by Gene Wolfe
“I’ll take a rain check, and I’ll see you real soon. Ozzie, what’s happening?”
Fuentes said, “You are Mees Garth? Go with me to the captain’s desk. We ask there for Joe.”
“Right. You better come too, Ozzie.”
Barnes whispered, “Aren’t you going to tell the piano player he has to split with you? I was watching, and there’s plenty in there.”
Candy shook her head. “Mostly ones and fives. You don’t get big dough in a joint like this, because how the hell are they going to get it on their expense accounts? They’ve got to pad it on, call it a cab ride or something, and the company back home will only stand for so much.”
“You should have had half, anyway. It was more than half for you.”
Fuentes said, “One floor down, Senor, Senorita. In lobby.” He held the elevator doors for them.
“Ozzie, asking isn’t getting. He’d have bitched like hell and ended up giving me twenty bucks, and the next time I wouldn’t be welcome. The way it was, I got a couple of free drinks, and I’ll get star treatment any time I come back. Golden oldies—did you notice? Nothing real raunchy. They loved ’em. If I hadn’t had to leave, I could have taken my pick of four or five johns, and with any luck he would have given me fifty or a hundred.”
The doors slid open, and they crossed the lobby to the bell captain’s desk.
“Joe’s looking for you,” Fuentes said. “I get him.”
Barnes said, “I wonder what she wants?”
“Who?”
“That chicky at the desk. Tam. Tweed skirt.”
“What do you care?”
“When you find out what this Joe’s after, whistle.” Barnes straightened his tie and pulled down his jacket.
“I know she’s here,” the young woman in the tweed skirt was saying. “I phoned, and you connected me.”
“She doesn’t wish to see you,” the clerk said. He used the world-weary tone of one who drops a polite pretense. “She called and said we weren’t to give out her room number, and she’s not taking calls. If you went up there—if you found out the room number—you might make a scene, but you wouldn’t be admitted.”
“But this is Serpentina! She’s got to see somebody!”
Barnes cleared his throat. “You’re looking for Madame Serpentina? As it happens, I’m a friend of hers.”
The young woman looked around at him. Her face was lively rather than lovely, but it was a very attractive liveliness, reminiscent of blindman’s buff played at a fifteenth birthday party. “Can you take me to her? Will you?” The sub-assistant manager seized the opportunity to move away.
“Not so fast,” Barnes said. “I don’t want to inconvenience her, not unless there’s a reason for it. But I might be able to talk her into seeing you. Let’s go over there,” he gestured toward one of the vinyl couches, “and discuss it. Who are you?”
“I’ve got a card,” the young woman said. She opened a purse nearly as big as Candy’s and jerked out a compact, a glasses case, and a package of nonnutritive gum. “Here they are!”
The card read:
ALEXANDRA DUCK
Associate Editor
Hidden Science/Natural Supernaturalism
with the usual address, telephone number, and so on.
“Miss Duck?” Barnes murmured uncertainly, returning the card.
“That’s Ms. Duck,” the young woman said, “and no quacks. Sandy Duck. If you’re really a friend of Madame Serpentina’s, call me Sandy.”
“Call me Ozzie,” Barnes told her. “Madame Serpentina does.”
“Swell.” Sandy Duck held out a hand in a knit acrylic glove.
Barnes shook it solemnly. “Is that a magazine or a newspaper? Hidden Science and Natural Whatever It Was?”
“It’s magazines. Or I should say they are. We publish them in alternate months. Hidden Science in January, March, May, and so on, and Natural Supernaturalism in February, April, June, and like that. It has to do with shelf life. The supermarket kids will leave the January-February issue of HS standing right next to the February-March issue of NS. Or anyway, we hope they do, and sometimes it works.”
“Supermarket kids?”
“The ones that straighten the magazine racks in the supermarkets. That’s where we sell, mostly. To women in the supermarkets. What’s she like?”
For a moment, Barnes thought wildly that he was being asked about his ex-wife.
“Madame Serpentina,” Sandy explained. “She’s getting to be quite famous, you know. I’ve met a dozen people who’ve met her, but you’re the first who claimed to know her well.”
“Well, she’s very beautiful … .”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Black hair, dark complexion, dark eyes, and she has a wonderful figure. You think of her as tall, but she isn’t really. Just medium height, maybe two or three inches taller than you are.” He paused to reflect. “She doesn’t exactly have an accent, but I don’t think English is her native language.”
“Don’t you know?”
Barnes shook his head. “It isn’t something you can ask somebody right out, now is it? She doesn’t talk about herself—or only once in a while. Sometimes she doesn’t talk at all. She’s imperious, very queenly.”
