338
RICHARD STERN
oaches and Milers, beat writers who were full of more hot air about
colored people than Talmadge and Bilbo; there was De Goal sitting
up in a French cloud while everybody in Paris killed themselves
with these plastic bombs; there was the Russians, more boojwa than
the capitalists, never thinking beyond their own bellies, not that he
should be thinking about anything else after such a wonderful meal,
for which Miss Wilmer, I never will git to thank you enough.
With which he was up, a handsome man with a fine moustache,
grey at the temples, a high forehead, a very distinguished-looking and
intelligent self-educated man, probably unmarried, though she didn't
know and wouldn't dream of asking, and
if
the world wasn't the way
it was, and if he could possibly get interested in her, who knows
if
despite everything that separated them, she would not enjoy cooking
for him and taking his praise and affection every single remaining
evening of her life.
If
she could take anyone that much, there being,
after all, much to be said for freedom, one's own time, doing one's
own work at one's own speed, so goodnight, Mr. Givens, it's been a
real pleasure, mutual, yes, some time again and I certainly would
like to go out with you, no absolutely, I'm not in the least offended
by the offer, I'm proud you asked me.
The next week Miss Wilmott began writing her article. It flew.
Never had she written so fast, so well. In one week, she laid out a
thirty-nine page first draft, and she knew that there wouldn't
be
more than a handful of changes. Still, she distrusted compositional
euphoria, remembered Horatian maxims, and laid the article aside
for a few days before turning to the final draft.
Fatal delay.
The evening Dr. Hobbie was due back from New York, she
sat in the troglodyte's arms, fingering her reference cards, thinking
about plunging ahead. On the very first card, the terrible equation,
"Picul=133Yi lbs." swooped towards her eyes. "Oh no," she said
out loud. "No, no, no." But there it was. Her calculations about
imports had been pegged at a hundred and sixty-six and a half
pounds to the picu!. She'd misread her skewered threes. An absurd
error, yet an easily corrigible one. But, no, those thirty false pounds
lodged in Miss Wilmott like splinters she was too fearful to dig
out of her tender article. Infection set
in.
Her beautiful account of
opium consumption, rich in psychological insight, economic analysis,
