The Collected Dashiell Hammett

This Little Pig

Collier’s, March 24, 1934

Max Rhinewien’s telegram brought me back from Santa Barbara. He glared at me over his bicarbonate of soda and demanded, “And where’ve you been?”

“Where’d you wire me? I’ve been trying to finish a play.”

“Is there a picture in it?”

“Why not? You bought Soviet Law, didn’t you? And that’s a bibliography.”

“Never mind,” he said, “it’s a good title anyway. Listen, Bugs, I want you to hop over to Serrita and—”

“Nothing doing. I’ve still got nine days coining to me and I want to get the play finished.”

“As a favor to me, Bugs. It won’t take over a week, I promise you. Is a week going to hurt? You can take your nine days afterwards — take ten days — take two weeks if you want. I wouldn’t ask you if I wasn’t in a hole. My God, I’d be the last person in the world to interfere with your play. But maybe it’ll be better for you this way. Maybe you’ll come back to your play with a clear mind — you know — better perspective. You got some problems, haven’t you, that you ain’t been able to clear up yet? Well, you get away from it for a little while and give your self-conscious mind a chance to work and—”

I never had much luck arguing with Max. I said, “All right, I’ll go.”

“Thanks. That’s fine. I knew I could count on you. Did you see the Go West! script?”

“No.”

“Well, I said all along it needed something, but it wasn’t till last night I could put my finger on it. It ain’t a bad story at all — this Blaine’s got something — but it needs just that one thing; and you know what it is? Sexing up.”

“You mean you’re going to put sex in a Western picture?” I asked.

“Yep!”

I shook my head.

He beamed on me. “Can’t see it, huh? I guess a lot of people can’t, but stick around and you will. And you’ll see Westerns grossing in the first-run houses instead of just in the neighbs and the sticks. Listen, Bugs, is Sol Feldman a dope?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Exactly. Not that anybody knows of. Well, I happened to hear only last night that they’re sexing up this The Dogie Trail plenty.”

“Why don’t you let him? Why don’t you wait and see how—”

He slapped a hand down flat on his desk. “You know that ain’t my way,” he said. “I got to be always first in the field. You know that. And we can beat ’em to release by a week or two easy.”

“It’s all right with me. It’s not my baby. What do I do?”

“I want you to sex up Go West! Keep it clean, see, but cram it with that stuff. You’re the boy to do it. You’ll have to get over there right away — take a plane — and you’ll have to work your stuff up as they go along, because they already been shooting a couple days, but you can do that all right. This fellow Lawrence Blaine that wrote the script is out with them and you can either make him help you or send him back, whichever you want. And you won’t have any trouble with Fred.”

“That part’s O. K.,” I said, “but tell me one thing: how are you going to sex up Betty Lee Fenton?”

“Why not — so you keep it clean? She ain’t crippled. She can throw herself around if somebody shows her how, can’t she? Anyhow, you don’t have to depend on her. There’s other girls over there — Ann Meadows and Gracie King and — and if you want to take anybody else, go ahead. I’m sending Danny Finn along with you. I was thinking you might work him in something along the line that he’s a drunk piano player that Gracie — say — is taking along to open a dance-hall in this mining town, and she’s got some girls with her and — you know — you can work it up.”

“Didn’t Paramount try something like that with Gene Pallette in Fighting Caravans three or four years ago? I didn’t see the picture, but I heard—”

“What of it?” Max asked. “Is the stuff you write going to be like anybody else’s? That’s what I’m counting on — the Parish touch — the angle you got that nobody else can come anywheres near.”

“Go on,” I said, “I bet you tell that to all the writers. Have you got a copy of the script?”

“Miss Shepherd’ll give you one. I appreciate this a lot, Bugs.” He shook a fist at me. “Like that, see, but clean.”

I said, “Absolutely,” and — with Danny Finn — flew over the mountains to Serrita.

I found Fred LePage in his tent — besides housing the company, the tents served as a U. S. cavalry encampment in the picture — rehearsing a small dark girl in a one-eyed fade-away. (A one-eyed fade-away is where a character that has been rebuffed glances sidewise — fearfully or reproachfully as a rule — into the camera or at whoever did the rebuffing, and slinks off.) Fred greeted me with open arms. “Hello! What are you doing here?”

