“Ask me!” Cheerful Charley piped. “I can see you have something on your mind, mister. You good-looking bastard, you.”

He let that pass. “This girl,” he began, but instantly Kathy grabbed Cheerful Charley away from him, stood holding it, her nostrils flaring, her eyes filled with indignation.

“The hell you’re going to ask my Cheerful Charley about me,” she said, one eyebrow raised. Like a wild bird, he thought, going through elaborate motions to protect her nest.

He laughed. “What’s funny?” Kathy demanded.

“These talking toys,” he said, “are more nuisance than utilitarian. They ought to be abolished.” He walked away from her, then to a clutter of mail on a TV-stand table. Aimlessly, he sorted among the envelopes, noticing vaguely that none of the bills had been opened.

“Those are mine,” Kathy said defensively, watching him.

“You get a lot of bills,” he said, “for a girl living in a one-room schmalch. You buy your clothes—or what else?—at Metter’s? Interesting.”

“I—take an odd size.”

He said, “And Sax and Crombie shoes.”

“In my work—” she began, but he cut her off with a convulsive swipe of his hand.

“Don’t give me that,” he grated.

“Look in my closet. You won’t see much there. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that what I do have is good. I’d rather have a little amount of something good…” Her words trailed off. “You know,” she said vaguely, “than a lot of junk.”

Jason said, “You have another apartment.”

It registered; her eyes flickered as she looked into herself for an answer. That, for him, constituted plenty.

“Let’s go there,” he said. He had seen enough of this cramped little room.

“I can’t take you there,” Kathy said, “because I share it with two other girls and the way we’ve divided up the use, this time is—”

“Evidently you weren’t trying to impress me.” It amused him. But also it irritated him; he felt downgraded, nebulously.

“I would have taken you there if today were my day,” Kathy said. “That’s why I have to keep this little place going; I’ve got to have someplace to go when it’s not my day. My day, my next one, is Friday. From noon on.” Her tone had become earnest. As if she wished very much to convince him. Probably, he mused, it was true. But the whole thing irked him. Her and her whole life. He felt, now, as if he had been snared by something dragging him down into depths he had never known about before, even in the early, bad days. And he did not like it.

He yearned all at once to be out of here. The animal at bay was himself.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Kathy said, sipping her screwdriver.

To himself, but aloud, he said, “You have bumped the door of life open with your big, dense head. And now it can’t be closed.”

“What’s that from?” Kathy asked.

“From my life.”

“But it’s like poetry.”

“If you watched my show,” he said, “you’d know I come up with sparklers like that every so often.”

Appraising him calmly, Kathy said, “I’m going to look in the TV log and see if you’re listed. “ She set down her screwdriver, fished among discarded newspapers piled at the base of the wicker table.

“I wasn’t even born,” he said. “I checked on that.”

“And your show isn’t listed,” Kathy said, folding the newsprint page back and studying the log.

“That’s right,” he said. “So now you have all the answers about me.” He tapped his vest pocket of forged ID cards. “Including these. With their microtransmitters, if that much is true.”

“Give them back to me,” Kathy said, “and I’ll erad the microtransmitters. It’ll only take a second.” She held out her hand.

He returned them to her.

“Don’t you care if I take them off?” Kathy inquired.

Candidly, he answered, “No, I really don’t. I’ve lost the ability to tell what’s good or bad, true or not true, anymore. If you want to take the dots off, do it. If it pleases you.”

A moment later she returned the cards, smiling her sixteen-year-old hazy smile.

Observing her youth, her automatic radiance, he said,” ‘I feel as old as yonder elm.’

“From Finnegans Wake,” Kathy said happily. “When the old washerwomen at dusk are merging into trees and rocks.”

“You’ve read Finnegans Wake?” he asked, surprised.

“I saw the film. Four times. I like Hazeltine; I think he’s the best director alive.”

“I had him on my show,” Jason said. “Do you want to know what he’s like in real life?”

“No,” Kathy said.

“Maybe you ought to know.”

“No,” she repeated, shaking her head; her voice had risen. “And don’t try to tell me—okay? I’ll believe what I want to believe, and you believe what you believe. All right?”

“Sure,” he said. He felt sympathetic. The truth, he had often reflected, was overrated as a virtue. In most cases a sympathetic lie did better and more mercifully. Especially between men and women; in fact, whenever a woman was involved.

This, of course, was not, properly speaking, a woman, but a girl. And therefore, he decided the kind lie was even more of a necessity.

“He’s a scholar and an artist,” he said.

“Really?” She regarded him hopefully.

“Yes.”

At that she sighed in relief.

“Then you believe,” he said, pouncing, “that I have met Michael Hazeltine, the finest living film director, as you said yourself. So you do believe that I am a six—” He broke off; that had not been what he intended to say.

“‘A six,’ “ Kathy echoed, her brow furrowing, as if she were trying to remember. “I read about them in Time. Aren’t they all dead now? Didn’t the government have them all rounded up and shot, after that one, their leader—what was his name?—Teagarden; yes, that’s his name. Willard Teagarden. He tried to—how do you say it?—pull off a coup against the federal flats? He tried to get them disbanded as an illegal parimutuel—”

“Paramilitary,” Jason said.

“You don’t give a damn about what I’m saying.”

Sincerely, he said, “I sure do.” He waited. The girl did not continue. “Christ,” he spat out. “Finish what you were saying!”

“I think,” Kathy said at last, “that the sevens made the coup not come off.”

He thought. Sevens. Never in his life had he heard of sevens. Nothing could have shocked him more. Good, he thought, that I let out that lapsus linguae. I have genuinely learned something, now. At last. In this maze of confusion and the half real.

A small section of wall creaked meagerly open and a cat, black and white and very young, entered the room. At once Kathy gathered him up, her face shining.

“Dinman’s philosophy,” Jason said. “The mandatory cat.” He was familiar with the viewpoint; he had in fact introduced Dinman to the TV audience on one of his fall specials.

“No, I just love him,” Kathy said, eyes bright as she carried the cat over to him for his inspection.

“But you do believe,” he said, as he patted the cat’s little head, “that owning an animal increases a person’s empathic—”

“Screw that,” Kathy said, clutching the cat to her throat as if she were a five-year-old with its first animal. Its school project: the communal guinea pig. “This is Domenico,” she said.

“Named after Domenico Scarlatti?” he asked.

“No, after Domenico’s Market, down the Street; we passed it on our way here. When I’m at the Minor Apartment—this room—I shop there. Is Domenico Scarlatti a musician? I think I’ve heard of him.”

Jason said, “Abraham Lincoln’s high school English teacher.”

“Oh.” She nodded absently, now rocking the cat back and forth.

“I’m kidding you,” he said, “and it’s mean. I’m sorry.”

Kathy gazed up at him earnestly as she clutched her small cat. “I never know the difference,” she murmured.

“That’s why it’s mean,” Jason said.

“Why?” she asked. “If I don’t even know. I mean, that means I’m just dumb. Doesn’t it?”

“You’re not dumb,” Jason said. “Just inexperienced.” He calculated, roughly, their age difference. “I’ve lived over twice as long as you,” he pointed out. “And I’ve been in the position, in the last ten years, to rub elbows with some of the most famous people on earth. And—”