The Genie of Sutton Place

by George Selden

  Then came cleanup time. Dooley got a razor and scissors from the attendant and gave Sam a shave and a haircut. He still looked pretty scraggly. I asked Dooley why he just didn’t do it all by magic, and he said there was no point in doing by magic what you could do by hand. Which makes sense. The only magic he did right then was to snap his fingers and find in one hand a little vial—“containing a very sweet scent,” he said, “distilled from the Wizard’s spice garden,” which he proceeded to slap all over Sam’s face. Among other things, Dooley proved to be an excellent barber.

  I got to comb Sam’s hair. I always liked to brush him—when he was a dog, I mean—and he must have known, because he bent over obediently, and we tried the part on both sides. We all preferred the left. “There!” I said. “Now I call that a handsome man.” And he was, too. He still had something of a stomach, but not too much, in my opinion. “It’s time to go home.”

  Sam whimpered dismally.

  “Sam, stop that!” I said. “Dooley fixed your voice.”

  “I know,” he groaned, man-style now, “but I’m scared.”

  “The whole point of making you a man was so I could still own you. That is—keep you.” I felt queasy about owning Sam the man. “I mean—so we could be together. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes, Tim.”

  “What we’ll do is, we’ll tell Aunt Lucy that you’re an old friend of Lorenzo’s. Because that’s true enough to say, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Sam. “Ever since that first day when he found me in the garbage can on Bleecker Street.”

  “Well, we don’t need to tell her that! There’s no point in being too honest. We’ll say that Dooley and I just ran into you while we were driving around this morning.”

  “Do you think she’ll like me, Timmy?” Sam was worried. “You know—as a man?”

  “I don’t know, Sam,” I said. “But I hope you make a better impression than you did as a dog.”

  During the drive back to Sutton Place we all were quiet. The Cadillac was full of Sam’s anxiety.

  And in the elevator, I remembered something else. “Sam, you have to have a last name. What one do you want?”

  He thought a moment—desperately, you could see by his face. Then he said, “Oh—Bassinger, I guess.”

  That struck me as funny—and also pretty original. “Why Bassinger, Sam?”

  “You never knew it, Timmy,” said Sam, “but my father was a basset hound, and my mother was a springer spaniel.”

  8

  The Fearful Lunch

  Aunt Lucy was in the living room. “Oh, Timmy—I’ve been so worried”—as usual. She was worried last night, she was worried this morning—she did a lot of worrying in those days. “I didn’t know where—” Then she saw Sam behind me.

  For a minute I thought the impossible: that she recognized him. Her forehead and eyes pinched into a question. But then they smoothed out clear again.

  Sam, of course, was just standing there with that basset expression of pure dumb hopeless love.

  Things had to be joggled on. I rushed into the silence that was holding us all apart. “Aunt Lucy, this is Mr. Bassinger. He’s an old friend of Lorenzo’s and mine; we met him this morning driving around, and since he’s an old friend of Lorenzo’s and mine, I thought I’d—I thought I’d—” About here I ran out of steam.

  But Aunt Lucy came to my rescue. “You thought you’d bring him up to say hello.” She smiled.

  “That’s right!” I said.

  “I’m so glad you did. How do you do, Mr. Bassinger?” She held out her hand.

  I breathed an inward sigh of relief that I’d taught Sam how to shake hands. But he did it like a dog. Just held his hand out limply and waited for Aunt Lucy to take it, shake it, and then let it go again. It’s funny how something like a limp handshake can be so appealing in a dog, but kind of icky in a man.

  “Well—” Aunt Lucy began to jitter, because Sam still hadn’t said a word—“I am glad to meet a friend of Timmy’s.”

  I was beginning to fear for his voice myself, when he managed to get out, “I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Farr. Again.”

  “Oh? Have we met before?” said Aunt Lucy.

  “I told him all about you, Aunt Lucy.” I realized right then that I was going to have to pay careful attention to everything and do a lot of tidying up.

  “Mr. Bassinger—” Aunt Lucy’s voice went into its social register—“I have an idea. It’s past time for lunch—I was waiting for Timmy—do say that you’ll stay and have luncheon with us.”

  “Luncheon?” Sam looked at me with terrorized eyes. You’d have thought she’d said rabies shots. “At the table—?”

