“God.”

“Oh, yes, yourname got into this. Now, are you worried? Kathy said she knew grotesques on Blunt with more taste, this, when another customer had come into the shop! Ms. Trent threatened to call the police.” Judy was shaking. She picked up the glass and almost slopped the wine over the rim getting another sip. “I can never go back there, Setha. I can never go back there. I don’t think I ever want to leave the apartment again in my life!”

“Judy.” He did feel sorry for her. Glass and all, he put his arms around her. “You have to go back there. Tomorrow. I’d advise an apology to Ms. Trent and a very large purchase. Break the budget.”

“I don’t know why Kathy’s acting like this, Setha, I don’t understand it!”

“I’ll talk to her.” At the moment he had Judy in his arms and a wineglass precariously crushed against her bosom. He disengaged carefully. “Are you all right?”

“I need you to be home and deal with this!”

He was suddenly aware of a burnt smell. “I think the fish is done.”

“Damn!” Judy burst into tears and grabbed the oven door.

“I’ll talk to Kathy.” It was an escape. Judy was about at the screaming stage herself, and it didn’t do to push her to communicate. As Judy should learn about Kathy someday, except they were too much alike. Two queens couldn’t possibly sit on the same throne.

Cutting school sessions and sneaking out into the real nether-side of Blunt, however, was a serious matter. A screaming fit in Marie Trent’s was serious on another level, an exposure to gossip that did his wife and daughter no good, and him no political good at all under present circumstances, with the media on the hunt and frustrated. He’d better call Marie Trent’s himself, apologize profusely, and buy something extremely expensive for Judy, trusting Marie Trent had Judy’s sizes in the computer.

He could do all these things afterhe’d dealt with Mr. Andreas Gide, tomorrow morning, assuming the ambassador’s ship arrived on schedule.

God, Judy and Kathy could time things amazingly. One night he spent at the office, and they were immediately at each other’s throats.

He took the lift up to Kathy’s hallway, walked to Kathy’s door. Hesitated. Knocked.

“Kathy. It’s your father.”

“Go away!”

“Kathy, I’ve got a ship from Earth on my doorstep and your mother’s burning supper downstairs. We need to talk.”

“No!”

“I heard about Marie Trent. I sympathize with your position and I’m not sure her clothes are your style, but can we possibly avoid stationwide media coverage?”

A heavy thump. Something hit the wall. Little thumps then as bare footsteps marched to the door.

It opened. Kathy stood there flatfooted, a beautiful teenaged girl in a gray, too-old-for-her skirt, a chic white silk blouse half-unbuttoned and hanging its tail out to the left, and her hair an unKathy-like and shocking red-brown, with her olive complexion. Behind her, the closet was a disaster area, clothes, mostly black and gray and white, flung over the bed and onto the floor, along with a confetti of fabric bits on the floor. His daughter’s chest was heaving. She had a scissors in her hand.

“She threw out all my clothes and put her damned castoffs in my closet!”

He heaved a sigh. “We’ll find your old clothes. Put down the scissors.”

“She says she put them in the disposer! Those were my favorites! She hates me! Everybody hates me!”

“Damn. Look, Kathy.” He put a hand on her shoulder. Kathy flung it off, a hazard with the scissors. He took the implement out of her hand, reached in his pocket and extracted his wallet, and now that he had her slight attention, drew from that mesmerizing object a credit card, holding it up between them. “Kathy, I’ll give you five hundred on my card. Just go buy something on your own tomorrow, without your mother. I’ll excuse you out of sessions.”

Five hundred had secured his daughter’s solid interest. She wiped her eyes and took the card.

“I just don’t know why she can’t leave me alone.”

“I’m on your side, right down to the point you cut your sessions, which is in the school records. On that score, I have an objection. Cutting up your clothes…I can almost sympathize with that. They don’t suit you.”

“I hate them!”

“The clothes? That’s evident.”

“The school. The damned school! I hate them, too!”

“Don’t use that language, please. What’s the trouble?”

“They’re a bore, and they’re always finding fault, no matter what I do.”

“Ippoleta Nazrani?”

“Is a skinny-ass whore.”

“Language. Language, Kathy.”

“Mignette.”

“Pardon?”

“I want to change my name. I want to change schools.”

“Why?”

“I’m bored. I’m bored, bored, bored, boredwith those fools.”

“Boredom rather well damns your own imagination, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t care. I don’t like always having to watch what I do, watch what I say, all because Ippoletais so good and so sweet. She’s a lump. She’s just a lump. She’d wear these things! I won’t!”

“Kathy.”

“Mignette. I want to be Mignette. It’s what my friends call me.”

“Mignette.” It was always something new with the female of the species. She wanted to change her school and change her name. As if that would solve it all. “I hope I’m still your father.”

“Mother’s not my mother.” A furious kick at the detritus of fabric snips on the floor. “Not anymore! And I haven’t got anything to wear and she says I’m not to talk to Denny and Mark, who are the onlyintelligent people in my whole class. And she embarrassed hell out of me with this stupidhaircut and this stupiddye job and I have to go out in public and have that stupidwoman tell me I’m fat because I have a chest and she doesn’t!”

“You know, Kathy—Mignette—I completely sympathize about the remarks. But you can’t pitch a fit in your mother’s favorite shop. She took you there because she cares about you and she wanted to give you what she thinks is pretty.”

“She took me there because she thinks I’m fat, too, and she doesn’t like my clothes and she hates my friends and she’s thrown out all my stuff, and she just drives me crazy,papa, she just drives me crazy!”

Now it was tears. Hormone wars, he’d about bet, fiftyish wife and teenaged daughter, who physically took after his side of the family. He gathered his outraged daughter in his arms and hugged her hard. “There, there, Mignette or Kathy, you’ll have five cee to go fix this tomorrow. You’re a good kid. You manage pretty well, all taken together—you don’t do drugs, you don’t do illicits, you usually don’t do things that I have to explain on the news and I appreciate that, I respect it, I really do. You can just come by the office tomorrow when you get through and show me what you’ve bought. And I’ll talk to your mother.”

“She’s not my mother, I tell you!”

“I’m afraid you’re stuck with biological fact, darling girl, you’re hers as well as mine, which is why you’re always fighting with each other. I want you to wash your face, tuck your shirttail in, and come downstairs.”

“No!”

“You can’t starve. I’m sure it’s a lovely fish, even a little singed. Just be my sweet daughter and learn to be a diplomat.”

“I don’t want to be a diplomat.”

“What doyou want to be someday?”

“I want to be rich, and buy anything I want and not have to be polite to anybody.”

“I’m Governor of Concord, and I absolutely have to be polite to everybody. Money and power won’t do that for you, Kathy-sweet. Mignette. Nothing ever excuses rudeness. Not yours and not your mother’s, and I hate it when you do this to each other. Temper always makes a mess of your surroundings, and if you’re smart, you mop it up as soon as you know about it. Now go wash your face. Put on your robe, if you don’t want to wear what you have on—I trust your bathrobe survived the scissors—and come down to dinner and be nice to your mother.”