“Do you—” Sandy broke off to look at the fat girl looming beside her.
“Seventh floor, room seventy-seven, Ozzie. We’re off to see the wizard.”
“Who was Joe, and what did he want?”
“It’s Jim, I thought it was. He’s up there. He phoned down, and we’re supposed to come up. Say bye-bye to your little friend.”
Sandy jumped up. “Is that where she is? Madame Serpentina? Seven seventy-seven?”
“Ozzie, who is this?”
“I’m from Hidden Science. One of our readers tipped me that Madame Serpentina was here. I telephoned, and a man’s voice said to come over, that he’d get me in to see her.”
Candy pursed her mouth. “That must have been Jim.”
“Who’s Jim?”
“A friend of ours. Maybe you ought to come with us.”
Baker’s Dozin’
“Come in,” Stubb said, and all three tried to crowd in together, Sandy Duck caught and crushed between Candy and Barnes.
“God, but I’m glad to see you,” Candy said. She sat on a bed, kicked off one of the galoshes the police had given her, and began to rub her plump, pink foot.
“What are you doing here?” Stubb asked Barnes.
Candy grunted, obstructed by her belly as she tussled with the other galosh. “I made him come, Jim. I was talking to him while you were up here, and he hasn’t anyplace to stay tonight. He just parked his sample cases and stuff in the bus station.”
Their hostess snorted like a small, well-bred horse. “Am I to have this mob domiciled with me?”
“Not me, Madame Serpentina,” Sandy Duck declared. “I only want to interview you—I told you over the phone.”
“And I told you that I do not grant such interviews. I am a witch, not a politician!”
There was a brief flash and the click of a shutter. Sandy lowered her little one-ten and looked at it with satisfaction. “That’s great, I think. With your head back like that. It looked like you were exorcising.”
“I would gladly ring my bell and light my candle, if they would make you go. Ozzie, I certainly did not invite you to my room, but now that you have come, please get this creature out.”
Barnes smiled. “I’ll be happy to, Madame Serpentina. But of course it might be better not to have a commotion. I think the best way might be to work out a compromise that would leave good feelings all around, and since you’ve laid it in my lap—if you’ll excuse the expression—here’s what I propose. Let Sandy ask three questions. I’ll see to it that she doesn’t pack them, doesn’t ask two questions as if they were one. You answer them fully and fairly, and when you’ve answered the third, Sandy will go out with no urging. Won’t both of you agree that’s reasonable?”
Stubb chuckled. “You should have been a diplomat, Ozzie.”
“She must also promise not to harass me in the future.”
Still clutching her camera, Sandy raised her hand. “I won’t harass. I may ask to see you, but if you say no I won’t push.”
“All right then, it is agreed—with the proviso that my answers need satisfy only my own sense of my own worth. I cannot promise they will be satisfactory to you.”
“Okay!” Barnes was beaming. “What’s the first one, Sandy?”
“Wait a minute.” The associate editor’s fingers fluttered as she jammed her camera into her purse. “I have to think … .”
“I have not got all night.”
Stubb added, “Hell no. There’s something I have to talk over with the rest of you when this girl’s gone.”
“Well, I have to think about it. I came up here with a list of about a hundred questions. Now I’m only going to get to ask three. The least you people can do is give me time to decide which three it’s going to be.”
“I said, I have not got all night!”
“Hey,” Stubb put in. “I’m hungry as hell—I don’t think I’ve eaten since breakfast. While she’s making up her mind, how about getting on that phone and asking room service to bring up a club sandwich and a cup of coffee?”
Candy laid a pink hand on the telephone. “Wait a minute, if anybody’s going to eat around here, I’m in. There’s probably a menu in this drawer.”
“What is the use!” The witch gave a theatrical gesture of despair. “Perhaps we should ask for stuffed pig, did we not have one already.”
“If you mean me, forget it. A pig, maybe. But stuffed? Forget it. I’m so empty I can feel my stomach folding up. Now listen to this.” Candy held up the room service menu. “‘Pompano Amandine—luscious filets of fresh pompano, flown up daily from Miami, broiled in a mixture of farm butter, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, and grated almonds.’ That’s for me.”
“Right,” Stubb said. He had taken a small notebook and a mechanical pencil from inside his coat. “What to drink?”
“Beer. Pie afterwards. Peach, if they’ve got it. Or apple. They’ve always got apple.”
“Right. What about you?” He looked toward the witch. “It’s your room, after all.”
“I am delighted you recall it. I had thought it forgotten that I will be paying for all this.”
“Sure. By the way, it’s about time you phoned the desk to ask about your seventy bucks. But wait till I get this order in. What’ll you have?”
