Fabian decided not to take that. “Now see here, Miss Gresham,” he said firmly. “Let us not play games. You didn’t have to tell me anything, but you decided, for yourself, for your own good reasons, to do so. Now I must insist on the whole story, and nothing but the whole story. What other physical difficulties do you have?”

It worked. She cringed a bit in her chair, straightened up again, but a little weakly, and began: “I’m sorry, Mr. Balik, I wouldn’t dream of—of playing games with you. There are lots of other things, but none of them interfere with my work, really. Like I have some tiny hairs growing on my fingernails. See?”

Fabian glanced at the hand held across the table. A few almost microscopic tendrils on each glittering hard surface of fingernail.

“What else?”

“Well, my tongue. I have a few hairs on the underside of my tongue. They don’t bother me, though, they don’t bother me in anyway. And there’s my—my—”

“Yes?” he prompted. Who could believe that colorless little Wednesday Gresham…

“My navel. I don’t have any navel.”

“You don’t have any—But that’s impossible!” he exploded. He felt his glasses sliding down his nose. “Everyone has a navel! Everyone alive—everyone who’s ever been born.”

Wednesday nodded, her eyes unnaturally bright and large. “Maybe—” she began, and suddenly, unexpectedly, broke into tears. She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed through them, great, pounding, wracking sobs that pulled her shoulders up and down, up and down.

Fabian’s consternation made him completely helpless. He’d never, never in his life, been in a crowded restaurant with a crying girl before.

“Now, Miss Gresham—Wednesday,” he managed to get out, and he was annoyed to hear a high, skittery note in his own voice. “There’s no call for this. Surely, there’s no call for this? Uh—Wednesday?”