(xxix)


I had been holed amidships, and had begun to detect a list to port, but I thought my judgment unimpaired.

“Restrain yourself, Gonzago,” I advised. “She’s probably seventeen years old, with the mental endowment of a hamster.”



I would have to write the letter, for I could still command some vestiges of motor control. I spread the napkin out and aimed my pen at it. “How do you want to start?” I asked.

He chewed his Big Boy reflectively. Two lines of burgrous ochre began to dribble from the corners of his mouth, each curving toward the other round his chin.

“I have it!” he exclaimed. “‘Dearest Anita.’”

“Unquestionably a brilliant stroke,” I conceded, writing. The napkin showed a tendency to tear, and the ink bled profusely about the letters: two points scored against the use of the fountain pen for such work. “But continue.”

“‘Dearest Anita’,” he mused. “‘What rapture this, to breathe the name, “Anita”.’ Paragraph. ‘Since first these watery orbs beheld your heavenly form, at the checkout stand at Woolco—’—Are you getting this down? I’m hot!”

“You’re smoking,” I agreed, scrawling furiously. The result promised to be wholly illegible.

“‘At the checkout stand at Woolco, your hair in a perfect bun—’”

“A moment,” I interjected, “I need another napkin.”

“Take two,” he suggested, “they’re small.”

I had the one. “Go ahead.”

“‘Your hair in a perfect bun, my dreams have been filled with you, Anita.’ Paragraph. ‘Let me take you away from all this: to far Cathay, to Arby’s.’ Paragraph. ‘What marvels might we view? The mountains of the Moon; the seven sacred pools; the one-eyed snake with the turtleneck.’”

I thought this such convincing evidence of genius that I smeared the napkin all the way down to the fold in a convulsive fit of appreciation, and had to start the page again, but I got it all at last. “How shall I sign it?” I asked.

He gestured grandly, felling a ketchup bottle. “‘Your devoted admirer’,” he said. He paused to recollect his name. “‘Gonzago’!”

I liked it.

As an afterthought we added his telephone number. He insisted on including the area code, in case she should suddenly decide to leave town. But with this, the piece was perfect.

We left it with a quarter tip, and stumbled through the double doors with the assurance of men who have seen the Muse with her panties down.