"Girls that troll in my waters catch whatever is swimming by that's hungry. Of course you're a spoiled brat--and all good looks are superficial. So I was in a mood. I came down to lunch. I saw a blonde with a book--odd enough, in itself, to be interesting. A hell of a good-looking blonde. And I sat down beside her and she told me the story of her life." She saw that she was not going to be appeased beyond that deliberately meager degree. She sighed and picked up the tall glass as soon as the waiter deposited it and drank perhaps a third of it, thirstily. Afterward, she tittered. "I'm going to get tight, if I do that again." "And if you get tight, I'll take you home." "And if you take me home, I'll pound on your door." "And if you pound on the door, I'll put you under a cold shower." "And I'll call the manager." "You won't need to. He'll be helping me with the shower." "I thought you were maybe hoping I'd get a little tight." "Why?" "Don't men?" "Not me." "It's supposed," she said with a flirtatious glance, "to make it easier." "Make what easier?" "Oh--being with girls." "I never found it difficult--_except_ when they were tight. Then my impulse is to run." "There we go again! Women mustn't drink. But you--being a man--don't care if the boys get blind." "Did I say so? Having been a drunk--and quit--I detest drunks. A common example of the law of opposites in operation. I force myself to associate with them, sometimes, because I owe drunkenness a good deal of quid pro quo--" "Like an Alcoholic Anonymous?" "Like that--without the self-canonization. An American man--with a few drinks in his blood stream--is able to become a shade more human. To shed the posture of men demanded by his era and its women. To show he has feelings, to be introverted--unless he gets out of hand--and even to think a little bit. To cherish and fear, to appreciate and revile, to show some evidence of the democracy and human brotherhood he is always talking about--and always doing his best to defeat by getting to the top in nefarious ways. I don't mind guys being slightly tight. Excepting for the danger that they'll go beyond that stage--which they so generally do." "But women! Dear, dear!" "The average American female with three or four cocktails in her becomes a living exhibit of the frustrations inherent in the feminist myth of these days. Together with the compulsions." "Yes, Mr. Wylie?"