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that?”
    He shrugged. “We deluded ourselves. We told ourselves she was merely neurotic. Phobias and rituals and the like …”
    What bothered Maury the most was that his daughter, somewhere along the line, had lost her sense of humor. Instead of being giggly and silly and sloppy as she had once been she had now become as precise as a calculator. And not only that. Once she had cared about animals. And then, during her stay at Kansas City, she had suddenly gotten so she couldn’t stand a dog or a cat. She had gone on with her interest in chemistry, however. And that—a profession—seemed to him a good thing.
    “Has the out-patient therapy here helped her?”
    “It keeps her at a stable level; she doesn’t slide back. She still has a strong hypochondriacal trend and she still washes her hands a lot. She’ll never stop that. And she’s still over-precise and withdrawn; I can tell you what they call it. Schizoid personality. I saw the results of the ink-blot test Doctor Horstowski made.” He was silent for a time. “That’s her outpatientdoctor, here in this area, Region Five—counting the way the mental health Bureau counts. Horstowski is supposed to be good, but he’s in private practice, so it costs us a hell of a lot.”
    “Plenty of people are paying for that,” I said. “You’re not alone, according to the TV ads. What is it, one person out of every four has served time in a Federal Mental Health Clinic?”
    “I don’t mind the clinic part because that’s free; what I object to is this expensive out-patient follow-up. It was her idea to come home from Kasanin Clinic, not mine. I keep thinking she’s going to go back there, but she threw herself into designing the simulacrum, and when she wasn’t doing that she was mosaicing the bathroom walls. She never stops being active. I don’t know where she gets the energy.”
    I said, “When I consider all the people I know who’ve been victims of mental illness it’s amazing. My aunt Gretchen, who’s at the Harry Stack Sullivan Clinic at San Diego. My cousin Leo Roggis. My English teacher in high school, Mr. Haskins. The old Italian down the street who was on a pension, George Oliveri. I remember a buddy of mine in the Service, Art Boles; he had ‘phrenia and went to the Fromm-Reichmann Clinic at Rochester, New York. There was Alys Johnson, a girl I went with in college; she’s at Samuel Anderson Clinic in Area Three, which would be in Baton Rouge, La. And a man I worked for, Ed Yeats; he had ‘phrenia that became paranoia. And Waldo Dangerfield, another buddy of mine. Gloria Milstein, a girl I knew who had really enormous breasts like pears; she’s god knows where, but she was picked up by a personnel psych test when she was applying for a typing job; the Federal people swooped down and grabbed her—off she went. She was cute. And John Franklin Mann, a used car salesman I knew; he tested out as a dilapidated ‘phrenic and was carted off, probably to Kasanin, because he’s got relatives in Missouri. And Marge Morrison, another girl I knew; she had the hebe’ version, which always bothers me. She’s out again, though; I got acard from her. And Bob Ackers, a roommate I had. And Eddy Weiss—”
    Maury had risen to his feet. “We better get going.”
    Together we left the cafe. “You know this Sam Barrows?” I asked.
    “Sure. I mean, not personally; I know him by reputation. He’s the darndest fellow. He’ll bet on anything. If one of his mistresses—and that’s a story in itself—if one of his mistresses dived out of a hotel window he’d bet on which end hit the pavement first, her head or her tail. He’s like one of the old-time speculators reborn, one of those captains of finance. Life’s a gamble to a guy like that. I admire him.”
    “So does Pris.”
    “Admire, hell—adores. She met him. They stared each other down—it was a draw. He galvanized or magnetized her or some darn thing. For weeks afterward she could hardly