“It was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, actually.”

  “Never heard of him,” said Hazeltine. (He undoubtedly never had, for, after all, he had been a literary critic.)

  “Let me read you some additional pieces,” he said. He intoned:

  “Listen, my children, and you will find

  That I’ll tell you a story, if you don’t mind,

  About the Land of the Rising Sun

  On the Seventh of December, forty-one,

  Almost all who remember are over and done—”

  I interrupted. “What do you call this one, Lucius? ‘The Daylight Snooze of Kimmel and Short’?”

  He stared at me narrowly. “How did you know?”

  “A wild guess,” I said.

  He then went on to recite, “That’s my last mother-in-law painted on the wall—”, and “You know, we Yanks stormed Anzio, and on the trysting day—”

  I had to stop him when he began what would clearly be a long, long ballad. It started:

  “It was an ancient sailing man

  And he stoppeth one of five.

  ‘If you don’t unhand me, graybeard loon,

  You won’t be long alive.’”

  I staggered away. It wasn’t as bad as being a critic, but it wasn’t much better.

  I went to see Ms. Lissauer. I found her in her study, drooping sadly over a manuscript.

  “I don’t seem to be able to write any longer, George,” she murmured softly. “The whole process no longer seems to grab me. My book Hang Me Up by My Intestines is doing well despite the cruel and vicious review of it by my beloved Lucius, but this new one palls. It is called Skin Me to the Bone, but I can’t seem to put my heart into the skinning.”

  “But what are you going to do instead, Agatha?” I asked.

  “I have decided to be a critic. I have sent in my curriculum vitae to the Critics Congregation, including documentary proof that I beat my aged grandmother and that I have stolen milk from babies on numerous occasions. I believe that will qualify me for the profession.”

  “I’m sure it will. And is it your intention to be a literary critic?”

  “Not quite. I am, after all, a writer, and what does any writer know about literature? No, indeed, I am going to be a poetry critic.”

  “Poetry?”

  “Of course. That’s easy. The pieces are usually short so you don’t get a headache reading them. And if they’re modern you don’t have to strain to understand them, because they’re not supposed to have meaning of any kind. Naturally, I shall find a post with Booksellers Weekly, which publishes anonymous reviews. I am certain I can really fulfill myself if no one ever finds out who said the nasty things I plan to say.”

  “But, Agatha, you probably have not heard of this, but your beloved Lucius is no longer a critic. He is writing poetry.”

  “Wonderful,” said Lissauer. “I will review his books.”

  “Gently, I hope,” I said.

  She eyed me with loathing. “Are you mad? And be fired from my post by Booksellers Weekly? Never.”

  I suppose you see the end.

  Hazeltine’s book of poetry was published under the title of Fragrant Reminiscences and was reviewed anonymously by Ms. Lissauer. This time it was Hazeltine who went about the livery stables, testing out horsewhips for the necessary springiness. He stormed the offices of Booksellers Weekly and before they could get in a squadron of police to remove him, he had found Ms. Lissauer cowering in a corner.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, “It was I who wrote the review.”

  Hazeltine threw away his horsewhip and burst into tears. As they dragged him off, he said, “She well deserves a lashing but I could not bring myself to raise welts on that glorious skin.”

  But it is still the same. Despite the changeover, they are still critic and writer and their love, which is as deep and as passionate as ever, must remain forever unfulfilled.

  I had listened closely to the story and, when it was done, I said, “Let me get this straight, George. Lucius Lamar Hazeltine, who had been a literary critic, is still suffering, is he?”

  “He is suffering the agonies of the damned.”

  “Wonderful. And Agatha Dorothy Lissauer, who became a critic, is also still suffering, is she not?”

  “If anything, more than Hazeltine is.”

  “And they will continue to suffer forever?”

  “I am sure of it.”

  “Well,” I said, “no one can ever say that I am a vicious person or that I hold grudges. All who know me speak favorably of my sunny disposition and my ability to forgive and forget. But I do make some exceptions. George, for once you don’t have to ask me for anything. Here is twenty dollars. If Azazel has any use for Earthly money, give him half.”

  IT’S A JOB

  I HAD BEEN NOTHING IT ALL THROUGH dinner and by now I had decided it was unmistakable. George had an undeniable look of prosperity about him.

  Not much, you understand. It was just that his jacket sleeve looked less frayed, his tie more neatly knotted, his cheeks a little pinker. It was no use actually trying to spot the individual changes that made up the impression. It was the impression as a whole.

  Nothing in the world would make George look like anything but a deadbeat, but somehow today the beat seemed to have a wan spark of life in it.

  “George,” I said, “you haven’t done something desperate like getting a job, have you?”

  He winced, and took a quick sip of wine. Then he said to me haughtily, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you that there are some subjects that aren’t proper in civilized discourse? A j—a j—”

  “A job,” I said, helping out.

  “I can say it,” he answered with asperity. “I’m just too much of a decent human being to say it in connection with myself.”

  “Well, then, George, what accounts for your altogether unaccountable air of not being utterly and completely broke?”

  “Ah, I see. You are impressed by my devil-may-care impression of munificence. —Actually, I made a small investment that paid off rather handsomely.”

