Well. She had plenty. The doctors--the dozens, the scores, mauled and mangled and encouraged. We have great hope for this new immunizing serum. She took it. Stubborn case, Mrs. Wylie. You seem to be especially sensitive to brucella. Streptomycin holds out hope. We find it, in a chronic case like yours--ineffectual. Some new mold is what we are searching for. The years--two--three--five--continued with their hopes and horror. It may be, Mrs. Wylie, that brucella sterilizes women in the same way it causes cattle to abort. Not all the sufferers--but a percentage. Of course, we aren't sure. But I wouldn't set my heart on having children, now. You're not in condition now, anyway; and when you've recovered, you may find it is impossible. She is a game girl, Ricky. Two years ago, she began to get well. We have had our fingers crossed-- crossed--and held tightly in the clamp of one more hope. I thought about her. These things--and how she was still that same calm girl. And how could I tell her, that perhaps it was my turn? Gradually I got myself into the tub again. I shaved, then. We are all afraid of Five O'clock Shadow. Such fears, indeed, have become paramount for most of us. Yuts. What was Paul's idiom? Cipher-faces--standing around waiting for somebody to put a minus one in front of them. Hitler, Stalin, or Huey Long. Zero-pusses, he called them. Zed-mugs. Neck-heads. Neonightmares. Two-legged negatives. I shaved, thinking I was positive, anyhow. Wait till they focused their bright peepers on that biopsy! I wished I had a little music to cheer up the joint. All I could hear was passing cargo on Madison Avenue, the elevator ruminating in its shaft, and some dame in the bathroom above me talking to a little kid with the motherly tones of a cement mixer. The sweet child was answering in words I could not distinguish, but it knew how to mix concrete, too. Ricky and I haven't owned a radio for years--except one that sneaked into the house in a record-player and we didn't even notice we had that, for eight months. A man in this world encounters more than he can bear of the sort of thing that radio purveys; it is Heaven's own mercy if he can avoid a part of it. The printed ads and the billboards get you willy-nilly; and second-class mail is always fooling you. You are eternally exposed to entertainment by chumps in the flesh. But when I want a cerebral clyster I want something that won't wash my brain out. And while I can eat with my mouth I propose to get along without the nutrient enema. Every orifice to its rightful function, I say. But now I wanted music. So I called Bill-the-bellman again. To think (as you are beginning to see) is to act, with me. Sometimes. And the Astolat doesn't have what is correctly called piped radio in its rooms. Bill brought up a machine with knobs like the eyes of dead fish and an illuminated grin for a dial--such a grin as may be seen on any alligator lamp.