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I had picked out the subject of anatomy in the belief that none of the inhabitants of Eros knew anything about it.

The men didn’t notice and the women had nothing at all to look at, anyway.

I went into my act.

“Kind hosts, friends and unfortunate incidents,” I said. “My topic is the science of anatomy. Now, the science of anatomy is copacetic to the point of mopery. The cerebellum is distended and the duodenum goes into a state of e pluribus unum. Incalculably, thrombosis registers and the ectoplasm becomes elliptic. Or, in the vernacular, the eight ball in the side pocket.”

The crowd sat stunned. Here and there, a flower sniffer looked down at his own rack of bones to check my statement.

“Let me illustrate,” I said. I drew the bathrobes off the wrestlers.

The boys’ muscles rippled as they strutted around the ring. From the women spectators came a long, deep sigh. From that moment, we had half the audience with us—the female half.

“In anatomy,” I said, shaking my finger to emphasize the point, “the wingback shifts outward for a lateral. In the words of the great philosopher Hypocritus, the coil should always be kept clean between the barrel and the tap and all excess collar should be removed with a spatula.”