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He was referring to the fact that ethical birth-control pills, the only legal form of birth control, made people numb from the waist down.

Most men said their bottom halves felt like cold iron or balsa-wood. Most women said their bottom halves felt like wet cotton or stale ginger ale. The pills were so effective that you could blindfold a man who had taken one, tell him to recite the Gettysburg Address, kick him in the balls while he was doing it, and he wouldn’t miss a syllable.

The pills were ethical because they didn’t interfere with a person’s ability to reproduce, which would have been unnatural and immoral. All the pills did was take every bit of pleasure out of sex.

Thus did science and morals go hand in hand.

The two Hostesses there in Hyannis were Nancy McLuhan and Mary Kraft. Nancy was a strawberry blonde. Mary was a glossy brunette. Their uniforms were white lipstick, heavy eye makeup, purple body stockings with nothing underneath, and black-leather boots. They ran a small operation—with only six suicide booths. In a really good week, say the one before Christmas, they might put sixty people to sleep. It was done with a hypodermic syringe.

"My main message to you girls," said Sheriff Crocker, "is that everything’s well under control. You can just go about your business here."

"Didn’t you leave out part of your main message?" Nancy asked him.

"I don’t get you."

"I didn’t hear you say he was probably headed straight for us."

He shrugged in clumsy innocence. "We don’t know that for sure."

"I thought that was all anybody did know about Billy the Poet: that he specializes in deflowering Hostesses in Ethical Suicide Parlors." Nancy was a virgin. All Hostesses were virgins. They also had to hold advanced degrees in psychology and nursing. They also had to be plump and rosy, and at least six feet tall.

America had changed in many ways, but it had yet to adopt the metric system.

Nancy McLuhan was burned up that the sheriff would try to protect her and Mary from the full truth about Billy the Poet—as though they might panic if they heard it. She told the sheriff so.

"How long do you think a girl would last in the E. S. S.," she said, meaning the Ethical Suicide Service, "if she scared that easy?"

The sheriff took a step backward, pulled in his chin. "Not very long, I guess."

"That’s very true," said Nancy, closing the distance between them and offering him a sniff of the edge of her hand, which was poised for a karate chop. All Hostesses were experts at judo and karate. "If you’d like to find out how helpless we are, just come toward me, pretending you’re Billy the Poet."

The sheriff shook his head, gave her a glassy smile. "I’d rather not."

"That’s the smartest thing you’ve said today," said Nancy, turning her back on him while Mary laughed. "We’re not scared—we’re angry. Or we’re not even that. He isn’t worth that. We’re bored. How boring that he should come a great distance, should cause all this fuss, in order to—" She let the sentence die there. "It’s just too absurd."

"I’m not as mad at him as I am at the women who let him do it to them without a struggle"—said Mary—"who let him do it and then couldn’t tell the police what he looked like. Suicide Hostesses at that!"

"Somebody hasn’t been keeping up with her karate," said Nancy.

It wasn’t just Billy the Poet who was attracted to Hostesses in Ethical Suicide Parlors. All nothingheads were. Bombed out of their skulls with the sex madness that came from taking nothing, they thought the white lips and big eyes and body stocking and boots of a Hostess spelled sex, sex, sex.

The truth was, of course, that sex was the last thing any Hostess ever had in mind.

"If Billy follows his usual M.O.," said the sheriff, "he’ll study your habits and the neighborhood. And then he’ll pick one or the other of you and he’ll send her a dirty poem in the mail. "

"Charming," said Nancy.

"He has also been known to use the telephone."

"How brave," said Nancy. Over