Azazel - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,55

person for reasons that are quite obvious, although, perhaps, not to you with your congenital inability to take note of the finer things of life. One is more aware of the slight hardness in her voice, you see, when one is not able to be directly reminded of a counterbalancing softness elsewhere.

"George," she cackled, "you must be magic. I don't know what you did at that dinner but it worked. Sophocles is going to take me to Paris. It's his own idea and he's awful excited about it. Ain't that great?"

"It's more than great," I said with natural enthusiasm. "It is earth-shaking. We can now indulge in that little promise you made. We can do a repeat of Asbury Park and shake the earth."

Women, however, as even you may have noticed from time to time, lack the feeling that a bargain is sacred. They are quite different from men in this respect. They seem to have no conception of the importance of keeping their word, no feeling for honor.

She said, "We're leaving tomorrow, George, so I ain't got time right now. I'll call you when I get back."

She hung up and that was that. The woman had twenty-four hours to spare and I would scarcely have used half of them - but off she went.

I did hear from her when she returned, but that was six months later. She phoned me again, and at first I didn't recognize her voice.

There was something haggard and worn-out about it. "To whom am I speaking?" I asked with my usual dignity.

She said wearily, "This is Fifi Laverne Moskowitz."

"Boom-Boom," I cried. "You're back! Marvelous! Come on over right now, and let's - "

She said, "George, drop dead! If it's your magic, you're a miserable phony and I wouldn't Asbury Park with you if you could hang by your toes twice as long."

I was astonished. "Didn't Sophocles take you to Paris?"

"Yes, he did. Now ask me did I get my shopping done."

I was willing. "Did you get your shopping done?"

"Like fun! I didn't even get it begun. Sophocles never stopped!" Her voice shed its weariness and, under the stress of emotion, rose to a shriek.

"We reached Paris and kept right on going. He kept pointing out things as we passed at top speed. 'That's the Eiffel Tower,' he said, pointing to some stupid building under construction.

"'That's Notre Dame' he said. He didn't even know what he was talking about. Two football players once smuggled me into Notre Dame and it ain't in Paris. It's in South Bend, Indiana.

"But who cares? We went on to Frankfurt and Bern and Vienna, which them stupid foreigners call Veen. Is there someplace called Treest?"

"Trieste," I,said. "Yes, there is."

"Then we went there, too. And we never stopped off at hotels. We stopped at old farmhouses. Sophocles said that was the way to travel. He said you saw the people and nature. Who wants to see people and nature? What we didn't see was showers. And plumbing. After a while you get so, you smell. And I got things in my hair. I just now took five showers and I'm still not clean."

"Take five more showers in my place," I urged in the most reasonable possible way, "and we can Asbury Park it."

She didn't seem to hear me. It's amazing how deaf women are to simple reason. She said, "He's getting started again next week. He said he wants to cross the Pacific and go to Hong Kong. He's going on an oil freighter. He says that's the way to see the ocean. I said, 'Listen, you screwball creep, you ain't going to get me on no slow boat to China so I can be all to yourself alone.'

"Very poetic," I said.

"And you know what he said? He said, 'Very well, my dear. I'll go without you.' Then he said something real weird because it made no sense. He said, 'Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, he travels the fastest who travels alone.' What does that mean? What's Gehenna? How did a throne get into it? Does he think he's Queen of England?

"It's Kipling," I said.

"Don't be crazy. I never kippled so don't tell me he did. He can hardly do it missionary. I told him I'd divorce him and take him to the cleaners. And he said, 'Suit yourself, my submoronic dear, but you have no grounds and will get nothing. All that