be compulsory, like education. I hypothesize that correlation could be found between
the modern tendency to skimp breakfast and the increase in juvenile delinquency.
I said nothing. Men are my weakness; food my ruin-but I didn’t care.
We lunched at Barstow, only I stayed in the car and tried to nap.
Cliff met us at our hotel and we excused ourselves because Cliff wanted to
drive me out to see the university. When we reached the parking lot he said, “What
has happened? You look as if you had lost your last friend-and you are positively
emaciated.”
“Oh, Cliff!” I said, and blubbered on his shoulder. Presently he wiped my
nose and started the car. As we drove I told him about it. He didn’t say anything,
but after a bit he made a left turn. “Is this the way to the campus?” I asked.
“Never you mind.”
“Cliff, are you disgusted with me?”
Instead of answering me, he pulled up near a big public building and led me
inside; it turned out to be the art museum. Still refusing to talk, he steered me
into an exhibition of old masters. Cliff pointed at one of them. “That,” he said,
“is my notion of a beautiful woman.”
I looked. It was The Judgment of Paris by Rubens. “And that-and that-” added
Cliff. Every picture he pointed to was by Rubens, and I’ll swear his models had
never heard of dieting.
“What this country needs,” said Cliff, “is more plump girls-and more guys
like me who appreciate them.”
I didn’t say anything until we got outside; I was too busy rearranging my
ideas. Something worried me, so I reminded him of the time I had asked his opinion
of Clarice, the girl who is just my size and measurements. He managed to remember.
“Oh, yes! Very beautiful girl, a knockout!”
“But, Cliff, you said-”
He grabbed my shoulders. “Listen, featherbrain, think I’ve got rocks in my
Page 154
head? Would I say anything that might make you jealous?”
“But I’m never jealous!”
“So you say! Now where shall we eat? Romanoff’s? The Beachcomber? I’m loaded
with dough.”
Warm waves of happiness flowed over me. “Cliff?”
“Yeah, honey?”
“I’ve heard of a sundae called Moron’s Delight. They take a great big glass and
start with two bananas and six kinds of ice cream and- “That’s passé. Have you ever
had a Mount Everest?” “Huh?”
“They start with a big platter and build up the peak with twenty-one flavors
of ice cream, using four bananas, butterscotch syrup, and nuts to bind it. Then they
cover it with chocolate syrup, sprinkle maltedmilk powder and more nuts for rock,
pour marshmallow syrup and whipped cream down from the top for snow, stick parsley
around the lower slopes for trees, and set a little plastic skier on one of the snow
banks. You get to keep him as a souvenir of the experience.”
“Oh, my!” I said.
“Only one to a customer and I don’t have to pay if you finish it.”
I squared my shoulders. “Lead me to it!”
“I’m betting on you, Puddin’.”
Cliff is such a wonderful man.
AFTERWORD
Santa Claus, Arizona, is still there; just drive from Kin gman toward
Boulder Dam on 93; you’ll find it. But Mrs. Santa Claus (Mrs. Douglas) is no longer
there, and her gourmet restaurant is now a fast-food joint. If she is alive, she is
at least in her eighties. I don’t want to find out. In her own field she was an
artist equal to Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare. I prefer to think of her
in that perfect place where all perfect things go, sitting in her kitchen surrounded
by her gnomes, preparing her hearty ambrosia for Mark Twain and Homer and Praxiteles
and others of her equals.
THE ANSWERS
(to Problems on Pages 334-338)
N.B.: All trips are Earth parking orbit to Earth parking orbit without
stopping at the target planet (Mars or Pluto). I assume that Hot Pilot Tom Corbett
will handle his gravity-well maneuvers at Mars and at Pluto so as not to waste
mass-energy-but that’s his problem. Now about that assumption of “flat space” only
slightly uphill: The Sun has a fantastically deep gravity well; its “surface”