“Didn’t Max wire you?”

His grin went away. “Maybe. I stopped reading his wires. He’s driving me nuts.”

“A fine business,” I said. “The director of a horse opera going temperamental.”

He had the decency to seem embarrassed. “Well, if you were in my shoes—” He broke off. “Uh — you know Kitty Doran? This is Bugs Parish.”

The small dark girl dimpled and held out her hand. “How do you do?”

Fred growled, “Come on, what’s the bad news?”

When I told him he hit the top of the tent and spun there. I had expected him to yell his head off, of course, but he put on a really grand performance.

“You know how Max is,” I said with soothing intent as soon as I could get a word in. “He hears Feldman’s going in for sex in the open spaces — we’ve got to have sex in our open spaces. What the hell? He’ll probably change his mind before—”

“That’s just it,” he howled. “He’ll change his mind again and stick me with a week’s retakes and I’m already three days behind. What was the idea of sending us way over here in the first place? And with nothing ready. I got to do every damned thing myself. What’s he trying to do — make a bum out of me? Why don’t he give me some of those crooner shorts if that’s what he’s trying to do?”

Fred was only a run-of-the-mine director, but his habit of getting pictures into the can a little ahead of his schedule and a little under his budget made him worth his wages, and he knew it.

I said, “I don’t blame you for squawking. Let’s see what you’ve shot and we’ll save as much of it as we can.”

He said, “I know it’s not your fault, but, by God, Max is driving me nuts.”

Betty Lee Fenton, our little gingham girl, came in and said: “Hello, Bugs. Say, is Max sticking this guy Finn in the picture? He knows I don’t like to work with him.”

“Danny’s a good comic, whatever else you say about him.”

She made a face. “The else is plenty.”

“How are you on good clean sex?”

“What?”

“I don’t mean tonight, or anything like that; I mean in the picture.”

“What is this — a gag?”

I moved my head up and down. “And it’s got Fred here rolling on the floor. The picture’s new title is Go West with Sex.”

Then it was her turn. “I might’ve known it,” she shrieked. “Once I let Max talk me into a ride-ride-bang-bang, he thinks he can do anything to me. Well, he can’t, and he might just as well find it out right now. If he’s crazy, I’m not. Don’t he think my public’s got a right to the kind of a characterization they expect of me? Does Fox try things like that with Janet Gaynor? Of course not. Sheehan’s got too much sense. Max is a fool.”

Fred said to her, “Now for God’s sake don’t you start cutting up.”

She turned on him: they were not very fond of each other. “Listen, Mr. Lubitsch, I’ve had—”

I said, “Come, come, my gal, you’re yelling before you’re hurt. Maybe—”

She turned on me. “You’re damned right I am! And I’m veiling long distance to Max right now.” And out she went.

Kitty Doran said primly, “I think she’s unreasonable.”

Fred said: “What? Oh! Uh — better scoot, Kitty. We got to work.”

“All righty.” She smiled brightly at him and came over to me. “I’m awfully, awfully glad to have met you, Mr. Parish, and I hope— Well, by-by, Freddy.” She waved her hand at both of us and went out.

“Whaty is thaty?” I asked Fred.

“She’s all right, just a kid that had a couple of bits in my last picture. I’m giving her a small part in this.” He looked as if a thought had struck him. “We might build it up a little. She’s pretty good.”

“She must be — if she needs private coaching in one-eyed fade-aways.”

“She’s just a green kid, of course,” he admitted, “but — you’ll see. You don’t think you got a chance of changing what La Fenton calls her characterization, do you?”

“No. I’m counting on Ann for the chief—”

“Sure,” he said, “and we can build up Kitty’s part, too. She’s just a green kid, but she takes direction swell and—”

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

He scowled at me. “Are you going to start that too? Any other director can pick a girl out of the line because he knows talent when he sees it, but with me it’s got to be because I’ve fallen for the dame and she’s playing me for a sucker. You and Ann ought to incorporate.”

“Ann doesn’t think your Kitty’s got talent?”

“Ann’s just being disagreeable. What’s the matter with women? Look here, Bugs: I’m not saying this kid’s a Hepburn; I’m saying she’s got something. What do you know about it? You’ve never seen her work. Wait till you do.”

