Джон Макдональд - Labor Supply

Vrees flinched inwardly. He smiled at all children, patted their heads and gave them gum. He detested them.

“Then there’s nothing we can do, is there?” Robert asked.

“Nothing,” Vrees said. “Perhaps, in time, as that... uh... regimentation causes an emotional and intellectual deviation from... our norms, the contact will gradually be broken.”

Robert stood up. He said, “I guess Ruth and I better go ahead with the wedding. Will you come, Doctor?”

Again he winced inwardly. “Ah... I’ve a pretty full schedule.”

“Of course,” Ruth said. “We should all get together now and then, though, to sort of... check up.”

“I’m prescribing sedatives for myself,” Vrees said. “I intend to stop dreaming.”

He walked them to the door. He could not help considering them his enemies. They had gotten him into this horror. And besides, they towered over him.

But he had to make some gesture.

At the door he said softly, so softly that they both had to bend down a little to hear him. “That sound they make. You... uh... were right. It’s definitely whoop, whoop.”

He sat alone in the dark after they had gone. He was an honest and objective man. Yet it took him an hour to isolate that final reason for his sense of bitterness. He realized it at last. Somewhere 1000 Drs. Vrees attended 10,000 Ruths. Yet, through an irony of selection, they were all as unattainable as the original Ruth was to the original Vrees. Anyway, they’d all be too busy with the children.