strangers.
Shortly they were in Las Vegas, stopping in a hotel off the Strip. Mike tried the games while Jill killed time as a show girl. She couldn't sing or dance; parading in a tall improbable hat, a smile, and a scrap of tinsel was the job suited to her in the Babylon of the West. She preferred to work if Mike was busy and, somehow, Mike always got her the job she picked. Since casinos never closed, Mike was busy almost all the time.
Mike was careful not to win much, keeping to limits Jill set. After he had milked each casino for a few thousand he put it all back, never letting himself be the big-money player. Then he took a job as a croupier, letting the little ball roll without interference and studying people, trying to grok why they gambled. He grokked a drive that felt intensely sexual — but he seemed to grok wrongness in this.
Jill assumed that the customers in the palatial theater-restaurant where she worked were just marks — and, as such, did not count. But to her surprise she actively enjoyed displaying herself in front of them. With increasing Martian honesty she examined this feeling. She had always enjoyed being looked at with admiration by men whom she found attractive enough to want to touch — she had been irked that the sight of her body meant nothing to Mike even though he was as devoted to her body as a woman could dream of-
-if he wasn't preoccupied. But he was generous even then; he would let her call him out of trance, shift gears without complaint and be smiling and eager and loving.
Nevertheless, there it was — one of his strangenesses, like his inability to laugh. Jill decided, after her initiation as a show girl, that she enjoyed being visually admired by strangers because this was the one thing Mike did not give her.
Her perfecting self-honesty soon washed out that theory. The men in the audience were mostly too old, too fat, too bald for Jill to find them attractive — and Jill had always been scornful of «lecherous old wolves» — although not of old men, she reminded herself; Jubal could look at her, even use crude language, and not give her any feeling that he wanted to get her alone and grope her.
But now she found that these «lecherous old wolves» did not set her teeth on edge. When she felt their admiring stares or outright lust — and she did feel it, could identify the sources — she did not resent it; it warmed her and made her smugly pleased.
«Exhibitionism» had been to her just a technical term — a weakness she held in contempt. Now, in digging out her own and looking at it, she decided that either this form of narcissism was normal, or she was abnormal. But she didn't
Okay, if a healthy woman liked to be looked at, then it follows as the night the day that healthy men should like to look, else there was just no darn sense to it! At which point she finally understood, intellectually, Duke and his pictures.
She discussed it with Mike — but Mike could not understand why Jill had ever minded being looked at. He understood not wishing to be touched; Mike avoided shaking hands, he wanted to be touched only by water brothers. (Jill wasn't sure how far this went; she had explained homosexuality, after Mike had read about it and failed to grok — and had given him rules for avoiding passes; she knew that Mike, pretty as he was, would attract such. He had followed her advice and had made his face more masculine, instead of the androgynous beauty he had had. But Jill was not sure that Mike would refuse a pass, say, from Duke — fortunately Mike's male water brothers were decidedly masculine, just as his others were very female women. Jill suspected that Mike would grok a «wrongness» in the poor in-betweeners anyhow — they would never be offered water.)
Nor could Mike understand why it now pleased her to be stared at. The only time their attitudes had been roughly similar had been as they left the carnival, when Jill had become indifferent to stares. She saw now that her present self-knowledge had been nascent then; she had not been truly indifferent to masculine stares. Under the stresses of adjusting to the Man from Mars she had shucked off part of her cultural conditioning, that degree of prissiness a nurse can retain despite a no-nonsense profession.
But Jill hadn't known that she had
She tried to explain this to Mike, giving her theory of the complementary functions of narcissist display and voyeurism. «The truth is, Mike, I get a kick out of having men stare at me … lots of men and almost any man. So now I grok why Duke likes pictures of women, the sexier the better. It doesn't mean that I want to go to bed with them, any more than Duke wants to go to bed with a photograph. But when they look at me and tell me — think at me — that I'm desirable, it gives me a warm tingle right in my middle.» She frowned slightly. «I ought to get a real naughty picture taken of me and send it to Duke… to tell him I'm sorry I failed to grok what I thought was a weakness in him. If it's a weakness, I've got it, too — girl style. If it is a weakness — I grok it isn't.»
«All right. We'll find a photographer.»
She shook her head. «I'll apologize instead. I won't send such a picture; Duke has never made a pass at me — and I don't want him getting ideas.»
«Jill, you would not want Duke?»
She heard an echo of «water brother» in his mind. «Hmm … I've never thought about it. I guess I've been “being faithful” to you. But I grok you speak rightly; I wouldn't turn Duke down — and I would enjoy it, too! What do you think of
«I grok a goodness,» Mike said seriously.
«Hmm … my gallant Martian, there are times when human females appreciate a semblance of jealousy — but I don't think there is any chance that you will ever grok “jealousy”. Darling, what would you grok if one of those marks made a pass at me?»
Mike barely smiled. «I grok he would be missing.»
«I grok he might. But, Mike — listen, dear. You promised you wouldn't do anything of that sort except in utter emergency. If you hear me scream, and reach into my mind and I'm in real trouble, that's another matter. But I was coping with wolves when you were still on Mars. Nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault. So don't be hasty.»
«I will remember. I wish you were sending that naughty picture to Duke.»
«What, dear? If I make a pass at Duke — and I may, now that you've put the idea in my head — I'd rather grab his shoulders and say, “Duke, how about it? — I'm willing.” I don't want to do it by sending him a picture like those nasty women used to send to you. But if you want me to, okay.»
Mike frowned. «If you wish to send Duke a naughty picture, do so. If you not wish, then not. But I had hoped to see the naughty picture taken. Jill, what is a “naughty” picture?»
Mike was baffled by Jill's reversal in attitude, plus longstanding bafflement at Duke's «art» collection. But the pale Martian thing which parallels tumultuous human sexuality gave him no foundation for grokking either narcissism or voyeurism, modesty or display. He added, «“Naughty” means a small wrongness, but I grok you did not mean a wrongness, but a goodness.»
«Uh, a naughty picture could be either, I guess — depending on who it's for — now that I'm over my prejudice. But — Mike, I'll have to show you; I can't tell you. Close those slats, will you?»
Venetian blinds flipped themselves shut. «All right,» she said. «This pose is just a little naughty — any show girl would use it as a professional pic… and this is a bit more so, some girls would use it. But this is unmistakably naughty … and this one is quite naughty … and this is so extremely naughty that I wouldn't pose with my face wrapped in a towel — unless you wanted it.»
«If your face was covered, why would I want it?»
«Ask Duke. That's all I can say.»
«I grok not wrongness, I grok not goodness. I grok — » He used a Martian word indicating a null state of all emotions.
Because he was baffled, they went on discussing it, in Martian when possible because of its extremely fine discriminations for emotions and values — and in English because Martian couldn't cope with the concepts. To pursue this mystery, Mike took a ringside table that night, Jill having coached him in how to bribe the maоtre d'hфtel. Jill came strutting out in the first number, her smile for everyone but a wink for Mike. She discovered that, with Mike present, the warm, pleased sensation she had been enjoying nightly was greatly amplified — she suspected that she would glow in the dark.
When the girls formed a tableau, Mike was about ten feet from Jill — she had been promoted to a front
