I told her there wasn't any mystery about that. "I am detestable," I said.
She nodded somberly. "You're an abominable cluck, and that's a mink-lined fact," she agreed. "But this is in no way your fault. You are simply an unfortunate victim of an extreme variation from the electric norm. You have what we bio-electronicists call a rogue symbiotic waveform."
She could be right. Big-electronics was a little out of my line. I didn't feel I knew enough about the subject to argue.
"What throws me," I said, "is why I should reciprocate your revulsion. I mean, ordinarily I am a sort of good-natured slob. I don't often get mad—not even at kindly old ladies."
It seemed Panda also had a theory about that. "This antagonism undoubtedly stems from the fact that we are at opposite ends of the symbiotic scale," she said. "We are a hundred per cent incompatible."
We drove around for a couple of hours before I dropped her off at her apartment in Santa Monica. When I finally left, I found I was committed to escorting her down to Long Beach, where I was wrestling that next night. I wanted that date the way a guy on his way to the electric chair wants to sit down.
The Long Beach match turned out to be one of my best performances. The sight of Panda sitting there in the front row, her face contorted in a livid mask of hatred, was positively inspiring. When I finally made my victor's march up the aisle, the place was a howling bedlam.
Those kindly old ladies were leaping from seat to seat like spindle-legged Tarzans.
Leo was all molars by the time we got back down to the dressing room. "Freddy," he chortled, "tonight you were great. I hear the TV switchboard is jammed with people calling up to swear they will slay you on sight. But slow and painful!"
I told Leo I was happy to learn I was such a success.