That seemed reasonable enough. I said: “O. K., Freddy. Get your author and let’s start pushing his masterpiece around.’

I sat beside Ann at dinner that night and we went for a walk down a canyon afterwards. “What’s the matter with everybody?” I asked.

“I hadn’t noticed,” she said. “Location fever, I guess.”

“Sure, but that oughtn’t to come till you’ve been out a couple of weeks, and here you’ve all been out only since — what? — Sunday and you’re already split up into tight little groups going around dog-eyeing each other.”

“Well, Fred’s been in a bad humor and I guess it’s catching.”

“What’s the matter with him?” I asked.

She laughed, though not very happily. “It started with the Indians. It was somebody’s bright idea to send us to hell and gone over here because these Indians had never been used in pictures before. You know what I mean? Simple, natural, unspoiled, that kind of junk. What a bright idea that was! Never having worked in pictures before, these little red brothers had no idea of what extras get. All they knew was what they read about Garbo and Gable and they started off putting anything from a hundred dollars a day up on their price tags. Then, when we got ’em over that, we found out they didn’t have any horses and most of ’em didn’t know how to ride, so we had to get horses and teach them. Then Fred tried shooting them without putting Indian make-up on ’em — some more of that natural stuff — and had to shoot ’em all over again. All that wasted time and money — and you know how Fred is about the schedule and budget.” We took about ten steps in silence, then she said, “And then this cutie.”

“The Doran girl?”

“Yes. You know her?”

“I met her before dinner.”

“Sure. If you’ve seen Fred you’ve seen her.”

“Why don’t you write that guv off, Ann?” I said. “What do you want to waste your time on him for when you can have a fellow like me?”

“Probably because I’m a sap,” she said, “but neither of us can help that. How big a part is Fred persuading you to give her in the new script?”

“It depends on what she can carry. Is she any good?”

“Terrible!” She took hold of my arm. “She really is. It’s not just that I am jealous, though I am — awfully. Oh, Bugs, can I help it that I’m nuts about that guy?”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but I can do without hearing too much of it.”

She squeezed my arm and said, “I’m sorry,” as if she were thinking of something else. Presently she asked, “Do you think she’s pretty?”

“She is.”

“Prettier than I am?”

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I’ve got to talk to somebody. You’re the only one that knows how I really feel about Fred. I... I hoped maybe you could help me.”

“You mean help you get him back?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a sweet job to give me. You’re not just nuts about him — you’re nuts. Anyway, how do you know he isn’t really in love with the girl — and through with you?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said with complete certainty. “You know what a push-over he is for a new face and a new line — and how soon it blows over.”

“Then the answer’s easy. Just wait it out.”

She caught her breath. “I’m afraid. I’m always afraid that this time he’ll get himself so tangled up that he won’t — maybe won’t want to get out of it.”

I thought, that would be swell. I said, “There’s nothing I can do about it, but I’ll see.”

She squeezed my arm. “Thanks, Bugs. I knew you—”

“Better wait till you see whether you’ve got anything to thank me for. Let’s go back. I’ve got a couple of hours’ work to do.”

The next day I discovered that Fred was right, Ann wrong, about Kitty Doran’s ability. Her part in the scene I watched was pretty simple and she had to be told how to do everything, but, once told, she managed to do it with a sort of fake naturalness and an aliveness that were very effective.

When they had cut, Fred came over to me. “Well?” he asked, grinning.

“Not bad,” I said. “How does she photograph?”

He laughed. “Wait till you see the rushes. Hey, Lew!” The camera man joined us. Fred said, “Bugs wants to know how Doran photographs.”

Lew said, “Easy to handle. How about a little poker tonight, Bugs?”

“If I get through in time. Maybe we’ll—”

Kitty Doran said, “Oh, hello, Mr. Parish.”

I said, “Hello.”

One of the boys handed me a telegram from Max Rhinewien:

I passed it over to Fred. “Betty Lee F. made her squawk stick as usual, which is all to the good.”

“That’s all to the good,” he agreed, and read the telegram. “A fine time we’d have trying to make that bum look like anything but Virtue-in-a-simple-frock! You ain’t gonna put no varmints in this yere fillum, air yuh, pardner?”

“No, suh,” I said. “I hates a snake like pison and I just ain’t got no use full buffalo. You sure you want that swimming-hole sequence we were talking about?”