  “To the extent of your picking up the check that sooner or later will be handed to me?”

  “On the other hand,” said George, “talking about jobs—I can recall the days when a friend of mine was dying for a job, and would, in fact, have given anything for a job, and couldn’t possibly keep one even when he had it.”

  “I said, George—are you munificent to the extent of your picking up—”

  “Why do you insist on interrupting me with aimless chatter when I’m trying to tell you the story of Vainamoinen Glitz?”

  George always knows how to stop me cold. “Vainamoinen!” I said. “What kind of name is Vainamoinen? You haven’t the faintest idea who Vainamoinen was!”

  “Of course I do. I’ve just told you. He was my friend, Vainamoinen Glitz. Everyone called him Van.”

  “But that’s ridiculous. There’s not a person outside Finland who could possibly be called Vainamoinen. Vainamoinen is the Finnish mythic hero; a musician; a magician; a demigod—”

  “My Vainamoinen was just a pleasant sort of nebbish, very good-looking the young ladies seemed to think, and as rich as the day was long. Actually, he was Vainamoinen Glitz III.”

  “You mean his father and grandfather—”

  “Yes, that’s the assumption. Maybe he had a faint trace of Choctaw blood in him. I think Vainamoinen is a Choctaw word meaning ‘brave warrior.’ But, talking about Finnish, can we finish with this thing you seem to have over an ordinary Choctaw name, or Chickasaw, and let me go on with the story.”

  I shrugged.

  I see that you are eager [said George] so let me plunge into the story without any further ado.

  I had known Van’s father well (his name being Vainamoinen Glitz, Jr.) and I had watched with pleasure as Van grew older. He had the pleasant upbringing of a young man in comfortable circumstances, since his father, having had the newsstand concession at the Pentagon, was naturally a multimillionaire.

  Van was a daring young fellow, too, for I’ll never forget his disappointment at having the Vietnam War end just before he reached draftable age. He was looking forward with such excitement to entering the National Guard.

  But it was not to be. He served his country, instead, by inspecting the various resort areas of our great nation, returning to the city every once in a while, for as he said, “All that lounging about is hard work, George, and it’s nice to get back to the occasional dinner with you.”

  Things might have gone very well with him, for he was becoming one of the nation’s leading experts on beaches, nightclubs, theaters, and other important business establishments, and then he met Dulcinea Greenwich. Now don’t start gasping over the first name, old man. She told me that her father had once read a book called Don Quixote, but I think she was making that up, because you know and I know that no one would ever write a book with a silly name like that. It wouldn’t sell.

  Van came to me all of a twitter. “George,” he said, “I have met the most wonderful woman in all the world. She is dynamic. She is strong. She is intelligent.”

  “Intelligent?” I said. I had seen him through a dozen mild love affairs and it had never seemed to me that his criterion for feminine excellence had been intelligence.

  “Well,” he said, simpering, “she says she’s madly in love with me and if that’s not a sign of intelligence, George, what is?”

  “Van,” I said, “when someone is as good-looking as you are, and as filthy rich, what’s not to love? That’s not a sign of intelligence, that’s just a sign that she’s not dead.”

  “No,” said Van, “she’s not that kind of young woman and I think that cynicism does not become you. It so happens that the other young women who seemed to me to be attracted to my charm and insouciance all wanted to marry me and achieve large settlements and double-indemnity insurance policies. Remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, Dulcinea doesn’t want anything.”

  “Not anything?” I viewed that statement with the deepest suspicion.

  “Well, one thing.”

  “Aha.”

  “It’s not what you think. She wants me to get a job.”

  I won’t deny the fact, old man, that I swallowed the wrong way when he said that and it took me some time before I could convince myself I wasn’t going to choke to death. Finally, everything stopped swimming before my eyes and I said in a ghastly whisper, “A job? Why does she want you to have a job?”

  “She thinks,” said Van moodily, “that it will make a man of me.”

  “But you are a man. You are even,” I said with a sense of awe, for I have always been impressed by those with the talent and cleverness to be born rich, “a wealthy man, and if anything defines a man more securely than pelf, lucre, and a thick wallet, I would like to know what it is.”

  (I feel strongly about such things, old man, for though my circumstances have cast me into a certain shadow of poverty, I have the heart and soul of as rich a man as any in these United States.)

  “She says,” said Van, “that I am charming and that she loves me dearly, but I’m an idle wastrel.”

  “Idle wastrel? With all the work you’ve been doing on the beaches and resorts?”

  “For some reason, she won’t count that. She wants me to have a nine-to-five job, however humble, and to hold it for no less than six weeks, thus proving myself to be a go-getter—to use her phrase.”

  “She must be sick.”

  “No, George. She is not. She is a creature of high ideals and she has my heart. I will simply get a job and show her that I can go-get as well as any go-getter in the world.”

  “What kind of a job are you thinking of, Van?”

  Van shook his head. “There you have me, George. I have not been trained or educated for anything and I can only hope that some prospective employer will be satisfied with the fact that I know very little—even nothing.” He smiled bravely, “I am, of course, an expert and certified beach inspector. Perhaps that will help. Good-bye, George, I’m off to the barricades.”

