"She certainly did!"
"I'm just as certain she did so without depriving her husband. Jake, do you have reason to believe that she limited herself to you—and her husband?"
"Uh— Damn you, Johann! I don't know. But I don't think she had time. Uh, I used up all the sneak-out time she could manage."
(Look, Boss, I'll tell you about every time I struck a blow for equal rights. Don't pester Jake.) (You're missing the point, Eunice. I'm forcing Jake to move Saint Eunice off her pedestal—that's the only way we'll ever get him.)
"How do you know? Can you be sure she didn't tell you the same sort of little white lies she told her husband? For that matter, Jake, Joe may have been as proud of his antlers as an old buck deer—the percentage of husbands who are pleased by their wives' adulteries has been climbing steadily in this country at least since nineteen-fifty—see any of the kinseys. That he loved her we both are certain. That does not prove he tried to keep her in a cage. Or wanted to."
"Joan, I would just as lief you didn't run down Eunice to me."
"Jake darling! I am not running her down. I am trying to find out what you know about her, so that I can model myself more closely after her. I loved her—and love her still more today. But if you told me that you knew she was mistress to six other men, a whore on the side, and playing girl games in her spare time—I—well, I've never known you to lie to me, Jake, so I would try to go and do likewise. You haven't told me much but what you have told me confirms what I believed—that Eunice was a perfect lady, with enough love in her heart to love three men at once and give each of them exactly what he needed to make him happy." (Thank you, Boss. Shall I bow?) (Quiet, little darling.) "But not a wanton, never a slut, and—while she wasn't prudish—I doubt if Winnie would have interested her." (Now wait one frimping minute!) (I'm telling him what he wants to bear, dear—if you want Winnie, we'll keep it out of Jake's sight.) (Who wants Winnie? You dirty old man!) (We both do—but it may be smart never to let it hatch. Dearest, Winnie wouldn't look at us with a man around.) (Want to bet?)
Joan sighed. "Jake, with my unique double inheritance it would be easy for me to turn ambi-female. I'm not going to, because I don't think Eunice would. With the deep. female drive this body has—bloodstream brimming with hormones and gonads the size of gourds is the way it feels—I could easily become ‘No-Pants Smith, the Girl Most Likely To.' Very easily—as Johann Smith was an old vulgarian who regretted only the temptations he had been forced to pass up. But I'm not going to do that, either, as Eunice did not behave that way. But if I don't get married fairly soon, I'm going to find it hard to stay off the tiles."
"Joan, I love you—but I am not going to marry you. It's out of the question."
"Then you had better help my granddaughters to swindle me."
"Eh? Why?"
"You know why. A multimillionaire who is young and female stands as much chance of getting a good husband as that well-known tissue-paper dog had of chasing that asbestos cat through Hell. Lots of them in our country—and all they ever got were Georgian princes, riding masters, and other gigolos. I don't want one, won't have one. I'd rather be broke, like Winnie, and take what love I can find. Jake, besides the fact that you understand me and no one else can, you'd still be in my top ten because my money does not impress you. Quite aside from wonderful fact that I love you and you love me, any marriage broker would call us a perfect match."
"Hardly. There's still the matter of age—body ages. Joan, a man who marries at my age isn't taking a wife, he's indenturing a nurse."
"Oh, frog hair, lake! You don't need one and I'll lay even money that you'll stay strong and virile right through my breeding period. But when you do need one I'll nurse you. In the meantime we'll sing. ‘September Song'—you lead, I'll harmonize."
"I sing bass. And I won't sing ‘September Song.'"
"Jake? We could buy you a new body. When you need it."
"No, Joan. I've had a long run and a good one, most of it happy, all of it interesting. When my time comes, I'll go quietly. I won't make the mistake you did, I won't let myself fall into the hands of the medics, with their artificial kidneys and their dials and their plumbing. I'll die as my ancestors died."
She sighed. "And you called me stubborn. I've taken you up on a high mountain and shown you the kingdoms of the earth—and you tell me it's Los Angeles. All right, I'll quit pestering you—and humbly accept any love you can spare. Jake, will you take me out on the town and introduce me to eligible young men? You can spot a fortune hunter—I think Eunice may be too naive, too inclined to think the best of people." (Rats, Boss, I bought me a gigolo with my eyes open...and, since I wasn't kidding myself, I bought top quality.) (I know you did, darling—but the Joe Brancas in this world are as scarce as the Jake Salomons.)
"Joan Eunice, if you want me to escort you, I'll be honored... and I'll try to keep pascoodnyaks away from you."
"I'll hold you to that, you not-so-very-old darling, lake, I asked if you believed in ghosts. Do you have any religion?"
"Eh? None. My parents were Orthodox, I think you know. My Bar Mitzvah speech was so praised that I had to fight to study law instead of being trained as a rabbi. But I shook off all that before I entered college."
"Parallels me, somewhat. My grandparents came from the south of Germany, Catholic. So the priests had a crack at me first. Then we moved to the Middle West before I started school, and Papa, who was never devout, decided it would be better—better for business, maybe—to be a Baptist. So I got the Bible-Belt routine, with hellfire and damnation and my sins washed away with full immersion.
It was the Bible-Belt indoctrination that stuck, particularly the unconscious attitudes.
"But, consciously and intellectually, I shucked off all of it when I was fourteen—probably the only real intellectual feat of my life. I became an aggressive atheist—except at home—and scorned to believe in anything I could not bite. Then I backed away from that—atheism is as fanatic as any religion and it's not my nature to be fanatic—and became a relaxed agnostic, unsure of final answers but more patient. I stayed that way three-quarters of a century; I left religion to the shamans and ignored it."
"My own policy."
"Yes. But let me tell you something that happened while I was dead."
"What? You were never dead, Joan—Johann, damn it!—you were merely unconscious."
"I wasn't, eh? With no body, and my brain cut off from the world and me not even aware of myself? If that is not death, Jake, it is an unreasonable facsimile. I told you that I thought Eunice's spirit has often given me a hand."
‘1 heard you. I ignored it''
"You stiff-necked old bastard. I haven't taken up seances and such. But here is what happens. When I am in a quandary—often, these days—I ask myself, ‘What would Eunice do!' That's all it takes, Jake; I know at once. No ectoplasm or voices from a medium—just instant knowledge not based on my own experience. Such as this afternoon when I decided in a split second to kiss Alec and Mac. No hesitation—you saw! That's not the way old Johann would behave... and yet you tell me I haven't missed behaving like Eunice even once. That's why it feels as if her sweet spirit were guiding me. Any comment?"
"Mmm ... No. You do behave like her... other than when you tell me flatly that you're speaking as Johann. But I don't believe in ghosts. Johann, if I thought I had to go on being Jake Salomon throughout all eternity, I'd—well, I would register a complaint at the Main Office."
"Let me tell you what happened to me at the Main Office."