chin resting on my fist, and saw that she was indeed a beautiful creature. Full-size, she'd be a knockout; I'd be falling, as the saying goes, all over her. But a foot high!

Then I remembered that Willy had sketched her. She was a drawing. Tri-dimensional, but nonetheless a figment of Willy's imagination. Yet she was solid. I was getting confused again, trying to tie it, so to fend off a return of the shakes I forced another blank into my mind. It was easier, this time. The whole thing was so ridiculous it was intriguing.

"Who is she, Willy?" I asked. It was easier to talk to him.

"Like I told you. Red. My dream girl."

I looked at him. "Yeah. M-hmm." I looked down at Red. She was sitting on my kneecap, combing her hair. "So just what seems to be the problem?"

His eyes were pathetic. "Again, like I told you. I'm too big for her."

"Yeah," I said. "Uh-huh." It had to be as simple as that. Something practical-like; for Willy, like I said, was basically a practical guy. Or practically a basic guy. I frowned at him, for the answer was also a simple one.

"Then why don't you draw her full size?" I asked.

Willy looked miserable. "I do."

I said, "Mmm?"

"I do draw her full-size. That's Red's full size. Twelve inches."

I nodded, following his lips.

"Once," he continued, "I drew her a little larger."

From her perch on my kneecap Red said, coolly, "Don't you dare try that again."

"No, dear," Willy said, sadly.

I rubbed my head. To Willy I said, "You can't—project her?"

Willy started to answer, but Red interrupted. She looked piqued.

"Of course he can't project me. That would be a distortion of myself. It wouldn't," she yawned, ruffling her red locks, "be me."

I rubbed my head again. I couldn't think of anything to say.

Willy shifted. "I can draw her smaller," he said. "But that would make it even worse, of course."

I nodded. "Of course." Because it seemed practical to say it, I said it: "But wouldn't that be a distortion too?"

"Of course not," Red said, and I had the fleeting impression of being faced by a school teacher in the minute end of a telescope. "Minimized elements are true elements, merely condensed. Maximized elements are bloated, therefore distorted." She sniffed. "Any figment knows that."

I tossed it around in my floundering mind, but it still came out the way it sounded. There was another silence. I could see that the two of them were losing faith in my godmaternal fairyhood. So just to keep the conversation jogging, I tried another tack. To Willy I said:

"If Red's a figment of your imagination, why didn't you imagine her a more practical size in the first place?"

Willy chewed on it for a couple minutes. Red turned away in disgust to leap from my kneecap to Willy's. She seated herself primly and began fussing with her infinitesimal nails. Willy said, "After all, she does have a mind of her own, Jim. She wanted to be imagined the size she is, so—" He looked at me and shrugged.

"Why," demanded the little woman, "should I go up to him? Why can't he come down to me?"

I was getting riled. "You love him, don't you?"

She frowned. "He loves me, doesn't he?"

This had a familiar feminine ring to it which balked pursuit of that subject. I wouldn't have believed that Willy possessed such a dogmatic objective imagination. If I wanted to conjure up a babe I'd make sure beforehand that she came out the way I whimmed her. Red had a mind of her own, which was the negative, or feminine, part of Willy's mind.

All these thoughts popped up in my head because I had to keep this in a practical light to insure against a return of the shakes. If I started considering the impractical side of it I'd recognize it in its true light, which was unmitigated madness.

Willy and Red remained silent, inferring that I was to carry the ball.

"What I'm dim about, Willy, is how this ties in