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By Root 405 0

country," said Eliot, "had tremendous research projects devoted to fighting odors. They were supported by individual contributions given to mothers who marched on Sundays from door to door. The ideal of the research was to find a specific chemical deodorant for every odor. But then the hero, who was also the country's dictator, made a wonderful scientific breakthrough, even though he wasn't a scientist, and they didn't need the projects any more. He went right to the root of the problem."

"Uh huh," said the Senator. He couldn't stand stories by Kilgore Trout, was embarrassed for his son. "He found one chemical that would eliminate all odors?" he suggested, to hasten the tale to a conclusion.

"No. As I say, the hero was dictator, and he simply eliminated noses."

Eliot was now taking a full bath in the frightful little lavatory, shivering and barking and coughing as he sloshed himself with sopping paper towels.

His father could not watch, roamed the office instead, averting his eyes from the obscene and ineffectual ablutions. There was no lock on the office door, and Eliot had, at his father's insistence, shoved a filing cabinet against it. "What if somebody should walk in here and see you stark naked?" the Senator had demanded. And Eliot had responded, "To these people around here, Father, I'm no particular sex at all."

So the Senator pondered that unnatural sexless-ness along with all the other evidences of insanity, disconsolately pulled open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. There were three cans of beer in it, a 1948 New York State driver's license, and an unsealed envelope, addressed to Sylvia in Paris, never mailed. In the envelope was a love poem from Eliot to Sylvia, dated two years before.

The Senator thrust aside shame and read the poem, hoping to learn from it things that might defend his son. This was the poem he read, and he was not able to keep shame away when he was through:

"I'm a painter in my dreams, you know,

Or maybe you didn't know. And a sculptor.

Long time no see.

And a kick to me

Is the interplay of materials

And these hands of mine.

And some of the things I would do to you

Might surprise you.

For instance, if I were there with you as you read this,

And you were lying down,

I might ask you to bare your belly

In order that I might take my left thumbnail

And draw a straight line five inches long

Above your pubic hair.

And then I might take the index finger

Of my right hand,

And insinuate it just over the rim of the right side

Of your famous belly button,

And leave it there, motionless, for maybe half an hour.

Queer?

You bet."

The Senator was shocked. It was the mention of pubic hair that really appalled him. He had seen very few naked bodies in his time, perhaps five or six, and pubic hair was to him the most unmentionable, unthinkable of all materials.

Now Eliot came out of the lavatory, all naked and hairy, drying himself with a tea towel. The tea towel was new. It still had a price tag on it. The Senator was petrified, felt beset by overwhelming forces of filth and obscenity on all sides.

Eliot did not notice. He continued to dry himself innocently, then threw the tea towel into the wastebasket. The black telephone rang.

"This is the Rosewater Foundation. How can we help you?"

"Mr. Rosewater—" said a woman, "there was a thing on the radio about you."

"Oh?" Eliot now began to play unconsciously with his pubic hair. It was nothing extravagant. He would simply uncoil a tight spring of it, let it snap back into place.

"It said they were going to try to prove you were crazy."

"Don't worry about it, dear. There's many a slip betwixt the cup and the lip."

"Oh, Mr. Rosewater—if you go away and never come back, we'll die."

"I give you my word of honor I'm coming back. How is that?"

"Maybe they won't let you come back."

"Do you think I'm crazy, dear?"

"I don't know how to put it."

"Any way you like."

"I can't help thinking people are going to think you're crazy for paying so much attention to people like us."

"Have you seen the other people there are to pay