Robert Heinlein - A Stranger in a Strange Land

She stood up, he stayed where he was. The soap lifted out of the soap dish, traveled all over her, replaced itself, and the soapy layer slathered into bubbles of lather. "Oooh! That's enough. You tickle."

"Rinse?"

"I'll just dunk." Quickly she squatted down, sloshed suds off her, stood up. "Just in time, too."

Someone was knocking at the outer door. "Dearie? Are you decent?"

"Coming, Pat!" Jill shouted and added as she stepped out of the tub, "Dry me, please?"

At once she was dry, leaving not even wet footprints on the bath mat. "Dear? You'll remember to put on some clothes before you come out? Patty's a lady - not like me."

"I will remember."

JILL STOPPED TO GRAB a negligee from a well-stocked wardrobe, hurried out into the living room and let in Mrs. Paiwonski. "Come in, dear. We were grabbing baths in a hurry; he'll be right out. I'll get you a drink - then you can have your second drink in the tub if you like. Loads of hot water."

"I had a shower after I put Honey Bun to bed, but - yes, I'd love a tub bath. But, Jill baby, I didn't come here to borrow your bath tub; I came because I'm just heartsick that you kids are leaving the show."

"We won't lose track of you." Jill was busy with glasses. The hotel was so old that not even the "Bridal Suite" had its own ice dispenser but the night bellman, indoctrinated and subsidized, had left a carton of ice cubes. "Tim was right and you know he was. Mike and I have got to slick up our act a lot before we can hold up our end."

"Your act is okay. Needs a few laughs in it, maybe, but - Hi, Smitty." As Mike came in, she offered him a gloved hand. Mrs. Paiwonski always wore gloves away from the lot, and a high-necked dress and stockings. Dressed so, she looked like a middle-aged, most respectable widow, who had kept her figure trim in spite of her years - looked so, because she was precisely that.

"I was just telling Jill," she went on, "that you've got a good act, you two."

Mike smiled gently. "Now, Pat, you don't have to kid us. It stinks. We know it."

"No, it doesn't, dearie. Oh, maybe it needs a little something to give it some zing. A few jokes. Or, well, you could even cut down on Jill's costume a little. You've got an awful cute figure, hon."

Jill shook her head. "That wouldn't do it."

"Well, I saw a magician once that used to bring his assistant out dressed for the Gay 'Nineties - the eighteen-nineties, that is - not even her legs showing. Then he would disappear one garment after another. The marks loved it. But don't misunderstand me, dear - nothing unrefined. She finished� oh, in almost as much as you wear now."

"Patty," Jill said frankly, "I'd do our act stark naked if the clowns wouldn't close the show." As she said it, she realized that she meant it - and wondered how Graduate Nurse Boardman, floor supervisor, had reached the point where she could mean it?

Mike, of course- And she was quite happy about it.

Mrs. Paiwonski shook her head. "You couldn't, honey. The marks would riot. Just a touch more ginger ale, dear. But if you've got a good figure, why not use it? How far do you think I would get as a tattooed lady ii I didn't peel off all they'll let me?"

"Speaking of that," Mike said, "you don't look comfortable in all those clothes, Pat. I think the aircooling in this dump has gone sour again - it must be at least eighty." He himself was dressed in a light robe, his concession to the easy-going conventions of carney good manners. Extreme heat, he had learned, affected him slightly, enough so that he sometimes had to adjust consciously his metabolism-extreme cold affected him not at all. But he knew that their friend was used to the real comfort of almost nothing and affected the clothes she now wore to cover her tattoos when out among the marks; Jill had explained it to him. "Why don't you get comfortable? 'Ain't nobody here but just us chickens.'" The latter, he knew, was a joke, an appropriate one for emphasizing that friends were in private - Jubal had tried to explain it to him, but failed. But Mike had carefully noted when and how the idiom could be used.

"Sure, Patty," Jill agreed. "If you're raw under that dress, I can get you something light and comfortable. Or we'll just make Mike close his eyes."

"Uh� well, I did slip back into one of my costumes."

"Then don't be stiff with friends. I'll get your zippers."

"Let me get these stockings and shoes." She went on talking while trying to think how she could get the conversation around to religion, where she wanted it. Bless them, these kids were ready to be seekers, she was certain - and she had counted on the whole season to bring them around to the light� not just one hurried visit before they left. "The point about show business, Smitty, is that first you have to know what the marks want� and you have to know what it is you're giving them and how to make 'em like it. Now if you were a real magician - oh, I don't mean that you aren't skillful, dear, because you are." She tucked her carefully rolled hose in her shoes, loosened her garter belt and got out of it modestly, let Jill get her dress zippers. "I mean if your magic was real like you had made a pact with the Devil. That'd be one thing. But the marks know that it's clever sleight-of-hand. So you give 'em a light-hearted show to match. But did you ever see a fire eater with a pretty assistant? Heavens, a pretty girl would just clutter his act; the marks are standing around hoping he'll set fire to hisself - or blow up."

She snaked the dress over her head; Jill took it and kissed her. "You look more natural, Aunt Patty. Sit back and enjoy your drink."

"Just a second, dearie." Mrs. Paiwonski prayed mightily for guidance - wished that she were a preacher� or had even the gift of gab of a talker. Well, her pictures would just have to speak for themselves - and they would; that was why George had put them there. "Now this is what I've got to show the marks� this and my snakes, but this is more important. Have either one of you ever looked, really looked, at my pictures?"

"No," Jill admitted, "I guess not. We didn't want to stare at you, like a couple of marks."

"Then stare at me now, dears - because that's why George, bless his sweet soul safe in heaven, put them on me. To be stared at� and studied. Now right up here under my chin is the birth scene of our prophet, the holy Archangel Foster - just an innocent babe and maybe not knowing what Heaven had in store for him. But the angels knew - see 'em there around him? The next scene is his first miracle, when a young sinner in the country school he attended shot down a poor little birdie� and he picked it up and stroked it and it flew away unharmed. See the school house behind? Now it kind of jumps a little and I'll have to turn my back. But all of 'em are dated for each holy event in his life." She explained how George had not had a bare canvas to work with when first the great opus was started - since they had both been sinners and young Patricia already rather much tattooed� how with great effort and inspired genius George had been able to turn "The Attack on Pearl Harbor" into "Armageddon," and "Skyline of New York" into "The Holy City."

"But," she admitted candidly, "even though every single one of them is a sacred picture now, it did kind of force him to skip around to find enough bare skin to record in living flesh a witness to each milestone in the earthly life of our prophet. Here you see him preaching on the steps of the ungodly theological seminary that turned him down - that was the first time he was arrested, the beginning of the Persecution. And on around, right on my spine, you see him smashing idolatrous images� and next you see him in jail, with the holy light streaming down on it. Then the Faithful Few bust into the jail-"