“Sure. It’s a natural for Kitty.”

“O.K. I’m going back and work a while. When you get through with Danny Finn, send him over. He remembers the old Ray Griffith gags better than I do and we need some of them.”

Kitty Doran caught up to me when I was within twenty feet of my tent. “Oh, Mr. Parish, I’m so happy! Freddy says you’re going to give me a real part in the picture.”

“That depends,” I said, “on whether you can handle it.”

She looked at me wide-eyed. “But... but Freddy said I was doing fine. Was that just because — just because he likes me? Tell me what I do wrong, Mr. Parish. I’ll stop doing it. Honest, I will. Honest, I want so much to— Am I awful bad?”

“No.”

“But I’m not very good?”

“I don’t know. What I’ve seen is all right, but I haven’t seen enough yet.”

“Oh, then I think—” She laughed. “I mean I hope you’ll not be disappointed. I mean in Freddy’s opinion.” She went into the tent ahead of me. “Could you tell me what my part is?”

“It hasn’t been worked out yet. You’re probably the cut-up of the expedition. Tomorrow you sneak off to go swimming and are surrounded by Indians or cavalrymen or something and can’t get to your clothes — that kind of junk.”

“I think that’s fine,” she said.

I let that go at that.

“You’re a friend of Ann Meadows, aren’t you?” she asked. “I saw you with her last night.”

“Yes.”

“She hates me, doesn’t she?”

“She’s in love with Fred.”

“I know, but it’s not my fault that he likes me.”

“She thinks it is. She thinks you’re stringing him along for a break in the pictures.”

“Well, what of it?” she demanded. “Didn’t he give her her first break?”

“Maybe, but she happens to be in love with him.”

“Well, I like him very much too.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

She stood in front of me and her lower lip trembled. “I guess you think I’m a dirty little tramp, Mr. Parish, but, honest, I want so bad to make good in pictures that I guess I’d do anything to get a break.”

“Could I count on that?”

“You’re making fun of me,” she said, “but yes.”

“That’s honest, anyhow. Now run along: I’ve got to work.”

“But—”

“Scram. I’ve got to work.”

She laughed and held out her hand. “I like you. Can I call you — your first name’s Chauncey, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh, but you don’t know me well enough to call me that. Make it Bugs.”

“Bugs,” she said, “and thanks.”

I thought about her for a couple of minutes after she had gone and then settled down to the typewriter. A page and a half later Ann came in.

“Don’t stop,” she said. “I don’t want to interrupt you.” She sat down and lit a cigarette. Her face was red and angry.

“That’s all right,” I told her. “What’s the matter?”

“Mr. LePage and I have just had a row. He accused me of sulking in front of the camera, so I told him what I thought of him and walked off the set.”

“After all,” I reminded her, “we are making a picture.”

“I don’t give a damn about the picture.”

“That’s not the spirit of Pagliacci. The show must go on though our hearts—”

She dropped her cigarette on the floor and stamped on it. “Cut it out. Bugs. I don’t feel like kidding. I’m sick. You know what she did?”

“Kitty?”

“Yes. She told him I was trying to persuade you not to fatten her part up any more than you had to.”

“That’s true in a way, isn’t it?” I asked.

She looked at me suspiciously. “It is not. I never— You didn’t tell her that?”

“No. You’re being a chump, Ann.”

“I suppose I am,” she said gloomily, “but who cares? I ought to—” She broke off as Danny Finn came in, said, “Hello, Danny; be seeing you, Bugs,” and went out.

Danny smacked his lips. “I could go for that dame. I got a swell Indian gag, Bugs. Listen to this.”

I listened and said, “No, Groucho would be sore. He used that in Duck Soup.”

“But there’s no Indians in Duck Soup.”

“The gag’s the same. I want something for a swimming-hole sequence we’re using Kitty Doran in.”

“Doran, huh?” He smacked his lips. “I could go for that dame. How about this? Eddie Sutherland used it in one of the Oakie pictures.” He described it to me.

“Yes, maybe we can kick that around, but cut out the double-wing-and-scram on the end. Now let’s see what else we can dig up.”

We had five more gags — two early Sennetts, a Chaplin, one from As Thousands Cheer, and one that practically everybody had used — by the time Fred came in from his day’s work afield. Betty Lee Fenton and Kitty Doran were with him.

