"If you honestly think I'm not half bad, could you do it just as a
favor to me? Pick up Hi-nin when you have the car pool?"
"The Hiserean child? No."
"Please, Regina. I'd do it _for_ you except that the children would
notice and it would get back to Mrs. His-tara. If there's anything I
could do for you in return--"
"What could you possibly do?"
"I don't know. But I _can't_ go back and tell that dear creature our
car pool doesn't want her."
"_Stop_ looking so intense. That's what keeps you from being the
boudoir-slip type. You always look as though you're going out to break
up a saloon or campaign for better Public Child Protection. The boudoir
slip requires a languorous expression."
"Phooey to looking languorous. And phooey to boudoir slips. I'd wear
diapers to nursery school if you'd change your mind about taking along
Hi-nin."
"Would you wear a boudoir slip?"
"I--hell, yes."
"And nothing else?"
"Only my various means of support. And my respectability."
Regina laughed her tiger-on-the-third-Christian laugh. "What I want to
find out," she said, "is how you manage the respectability bit."
It dawned on me while I was grinding the pepper for Clay's salad that
Regina had explained herself. All of a sudden I saw straight through
her and I wondered why I hadn't seen it before. Regina _envied_ me.
Now on the face of it, that seemed unlikely. But it occurred to me
that Regina's parents had been the poor but honest and uneducated sort
that simply are never asked to chaperone school parties. And the fact
is that they were not what Regina thought of as respectable, though it
never occurred to anyone but her that it mattered. And since all her
culture was acquired after the age of thirteen, she felt it didn't fit
properly and that's why she went out of her way to be arty-arty.
Whereas I took for granted all the things Regina had learned so
painstakingly, and this in turn was what made me so irritatingly
respectable.
As Regina had suggested, perhaps it _is_ the expression on one's face
that makes the difference.
* * * * *
"Hey!" a cop yelled, pulling up as close to us as his rotors would
allow. "What the hell?"
"I beg your pardon," I said frigidly. It is very frigid in November if
you are out in a helicopter dressed only in a boudoir slip.
"Look de bleesemans!" Gail cried.
"He might shoot everybody!" Billy warned.