Blaine leaned forward with his forearms balanced on his knees. He gave a little sigh and turned up his palms. “We adopted Wally when he was three,” he said. “Most of the psychic damage had to have been done long before. We were good parents. Who knows? Maybe manic psychosis is genetic. The psoriasis comes from the pills. Of course, what he says may be true. He may indeed come from Smallville. Perhaps he truly is Superman. He went through the windshield of a Corvair without a scratch.”

“It’s a possibility we should consider,” Freddy said. “Superman.”

Blaine turned to Zona. “What about Turkey? Can’t you go back there for the psoriasis?”

“Turkey?” Freddy said, pinching his chin.

“Yes,” Blaine said. “There’s this village in Turkey that has a kind of hot springs with these weird little fish in it, and what you do is sit in the springs and the fish come up and nibble your skin. There’s something in their saliva, or whatever, that causes the skin to heal over. Two weeks and you’re in remission.”

“I’m not going back to damn Turkey,” Zona said. “They don’t have any magic carpets. What they got is buses with bald tires, nonexistent shock absorbers, and all the windows stuck shut! Damn! I’m a California girl. I like air conditioners, clean water, and a certain amount of oxygen in my atmosphere.” Zona shot a stream of smoke out of the side of her mouth. “And they’ve got laws from day one over there. They used to hang you for drinking coffee and smoking.”

“Pretty soon they’ll be doing it here,” Freddy said. “Have you noticed that now you can’t offend with the sexist or racial remark, but smokers are open game? I mean every news broadcast, the front page of every paper. A cigarette was just a cigarette twenty years ago, but now the smoker is a pariah.”

“That’s true,” Blaine said. “All that hate has to come out. The world needs scapegoats. No one will embrace the other—the inner dark man.”

“And in another ten years coffee drinkers will be on the list,” Zona said, taking a measured drag on the cigarette. “Coffee makes people violent or something.”

“They should tax it, if you want to know,” Blaine said. “I mean, if you get right down to it, how much would you pay for a Kool and a cup of rocket fuel before you had to get dressed and hit the road?”

Freddy fiddled with his lighter. “Getting up in the morning, for coffee and a cigarette? I don’t know, considering my present financial circumstances, which are meager, every last dime…seven hundred.”

“You see. You aren’t the only one, either; there are thousands like you,” Blaine said. “We could wipe out the national debt.”