  Fortunately she misunderstood. “Perhaps you’re one of those very courageous people who don’t eat lunch—” For those whole great weeks we were saved very often by somebody’s ignorance.

  “Usually I have just one meal a day,” said Sam. “And two biscuits when I wake up.”

  “Won’t you make an exception this noon?” said Aunt Lucy, flirting with his appetite. “We’re having lamb chops—”

  “Lamb chops—” I could see Sam’s mouth begin to water.

  “Oh, good! You do like them.”

  “I like the bones—”

  I gave a warning cough to Sam. The first of many warning coughs. By the end of that lunch, Aunt Lucy was sure I had a cold, and I had made my throat sore.

  “I’ll ask Rose to set another place.” Aunt Lucy went into the kitchen.

  “Timmy,” Sam yowled, “take me back to the dog pound!”

  “Now, Sam—” I wanted to pet his head. But apart from being caught by Aunt Lucy, I guessed all those doggy things were now out.

  “I can’t make it, Tim! I can’t!”

  “Yes you can, Sam. Just keep watching me.”

  “I’m a dog—”

  “No you’re not! You’re a man. You’ve got to put all that behind you, Sam. When you’re in doubt—look at me. And I’ll—I’ll—” As a matter of fact, I didn’t know what I’d do, but I had to put up a good front, for Sam—“I’ll give you little lessons in elemental humanity.”

  Sam threw back his head, about to howl, but Aunt Lucy came in and he managed to stifle it.

  “We’ll only be a few minutes more. Won’t you sit down, Mr. Bassinger?”

  Now Aunt Lucy took over. That’s one thing about living in Sutton Place: you learn how to make an awful lot of idiotic but very useful small talk. And Aunt Lucy really did her duty that day. She could see that Sam was very nervous—as well he might be: except for the car this was the first time he’d ever sat up in a chair—and to set him at ease she let go a Mississippi of chatter. About the plays she liked. And the operas. And all the committees she was on. And me—what fun having me living there! It was all dull stuff, but she did it for Sam, just out of politeness. That was the first time I realized how important boring conversation can be. People’s lives just slide along on it.

  Sam was edgy! Just as if he had fleas. (I think we got rid of the last of them in the Turkish bath.) At one point he began to scratch his ear. Of course he couldn’t use his leg, the way a dog would use his right hind leg, but the same quick jerky motions were there. I gave another warning cough. But I’m not going to put down all my coughs, it would sound too much like tuberculosis.

  Rose came in and announced, “Lunch, Miss Lucy.” She had a way of not sounding like a servant—only someone who had an announcement to make …

  And the fearful luncheon began …

  When poor Sam saw the fork, the knife, and the spoons, you’d have thought they were going to be used to carve him up, instead of the lamb chops. In very slow motion I opened my napkin and spread it in my lap. Sam did the same. I had hopes for his table manners, because he was usually a very neat dog. Although his tail was clumsy sometimes, he never slobbered around his bowl or left a mess. So little by little, secretively, and with many a glance in my direction, Sam learned how to use the utensils. Fork like this—
knife like this—carve slowly!—et cetera …

  Rose served us the courses, one by one—tomato juice first—and behind the swinging door to the kitchen I could see Dooley spying. He had his widest smile on, because he knew the crazy truth of everything that was happening.

  Meanwhile, Aunt Lucy was pouring out her torrent of necessary nonsense. When I wasn’t concentrating on Sam, I was thanking her silently.

  Dessert arrived—almost a disaster! Because you know how much dogs like ice cream. Sam’s face lit up, and I thought he was going to lean right over and lap. But I managed, accidentally, to bang my spoon on my water glass, and he smartened up and used his spoon.

  We moved into the living room. That’s a custom they have up in Sutton Place: you take your coffee somewhere else. It’s a nice custom, too, because it’s fun to change places for the last part of a meal.

  I was feeling very self-satisfied. Here was my dog—I mean, my ex-dog—sipping demitasse in the company of my aunt, and I thought to myself, This can’t have happened to too many other kids.

  Then Rose came in with the bad news. “Miss Lucy, Mr. Watkins is here.”

  “Oh, lovely! I wasn’t expecting him yet. He can join us for coffee.”

