Here Getaway flung his most Yankee-Doodle-Dandy manner, collapsing inward at his extremely thin waistline, arms akimbo, his step designed to be a mincing one, and his voice as soprano as it could be.
"You don't know the half of it, dearie. I've been slapping granny's wrist, just like that. Ts-s-st!"
But somehow the laughter had run out of Marylin's voice. "Getaway," she said, stopping on the sidewalk, so that when he answered his face must be almost level with hers—"you're up to something again."
"I'm up to snuff," he said, and gyrated so that the bamboo cane looped a circle.
She almost cried as she looked at him, so swift was her change of mood, her lips trembling with the quiver of flesh that has been bruised.
"Oh, Getaway!" she said, "get away." And pushed him aside that she might walk on. He did not know, nor did she, for that matter, the rustling that was all of a sudden through her voice, but it was almost one of those moments when she could make his eyes smart.
But what he said was, "For the luvagod, whose dead?"
"Me, in here," she said, very quickly, and placed her hand to her flimsy blouse where her heart beat under it.
"Whadda you mean, dead?"
"Just dead, sometimes—as if something inside of me that can't get out had—had just curled up and croaked."