I’m Smith. There are only two of us left now. Used to be seven but Vassar got her wrists slashed under the Eiffel Tower, Wellesley slipped into the Bosphorus on Valentine’s Day, Holyoke did a swan dive off a balcony in Tokyo…bad luck. At least each of them had the foresight to make her death like a bimbo suicide. Last year Bryn Mawr then Radcliffe vanished in Africa, leaving Barnard and me alone with Maxine the Queen. At least I think we’re alone. For all I know, the Queen’s slapping another seven debutantes through boot camp. She certainly isn’t treating her two survivors like priceless gems. On the contrary, my last few adventures leave a whiff of suspicion that she’s trying to cancel me. Of the seven, I’ve been the Queen’s class brat and Maxine seems to resent my outlasting the sweetheart Vassar, who heeled like a champion spaniel, or Holyoke, who would hack off her right foot for America. I’m a patriot, not a kamikaze, and have occasional difficulty taking orders from a lady with an IQ sixty points below my own. Worse, the Queen has the joie de vivre of a tortoise. Maxine doesn’t like to diddle with reality as if it were fiction. She rarely exploits coincidence, never plays God…then has the gall to laugh when I tell her that gambling with my own little life keeps me humble. By now Maxine’s half convinced I stay alive just to irritate her; no one joins this outfit without a sensational death wish and I’ve had many opportunities to indulge myself lately. The ante just hasn’t been high enough. Smith’s eyeballs will not become buzzard’s lunch; Smith’s brains will not dribble like slugs over a black leather couch unless the history of the world is at stake. I detest anticlimaxes.