“That’s probably not enough to live on,” she said, which was, for her, diplomatic. She wasn’t wrong, either.

“You don’t write short stories to live on. You write them to get better at writing, or because the idea isn’t big enough for a novel. Novels, you can make a living writing novels. There are people who do.”

“How many?”

“Not a whole lot. Most writers keep their day jobs. Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, de Camp, Andre Norton … You can do it.”

“Make damn sure you’re one of those people before you quit your day job,” Anna said.

“I will. I would anyway.” Of course, Jerry was sitting on a different kind of bestseller, not science fiction but nonfiction. If the CIA didn’t murder him before he published. If they didn’t murder his editor or his publisher to keep their secrets secret. If … all kinds of interesting things.

He and Anna got more used to living with each other, and to putting up with each other. Or sometimes not. She complained that he squeezed too much toothpaste from the middle of the tube. “Do you have to?” she asked.

“I don’t even notice I’m doing it,” he said, feeling like a character in a Tom Lehrer song. “Is the world gonna end if I screw up once in a while?”

“No,” she said, in a way that could only mean yes. So he tried to remember not to commit that particular sin. And sometimes he did, and sometimes not so much.

He had gripes of his own. Sure enough, he found himself doing the dishes almost all the time. Yes, he hated dirty dishes much more than she did. Yes, he was home more than she was. He still muttered to himself when she kicked back while he cleaned up.

One of his winter quarter sections had a couple of very pretty girls in it. He would have been delighted if they’d been as smart as they were good-looking; he liked smart women. But they both bombed quiz after quiz and lived down to every stereotype about blondes.

They were friends. They hung out together—the blind leading the blind, he thought. In his mind, he tagged them the Bobbsey Twins.

When he told Anna about them, the first thing she asked was, “Will you flunk them if they keep being stupid?”

“Of course I will,” he said, surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

The look she gave him said there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in his philosophy. It also said he was still wet behind the ears, which annoyed him—at least until she answered, “Because men are shitheads, that’s why. You never had anybody flash a hundred-dollar bill at you and say he hoped you’d be nice, did you?”

“Uh, no. You have?”