THE EFFECT OF THE GAMMA RAYS ON MAN IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS

To escape the boredom of her sad existence, Beatrice Hunsdorfer goes through the small the ads and lonely hearts every day. She spends most of her time locked away at home, chain smoking cigarettes. Her father is dead; her son was killed in Korea; her husband left her. The men she tries to interest are both fascinated and disgusted by her. To make ends meet, she tries to sell dancing classes over the telephone. She also rents one of her rooms to people that are even stranger than her. One of her two daughters studies the effects of gamma rays on marigolds. The effects are weird: the seeds of the flowers suffer genetic mutations that seem to partially destroy them…