"Such spiritual Band-aids are all the help there is, Chief. Thank you for them." He slapped me on the shoulder with his gloved right hand, then walked through the shower-room, trailing his black air-hose, and dropped down the manhole into the formaldehyde sump on his way back out into the world. I sat on my bench in my artificial garden in the middle of the great steel womb I'd been delivered into, and I thought about my Anne. * * * * * "If I had a chisel and about four tons of Carrara marble," the girl standing behind me said, "I'd hack me out a statue on your model, and call it _The Thinker_." Dorothy--the Firebird--Damien plumped her little backside onto the bench beside me and scintillated eagerness to converse. I didn't want to talk to anyone at the moment, certainly not to the Firebird. To employ a metaphor from an appetite less exalted than love, seeing the Firebird after losing Anne was too much like being offered hamburger after having had a filet mignon snatched from under nose. Still, as my peripheral vision took in the Firebird's brilliantly distributed five-foot-three, I realized that my metaphor was false. That flame-colored hair and impish, freckled face; that halter taut as a double-barreled ballista cocked to fire twin rounds; I turned my attention to the girlscape beside me, quite innocent of covetousness, my interest purely aesthetic. No hamburger, this. Firebird Damien was filet mignon. But she wasn't Anne. Suddenly I was contrite toward my fellow captive. "You're looking splendid, Miss Damien," I said. "And you got a face peeled off the iodine bottle. Tell mamma where it hurts." "Don't delve, doll." "Woman-trouble?" she asked. "The term is tautological," I said. "_Woman_ and _trouble_ are synonyms. If the language had any logic the words would rhyme." The Firebird put a freckled arm across my shoulder and squeezed my deltoid with her resting hand. I shrugged. "Don't try to shake me loose, Johnny," she said. "I'm trying to find out what sort of people you are. Whether you're a Shrinker or a Flesh-Presser." "Obviously, you're of the Shrinker persuasion," I said.