Yak-yak. This is the cup. And take this cup from me. Nyanh-nyanh. I soaped the person. The phone rang. It does. You get out of the bathtub. You wrap a towel around your midriff and make footprints on your rug. You sit and drip. The operator says, "One moment, please. Rushford calling." If her boy friend had too many beers on the night before, she hurts your ear. This mug must have been rolling. "Hello, dear." Rickey's voice was as clear as heaven's door-chimes. I could feel my heart jumping around inside me, trying to straighten things up in a hurry. "Hello, Tud." It rhymes with "good" and doesn't mean anything to anybody but us. "How are you--you sound--worried?" My banging heart must have left a chair out of place somewhere. I took a good breath and pushed whatever it was back into the regular design. "Naw. Maybe tired. Been working. Paul was here. I'm worried about him--if that's what you mean." "I guess so. I called up because I thought maybe you were planning to call me this evening." "Was." "Mother and I are going up to Brookses to play bridge. So we'd have been out, if you'd have called. What about Paul?" "He's living in sin with a dame he's nuts about--and he found out after he went overboard that she's an old understudy from Hattie Blaine's finishing school for young ladies." "Oh, dear." Rickey can put all her compassion into two syllables--and it's compassion enough for a saint. "I was dawdling around here cogitating ways and means--" She giggled. "In the tub, I bet." "Think what Socrates accomplished in a tub. Not to mention Archimedes." "The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker," she replied amiably. "Then there was that show-girl who bathed in champagne. Her tub landed her in jail. Any number of people have opened their arteries in tubs. They put tubs under guillotines--north end. A tub cuts both ways, dear--" "What should I do, then? Maybe you take dust baths. Maybe that makes people brighter. The genius is a quaking mass of emotional mincemeat. Hasn't told a soul but me. Dumped it in my lap. Regarded it as an Act of God that I happened to be here when the confessional mood came over him. Typical physicist--solve any equation but the human." Rickey said, "Did you see her?" "Tomorrow. Lunch." "It just won't work--for him." "Yeah." "Is he--terribly--?" "The works. Head-over-heels." "Oh, _dear_! Has it been long?" "Six-seven months." "Then--it could take him six or seven years to--" "Some kind of female arithmetic. But probably solid." "You could call up Hattie and talk to her and find out--" "I've considered that. What do I ask Hattie? Is Marcia sincere--like sincere in a Freddie Wakeman character?" "Marcia?" "M'm'm'm." "If it was only Dolores! Or Fern or Pearl!" "More woman-palaver. And it's Marcia. And she was in college for a while. She reads books." "You could ask if she's sweet. You know what to ask, dope."