"Billy!" I screamed.
"Aw!" he said, and let go.
Hi-nin began to breathe again in a violent, choked way.
"Billy," I said, wondering if I could keep myself from simply throwing
my son out of the helicopter, "Billy...."
"It is nothing, nice mama," Hi-nin said, still choking.
"Billy." I didn't trust myself to speak any further. I reached around
and spanked him until my hand was sore. "If you _ever_ do that again--"
"_Waa!_" Billy bawled. I'm sure he could be heard quite plainly by the
men building the new astronomical station on the Moon.
* * * * *
I put Hi-nin on my lap and kept him there. "That's just Billy's way of
making friends," I whispered to him.
Under Billy's leadership, several other children began to cry, and all
in all it was not a well-integrated, love-sharing group that I lifted
down from the heli at Playplace.
"The children always sense it, don't they," Mrs. Baden said with her
gentle smile, "when we don't feel comfortable about a situation?"
"_Comfortable!_" I cried. It seemed to me the day had become blazing
hot and I didn't remember what I was dressed in until I tried to take
off my jacket. "My son is an inhuman monster. He tried to--to--" I
could feel a big sob coming on.
"Bite?" Mrs. Baden supplied helpfully.
"Strangle," I managed to blurt out.
"We'll be especially considerate of Billy today," Mrs. Baden said.
"He'll be feeling guilty and he senses your discomfort about his
aggression."
"_Senses_ it! I all but tore him limb from limb! That dear little
Hiserean child--"
"I do not want to be of difficulty," Hi-nin said, tears pouring out of
those great, big eyes.
* * * * *
Tears were pouring out of my small blue eyes by this time and Mr.
Grantham, who brings a set of grandchildren, came by and patted my
shoulder.
"Chin up!" he said. "Eyes front!"
Then he looked at his hand and my recently patted shoulder.
"Oh, excuse me," he said. "Would you like to borrow my jacket?"
I shook my head, acutely aware, suddenly, that Mr. Grantham is not a
doddering old grandfather but a young and handsome man. And all he
thought about my bare shoulder was that it ought to be covered.
"You just run along," Mrs. Baden said. "We'll let Billy strangle the
pneumatic dog and everything will be just fine. Oh, and dear--I don't
know whether you've noticed it--you don't have on a dress."
I went home and sat in front of the mirror feeling miserable in several
different directions. If Regina Raymond Crowley appeared in public
dressed only in a boudoir slip, people would think all sorts of wicked
things. When I appeared in public in a boudoir slip, everybody thought
I was just a little absentminded.
This, I thought, is a hell of a thing to worry about. And then I
thought, Oh, phooey. If even I think I'm respectable, what can I
expect other people to think?
I took down the note on the mirror about Regina. No wonder I didn't
like her! I turned the paper over and wrote "Phooey to me!" with my
eyebrow pencil.
I was still regarding the note and trying to argue myself into a better
mood when Clay came tramping down from work at three o'clock.
"Why are you sitting around in a boudoir slip?" he asked.
"You're a double-dyed louse and a great, big alligator head," I told
him.
"Don't mention it," he said. "Where's Billy?"
"Taking his nap. Tell me the truth, Clay. The absolute truth."
Clay looked at me suspiciously. "I'd planned on a little golf this
afternoon."
"This won't take a minute. I don't ask you things like this all the
time, now do I?"
"I still don't know what you're talking about."
I took a deep breath. "Clay, is there anything about me, anything at
all, that is not respectable?"
"There is _not_," he said.
"Well--I guess that's all there is to it," I sighed. I pulled off my
boudoir slip and got a neat paper one out of the slot. "Anyway," I said
bravely, "boudoir slips have to be laundered."
Clay looked at me curiously for a moment and then said, "This looks
like a good afternoon to go play golf."
"Do you think there's anything not respectable about Regina Crowley?"
"There is _everything_ not respectable about Regina Crowley," Clay said
vehemently.
"You see?"
"Frankly, no."
"Well, do you think her husband uses that tone of voice when he says,
'There is _everything_ respectable about Verne Barrat?'"
"I don't know why he should say that at all."
"She might ask him."
"Darling, you're mad as a hatter," Clay said, kissing me good-by.
"Do you really think so?"
"Of course not," Clay roared as he tramped up the steps to the heli.
* * * * *
About nine o'clock the next morning I heard a heli landing on the roof
and I thought, Now who? There was much tooting, and when I went up,
Regina practically threw Hi-nin at me.
"I told you so," she snapped at me. Her face was burning red and she
wasn't bothering to tilt her nose.
"What happened? Why did you bring him back to _me_?"
"His hand," she said, and took off.
Hand? He was holding one hand over the other. No! I grabbed his hands
to see what it was.
One hand had obviously been bitten off at the wrist. He was holding the
wound with the tentacles of his other little boneless hand. There was
very little blood.
"It is as nothing," he said, but when I cradled him in my arms, I could
feel him shaking all over.
"It will grow back," he said.
Would it?
I took him in the heli and held him while I drove. I could feel him
trying to stop himself from shaking, but he couldn't.
"Does it hurt very much?" I asked.
"The pain is small," he said. "It is the fear. The fear is terrible. I
am unable to swallow it."