off than anyone in that audience. He wears earplugs at all times. He can't stand any sound above a whisper.
Serves him right!
The Smile That Loses
I said to my friend George over a beer recently (his beer; I was having a ginger ale), "How's your implet these days?"
George claims he has a two-centimeter-tall demon at his beck and call. I can never get him to admit he's lying. Neither can anyone else.
He glared at me balefully, then said, "Oh, yes, you're the one who knows about it! I hope you haven't told anyone else!"
"Not a word," I said. "It's quite sufficient that I think you're crazy. I don't need anyone thinking the same of me." (Besides, he had told at least half a dozen people about the demon, to my personal knowledge, so there's no necessity of my being indiscreet.)
George said, "I wouldn't have your unlovely inability to believe anything you don't understand - and you don't understand so much - for the worth of a pound of plutonium. And what would be left of you, if my demon ever found out you called him an implet, wouldn't be worth an atom of plutonium."
"Have you figured out his real name?" I asked, unperturbed by this dire warning.
"Can't! It's unpronounceable by any earthly pair of lips. The translation is, I am given to understand, something like: 'I am the King of Kings; look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.' ?t's a lie, of course,said George, staring moodily at his beer. ?e's small potatoes in his world. That's why he's so cooperative here. In our world, with our primitive technology, he can show off.
"Has he shown off lately?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact," said George, heaving an enormous sigh and raising his bleak blue eyes to mine. His ragged white mustache settled down only slowly from the typhoon of that forced exhalation of breath.
It started with Rosie O'Donnell [said George], a friend of a niece of mine, and a fetching little thing altogether.
She had blue eyes, almost as brilliant as my own; russet hair, long and lustrous; a delightful little nose, powdered with freckles in the manner approved of by all who write romances; a graceful neck, a slender figure that wasn't opulent in any disproportionate way, but was utterly delightful in its promise of ecstasy.
Of course, all of this was of purely intellectual interest to me, since I reached the age of discretion years ago, and now engage in the consequences of physical affection only when women insist upon it, which, thank the fates, is not oftener than an occasional weekend or so.
Besides which, Rosie had recently married - and, for some reason, adored in the most aggravating manner - a large Irishman who does not attempt to hide the fact that he is a very muscular and, possibly, bad-tempered person. While I had no doubt that I would have been able to handle him in my younger days, the sad fact was that I was no longer in my younger days - by a short margin.
It was therefore with a certain reluctance that I accepted Rosie's tendency to mistake me for some close friend of her own sex and her own time of life, and to make me the object of her girlish confidences.
Not that I blame her, you understand. My natural dignity, and the fact that I inevitably remind people of one or more of the nobler of the Roman emperors in appearance, automatically attracts beautiful young women to me. Nevertheless, I never allowed it to go too far. I always made sure there was plenty of space between Rosie and myself, for I wanted no fables or distortions to reach the undoubtedly large, and possibly bad-tempered, Kevin O'Donnell.
"Oh, George," said Rosie one day, clapping her little hands with glee, "you have no idea what a darling my Kevin is, and how happy he makes me. Do you know what he does?"
"I'm not sure," I began, cautiously, naturally expecting indelicate disclosures, "that you ought to - "
She paid no attention. "He has a way of crinkling up his nose and making his eyes twinkle, and smiling brightly, till everything about him looks so happy. It's as though the whole world turns into golden sunshine. Oh, if I only had a photograph of him exactly like that. I've tried to take one, but I never catch him quite right."
I said, "Why not