I was washing my hands when someone moved up to the sink beside me and it was Martin Walters.
It was only a little over two hours since the embarrassment over the press conference that I had come on time for and still been too late for, and I scowled at him.
Martin had no difficulty reading the scowl. He dried his hands and said with an uncomfortable smirk (perhaps it was intended to be an ingratiating smile), «Listen, Darius, I’m sorry about this afternoon. I really am.»
«It’s all right,» I said, but it wasn’t, so I changed the subject. «Do you know Giles Devore?»
«Yes. Why?»
«You haven’t seen him up here by any chance?»
«I just got up here. And even if I saw him, I wouldn’t see him.»
«Oh? What’s the matter.»
«He stood me up.»
«Receiving end doesn’t taste as good?»
He smiled uncomfortably again. «Come on, Darius. It was different. In our case, it was the force of circumstances, you know that. In the case of Giles, it was just a matter of forgetting or not caring. I’m in charge of the entertainment for a dining club and I arranged with him to come down and give a little talk on the significance of fantasy or something like that. It wasn’t much, but I thought it would start some good conversation, you know—only he never showed. It was very embarrassing and when I called him the next day he said, coolly, he had forgotten. No sign of contrition; seemed totally unmoved. It was the most unprofessional thing I’ve come across in a long time. I’ve wiped him out of my book.»
«Too bad,» I said, not managing to be as sympathetic as I ought to have been.
Once out of the men’s room, I gave up my ticket and moved into the outer of the two rooms into which the ballroom was divided. That one was the bar, and I paused just long enough to make sure that Giles Devore wasn’t there. Then I moved on.
10 ISAAC ASIMOV 6:45 P.M.
In the inner room, there were four large buffet tables, one against each wall. I presume they were all the same, but I visited only the nearest. Free dinner, I said to myself, and had myself some fried chicken, two kinds of sausage, a few slices of tongue, a glob of potato salad, some five or six olives, plus a roll and butter on a separate plate.
I found myself a table that had not yet collected anyone at any of its four chairs and sat down with a little sigh. If I were left alone, if I were allowed to eat in peace, I might yet brush away all the implacably humiliating events of the day. Some people dissolve their woes in wine; I’m quite likely to assuage my sadness in spiced sausage.
It wasn’t to be. Nothing broke right that Sunday. I hadn’t completed my first mouthful when a cheerful voice boomed out, «Good old Darius Dust. Mind if I join you?»
I’ve got to explain about the name Darius. It was wished upon me by a self-educated father. You can’t trust self-education, it goes too far, gets too bloated, knows no moderation. My father’s name was Alexander and he knew that Alexander the Great had defeated Darius III of Persia, and that was it. Perhaps he had the feeling that even though he would see to it I had a thorough education (he did) I would never be able to surpass him. Since he was five feet ten, I guess I never did.
My mother, a very little woman whose genes, in that respect, I inherited, went along with it. She had no choice.
No one ever had a choice within hearing distance of my father.
To be the smallest kid in class is not exactly a passport to happiness. To be any kid named Darius, surrounded by Jims, Toms, and Bills, produces little joy. To be the smallest kid in class, and named Darius, too, is something like sitting under a neon sign that flashes on and off with the message, «Kick me!»
It wasn’t until I was in college before my name stopped serving as an insult to everyone my age I ever met; an insult to be personally avenged at once.
I hated that name at first, but held on to it with a wretched obstinacy. No one was going to force me out of it.
By the time I reached a coterie of friends old enough and sophisticated enough to be able to pronounce it and feel at home with it, I began to like it.
Correct pronunciation helps. Even among relatively sophisticated adults, it isn’t a familiar name. Outside Herodotus, one is only likely to come across it in an old chestnut of a poem called «Darius Green and His Flying Machine» by John Townsend Trowbridge, written a little over a hundred years ago. I hated that poem. Naturally the only Darius in popular literature was served up as comic relief.
I’m not sure what proportion of the general population knows how to pronounce the name, but even in the rarefied circles within which I have my being (God help me) I hear it more often mispronounced than pronounced. The first impulse is to pronounce the name so as to rhyme it was «various,» but that’s not right. The accent is on the second syllable, with a long «i,» so that in rhymes with «pious» and «bias.»
That has its disadvantages, too, for once you learn to say Darius properly, you are bound to notice that it sounds something like «dry as.» Then, if you have a particularly feeble mind, it occurs to you that if you change Just to Dust, the name becomes «Dry as Dust,» which is not exactly ideal for a writer.
Actually, only one person I know has the kind of perverted sense of humor that thinks this is funny. When I heard someone say «Good old Dry as Dust. Mind if I join you?» I knew, without looking up, that it was Isaac Asimov. Word play is his idea of the empyrean heights of wisdom.
I didn’t let it bother me. I just said, «Hello, Ikey. Of course I mind having you join me, but sit down anyway.»
As it happens, there’s nothing that Asimov can possibly call me that I would hate as much as he hates being called Ikey. So one of these times, when it finally dawns on him that every «Dry as Dust» will elicit an «Ikey» without fail, he will quit. Anyone else would quit after two tries. I give Asimov twenty years.
Since this book is rather in the nature of a collaboration, with his name on it as sole author, however, I had better be particular about describing him.
He’s five feet nine inches tall, rather fat and more than rather grinning. He wears his hair long, and it’s clear he does it out of laziness, rather than out of any desire for a splendid leonine effect (which is how I’ve heard him describe it), because it never seems more than sketchily combed. The hair is somewhat gray and the sideburns, which run down to the angle of his jaw and which have been aptly described as looking like Brillo, are nearly white. He’s got a bulbous nose, blue eyes, a bolo tie, and glasses with black frames. He has to remove his glasses to read or eat because he won’t admit his age long enough to get bifocals.
He’s like me in some respects. He doesn’t smoke or drink any more than I do. Like me, he also likes to eat, but I don’t get fat on it and he does. He thinks the difference is metabolism, which is funny for a guy who claims to be a biochemist. I know the difference is exercise. I work out in a gym nearly every day—but once Asimov has managed to lift himself out of bed in the morning, that is his exercise for the day. Except for typing, of course. His fingers are in good shape.
He had his plate heaped much higher than mine was, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing anxiously at what I had retrieved as though I might, perhaps, have found a goodie he had overlooked.
«What’s the score now, Isaac?» No use calling him Ikey except under provocation.
He knew what I meant. «A hundred sixty-three at the moment,» he said, with his mouth full, «but who’s counting?»
«You are,» I said.
He swallowed, and said in an aggrieved tone, «I have to. That’s my shtick. Everyone wants to know how many books I’ve published and if I don’t tell them they’re disappointed. What’s more, if they ask me the question in two successive months and the figure doesn’t go up by at least one, they feel cheated. Look, there’s no need for you to be resentful. You’ve had a movie made out of one of your books. I haven’t.»