Time passed.

Vera Bundle was halfway through her second daiquiri. The man across the aisle from her continued to look at his wristwatch over and over again. He has a problem, decided Vera Bundle, and gulped down the last of her second daiquiri, which added appreciably to Vera’s buzz and her need to strike up a conversation with the gentleman sitting across from her. “You have a problem, don’t you?” she asked—perhaps a little too motherly—the man across the way.

He nodded.

Maybe motherly was good. “Can I help?”

The man shook his head.

“Excuse me for asking, but what happened?”

He shook his head again and said, “I’d rather not say.” Then the man looked away from Vera.

He obviously doesn’t want to talk about it, at least not to me, thought Vera Bundle. She sighed and decided New Yorkers weren’t very sociable. Vera returned to twirling her empty daiquiri glass.

A few more minutes passed.

Maybe in a little bit the handsome man will change his mind and talk to me, hoped Vera.

More time went by.

The handsome man apparently wasn’t going to change his mind.

Oh, well.

Vera signaled the waitress she wanted to leave. The waitress, sitting on a bar stool talking to the bartender, saw Vera’s waving arm and headed her way. When she arrived at Vera’s table, she smiled a worn-out smile and said, “Another daiquiri?”

“Goodness no!” answered Vera a little too loudly. “Another daiquiri and I’ll be on my Jeanie Keister and you’ll be having to pick me up. Jeanie Keister’s a friend of mine. Don’t know when I started saying that, calling my keister my Jeanie Keister. And it won’t be so easy picking me up if I do fall on my Jeanie Keister being as how I’ve been putting on some weight lately. I’ll just have the check, please.”

The waitress returned with the check. She placed it on Vera’s table and left. Vera moved her pocketbook onto her lap and opened it.

“Oh my God!” she shrieked.

Linus Major IV had the good fortune to be born into an extremely wealthy dynasty and the misfortune to be born with a lisp. Some folks liked to say Linus was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and that’s what caused his lisp. Linus IV’s lisp made him sound exactly like a youngster who spoke without his front teeth. Little Linus pronounced an s or a z like the th in “third” or “thick,” giving his speech a sibilant rhythm, childish and halting.