  Poor Van. What followed thereafter was pitiful. Pitiful! If I were to give it to you in detail, old man, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy—

  (Please don’t recite along with me. Has someone been stealing my lines again? —Hamlet’s father? Never heard of him.)

  In any case, he didn’t make it. I didn’t follow his case closely, of course, for I am a busy man with a million things to do constantly. The racing form alone—but I digress.

  Occasionally, he would invite me to dinner and it was plain that he was sinking under the strain. His tan was fading and he admitted that his polo game was quite off. “When I tell you, George,” he said, in a husky whisper, “that in the last month I have fallen off my polo pony twice you will know what I mean. Please don’t let it get round.”

  “But it must get round. Surely the other players would have noticed that you fell off?”

  “Polo players never talk about such things, George. It’s the code of the pony.”

  The problem was that infernal matter of a job, of course. He had tried everything, he said. He had obtained a job as champagne taster at his favorite nightclub, got drunk the first night and insulted the boss. He was evicted with extreme prejudice. He offered to show me where he was kicked but I was not interested in the sight.

  He got a job as a cashier, but couldn’t figure out how to work the register. And he said all those numbers made him numb, which (he thinks) is why they’re called numbers. He got a job at a gasoline pump but never figured out how to get the gas cap off the tank. He got a job at the information desk at Bloomingdale’s, but quit after one hour in a dudgeon because it seemed the customers expected him to have information. Need I go on?

  “It seems,” said Van, “that I will never have the girl of my dreams. My life, George,” he went on, “will be empty and void of meaning. Inspecting beaches will have no allure. Trying out a new nightclub will result in but hollow gaiety. Of what use is it if I plumb the heights of idle wastreldom, if I lose the woman to whom my soul is indissolubly bound?” And here he wept into his champagne, diluting it in the most appalling fashion.

  My heart ached for him, old man. It seemed to me that if he retired into a life of moroseness and sorrow, he would be far less likely to stand me the occasional meal. True altruism, as you know very well, begins at home, so I would have to do something for him.

  That meant Azazel. —Have I ever told you about my two-centimeter alien whom I can call upon by means of arcane methods known only to myself?

  I have? —Surely you jest.

  But be that as it may, I called upon Azazel.

  Azazel, as you might have expected, was furious. He arrived still shrieking in his counter-soprano and waving his arms madly. Then he looked about, spied me, and said, “You idiot of a grobbledug, is this a time to call me?”

  “It is a time I need you, O Marvel of the Universe.”

  “But I was watching—” He went on to describe the matter in tedious detail. There are apparently beasts on his world with six legs who proceed by leaps and somersaults in random directions and a great deal of money is placed on their progress. The first one to blunder across a finish line wins. Azazel insisted that his steed, whose name was unpronounceable, was on the point of winning.

  “If I don’t get back to the exact instant at which I left,” he screamed, “I will lose seventy dworshaks.”

  “Of course you will get back to the exact instant. What I am going to ask of you is simplicity itself and will take you only another instant, O Champion of the Cosmos.” (He loves being addressed in that fulsome fashion for he is a little creature and on his home planet he is usually referred to with the utmost contempt, I gather.)

  I explained the situation. “A job?” he said, “On my world, we have the word klastron by which we refer to any demeaning task that must be performed by people of low social status over their objections and against their will.”

  “Yes,” I said, feelingly, “that’s what we mean by a ‘job.’”

  “Poor fellow,” said Azazel, dripping a tiny tear that fell upon the tablecloth and burnt a tiny hole in it. “And he actually wants one?”

  “He needs one if he is to have the girl of his dreams, the woman to whom his soul is indissolubly bound.”

  “Ah, love, love,” said Azazel, dripping another tiny tear, “to what extremities it takes even the wisest being. I remember once, when for the love of a dear zapulnik—who was six feet tall, which created a problem, I can tell you—I challenged her middle-mate to a—But that is neither here nor there. I take it you want me to arrange to have him find a job that he can keep.”

  “That is right.”

  “And he has no qualifications?”

  “None.”

  “Then we must work purely emotionally. We must arrange to have an employer who will be perpetually satisfied with this friend of yours, and arrange further to have your friend perpetually satisfied with his job. An intricate affair.”

  “Not too intricate for the Unpuzzler of the Pulsars.”

  “No, of course not,” said Azazel doubtfully, “and yet this has its difficult points. Since we don’t know who the employer might be, I will have to arrange a general field of acquiescence and that’s not easy.”

  I must say, old man, that this was one time when I seemed to lack faith in Azazel. He took a long time, mumbled a great deal, and, although I cannot tell what it is he does when he is engaged in the advanced technology of his own society, it did seem to me that he was backing and filling, with much shaking of the head and the making of new starts.

  When he finally heaved a tremulous sigh and said, “It is done,” he said it in a tone of voice that filled me with doubt. I thanked him effusively, of course, but I didn’t entirely believe he had done it.

  I blame myself for this, old man. It was my doubt that led to disaster. —No, I am not about to drip a tiny tear into my champagne. And this is not champagne, I might as well remind you. It is cheap white wine.