“I don’t mind,” said Stokharin disagreeably, but he did adjust his glasses.
“I’d a feeling we’d have a few people in to see us but no idea it would be like this.” He turned to me as the quietest, the least dangerous of the three. “You wouldn’t believe the response to last night’s telecast if I told you.”
“Why don’t you tell me?” The comic aspects were becoming apparent: Stokharin’s assaulted dignity and the ruin of Clarissa’s ingenious hair both seemed to me suddenly funny; I cleared my throat to obscure the tickling of a smile. Paul named some stupendous figures with an air of triumph. “And there are more coming all the time. Think of that!”
“Are they favorable?”
“Favorable? Who cares?” Paul was pacing the floor quickly, keyed to the breaking-point had he possessed the metabolism of a normal man. “We’ll have a breakdown over the weekend. Hired more people already. Whole lot working all the time. By the way, we’re moving.”
“Not a moment too soon,” said Clarissa balefully. “I suggest, in fact, we move now while there are even these few police to protect us. When they go home for lunch (they all eat enormous lunches, one can tell), that crowd is going to come in here and throw us out the window.”
“Or suffocate us with love,” said Paul.
Stokharin looked at Clarissa thoughtfully; with his turned-around necktie he had a sacerdotal look. “Do you often think of falling from high places? of being pushed from windows or perhaps high trees?”
“Only when I’m on the top floor of the world’s highest building surrounded by raving maniacs do such forebodings occur to me, doctor. Had you a greater sense of reality you might be experiencing the same apprehension.”
Stokharin clapped his hands happily. “Classic, classic. To believe she alone knows reality. Madam, I suggest that you....”