I went to bed and the next thing I knew I was awake again and it was getting on for ten o’clock in the morning. Ring, ring, said the telephone, ring ring. Seize him. ‘I’m right here,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of running. Here I stand.’ ‘I have a call for you from Sol Mazzaroth,’ said Lucretia. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘bring forth Mazzaroth in his season.’ Sol stepped out of the telephone and looked at me in disbelief. ‘Herman,’ he said, ‘was it a bad dream or did you actually phone me at three o’clock this morning and say you couldn’t do it?’ ‘Yes, it was a bad dream and that’s what I said.’ ‘But why, Herman? Surely you’ve done tougher adaptations for me: look at War and Peace, how you got through it in twenty-five pages, I still tell people about that.’ ‘I know, Sol. This is just one of those times when something that was whatever it was becomes something else and all of a sudden it’s too much.’ ‘Herman, when I think of what we’ve been through together since the old Hermes Foot Powder days I can’t believe this is happening.
