Shall we assemble her? Michael said.

I could see it. In very clear detail.

They put the transparent shell on the bed between them and crouched over it. Perhaps they were dressed at the time; I felt a bit squeamish, and didn’t ask. She would have told me, I suppose, if I had asked.

Place right and left lungs into rib cage as shown, the instructions said, and Michael read, then place urinary and reproductive organs into pelvic cavity. She was fascinated. I certainly could see it. And hear them. In that studio. With the skylight slanted and the drift of cloud and smoke. She looked at the illustrated booklet. It looked just like the inside of a machine. With all the thingamajigs. She was just thingamajigs, too. Wasn’t that fascinating? Michael was inserting the plastic organs. The heart was divided into two halves. Now locate the small intestine below the large intestine, it said, and Michael did so, with all the precise care of a garage mechanic. It was absolutely marvelous watching yourself being assembled. Michael felt just like God if God went to M.I.T. Now put liver into place as shown. Insert rectum behind urinary and reproductive organs. It was absolutely the greatest birthday present. The rib cage fitted over the collar bone. Hook the breast into position as follows.

There you are, Michael said. The toy was assembled.

And you know? You did feel, once the thing lay there on the bed all put together, just like a toy. You know? Not exactly educational. But it was the queerest. Just godawful scientific or something. That stuff inside you.

And, as she spoke, glowing, with a little giggle now and then, as she described it to me, I kept seeing the two of them, crouched over, engrossed and fascinated and impure children. And I knew, without asking or being told, that they’d gone to bed after that. It would follow. With the toy between or near them. Color the uterus green. The sum of all those jointed hooked-in pin-secured numbered parts. Was that why he’d bought her the toy? A polystyrene girl. Color the vulva gold. They called her Fannystein. Naturally. Replacements (worn-out, defective, missing, lost, manhandled, broken by age) were available by writing to the company. Zip code 217. East of the land of Eden.

Oh, yes. They had complicated games. It was way beyond strip poker, that triumph of the innocent orgies of my youth. I felt queer about it. Or as Aurora said, in their superlatives: the queerest. But that might be just some inhibitory thing in myself. I mean: something that prevented me from seeing the measure of a freedom they had achieved that was, perhaps unfortunately, not available to me. Apparently, there were a few more sacred objects left in my tabernacle than I believed were there. I may have been too solemn about the forked creature we are. I couldn’t quite see, yet, man and all he was or did as the funniest thing since vaudeville. It was possible that he was, but it took something I didn’t have to hang a vulva instead of mistletoe on even the most contemporary and the most metallic of Christmas trees.