Betty Lee paused at the door only long enough to ask. “You heard from Max?”

“Sure,” I said. “Your virginity’s safe.”

“I thought it would be,” she said and went away.

Danny, looking after her, automatically smacked his lips and muttered, “I could go for...”

Fred asked, “What’ve you guys got?” and, when we told him our six gags, said, “I guess they’ll do.”

Danny went away.

Fred yawned and spread himself on my cot. “Ann tell you about the blow-up?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t do anything with her,” he complained. “She’s just laying down on me.”

Kitty said, “It was disgraceful.” Neither of us paid any attention to her.

“The part can be whittled down,” I said. “She doesn’t have to be the one that Wiley seems to be falling for.”

“We’ve got to do something,” he growled. “She’s wooden. Why the hell does she have to take her spite out on the picture?”

Kitty clapped her hands. “Oh, Freddy, couldn’t I have that love scene with Wiley? I know I could do it. Please.”

“It could be written that way,” I said.

He scowled at her and at me. “Max wouldn’t stand for it. It’d have to be too big a part — we’d need a name.”

“Max wants sex,” I said. “Here it is.”

“Please, Freddy!” she cooed. “Please, darling! Just try me.”

He shook his head. “Max’d raise hell.”

“Well, I’ve got to do something,” I said. “What?”

Kitty said, “Please, sweetheart!”

He looked at me.

I said, “I’ll front for you to Max.”

He jumped up from the cot. “All right, damn it! Go ahead!” Kitty laughed happily and put her arms around his neck. I said, “Clear out, youse mugs, this means a solid night’s work for me.”

Kitty came back alone at a few minutes before midnight. “I just bad to come in to thank you,” she said, “because I owe this wonderful chance all to you and I’m so excited I know I won’t be able to sleep a wink tonight. Could I see what you’ve written for me? Just a tiny peep, Bugsy?”

“Stop talking like that,” I said. “One more Bugsy puts you back among the people who call me Mr. Parish.”

“I’m sorry, Bugs, but I’m so happy I don’t know what I’m doing.” She began to dance around the tent. “Freddy likes me to call him Freddy.”

“Would he like your being here?”

She laughed. “Then maybe I’d better stay till late — till we re sure he’ll be asleep and won’t see me leaving. Can’t I see what you’ve written?”

“Help yourself.”

She read the new pages of script carefully and said: “I like that. I think it’s fine. But look, I’ve got an idea. I know an awfully cute little dance. I’ll show it to you — and see if you don’t think it could be worked in in that campfire scene. You know, I could dance around the fire.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “We could have thirty or forty Nubian slaves bring you on in a silver chariot and while you were dancing around the fire we could release a flock of swans.”

She pouted. “You’re making fun of me again, but let me show you. It’s a cute dance.”

She showed me and it was a cute dance.

I said, “It’s a cute dance.”

“And you’ll let me do it?”

“No.”

“You’re a meany. I guess you think I’m an awful pig, but there’s something else I want to ask you — another favor. Freddy’s been awfully nice to me, but he’s mostly a Western picture director, isn’t he?”

“Most of his pictures have been outdoor he-man stuff, yes.”

“That’s what I thought. Well, will you help me with the love scenes? I’m so awfully anxious to make good and they’re the kind of things you write and you’d know more about it. Will you?”

“Sure, but it’s not going to do you any good at this stage of the game to let Fred get the idea that you’re slighting him. He—”

“I know, but we can he tactful about it, can’t we? I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings for worlds.”

“Your sentiments do you credit,” I said. “Now you’d better—”

“Oh, no, I can’t leave till we re sure Freddy’s gone to bed. He might see me. I’m going to curl right up in this corner and I won’t bother you one teeny-weeny bit.”

So I wrote her a love scene with Ted Wiley, the male lead, and we shot it against the campfire almost in silhouette, and I directed it. and if I do say it myself it was every bit as good as when Murnau first did it against a sky in Sunrise. And everybody except Ann agreed that we had a find in Kitty.

Ann took me aside to say, “I’ve seen a lot of hammy performances, but...”

I said: “I’m very sorry to hear you say that, Miss Meadows. I thought we were all great artists working together in a great art form.”

