"Pre-Noisy, that is. After Noisy arrived, it went more like this: Buy a drink as before. Maybe buy the girl a second drink rather than interrupt a blind man's song. Take the girl to her room. When he comes back, Noisy is singing 'Frankie and Johnnie' or 'When the Pusher Met My Cousin,' and smiles and throws a verse at him-and the customer sits down and listens to all of it-and asks Noisy if he knows 'Dark Eyes.' Sure, Noisy knows it, but instead of admitting it, he asks the john to give him the words and hum it and he'll see what he can do with it.

"If the customer has valuta, he's still there hours later, having had supper and bought supper for one of the girls and tipped Noisy rather lavishly and is ready for an encore with the girl or another girl. If he's got the money, he stays all night, splitting his cash between the girls and Noisy and the bar and kitchen. If he spends himself broke and has been a good customer-well behaved as well as free with his money-I stake him to bed and breakfast on credit, and urge him to come back. If he's alive next payday, he's sure to be back. If not, all the house is out is the wholesale cost of one breakfast-nothing compared with what he's spent. Cheap goodwill advertising.

"A month of that, and both the house and the girls have made much more money, and the girls haven't worked much harder as they have spent part of their time drinking pay-me drinks-colored water; half the price to the house, half to the girl-while they help a john listen to Noisy's nostalgic songs. Shucks, a girl doesn't want to work like a treadmill even if she usually enjoys her work as many of them did. But they never got tired of sitting and listening to Noisy's songs.

"I quit playing the pianette, except, maybe, while Noisy ate. Technically I was a better musician-but he had that undefinable quality that sells a song; he could make 'em cry or laugh. And he had a thousand of 'em. One he called 'The Born Loser.' Not much of a tune, just:

"Tah tah poom poom!

Tah tah poom poom!

Tah t'tah tah tah poom poom-

"-about a bloke who can never quite make it. Uh:

"There's a beer joint

By the pool hall

For to pass some pleasant hours.

"There's a hook shop

Above the pool hall

Where my sister makes her living.

"She's a good sport;

I can spring her

For a fin or even a sawbuck

When not holding, Or the horses

Have been running rather slowly-

"Like that, folks. But more of it."

"Lazarus," said Ira, "you have been humming or singing that song every, day you've been up here. All of it. A dozen verses or more."

"Really, Ira? I do hum and sing; I know that. But I don't hear it myself.' It's like the purring of a cat; it just means that I'm functioning okay, board all green, operating at normal cruising. It means that I feel secure, relaxed, and happy- and, come to think of it, I do.

"But 'The Born Loser' doesn't have a mere dozen verses, it has hundreds. What I sang was only a snatch of what Noisy used to sing. He was always fiddling with a song, changing it, adding to it. I don't think this one started out as his; I seem to remember a song about a character whose overcoat was usually in hock clear back when I was very young and raising my first family, on Earth.

"But that song belonged to Noisy when he got through filing off serial numbers and changing the body lines. I heard it again, oh, must have been twenty, twenty-five years later, in a cabaret in Luna City. From Noisy. But he had changed it. Fixed up the scansion, given it a proper rhyme scheme, dolled up the tune. But the tune was still recognizable-in a minor key, wistful rather than sad, and the words were still about this third-rate grifter whose topcoat was always in hock and who sponged off his sister.

"And he had changed, too. A shiny new instrument, a tailored spaceman's uniform, gray hair at the temples-and star billing. I paid a waiter to tell him that 'Happy' Daze was in the audience-not my name then, but the only name Noisy had for me-and after his first group he came over and let me buy him a drink while we swapped lies and talked about our happy days at dear old Hormone Hall.

"I didn't mention to him that he had left us rather abruptly and that the girls had gone into a decline over it, worrying that he might be dead in a ditch-didn't mention it because he did not. But I had had to investigate his disappearance because my staff was so demoralized by it that the place felt like a morgue-no way for a parlor house to be. I was able to establish that he had gone aboard the 'Gyrfalcon' when she was about to lift for Luna City and had not left her-so I told the girls that Noisy had had a sudden opportunity to go home again but had left a message with the port captain for each of them-then added more lies to personalize the goodbye he hadn't made. It perked them up and lifted the gloom. They still missed him, but they all understood that grabbing a ride home was not something he could postpone-and since he had 'remembered' to send a message to each of them, they felt appreciated.

"But it turned out that he did remember them, mentioned each by name. Minerva dear, here is a difference between a blinded flesh-and-blood and one who has never been able to see. Noisy could see a rainbow any time he cared to, by memory. He never stopped 'seeing,' but what he 'saw' was always beauty. I had realized that, some, back when we were on Mars together, for-don't laugh-he thought I was as pretty as you are, Galahad. Told me that he could tell what I looked like from my voice, and described me to me. I had the grace to say that he flattered me but let it lie when he answered that I was too modest-even though I'm not handsome now and wasn't then and modesty has never been one of my vices.

"But Noisy thought all the girls were beautiful, too-and in one case this may have been true and certainly several of them were pretty.

"But he asked me what had become of Olga and added, 'Golly, what a little beauty she was!'

"Kinfolk, Olga wasn't even homely, she was ugly. Face like a mud pie, figure like a gunnysack-only on an outpost like Mars could she get by. What she did have was, a warm and gentle voice and a sweet personality-which was enough, as a customer might pick her through Hobson's choice on a busy night, but once he had done so, he picked her some later time on purpose. Mean to say, dears; beauty will lure a man into bed, but it won't bring him back a second time, unless he's awfully young or very stupid."

"What does bring him back a second time, Grandfather?" asked Hamadryad. "Technique? Muscular control?"

"Have you had any complaints, dear?"

"Well...no."

"Then you know the answer and are truing with me. Neither of those. It's the ability to make a man happy, principally by being happy about it yourself-a spiritual quality rather than a physical one. Olga had it in gobs.

"I told Noisy that Olga had married shortly after he left, happily so, and had three children last I had heard...which was an utter lie, as she had been killed accidentally and the girls bawled about it and I didn't feel good myself and we had shut the place down for four days. But I couldn't tell Noisy that; Olga had been one of the first to mother him, had helped bathe him and had stolen some of my clothes for him while I slept.

"But they all mothered him and never fought over him. I have not deviated from our subject in this rambling account of Noisy; we're still defining 'love.' Anybody want to take whack at it now?"

Galahad said, "Noisy loved every one of them. That's what you've been saying."