Birdie Bolton

By daylight she is a tweedy, over-dressed British spinster in the quiet suburb of Westhampton; by night she is a gaunt, diamond-draped spectacle who screams like a seagull and dances like a dozen women fighting. She has never dreamed in her life until now, and the dreams—motorbuses, parrots in the bathroom, a noise that vanishes—frighten a woman who insists she neither drinks nor drugs. When Reggie asks if anything is worrying her, she blushes, grips his hand like a man, and says only, 'Be good!'