I grinned back--and sat on the bench beside the young lady as soon as Jay pulled out the table. She looked at me--turning her head slowly--and afterward went on reading her book. Her eyes were gray, stained with some unguessable, dark residue of emotion. Her hair was pale blonde, not quite ashen--parted in the middle and clipped at the back like a schoolgirl's--with a wide gold barrette. She had small, smooth hands. She wore a square engagement ring and a wedding ring set with many diamonds. From time to time, too, she sipped a Martini. Her dress was a gray and white print--not fancy but fitted by somebody who knew the tricks. Bonwit's, maybe, or Bergdorf's. Her shoulders were fairly broad, for a girl's. But she had large, firm breasts--or the synthetic equivalent thereof. I noticed, too, that the perfume she used was not right for her appearance--though perhaps it suited the self-estimate of her soul. It was one of the musky varieties--animal, nocturnal, full of erotic business. In a restaurant where you have enjoyed a thousand meals, you look desultorily at the menu because, as a rule, you know what you are going to order. I took the fried sole, a boiled, parsley potato, and apple sauce. Then, for a while, I forgot the girl. I must plan, I thought. First, the money. Fifty thousand dollars' worth of insurance. Several thousand dollars in war bonds. I had about ten thousand in the bank. Ricky had a few thousand. We owed a steep mortgage on the house we were building in Florida--in the country south of Miami, among live oaks and cabbage palms. It would be too big a home for Ricky and her mother and Karen, by themselves. Too big--and too expensive to keep up, without my income. They could sell it as soon as it was finished, and undoubtedly make a small profit. Or they could rent it each year for a much larger sum than the interest, amortization and upkeep--thus bringing to my estate an income of one or two annual thousands. I would be paid twenty-four thousand dollars for the serial upstairs, when I had cut it. Unfortunately, half of that would be turned over to the government, as income tax. Most of the balance was ear-marked for furniture which Ricky now might or might not buy. I thought about the tax.... Business is the lone God of our Congress. Let a man open a pie factory or begin to mold cement blocks and he becomes Privileged. His property is taxed as a sacred, eternal entity. His costs are deductible. Only the profit he pockets is thought of by our Congress as income; his every barrel of flour or bag of cement is capital. But let a man create books or serials in his head and Congress sees him as a social inferior, a mere wage earner.