Labor Supply

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“They do what?” Dr. Vrees said, conscious of inanity.

His patient was a large young man. During the thorough physical checkup prior to this psychiatric questioning, Dr. Vrees had decided, with all the dolor of a spindly man, that this Robert Smith was a truly amazing physical specimen. He was muscled like a stereotype picture of a Viking, and with lean cow-hand hips. There were six feet four inches of him, and every inch in a perfect bloom of health.

Robert Smith seemed lost in some dismal private thought.

“They do what?” Dr. Vrees repeated.

“Huh? Oh, they go whoop, whoop, whoop. Sort of.”

“In your dreams do these... uh... whoops convey any meaning?”

“I guess I understand them all right. Or we understand them, you might say, because I... we... keep working. And all the Ruths, too.”

“All the Ruths,” Dr. Vrees repeated mechanically. Just one Ruth was almost too much to contemplate. Dr. Vrees was highly aware of her, out there in the waiting room. Ruth Jones was as dark as Robert Smith was fair, and she was built on the same heroic scale. At least six feet tall, and proud of it, moving like a ship under a full head of sail. Just to look at her tall beauty, sensing the ripeness of her, made Dr. Vrees unhappily aware of his yen for tall women, a yen which was successfully canceled out by his refusal to look ridiculous in public.

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