door, it opened in front
of me, and a stylishly dressed young lady came out, smiling, with
Pheola standing in the doorway behind her.

"Lefty!" Pheola said happily.

"Is this your fiance?" the girl said to Pheola.

"No!" I said. "I'm her chiropractor, and I'm about to straighten out
some vertebrae in her neck!"

Something about the way I said it made the girl from the department
store scuttle down the corridor. I glared at her back, went into
Pheola's apartment and shut the door.

"What were you telling her?" I started, and then I knew there was no
point to it. I waved an irritated hand and kept on talking.

"When will your clothes be here?"

"Some things for tonight in about an hour," she said meekly. "I got
quite a lot. Was that all right?"

"If you keep shooting off your puss about our getting married, you
won't last long enough to wear them all," I threatened. "Can you find
Room 4307, or will I have to take you down?"

"I can find it if you want me to, Lefty," she said.

I was sick of being her darlin' Billy. "Then find it," I said. "Ask
for Norty. Tell him you are my PC. Do what he tells you. I'll pick you
up around seven o'clock back here. All right?"

"All right."

"And stop telling people we're going to get married!"

She didn't answer that, so I let myself out and went to my own
apartment, sizzling.

* * * * *

The phone was ringing as I came in, and I walked over to press the
"Accept" button. The screen lit up to show me a lined and wrinkled
face framed in scraggling hair streaked with gray.

"Hello, Evaleen," I said to her.

"This is dynamite," she said in a graveyard tone. "In the gym, in
about ten minutes?"

I could feel my eyebrows rise. "Sure," I said, and before I could
foolishly ask her what it was all about, she cut the image.

It isn't that our phones are tapped. Maragon doesn't need that. But in
a building full of telepaths, any conversation is going to be peeped
if you carry it on long enough. And who can keep his mind closed while
he's talking? It's hard enough when you're silent.

I rode directly down to twenty and let myself into the locker room. By
the time I had changed into my gym suit, Evaleen Riley's ten minutes
had elapsed, and I went into the gym.

If she wanted to be careful about our conversation there was no point
going directly to wherever she was working out, so I wandered.

There was the usual dozen or so TK's there practici