of them taboo in the faraway days of Johann's youth.

(Eunice! Please, darling, it doesn't become you.)

(Pipe down, Boss. I'm going to finish this even if you blow every fuse.) The recitation went on— (That does it, I guess—those are the words I had tagged in my mind never to use in your presence. Now tell, me—was there even one you didn't understand?)

(That's not the point. A person should not use language-which offends others.)

(I never did, Boss. In public. But I'm home now thought I was. Do you want me to go away again?)

(No, no, no! Uh, you were away?) (I certainly was, Boss. Dead, I suppose. But I'm here now and I want to stay. If you'll let me. If I can relax and be happy and not have to be on guard all the time for fear of offending you. I can't see why a Latin polysyllable makes me more a lady than a monosyllable with the same meaning. You and I think with the same brain—yours—eat with the same mouth—mine, or used to be—and pee through the same hole. So why shouldn't we share the same vocabulary? Speaking peeing—oh, pardon me, sir, I meant to say ‘micturition'—).

(None of your sarcasm, girl!)

(Just who are you calling a ‘girl,' girlie? Feel yourself, go ahead and feel. Some knockers, eh, Boss?—and how you used to stare at them, you horny old goat. Made me tingle. But I was saying, speaking of micturition, that we are going to have to ring for a bedpan fairly soon, now that we no longer are rigged with plumbing... and there is no way for me to leave the room while you pee. I don't dare leave; it's dark out there and I might not find my way back. So it's either get used to such things—or send me away forever—or bust your nice new bladder.)

(Okay, Eunice, you've made your point.)

(Have I offended you again, Boss?)

(Eunice, you have never offended me. Sometimes you have startled me, sometimes you have surprised me and often delighted me. But you have never offended me. Not even with that list of blunt words.)

(Well...as I saw it, if you already knew them, you couldn't really be offended; if you didn't understand them, then you couldn't possibly be offended.)

(All right, dear. I'll quit trying to correct your speech. But for the record—I used all those words long before your mother was born. Possibly before your grandmother was born.) (Grandma is sixty-eight). (Learned ‘em all and used them with relish long before your grandmother was born—with relish because they were sinful, then. I take it they aren't, to you kids now.)

(No, they're just words. Short-talk.)

(Not short-talk, as they were used before video corrupted the language. Except—What was that one word? ‘Frimp'?)

(Oh. Shouldn't have included that one, Boss; it's not a classic word. Current slang, swing talk. It's a general verb, one which includes every possible way to copulate—) (Pfui! You youngsters. When I was a kid, we had at least two dozen words meaning ‘frimp,' some new, some old besides the standard taboo words for it) (You didn't let me finish, Boss—every possible way to hook up two or more bodies—any number—of any sex, or combinations of all six sexes, and including far-out variations that would shock you right out of this bed. But swing is a today scene, so it's not surprising you hadn't heard the word ‘frimp' before.)

(Oh, I'd heard it. I have news for you, infant.)

(Yes, sir? I mean ‘Yes, Miss Smith,' dearie. ‘Miss' Smith—what a giggle I got when I first heard it. But it's nice, since it means both of us. Say, Rosy is all right, isn't he? Puts more into handkissing than some studs do into a romp on the pad.) (Sweetheart, you not only have a dirty mind—but it veers.) (How can I help having a dirty mind when it's actually yours, Boss-I'm hip deep in the stuff.) (Shut up, Eunice; it's my turn. The swing scene is nothing new. The Greeks had a word for it. So did the Romans. And so on through history. The orgy was relished in Victorian England. It was far from unknown in my youth in the heart of the Bible Belt, even though it was dangerous in those days. Eunice, as long as we are trying to get easy with each other, let me say this: Anything you've ever seen, or tried, or heard of, I did, or had done to me, before your grandmother was born—and if I liked it, I did it again and again and again. No matter how risky.)

The second voice was silent a moment. (Maybe we simply start younger today. Less risk and fewer rules.)

(Beg to doubt.)

(Oh, I'm sure we do. I told you how young I was when I got caught. Fifteen. And I started a year younger.)

(Eunice my love, the main difference between the young and the old, the cause of the so-called Generation Gap—a gap in understanding that has existed throughout all time—is that the young simply cannot believe that the old ever really were young... whereas to an old person his youth is something that happened just last week, and it annoys the hell out of him when someone in effect denies that this old duffer ever owned a youth.)