He said, "'Ello, 'ello."
As I walked into the kitchen, giddy with this enormous joke, my wife said, "Guy and Em are flying up for dinner. That rocket of Guy's they launched in the desert yesterday was a success. It pulled Guy up to Cloud Nine and he wants to celebrate."
I danced a little jig the way old Nijinsky might do it. "Oh, great! Oh, wonderful! Good old Guy! Everybody's a success. It's great. It's wonderful. Success on success!"
I danced into the kitchen table and tipped over a basket of green corn. The maid promptly left the kitchen for some other place.
My wife just stared at me. "Have you been drinking the lab alcohol?"
"I've been drinking the nectar of the gods. My Hera, you're properly married to Zeus. I've my own little Greeks descended from Icarus."
She pretended a hopeless sag of her pretty shoulders. "Wouldn't you just settle for a worldly martini?"
"I will, yes. But first a divine kiss."
I sipped at my martini and lounged in a terrace chair watching the golden evening slant across the beautiful hills of our ranch. I dreamed. I would invent a euphonious set of words to match the Basic English vocabulary and teach it to them as their language. They would have their own crafts and live in small tree houses.