  Sam bristled.

  It’s different when a man bristles. His hair doesn’t stand up quite so high, but it stands up high enough to make somebody worry.

  “Henry,” said Aunt Lucy in that phony high but workable tone she’d been using through lunch, “this is Mr. Bassinger. A friend of Lorenzo’s. And of Timmy, too!” She glittered at me, to prove her point.

  “’Ullo,” said Sam, in a bassety voice. He gave Mr. Watkins a limp handshake. I hated that. Because I knew Sam was really a strong dog. Or man. Or whatever he was. At that stage I wasn’t really sure.

  Aunt Lucy began churning out more chatter, but Mr. Watkins wouldn’t go along with fluff. I could see that he instinctively didn’t like Sam, just as much as Sam resented him. It was chemical, that’s all. He kept digging in.

  Like—“What’s your field, Bassinger?”

  “Well, I—I—” Sam looked to me for help. But I didn’t have any.

  “Between jobs, eh?” Mr. Watkins lit a cigarette. He did it as if he’d scored a point. “Kind of late to change horses, isn’t it?”

  “Am I going to change horses?” Sam panicked at me. I shut my eyes and shook my head a little, to reassure him: no.

  “The recession, I meant,” said Mr. Watkins. “And a man your age, to be changing careers. What line of work have you been in?”

  “Just—mostly—” Sam gave another quick scratch at his ear, but then remembered and held his hand in his lap—“prowling around, I guess.”

  “Prowling?” Old Watkins wouldn’t let that go by.

  “I mean—inspecting is more what I do.”

  “Inspecting what?”

  “Oh—trees—fireplugs—”

  “I see. A city job,” sneered Mr. Watkins cattily.

  That’s it! I didn’t realize it till now, but Mr. Watkins was a cat person.

  Don’t misunderstand: I’ve met some very nice cat people. Mrs. Libovski, who owned the clock shop next to Madame Sosostris’s on Bleecker Street, was definitely a cat woman. I don’t just mean she owned cats—she did, three Siamese—I mean, if she’d been an animal, she would have been a cat. I think inside of everybody, along with the humanity, there exists a possible animal. I don’t mean like the dog in Sam—a transformation like that must take place only once in a very blue moon. I mean, more like what that person might have been. For instance Aunt Lucy: there’s a little nervous squirrel sitting up on its hind legs inside of her. And Dooley—he’d have been, perhaps not a bull or a bear, but something big and dark and powerful. Rose has a panther inside her, but a quiet one, with its tail switched around its legs—only don’t make her mad.

  And if ever there was a man with a cat—a catty cat, not like one of Mrs. Libovski’s—inside of him it was Henry Watkins.

  I can see now that that explained Sam’s reaction. His lips began to curl, and I heard a growl coming up from his chest.

  Mr. Watkins didn’t help things, either, by asking Aunt Lucy, right over my head, “How did the chappy take his—canine separation this morning?” As if any kid doesn’t know what “canine” means.

  The squirrel in Aunt Lucy twitched nervously at me. “Uh—we haven’t discussed it, Henry.”

  “What canine separation?” snarled Sam.

  “Tim had this dog—a pretty ragged character—that didn’t fit in. I’m proud of the way you’re accepting this, Tim—”

  He didn’t have time to finish his purring compliment, because Sam barked, “Yes, and you’re the one who called the dogcatcher—!”

  “How did you know that?”

  “A guess!” Sam’s teeth were all out now.

  We were right on the edge of a downright cat-and-dog fight.

  “Mr. Bassinger—” I stood up—“would you like to see my room? I have some things of Lorenzo’s there.”

  Sam got his dog under control and muttered, “Yes, I would. Very much.”

  It turned out that Aunt Lucy and Mr. Watkins were going off to a meeting of the Committee for the Preservation of the Upper East Side. But before they left, Aunt Lucy made a point of shaking hands with Sam again and said, “It’s been such fun to have you to lunch. Will you come another time?”

  “I’d like to, Miss Farr,” Sam mumbled.

  “‘Miss Farr’ is so formal. My first name’s Lucy—” Sam didn’t say anything. “And yours is—?”

  Sam looked, hangdog, at his feet and said, “Sam.”

