She interrupted him. “Would ennui be enough?” she asked. “Just simple ennui?”
He wrote ennui for the reason and shoved the application to one side. “You can sign it later.”
“I can sign it now.”
“We’d prefer you wait a little.”
Blaine fiddled with the pencil, trying to think it out—wondering why this client should disturb him so. Lucinda Silone was wrong and he couldn’t place the wrongness; yet, he knew he should be able to, for he met all sorts of clients.
“If you wish,” he said, “we could discuss the Dream. Usually we don’t but…”
“Let’s discuss it,” she said.
“A Dream is not necessary,” he told her. “There are those who take the Sleep without one. I don’t wish to appear to be arguing against a Dream; in many cases it appears to me to be preferable. You would not be conscious of the time—an hour or a century is no longer than a second. You go to sleep; then you wake, and it is as if there had been no time at all…”
“I want a Dream,” she said.
“In that case, we are glad to serve you. Have you thought what kind?”
“A friendly dream. A restful one and friendly.”
“No excitement? No adventure?”
“Some; perhaps, it might get monotonous otherwise. But genteel, if you please.”
“A polite society, perhaps,” suggested Blaine. “Let’s say, one much concerned with manners.”
“And no competition, if you can manage it; no rushing about to beat out someone else.”
“An old, established home,” continued Blaine. “Good position in the community, high family traditions; sufficient income to banish money worries.”
“It sounds a bit archaic.”
“It’s the kind of Dream you asked for.”
“Of course,” she said. “What am I thinking of? It will be lovely. It’s the sort of thing, the sort…” she laughed. “The sort of thing you dream of.”
He laughed with her.
“You like it? We can change it, bring it up to date.”
“Don’t you dare, it’s just what I want.”
“You’ll want to be young, I suppose, younger than twenty-nine—sixteen or seventeen.”
She nodded.
“And pretty, of course, you would be beautiful despite anything we did.”
She did not answer.
“Plenty of admirers,” he said. “We could put in lots of them.”
She nodded.
“Sexual adventures?”
“A few, don’t overdo it, though.”
“We’ll keep it dignified,” he promised. “You’ll have no regrets; we’ll give you a Dream you’ll need not be ashamed of—one you can look back upon with a lot of happiness. There naturally will have to be some disappointments, a few heartaches; happiness can’t run on forever without getting stale. There must be something, even in a Dream, upon which you can establish comparative values.”
“I’ll leave that all to you.”
“All right, then, we’ll get to work on it. Could you come back, say in three days’ time? We’ll have it roughed out then and we can go over it together. It may take half a dozen—well, let us call them fittings, before we have what you want.”
Lucinda Silone rose and held out her hand. Her clasp was firm and friendly. “I’ll stop at the cashier’s and pay the fee,” she said. “And thanks, so very much.”
“There’s no need to pay the fee this soon.”
“I’ll feel better when I do.”
Norman Blaine watched her go, then sat back down again. The intercom buzzed. “Yes, Irma.”
His secretary said, “Harriet called. You were with the client, and couldn’t be disturbed; she left a message.”
“What did she want?”
“Just to let you know she can’t have dinner with you tonight. She said something about an assignment, some big bug from Centauri.”
He said: “Irma, let me give you a tip. Never fall in love with Communications. You can’t depend on them.”
“You keep forgetting, Mr. Blaine; I married Transportation.”
“So I do,” said Blaine.
“George and Herb are out here waiting. They’ve been slapping one another on the back and rolling on the floor. Take them off my hands before I go stark raving.”
“Send them in,” he said.
“Are they all right?”
“George and Herb?”
“Who else?”
“Certainly, Irma; it’s just the way they work.”
“It’s a comfort to know that,” she said, “I’ll shoo them in.”
He settled back and watched the two come in. They sprawled themselves in chairs.
George shied a folder at him. “The Jenkins Dream; we got it all worked out.”
“He’s a jerk who wants to hunt big game,” said Herb; “we cooked up some dillies for him.”
“We made it authentic,” George declared with pride; “we didn’t skip a thing. We put him in the jungle, and we put in mud and insects and the heat; we crammed the place with ravenous nightmares. There’s something thirsting for his blood behind every bush.”
“It’s no hunt,” said Herb; “it’s a running battle. When he isn’t scared, he’s jumpy. Damned if I can figure out a guy like that.”
“It takes all kinds,” said Blaine.
“Sure; and we get them all.”
“Some day,” Blaine told them drily, “you guys will lay it on so thick you’ll get booted to Conditioning.”
“They can’t do that,” said Herb. “You got to have a medical degree to get into Conditioning. And George and me, we couldn’t bandage a finger the way it should be done.”
George shrugged. “We haven’t a thing to worry about; Myrt takes care of that. When we go too hog wild, she tames it down.”
Blaine laid the folder to one side. “I’ll feed it in before I leave tonight.” He picked up the pad. “I have something different here. You’ll have to slick down your hair and get on good behavior before I turn you loose on it.”
“The one who just went out?”
Blaine nodded.
“I could cook up a Dream for her,” said Herb.
“She wants peace and dignity,” Blaine informed them. “Genteel society. A sort of modern version of mid-nineteenth century Old Plantation days. No rough stuff; just magnolia and white columns; horses in the bluegrass.”
“Likker, “ said Herb. “Oceans of likker. Bourbon and mint leaves and …”
“Cocktails,” Blaine told him, “and not too many of them.”
“Fried chicken,” said George, getting into the act. “Watermelon. Moonlight. River boats. Lemme at it.”
“Not so fast; you have the wrong approach. Slow and easy. Tame down. Imagine slow music. A sort of eternal waltz.”
“We could put in a war,” said Herb; “they fought polite in those days. Sabers and all dressed up in fancy uniforms.”
“She doesn’t want a war.”
“You gotta have some action.”
“No action—or very little of it. No worry; no competition. Gentility …”
“And us,” lamented George, “all spattered up with jungle mud.”
The intercom buzzed. “The b.a. wants to see you,” Irma said.
“O.K., tell him …”
“He wants to see you now.”
“Oh, oh,” said George.
“I always liked you, Norm,” said Herb.
“All right,” said Blaine. “Tell him I’ll be right up.”
“After all these years,” Herb said, sadly. “Cutting throats and stabbing backs to get ahead and now it comes to this.”
George drew his forefinger across his throat and made a hissing sound, like a blade slashing into flesh.
They were very funny.