She wrinkled up her forehead. “Listen, Bugs, what are you up to? On the level.”

“I’m fixing things — for everybody.”

She looked at me suspiciously. ”I wonder.”

I crossed my heart.

“How?

I told her. “By simply doing what everybody wants. It’s a beautiful plan. You want Fred back. You get him. Fred and Kitty want her to get a chance in pictures. She gets it. Betty Lee wants to keep her virginal characterization. She keeps it. I don’t want anything. As usual, I get it.”

“But how does that bring Fred back?”

“Wouldn’t he break with his own mother if she sent him over his schedule and budget? Well, with Kitty carrying the sex burden, she steals the picture completely from Fenton. Whether your jealousy will let you see it or not, she’s not bad, and when Fenton sees the finished film she realizes it and squawks her head off in her usual refined manner. Max has got too much dough tied up in her to let her be buried by an unknown, and Kitty’s part is written so that if the big scenes come out the rest will have to come out and something else will have to be put in its place — and that means more money and time. And who does Fred blame for that but me and Kitty? He can’t do anything to me: he can bounce her out of his affections and his picture. On the other hand, you have only a small part in the dingus now and he probably still loves you and—”

“Maybe,” she said slowly, “but I don’t like it. You’re being malicious and you could’ve—”

“Sure, I’m being malicious, but I’ve got to have some fun. Besides, a lot of people get good lessons out of it. Max learns he oughtn’t to try to sex up westerns; Fred, that if his gods are Budget and Schedule that he should stick to them; Kitty, that little pigs who go to market shouldn’t carry too big baskets; and maybe all of you that I’m not just an amiable boob.”

She shook her head. “There’s more to it than you’re telling me, and I don’t like it.”

There was more to it.

Ten days later I finished my work on the script and went back to Hollywood, but, of course, not immediately on to Santa Barbara and the play. Max Rhinewien had bought a I Bulgarian comedy which he said needed more epigrams and he talked me into doing the adaptation. That took about four weeks and I finally escaped by simply ducking out on him.

I had been in Santa Barbara eight clays when Ann telephoned me. She said, “Bugs? I think you ought to know that your plan worked so well that Kitty Doran is dying in St. Martin’s Hospital,” and hung up.

Kitty wasn’t dying. Her mouth and throat were burned, but they had pumped the stuff out of her before it got a chance to work. She raised her head a little and smiled painfully at me when I came into the hospital room.

“What the hell is this?” I asked. “Never mind. Don’t try to talk.”

“I can talk,” she said. “Bugs, they took all my stuff out of the picture and when I asked Freddy about it he was awful nasty and he said Ann Meadows told him you meant them to.”

“Forget it. We’ll fix you up.”

“But it was my chance to make good and now—” She began to cry.

“Stop it. You’ll get another one as soon as you’re up. I’ve got an original with a part in it for you that won’t be cut and—”

She sat up in bed. “Honest?”

“Uh-huh,” I said, making it up as I went along, but not working too hard at it, “it’s about a boy and a girl and another girl and maybe another boy.”

She smiled at me as if I were handing her Romeo and Juliet. “You’re a darling, Bugsy! How soon do you think my mouth will be all right?”

“It’ll never be all right till you stop that Bugsy stuff. Look at me. Did you really try to kill yourself, or was it just another act?”

She hung her head. “I... I... now don’t get mad — I don’t really know, Bugsy — Bugs, I mean. I thought I meant it, but I guess I did kind of spit it out. Maybe — at first I meant it, all right, but maybe after I started I thought it might he just as good if I didn’t actually — you know — die, if I–Listen, B-Bugs, now you tell me something. When you played that dirts trick — it was an awful dirty trick — on me, wasn’t it a little because you thought I liked Freddy and you liked me and you thought you could—”

“Don’t be a dope,” I said. “You were only a very small cog in the wheel. I was up to something that had nothing to do with you, then you got into this mess and I — God knows why — thought I ought to do something about it. I’m willing to give you a boost up, but get this straight: I’m not tangled up with you now, I’ve never been, and I’m never going to be.”

“You don’t have to be so nasty about it,” she said.

“I’m not being nasty, I’m being definite.”

“Will... will you kiss me?”

“What for? Sure, if you want.”

“Oh,” she said, “then that’ll be all right.”