East of Laughter
Page 22
“No, no,” Solomon refused to surrender. “The Ifrit cried out ‘We Have a Giant’, and then he identified the giant to Monika as the Riant Giant, and that is an attribute to myself, not of Denis Lollardy.”
“Yes, but you bribed the Ifrit to make the identification, Solomon,” Mary Brandy charged. “And shall I tell the rest of them here how small that bribe was? Shall I tell them, Solomon, what a cheap-skate you were to take advantage of a poor Ifrit who didn’t know one coin from another?”
“Oh, no, no, not that, Mary Brandy. But I always say that it is the spirit of the bribe, and not the amount, that counts. Caesar, stop swinging that fungo bat so close to me! Oh, I’m dashed down completely now. And I’ve already had all these business cards printed up, three-score different sorts of them.”
“Let me see them, Solomon,” Drusilla offered. “Let me see whether there’s one that doesn’t identify you as Top Giant.”
“Oh, but if Atrox doesn’t approve me, then I’m no giant at all.”
“Let’s just settle this right now,” Jane Chantal stated firmly.
“Holy hookey, holy cow,
Holy Atrox, judge this now!”
And there was heard a sigh so weary that it would almost have melted a stone. “How is a poor dead giant to get any sleep in his miserable earth with that girl-woman Jane evoking me?” the flimsy outline of the evoked Atrox demanded. “But even the lowliest place must be filled, I suppose. Let the small pipsqueak Solomon be my replacement then and become the lowest and least of the seven scribbling giants. Let it be done! And don’t wake me from death again or I’ll get nasty!”
And then the flimsy outline of Atrox disappeared forever.
“It’s something, it’s something, but it’s not quite what I’d planned,” Solomon began to shine again.
“And here’s one pile of business cards you can keep, Solomon,” Drusilla said. “These make no claim to your being Top Giant. I rather like these. I’ll take one of them with me. But the other fifty-nine piles of business cards, oh how pretentious they are! I’d better destroy them out of hand.” And Drusilla destroyed all the other cards with fire coming out of her finger-tips. (All East Sussex ladies can make fire come out of their finger-tips, but most of them conceal this talent.)
“And how do we divide the boodle?” Solomon asked, getting his confidence back a little bit. “I originally intended that the Top Giant should take two-thirds of it and the other six of you should divide the last third, but that was when I thought that I was the Top Giant. I know that I’m the lowest of the Seven Giants now, but I suggest that we divide the boodle in seven even parts now and not leave me out. I did devise the plan to make a money-maker out of it.”
“I say that we should let Solomon keep all the money, since he has so little else going for him,” Gorgonius suggested. “I surely don’t want any money for my simple duty as a Scribbling Giant. Do any of you five others want a share?”
“No.” “No.” “No.” “No.” “Never.” the other five refused it.
“Then keep such boodle as may accrue to you, Solomon,” Gorgonius said, “and keep such baubles as this plush building also.”
“And try to rehabilitate yourself a bit, Solomon,” Mary Brandy suggested. “And after a year or two we may include you in our visits. After all, you do belong to our group.”
The other six giants left Solomon there then, Caesar Oceano taking a last near swing at his head with the fungo bat as he went out.
And Solomon Izzersted was alone.
“But only for as long as I want to be alone,” Solomon said. “A man with my kind of money can have all the friends he wants,” and his spherical grin began to spread over his baseball-sized face and head again. “If I didn’t know different I’d think that I did have the Top Job. A billion dollars a year isn’t bad, and I’ll find ways to up that. And I can still go and renew my youth again and again in that close-throated fountain. And I still love the irony of being the smallest man in the world and a certified giant at the same time.”
He still had the bauble, the fabulous “East of Laughter World-Wide Publications Building. And what else?
He lifted a business card from the one stack of them that Drusilla Evenrood had spared. He read the modest words on it:
SOLOMON IZZERSTED THE PATAGONIAN GIANT.
I DO FUTURES.
And his spherical grin spread until it included all of him.