gie, Tomboy Taylor was a mighty
attractive dish, and I knew that she could also be a bright and
interesting conversationalist if she wanted to be. Under other
circumstances I might have enjoyed the company, but it was no pleasure
to know that every grain of her one hundred and fourteen pounds
avoirdupois was Barcelona's Personal Property. At that moment I realized
that I was not too much concerned with what Barcelona's reaction might
be. Instead, I was wishing that things were different so that any
activity between us would be for our own personal gain and pleasure
rather than the order of or the fight against one Joseph Barcelona.
There was one consolation. Tomboy Taylor had not come equipped with a
box of Pittsburgh stogies with which to make my appreciation of beauty
throw up its lunch.

She said, sweetly, "The better to ensnare you, my dear."

But as she spoke, for just a moment her thick woolly mind shield thinned
out enough for me to catch a strange, puzzled grasp for understanding.
As if for the first time she had been shown how admiration for physical
attractiveness could be both honest and good. That my repugnant attitude
over her Pittsburgh stogies was not so much based upon the spoiling of
beauty by the addition of ugliness, but the fact that the act itself
cheapened her in my eyes.

Then she caught me peeking and clamped down a mind screen that made the
old so-called "Iron Curtain" resemble a rusty sieve.

"I'm the one that's supposed to keep track of you, you remember," she
said, once more covering up and leaping mentally to the attack.

"I'll remember," I said. "But will you tell me something?"

"Maybe," she said in a veiled attitude.

"Is your boy friend really interested in cleaning up, or is he
interested in watching me squirm out of a trap he set for me?"

"In the first place," she said, "I may have been seen in Barcelona's
presence but please remember that my association with Mr. Joseph
Barcelona has always been strictly on a financial plane. This eliminates
the inference contained under the phrase 'Boy Friend.' Check?"

"O.K., Tomboy, if that's the--"

"That's not only the way I want it," she said, "but that's the way it
always has been and always will be. Second, I have been getting tired of
this nickname 'Tomboy'. If we're going to be racked this close together,
you'll grate on my nerves less if you use my right name. It's just plain
'Nora' but I'd like to hear it once in a while."

I