  “Sam—” Aunt Lucy flicked her eyes at me. And then giggled. “Well, that’s a coincidence!”

  Again I wondered, like in Mr. Dickinson’s office, if all coincidences, if you got to know the whole truth about them, are just as complicated and planned as this one was.

  In my bedroom I tried to cool Sam down. He still was fuming and woofing indignantly. “He did call the dogcatcher, Timmy. He was here at the crack of dawn.” I wanted to hold him in my lap—but no way.

  Dooley came in, with a pumpkin grin. “How fares our former quadruped, master?”

  “Pretty primitive, Dooley,” I said. “As if you didn’t know! Eavesdropping in the hall like that. Does Rose suspect anything?”

  “She suspects something, master. But she knows not what she suspects. Her only comment, whispered to me in the kitchen after Sam had sniffed at the salad, was, ‘There’s something funny about that man.’”

  “She doesn’t know the half of it,” I said.

  “Ah, Sam—do the nets of human nature ensnare thee?”

  “I’ll say,” said Sam dejectedly.

  Dooley put his arm around Sam’s shoulder and squeezed: a man-to-man gesture. Pretty strange when you think that one was a genie, just let out of a rug, and the other, two hours ago, was a dog.

  “I don’t have a job—” Sam looked down sadly at the foot of my bed. “I can’t sleep in my box any more—”

  “Fear not, Sam. For I can provide any lodging you wish.”

  “And as far as work goes, Sam,” I said, “isn’t there something you’d like to do?”

  “No! I was happy the way I was. Scrounging is fun. Timmy—” he looked at me with a pleading hopelessness—“maybe I better go back to—”

  “No!” It was my turn to put my foot down. “You have to give it a try, Sam—you have to! Just think.”

  “Think,” grumped Sam, disgusted.

  “’Tis the task of man, Sam,” said Dooley philosophically.

  Sam shook his head. “When I woke up this morning, the biggest problem I had was to choose between Alpo and Chuck Wagon.”

  But then he did try to think. Dooley and I helped him silently.

  And something worked. Because Sam broke out in a big laugh and said, “Hey!—there is something that I ought to be good at!”

  9

  Sam’s Pet Shop

  That’s what the
sign over the door said—in big beautiful letters that Dooley invented.

  It was on Second Avenue, and Sam and Dooley had their apartments—floor-throughs—on the second and third floor above. On the top floor lived Mr. Cantarell. He was one of those Collier-brother-type recluses who don’t go out for anything except to get food. And right in the middle of the biggest, busiest city in the world! I met him in the hall once and I liked him, but he doesn’t have anything to do with anything—so there he still lives.

  When I learned, the day after the nervous lunch, that Sam had his pet shop and that Dooley and he had acquired pads, coincidentally, in the very same building on Second Avenue, I began to worry about evaporated former tenants. But Dooley swore to me that he hadn’t done anything to anyone. It was kind of a rickety building, down in the twenties, and all vacant, except for Mr. Cantarell. They kept him on, at his same cheap rent, for charity, and because he liked animals.

  The way they got it was, Dooley made money. And I mean he really made money! About twenty-five thousand dollars in one afternoon. (That’s another thing: if anybody should find some fake money around, hold on to it. It may be Dooley’s, and it’ll probably be very precious someday. There can’t be too much counterfeit in circulation that a genie himself created.)

  But after the money they did it all themselves. That same business about not wasting magic on what you can do by hand. Once the building was bought, and the mortgage arranged—with some doctored credentials for Sam—they tore through the place like two hurricanes: painting, scrubbing, renovating. Every old building should be so lucky as to have two guys like Dooley and Sam in it. They even bought ladders and painted the outside, too. And the plumbing—all new pipes—everything … Believe me, it’s lucky that all of that work was really work! It lasted beyond the spell.

  In two weeks Sam’s Pet Shop was ready. And the best time in my life began … We started to get the animals.

  We decided right off that we wouldn’t specialize in just one type. We’d have dogs and cats and fishes and birds and monkeys—and every kind of animal that could possibly find a home in New York. And at that very first conference we also resolved that we’d have special kennels and pens for mongrels and other mixed-together things that the other pet shops might consider just throwaways … After all, Sam was no pureblood himself.