A call girl had been arrested, after the cops had tapped her telephone and listened. I viewed her attractive face in the tabloids and read the elaborate report of her dialogue with her clients.
(Since when had freedom stooped to tap the phones of prostitutes? What excellence of police was this, in a world community where hardly an honest man or woman remained, where half a billion people slowly starved, where thieves and cheats were commoner than spots of oil or horse-dung in streets? And how the cops enwhored Lady Liberty when they invaded the life of that busy lass! Truly dirty deeds bought their own big privacies: corporations burned their books and politicians lost their records. Mere tarts, however, had their phones tapped and their words recorded. What a splendid free nation I had come to live in! With what marvels of detective science!)
Well—not for long.
My weary effort would soon peter out.
Maybe then I could go and watch Kipling splash on his big-league canvas with brushes of comet's hair.
I pondered for a while over those hairy comets.
Well. All of us had short arms. We all reached too far.
I dialed Dave.
Veto said he was asleep and would call me when he woke.