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Show Anting Alone Page 325 them were having bum angel dust trips. Sam would have forgotten completely about his obligation to record this puke if he hadn't started searching his person for some kind of toy to alleviate boredom's pain. After he'd fired all four springs from his Bic four-color pen across the aisle and bounced them off the white part of an old nun's eye, he laid hands on the Sony and decided that he would entertain himself and his new buddy Simone by pretending to be a radio interviewer. "Ms. Sister Simone Stylite," he said at the top of his lungs, "could you briefly outline for our listeners the mythic extraction, if any, of your unusual name-in-religion? Speak directly into the mikehole if you please." Simone obliged him. She spoke in a purely informative tone with no mischief at all in her face or her voice, as though she thought Sam actually wanted to hear a pious exposition of the tired subject of pillar sainthoood. It seemed as though this was the sole serious thing in her life, this alias of hers. "Simeon Stylite was a Syrian of the sixth century, A.D.," she said, "who spent a total of forty years sitting on top of fifty-, sixty-, seventy-foot poles all by himself. He totally abstained from food and even water for the forty days of Lent, to follow Jesus' example." Simone sucked in her wonderful balloon cheeks. "He was the greatest of all ascetics. Even the barbarous infidels tried to climb his pillar, Persians and Armenians, so they could touch the hem of his meager garment." "Yeah, I know," said Sam. "He enjoyed a brief moment of popular fame |