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what next? What do you have in mind? And what should I do, if anything?
    You’ve already helped, by giving me something to hope for, and I thank you for that.
    Mallory (for now)
    Dear Mallory (and please make it Jason):
    I don’t at all mind your asking how I knew and how I can help but would rather answer these questions in person if I may. This brings me to what comes next and to what you can do.
    What’s next is for me to visit you in the hospital. What you can do is tell the people there, first, that I’m coming, and, second, that you want me to be passed through (which I was not the last time I was there). I feel sure you can insist on this. It isn’t as though you’re a ten-year-old. You’re an adult and certainly have a right to choose your own associates.
    The hospital people may feel obliged to tell Mrs. Hastings about this. You can ask them not to if you feel like it, but there’s probably no way to stop them.
    Since Mrs. Hastings doesn’t understand the situation, she’s trying to do the next best thing, which is to control it. She may very well perceive me as a threat to her control and try to block me from seeing you. If it looks like this is going to happen, then you’d better phone me. If necessary, I can arrive with a battalion of lawyers to persuade everyone that they don’t want to get into a position where they seem to beholding you against your will. As I understand it, the hospital’s stance is that there’s no reason why you can’t go home, so that should settle the matter for them. But I don’t know what “home” means. Did Mallory live with her parents or somewhere else? It won’t hurt to have the answers to questions like these. You presumably have a driver’s license, and that’ll have an address on it.
    This letter should be in your hands in two or three days at the most. I’ll present myself at the hospital on the fourth day. If there’s some problem, phone me. Otherwise, I’ll see you soon.
    Jason
    Mrs. Hastings evidently decided (or was persuaded) that yielding gracefully was going to work better for her than drawing a battle line across the hospital steps, so I was waved through to the elevators as if I were a kinsman. The press had published no pictures of Mallory, so I was unprepared for what I saw when I pushed my way through the door to her room: a flawless Aryan snow maiden—milky skin, eyes as blue as the Mediterranean, and hair as yellow as the sun. I suppose I was gawking a bit when the girl in the bed glanced up from her book, with her wounded eyes and chaste, narrow lips making her look rather more like an elfin child than a woman of twenty-six. She returned my gaze for a moment, then produced an almost imperceptible shrug.
    “You fuckhead,” she said flatly. “Go home and die.”
    Bewildered, I looked over my shoulder to see who she was talking to, but I was alone. She was talking to me.
    I said, “I’m Jason Tull.”
    “I didn’t think you were Chester Morris.”
    Blinking stupidly, I asked her who Chester Morris was.
    She sighed and went back to her book.
    I stood there for a minute then asked what I’d done wrong.
    “You were born,” she said without looking up. “That’s where it began.”
    I couldn’t imagine what she meant by that, but I felt I had to make a stab at it. “You mean … it’s something about my family. About being born a Tull.”
    “Forget it,” she said, tossing her book aside. “Sit down and we’ll start over.”
    Several sets of muscles wanted to accept the invitation, but I held them in check. “I think I’d rather start over on a more even footing than this, Mallory. Give me a call when you’re ready to talk.” I turned to go, and she said, “Wait a minute.”
    I turned back and waited.
    She sat for a moment staring into the middle distance. Then, as if offering a demonstration, she raised a hand and deliberately raked the side of her face with her nails, leaving four livid tracks.
    “Get that?” she