"Well, I wouldn't for one," I said defensively. "I only bite when I'm bitten."
She found a handkerchief somewhere and began sopping up the wet spots from her complexion; a complexion, I noted happily, that did not come off with water.
"Have a chair," I said, and rang for the steward. "I hope you drink?"
"Not a lot," she admitted. "But I could use one right now."
"Good," I said, watching her as she poised gracefully on the chair before my cabin's private stereo set. "By the way, my name's Jery. Jery Delvin."
She flushed scarlet again, and said, "Mine is White."
"First name?" I asked. She paused. "What is your first name?"
She looked at the carpet. "Snow," she said softly.
"For real?" I said. "Like with the dwarfs?"
She nodded, as one who'd been over the same conversational ground many wearisome times in the past. "Mother was a Walt Disney fan, back in the Age of Movies."