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fubar surroundings. He had not taken into account the Personnel Department’s card machines, to whom a girl was simply a girl.
    “Come in—come in,” said Fuzz emptily.
    Francine entered the miserable little office, still smiling, vibrant with optimism and good health. She had obviouslyjust joined the company, for she carried all the pamphlets that new employees were given on their first day.
    And, like so many girls on their first day, Francine was what one of her pamphlets would call
overdressed for work
. The heels of her shoes were much too slender and high. Her dress was frivolous and provocative, and she was a twinkling constellation of costume jewels.
    “This is nice,” she said.
    “It is?” said Fuzz.
    “Is this my desk?” she said.
    “Yes,” said Fuzz. “That’s it.”
    She sat down springily in the revolving posture chair that was hers, stripped the cover from her typewriter, twittered her fingers over the keys. “I’m ready to go to work any time you are, Mr. Littler,” she said.
    “Yes—all righty,” said Fuzz. He dreaded setting to work, for there was no way in which he could glamorize it. In showing this pert creature what his work was, he was going to display to her the monumental pointlessness of himself and his job.
    “This is my very first minute of my very first hour of my very first day of my very first job,” said Francine, her eyes shining.
    “That so?” said Fuzz.
    “Yes,” said Francine. In all innocence, Francine Pefko now spoke a simple sentence that was heartbreakingly poetic to Fuzz. The sentence reminded Fuzz, with the ruthlessness of great poetry, that his basic misgivings about Francine were not occupational but erotic.
    What Francine said was this:
“I came here straight from the Girl Pool.”
In speaking of the Girl Pool, she was doing nomore than giving the proper name to the reception and assignment center maintained by the company for new woman employees.
    But when Fuzz heard those words, his mind whirled with images of lovely young women like Francine, glistening young women, rising from cool, deep water, begging aggressive, successful young men to woo them. In Fuzz’s mind, the desirable images all passed him by, avoided his ardent glances. Such beautiful creatures would have nothing to do with a man who was fubar.
    Fuzz looked at Francine uneasily. Not only was she, so fresh and desirable from the Girl Pool, going to discover that her supervisor had a very poor job. She was going to conclude, as well, that her supervisor wasn’t much of a man at all.
    The normal morning workload in the General Company Response Section was about fifteen letters. On the morning that Francine Pefko joined the operation, however, there were only three letters to be answered.
    One letter was from a man in a mental institution. He claimed to have squared the circle. He wanted a hundred thousand dollars and his freedom for having done it. Another letter was from a ten-year-old who wanted to pilot the first rocket ship to Mars. The third was from a lady who complained that she could not keep her dachshund from barking at her GF&F vacuum cleaner.
    By ten o’clock, Fuzz and Francine had disposed of all three letters. Francine filed the three letters and carbons of Fuzz’s gracious replies. The filing cabinet was otherwise empty. The General Company Response Section had lost all its old files in the Building 181 fire.
    Now there was a lull.
    Francine could hardly clean her typewriter, since her typewriter was brand new. Fuzz could hardly make busywork of shuffling gravely through papers, since he had only one paper in his desk. That one paper was a terse notice to the effect that all supervisors were to crack down hard on coffee breaks.
    “That’s all for right now?” said Francine.
    “Yes,” said Fuzz. He searched her face for signs of derision. So far there were none. “You—you happened to pick a slack morning,” he said.
    “What time does the mailman come?” said