"Night, darling."
What dripped now was not eau de Croton Reservoir. It came from Wylie's pores.
Almost—I called her back about the plane.
She had sounded fine—thank God!
It was not always so.
We had been married, Ricky and I, for two years (was it three?) and built a candy-box house on an island in Biscayne Bay (before the sixty sewers of Greater Miami belched the water sludge-thick) when she fell sick. Brucellosis, they called it, or undulant fever. In cattle, Bang's disease. The cows abort. They told us it was common everywhere in our fair land and caught from unpasteurized milk, or cheese, ice cream, or meat improperly inspected. The pasteurization laws in those days, they said, were altogether inadequate; inspection was bad; and cattle owners—they said further—were loath to lose their stricken animals. For a small bribe, we were told, they might be warned of impending inspection. Thereupon, they could drive the afflicted members of their herds into hiding while the government agent went by. They were in business (after all) and a buck is sacred; so are American sacred cattle sacred; let the public look after itself. Some of the cowmen don't believe the germ theory, anyhow; they think hygiene is one more racket like their own. And some, of course, like a certain proportion of the men in every business, would sell you leper's dung (neatly packaged—nationally advertised) if there were money in it.
They sold the milk.
We drank it.
Some get brucellosis—some not. Some hundreds of thousands of free American citizens. It is one of the marvels of our Age.
Some die.