Joan Eunice looked at the nearly finished painting almost with awe. She knew what a beautiful body she had inherited; she knew that Gigi was a beauty of another sort; she could see that these "Grecian damsels" were herself and Gigi and she could not see any detail in which the painting was not a perfect likeness of each.

Yet Joe Branca's "realism" was fantasy. These two nymphs in a glade were voluptuous, sensuous, enticing in a way that she knew that she and Gigi had not been—sprawled on a platform of boards and gossiping about everything from an alcoholic to dirty dishes.

"What do you think?" Gigi asked. "Say what you like; Joe doesn't give a hoot about any opinion but his own."

Joan took a deep breath, sighed. "How does he do it? Here I am With my nipples tight just from looking at it—and yet it's you and me, and we lay there talking for hours and never got in a sweat about it. Discussed everything but Topic ‘A'—wasn't even a cuddle because we had to hold still. Yet this paint-and-canvas reaches out and grabs you by the gonads and squeezes. I'm certain it would have just as much effect on a man."

From behind them Joe said, "Fool-the-eye."

Joan answered, "Fool-the-eye, hell, Joe. My eyes are not fooled, I'm enchanted. I want to buy it!"

"No."

"Huh? Oh, kark. You planned to sell it to some old butch. God knows ninety-five is old—and I feel butch enough to qualify when I look at the painting."

"Yours."

"Huh? Joe, you can't do this to me. You intended to sell it, you said so. Gigi, back me up."

Gigi chose not to answer. Joe said stubbornly, "Yours, Joan. You want it, you take it."

"Joe, you are the most stubborn man I've ever met and I don't see how Gigi puts up with you. If you give me that painting, I'm going to destroy it at once—"

Gigi gasped. "Oh, no!"

Joe shrugged. "Your ache. Not mine."

"—but if you'll sell it to me at your going rates, I'll take it with me and give it to Jake Salomon to hang at the end of his bed so he'll wake up happy each morning." (You bombed him, twill! Now swing back and strafe the survivors.) "That's the choice, Joe. Give it to me and I'll chop it into shreds. But sell it to me—and Jake Salomon gets it. Oh, you could welch, then hang it for sale—and put me to the trouble of hiring detectives to follow it to where you hang it so that I can buy it through an agent. What I do with it then, I won't tell. Or you could even keep it for your own jollies; it's quite a job."

Gigi said, "Quit being stubborn, Joe; you know you'd like Jake to have it."

"Gigi, what does Joe charge for a painting like that?"

"Oh, I set the prices. Mostly I sell them by the yard. By size."

"So? How much is this size?"

"Well, I try to get two hundred and fifty for that size."

"Ridiculous!"

"Really, Joan, considering that it took both my time and Joe's all yesterday evening and today—not to mention your time, but you're buying it, so I didn't add on for the second figure in it—considering all that and the commission we pay, it's not very much—"

"Darling, I meant ‘ridiculously' low. I haven't bought much art the last twenty years but I do know that is not less than a thousand-dollar picture—then up like a kite to whatever the traffic will bear. I can tell you this: When Jake dies and that painting is auctioned off, it won't go for as little as a thousand...and it might be much higher because I'm certain to be at, that auction and in no mood to let it get out of the family. But I'm not raising the price now; I never do that. You named a price of two-fifty; I accept. It's a sale."

"Joan, you never did let me finish."

"Oh. Sorry, hon."

"I try to get two hundred and fifty for that size when I hang it in a shop. But half of that goes to the owner of the shop; that's the only way I can get space. So the price to you is a hundred and twenty-five."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Just ‘No' the way Joe said it to me. As good business practice you should never undercut your retailer. I think he's robbing you; the commission should be twenty-five percent, no more. But don't undercut the price you want him to ask—that's no way to stay in business. I don't know much about art... but I know one hell of a lot about business. Cash, or check?"

"Cash is fine. If you have that much with you. Or pay when you feel like it."

"I want to pay now and get a receipt so that it will be legally mine—before your stubborn husband can thwart me again. Shall I write the receipt for you, Gigi girl?"

"Oh, I've got Woolworth's printed forms for that, and I can write numbers and sign my chop. No huhu."

"Good. But I want something else."

"What, Joan?"

"I want to be kissed. I've been a good girl and posed all day and haven't even been kissed for it. So I want Joe to kiss me for being so stinky difficult—and I want to kiss you for helping me with him. Joe, will you kiss me?"

"Yes."

"That's better. Joe, will you escort two nice girls—me and Gigi, I mean, and no smart cracks—down to the

supermarket? If Gigi will buy us a steak to celebrate, I want to prove I can broil it. Will you buy us a steak, Gigi?"

"Sure! Beef, or horse?~'

"Uh...hon, I'm forced to admit that I haven't shopped for groceries in years. What do you think?"

"Well... it had better be horse."

"Whatever you say. As long as they don't sell us the harness."

25

In the United Nations the Burmese delegation charged that the so-called Lunar Colonies were a cover-up for a con­spiracy by China and the United States to build military bases on the Moon. The Secretary of Conservation and Pollution Control denied a report that deer in Yosemite National Park were "dying in hordes from polluted water and emphysema." He stated that a healthy ecological rebalancing was taking place-no need for alarm—and the new herd would be stronger than ever.

The Reverend Dr. Montgomery Chang, D.D., Most Humble Supreme Leader of The Way, Inc., testified before the Subcommittee on Unwritten Law of the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of the pending bill to require Federal licensing of teachers of Zen Buddhism and related disciplines as "therapists de facto et de jure:" "These bootleg gurus are giving rational mysticism a bad name. A man should no more be allowed to teach meditation, asanas, or transcendental philosophy without strict control by a licensing board than he should be allowed to ski, or to surf, or to frame a picture without passing an examination. The idea that this bill would abridge the sacred guarantees of the First Amendment is the sheerest nonsense; it protects and frees them." Under questioning he stated that he would be humbly willing to serve as chairman of such a board if such sacrifice were asked of him. Survivors of Hurricane Hilda were still being rescued and the known death toll now stood at 1908.

The Department of Internal Defense placed a temporary exception on interstate transmittal of intelligence concerning public disorders involving more than three persons, then placed a second exception with strict penalties on the publicizing of the first censorship order. The Secretary reported to the President that news services and video nets were cooperating voluntarily in the interests of the general welfare. In re the matter of identity of Conglom Tycoon Johann S. B. Smith the Supreme Court, in a declaratory relief opinion made notable only by Mr. Justice Handy waking up in the middle of its reading, slapping the desk and roaring, "Divorce granted!" then going back to sleep, ruled seven to two to sustain a lower court in expanding and clarifying the principle originally set forth in Estate of Henry M. Parsons v. Rhode Island. Four of the majority and one dissenting justice ruled also that a legal sex change was involved in the matter; two justices thought otherwise; one justice (Mr. Handy) used twenty pages to prove that such a composite of sexes was contrary to public interest and to the laws of God and that both Johann Smith and Eunice Branca were legally dead and that the resultant monster had no legal existence of any sort; the ninth justice, in a one-sentence separate assent, opined that sex was irrelevant in the entire matter; one of the majority, in another separate assenting opinion, stated that the donor body should have been sterilized surgically in the public interest and that the Congress would do well to make such sterilization mandatory in any future similar situation. No mention was made by any justice of thirteen amici-curiae brief s and one petition filed with the Court. In an opinion issued the same day (Illinois v. Sam J. Roberts) conviction was set aside on the grounds that the householder (deceased) had not advised Roberts of his rights before attempting to place him under citizen's arrest.