Sometimes, when he was taking his Saturday night soaker he still got kind of a funny feeling. But he knew it was only rust from the faucets.

Collins sighed. It seemed like a long time since he had seen his mother coming down those stairs....

He stopped, his throat aching with tightness.

Something was very strange.

His mother was coming down the stairs right now.

She was walking down the stairs, one step, two steps, coming closer to him.

Collins ran up the stairs, prepared to run through the phantom to prove it wasn't there.

The figure raised a gun and pointed it at him.

This time, she was going to shoot _him_.

It figured.

He always had bad luck.

"Stop!" the woman on the stairs said. "Stop or I'll shoot, Mr. Collins!"

* * * * *

Collins stopped, catching to the bannister. He squinted hard, and as a stereoptic slide lost its depth when you shut one eye, the woman on the stairs was no longer his mother. She was young, pretty, brunette and sweet-faced, and the gun she held shrunk from an old Army Colt to a .22 target pistol.

"Who _are_ you?" Collins demanded.

The girl took a grip on the gun with both hands and held it steady on him.

"I'm Nancy Comstock," she said. "You tried to assault my mother a half hour ago."

"Oh," he said. "I've never seen you before."

"Yes, you have. I've been away to school a lot, but you've seen me around. I've had my eye on you. I know about men like you. I know what has to be done. I came looking for you in your house for this."

The bore of the gun was level with his eye as he stood a few steps below her. Probably if she fired now, she would kill him. Or more likely he would only be blinded or paralyzed; that was about his luck.

"Are you going to use that gun?" he asked.

"Not unless I have to. I only brought it along for protection. I came to help you, Mr. Collins."

"Help me?"

"Yes, Mr. Collins. You're sick. You need help."

He looked the girl over. She was a half-dozen years younger than he was. In most states, she couldn't even vote yet. But still, maybe she could help, at that. He didn't know much about girls and their abilities.

"Why don't we go into the kitchen and have some coffee?" Collins suggested.



III

Nancy sipped her coffee and kept her eyes on his. The gun lay in her lap. The big kitchen was a place for coffee, brown and black, wood ceiling and iron stove and pans. Collins sat across the twelve square feet of table from her, and nursed the smoking mug.

"Sam, I want you to take whatever comfort you can from the fact that I don't think the same thing about you as the rest of Waraxe."

"What does the rest of the town think about me?"

"They think you are a pathological degenerate who should be lynched. But I don't believe that."

"Thanks. That's a big comfort."

"I know what you were after when you tore Mom's dress."

In spite of himself, Collins felt his face warming in a blush.

"You were only seeking the mother love you missed as a boy," the girl said.