Malone put in a great deal of time, he imagined, just staring at the face of the little old lady on the screen. At last he spoke. "My God," he said. "Her name is Fueyo. I'll be damned."
"I've told you," the Queen said with some asperity, "not to swear, Sir
Kenneth."
"I know," Malone said. "But—"
"You're excited," the Queen said. "You're stunned. Goodness, you don't need to tell me that, Sir Kenneth. I know."
"But she's—" Malone discovered that he couldn't talk. He swallowed a couple of times and then went on. "She's Mike Fueyo's sister."
"That's exactly right, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said. "That's just what
I told you."
"Then she swiped the book to protect her little brother," Malone said.
"Oh, boy."
"Exactly, Sir Kenneth," the Queen said.
"And she doesn't care about me at all," Malone said. "I mean, she only went out with me because I was me. Malone. And she wanted the notebook. That was all there was to it." He added an expletive. The Queen frowned, but said nothing about it.
"I wouldn't say that if I were you," she went on. "Quite the contrary. She does like you, you know. And she thinks you're a very nice person." The Queen beamed. "You are, you know," she said.