Dwayne entered his showroom. The ground wasn’t blooping underneath him anymore, but now he saw something else for which there could be no explanation: A palm tree was growing out of the showroom floor. Dwayne’s bad chemicals made him forget all about Hawaiian Week. Actually, Dwayne had designed the palm tree him-self. It was a sawed-off telephone pole—swaddled in burlap. It had real coconuts nailed to the top of it. Sheets of green plastic had been cut to resemble leaves. The tree so bewildered Dwayne that he almost swooned. Then he looked around and saw pineapples and ukuleles scattered everywhere. And then he saw the most unbelievable thing of all: His sale manager, Harry LeSabre, came toward him leeringly, wearing a lettuce-green leotard, straw sandals, a grass skirt, and a pink T-shirt. When Dwayne Hoover saw Harry LeSabre, his sales manager, in leafgreen leotards and a grass skirt and all that, he could not believe it. So he made himself not see it. He went into his office, which was also cluttered with ukuleles and pineapples.

Kilgore Trout w as far away, but he was ste adily closing the distance be tween himself and Dwayne.