Audrey’s eyes shone briefly. “No. I’m over there a lot—now. Anyhow, this man repeated most of your eloquence. I didn’t know, Jimmie, that you’d been—wounded.”
“Let’s skip that part.”
“Can’t I even see?”
That was like the more familiar Audrey. “No.”
“All right.” She performed an exorbitant pout, and dissolved it. “You’ve made me very happy anyhow—about Larry. Very happy. It was worth all the weeks I’ve been through. Just that, alone. Let’s talk about something different. Biff, for example. He is a cad, you know.”
“I’m beginning to think so.”
Audrey nodded, slowly, up and down. “Yep. Cad. The very kind the lady novelists write about. A hero—also. The novelists seldom stop to think that, in the case of superheroism—” she barely glanced at him—“there is a compensatory caddishness.
Generated, at times, by doting women. At other times, by too much adrenaline in the pride.”
“Damn it, you sound like Willie!”
“Oh,” she responded equably. “Willie said that first.”