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threatening me with Astrid.”
    “All right. As long as you behave. Now get up and into the shower. First very hot, then very cold. Like a sauna.” She waited. “‘Up,’ I said. I’m not leaving until that shower is running and steam is pouring out.”
    “I’ll shower. After you leave.”
    “And you’ll run it lukewarm, I know. Get up, get those trousers off, get into that shower. While you’re showering, I’ll fetch your breakfast tray. There is just enough time before they shut down the galley to set up for lunch…so quit wasting time. Please!”
    “Oh, I can’t eat breakfast! Not today. No.” Food—what a disgusting thought.
    “You must eat. You drank too much last night, you know you did. If you don’t eat, you will feel bad all day. Mr. Graham, I’ve finished making up for all my other guests, so I’m off watch now. I’m fetching your tray, then I’m going to stay and see that you eat it.” She looked at me. “I should have taken your trousers off when I put you to bed. But you were too heavy.”
    “You put me to bed?”
    “Ori helped me. The boy I danced with.” My face must have given me away, for she added hastily, “Oh, I didn’t let him come into your room, sir. I undressed you myself. But I did have to have help to get you up the stairs.”
    “I wasn’t criticizing.” (Did you go back to the party then? Was he there? Did you dance with him again? “— jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire —” I have no right.) “I thank you both. I must have been a beastly nuisance.”
    “Well…brave men often drink too much, after danger is over. But it’s not good for you.”
    “No, it’s not.” I got up off the bed, went into the bathroom, said, “I’ll turn it up hot. Promise.” I closed the door and bolted it, finished undressing. (So I got so stinking, rubber-limp drunk that a native boy had to help get me to bed. Alex, you’re a disgusting mess! And you haven’t any right to be jealous over a nice girl. You don’t own her, her behavior is not wrong by the standards of this place—wherever this place is—and all she’s done is mother you and take care of you. That does not give you a claim on her.)
    I did turn it up hot, though it durn near kilt poor old Alex. But I left it hot until the nerve ends seemed cauterized—then suddenly switched it to cold, and screamed.
    I let it stay cold until it no longer felt cold, then shut it off and dried down, having opened the door to let out the moisture-charged air. I stepped out into the room…and suddenly realized that I felt wonderful. No headache. No feeling that the world is ending at noon. No stomach queasies. Just hunger. Alex, you must never get drunk again…but if you do, you must do exactly what Margrethe tells you to. You’ve got a smart head on her shoulders, boy—appreciate it.
    I started to whistle and opened Graham’s wardrobe.
    I heard a key in the door, hastily grabbed his bathrobe, managed to cover up before she got the door open. She was slow about it, being hampered by a heavy tray. When I realized this I held the door for her. She put down the tray, then arranged dishes and food on my desk.
    “You were right about the sauna-type shower,” I told her. “It was just what the doctor ordered. Or the nurse, I should say.”
    “I know, it’s what my grandmother used to do for my grandfather.”
    “A smart woman. My, this smells good!” (Scrambled eggs, bacon, lavish amounts of Danish pastry, milk, coffee—a side dish of cheeses, fladbrød , and thin curls of ham, some tropic fruit I can’t name.) “What was that your grandmother used to say when your grandfather argued?”
    “Oh, she was sometimes impatient.”
    “And you never are. Tell me.”
    “Well—She used to say that God created men to test the souls of women.”
    “She may have a point. Do you agree with her?”
    Her smile produced dimples. “I think they have other uses as well.”
    Margrethe tidied my room