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being neighborly. The place is crawling with urchins all the time, and Di and I couldn’t care less, really. Your two are sweethearts, and Floss will stuff a lunch into them on schedule, and Esperanza will keep them safe. In bad weather we’ve got that huge indestructible playroom.”
    After much argument, Claire had agreed to let her pay Floss and Esperanza an additional five dollars a week for the work and the responsibility. Roy and Alicia had begun to think of the Sinnatplace as a second home. It was good not to have to worry about them. Van had had both of them swimming by the time they had learned to walk.
    The kids were subdued at dinner, their brown faces drowsy, their voices slowed by the exhaustions of the long hot day. Their objections at being told to go to bed were halfhearted.
    After they were asleep and the dishes done, Kat hesitated for some time, inventing and discarding plausible excuses, then phoned Sally Ann Lesser.
    “I thought you might be at the Deegans’ party,” Kat said.
    “Oh hell, no,” Sally Ann said. “Sammy and Wilma go further afield for their weird guests. They find people nobody ever saw before.” Her voice was slightly slurred. “Kat, honey, why don’t you come on down here and help Carol and me destroy reputations? I’ll send my idiot daughter up. She can do her summer-school homework just as well there as here. And don’t let her shill you into a sitter fee this time.”
    Frosty Lesser arrived within five minutes with an armful of books. She was fifteen and looked older because of the maturity of her figure and her indifferent, impenetrable poise.
    When Kat went up the walk toward the Lessers’ front door, Sally Ann called to her, “Out here in the cage, dear. Come around.”
    She went across the lawn and around to the side door to the screened cage. The outside floods were on, and there was a faint reflected glow inside the high cage. Sally Ann reclined in a white chaise. She was a sturdy, muscular, brown woman with a heavy, affirmative jaw, curly gray hair worn very short. She wore swimsuits in hot weather, slacks and work shirts in cool weather. On the rare occasions when she was forced to wear a dress, she seemed to lose her confidence and authority. She had a good deal of inherited money, and she was very careful with it. She had a raspingvoice, complete domination over her husband, an offhand, derogatory attitude toward her three children. She drank quietly, slowly, and steadily all day long every day, without evident effect. She worked in her yard, swam every day, and was a ruthlessly efficient housekeeper and cook. She lied constantly and for no apparent reason, and became highly irritable when anyone tried to trap her in a contradiction.
    Carol Killian sat in a redwood chair with her long legs hooked over one arm. She was a slender, dark, brooding beauty, just a few years past her prime, but still exquisite. She never had much to say. Her habitual expression was one of thoughtful intelligence, of perception and sensitivity. But when she did speak, her voice was high and thin and childish, and her every remark exposed the dull innocence and inanity of her mind.
    Strangers often thought it was an act and tried to laugh with her, but they merely confused her and hurt her. They soon came to realize that she was a decorative object which had learned to dress itself tastefully, move gracefully, give itself good care and maintenance, and perform a narrow range of household duties. It could talk with a certain amount of animation about clothes, cosmetics and household furnishings. Ben Killian had acquired it long ago, and seemed content to live with it. Over an unstated number of pregnancies—Sally Ann insisted it had to be at least ten—she had carried one as far as six months, and it had lived in an incubator for six days before expiring.
    “Fix yourself a noggin,” Sally Ann said. “Carol just went in and brought out some new ice.”
    There was a weak, hooded light