I hurried to open it. It was she! Glory hallelujah! She seemed even smaller than I knew her to be, and all big round solemn eyes. She was carrying the little potted maple as if it were a love offering-perhaps it was. "Richard, will you let me come back? Please?"
All happening at once I took the little tree and put it on the floor and picked her up and closed the door and sat her on the couch myself beside her and we were crying sobs and tears and talking all mixed up together.
After a while we slowed and I shut up enough that I heard what she was saying: "I'm sorry Richard I was wrong I should have backed you but I was hurt and angry and too stinking proud to turn back and tell you so and when I did you were gone and I didn't know what to do. Oh, God, darling, don't ever let me leave you again; make me stay! You're bigger than I am; if I ever get angry again and try to leave, pick me up and turn me around but don't let me leave!"
"I won't let you leave again, ever. I was wrong, dear; I should not have made an issue of it; that's no way to love and cherish. I surrender, horse and foot. Make a pet out of Bill any way you like; I won't say a word. Go ahead, spoil him rotten."
"No, Richard, no! I was wrong. Bill needed a stem lesson and I should have backed you up and let you straighten him out. However-" Gwen unwound herself a little, reached for her purse, opened it. I said,
"Mind the alligator! Careful."
She smiled for the first time. "Adele certainly took that hook, line and sinker."
"Do you mean that there is not an alligator in there?"
"Goodness, sweetheart, do you think I'm eccentric?"
"Oh, Heaven forbid!"
"Just a mousetrap and her imagination. Here-" Gwen placed a wad of money, paper and metal, beside her on the couch. "I made Bill give it back. What he had left, I mean; he should have had three times as much. I'm afraid Bill is one of those weaklings who can't carry money without spending it. I must figure out how to spank him for it till he learns better. In the meantime he can't have any cash until he earns it."
"As soon as he earns any money he should pay me ninety days' air fee," I put in. "Gwen, I really am vexed about that. Vexed at him, not at you. His attitude about paying for air. But I'm sorry as can be that I let it slop over onto you."
"But you were right, dear. Bill's attitude about paying for air reflects his wrong-headedness in general. So I've discovered. We sat in Old Dome and discussed many things. Richard, Bill has the socialist disease in its worst form; he thinks the world owes him a living. He told me sincerely-smugly!- that of course everyone was entitled to the best possible medical and hospital service-free of course, unlimited of course, and of course the government should pay for it. He couldn't even understand the mathematical impossibility of what he was demanding. But it's not just free air and free therapy, Bill honestly believes that anything he wants must be possible... and should be free." She shivered. "I couldn't shake his opinion on anything."
"'The Road Song of the Bandar-Log.'"
"Excuse me?"
"From a poet a couple of centuries back, Rudyard Kipling. The bandar-log-apes, they were-believed that anything was possible just by wishing it so."
"Yes, that's Bill. In all seriousness he explains how things should be ... then it's up to the government to make it happen. Just pass a law. Richard, he thinks of 'the government' the way a savage thinks of idols. Or- No, I don't know, I don't understand how his mind works. We talked at each other but we didn't reach each other. He believes his nonsense. Richard, we made a mistake-or I did. We should not have rescued Bill."
"Wrong, honey girl."
"No, dear. I thought I could rehabilitate him. I was wrong."
"That's not how I meant you were wrong. Remember the rats?"
'•Oh."
"Don't sound so miserable. We took Bill with us because each of us was afraid that, if we didn't, he would be killed, possibly eaten alive by rats. Gwen, we both knew the hazards of picking up stray kittens, we both understood the concept 'Chinese obligation.' We did it anyhow." I tilted up her chin, kissed her. "And we would again, this very minute. Knowing the price."
"Oh, I love you!"
"I love you, too, in a sweaty, vulgar fashion."
"Uh... now?"
"I need a bath."
"We can bathe later."
I had just retrieved Gwen's other baggage, temporarily forgotten outside the door-and happily untouched-and we were getting ready to bathe when Gwen bent over the little tree, then picked it up and put it on the shelf table by the dumbwaiter so she could get at it better. "Present for you, Richard."
"Goodie. Girls? Or liquor?"
"Neither. Although I understand both are readily available.
The desk manager wanted a cut of my fee when I bought Bill a key here."
"Bill is here?"
"Overnight, in the cheapest single. Richard, I didn't know what to do with Bill. I would have told him to find his own doss in Bottom Alley if I hadn't heard something Rabbi Ezra said about rats. Dam it all, there did not used to be rats down there. Luna City is getting to be a slum."
"I'm afraid you're right."
"I fed him, too-there is a Sloppy Joe up the line. He eats enough for four-perhaps you've noticed?"
"I have."
"Richard, I could not abandon Bill without feeding him and finding him a safe bed. But tomorrow is another story. I told him that I expected him to shape up-before breakfast."
"Hmmph. Bill would lie for a fried egg. He's a sad sack, Gwen. The saddest."
"I don't think he can lie convincingly. At least I gave him something to think about. He knows that I am angry with him, that I despise his notions, and that the free lunch is about to shut its doors. I hope I have given him a sleepless night. Here, dear-" She had been digging into the potting soil, under the little maple. "For Richard. Better wash them." She handed me six cartridges, Skoda 6.5 mm longs or monkey copies.
I picked one up, examined it. "Wonder woman, you continue to amaze me. Where? When? How?"
Praise made her look sunnily happy and about twelve. "This morning. In Kong. Black market, of course, which simply means finding which counter to look under at Sears. I hid my Miyako under Tree-San before I went shopping, then stashed the ammo there in leaving Xia's place. Sweetheart, I did not know what sort of search we might have to stand if things got sticky in Kong-and they did, but Auntie got us loose."
"Can you cook?"
"I'm an adequate cook."
"You can shoot, you can rassle a rolligon, you can pilot a spacecraft, you can cook. Okay, you're hired. But do you have any other skills?"
"Well, some engineering. I used to be a pretty good lawyer. But I haven't practiced either one lately." She added, "And I can spit between my teeth."
"Supergal! Are you now or have you ever been a member of the human race? Careful how you answer; it will be taken down in writing."
"I decline to answer on advice of counsel. Let's order dinner before they shut down the kitchen."
"I thought you wanted a bath?"
"Do. I'm itchy. But if we don't get the order in soon, we'll have to get dressed and go out to Sloppy Joe's ... and I don't mind Sloppy Joe but I do mind having to get dressed. This is the first completely relaxed, quiet time I've had alone with my husband for, oh, ages. In your suite in Golden Rule before that silly eviction notice."
"Three days."
"As little as that? Truly?"
"Eighty hours. Fairly busy hours, I grant you."
The Raffles has a good kitchen as long as you stick to chef's choice; that night it was meatballs with Swedish pancakes, honey-and-beer sauce-an odd combination that worked. Tossed fresh salad, oil and wine vinegar. Cheese and fresh strawberries. Black tea.
We enjoyed it but an old shoe, suitably sauteed, would have been acceptable, so long had it been since we had eaten. It could have been fried skunk and I would not have noticed;