“I do not eat flesh or dairy products. Is there anything there for me?”
Candy scanned the menu. “Large fresh fruit salad—includes pineapples and mangoes, other fruits in season.”
“That will do. I will have a glass of white wine also.”
Stubb glanced at the salesman. “Ozzie?”
“Filet mignon with mushroom caps. Scotch on the rocks.”
“Got it. Sandy?”
“Nothing. I don’t want anything.”
“We can’t just eat in front of you. How about a drink?”
“You’re going to have coffee, aren’t you? I’ll have that. A cup of coffee.”
“Got it.” Stubb took the telephone, rang room service, and began to read out the order.
“I can’t decide which questions.” Sandy was staring at a scuffed notebook as though the scrawled words there represented some indecipherable code.
“You must,” the witch said. “Or give them to me. I will decide.” She reached for the notebook.
“A minute. Can’t you give me just a minute?”
There was a knock at the door.
Stubb put a hand over the mouthpiece and looked significantly at the witch. “There’s a peep-hole in the door. Use it.”
“I need not,” she said, standing up. “Our visitor means no harm.” She opened the door, but stood in the doorway.
A little, gray-haired woman in a shabby coat waited on the other side of the threshold. “I know you,” she said as the door opened. “You’re Miz Garth.” She sighed as a traveler who has come to the end of a long journey. “You’re a sight for some eyes, being from Mr. Free’s house and all. Can I come in?”
“I have visitors, and though you say you know me, I do not know you. What is it you wish?”
“I know all of you,” the little woman said, peering around the witch’s shoulder. “Or anyways, most all, almost. A difference without a disinclination, is that what they call it? I just want to ask you about Mr. Free.”
“Let her come in,” Stubb said. “Come in, Mrs. Baker.”
The witch took a half step back, and Mrs. Baker slipped past her. “I know you,” she said. “You were in my parlor when that nice policeman was playing with Puff. I’ve seen you over at Mr. Free’s too. You’re Mr. Barnes.” She turned her vague, sweet smile toward Candy. “And you’re Miz Snake, the fortune teller. Oh, I do so love to have my fortune read! There’s truth in tea, I always say.”
Candy grinned at her. “I’m afraid you’ve made a Miz Snake, Mrs. Baker.”
The old woman did not appear to hear her. “But I don’t know … Well, where did she get off to? Where’s the other girl? I’m sure I saw three when the door opened.”
No one answered. Stubb stepped to the drapes and jerked them aside, but there was no one there.
The witch said, “Certainly she did not go out.”
Barnes called, “Sandy? Ms. Duck, where are you?”
A muffled voice replied, “In here.”
“Oh, hell.” Barnes sounded relieved. “She’s going to the bathroom. I must be getting jittery.”
“I’ll come out when I’ve got my questions!”
Candy sighed. “I was just about to go in there myself. Ozzie, you brought her, tell her to hurry up.”
“That’ll just fluster her worse,” Barnes said. “Leave her alone. She’ll be out in a minute.”
Mrs. Baker smiled at them. “Haste makes worst, I always say.”
“I’ll bet you do,” the fat girl said.
Stubb interposed. “While Sandy’s out of the way, we’ve got a chance to talk to Mrs. Baker here. Let’s make use of it. You said you wanted to find out something about Mr. Free, Mrs. Baker. What was it?”
“Where he’s at, of one thing. A bird in the hand’s worth two in the brush, they say.”
The witch, who had been watching the old woman expectantly, let her shoulders droop a trifle. “Then you know no more than we. I had hoped you did.”
“Because some ladies were asking around and about him. They’re from the Government, I think. And I’d like to know myself. It’s been prying on my mind.”
Stubb said, “These ladies from the Government, were they police? Like Sergeant Proudy, who played with your cat?”
“I don’t think so. They weren’t uniform. Besides, they drank my tea. It was my obsession, when those two nice policemen broke my door, that policemen bought and large won’t drink tea, only cooco. Tea and symphony is what they say, and policemen bought and large don’t care for music.”
“Can you tell us what they told you? Please think carefully. It might be important.”
“Only that they had seen Mr. Free broadcased, and they wanted to talk to him—”
“They saw him on television?”
“Yes, and I did too, clear as day sight on the TV pogrom. It was just after they showed that nice sergeant getting hit with the ax. They say fool’s names and fool’s cases are often aired in public paces, but I thought Mr. Free gave his case about as good as anybody could. He didn’t sound like a lawyer—he sounded like he was telling the truth.”
Barnes said, “That must have been while the rest of us were inside looking after that cop.”
The old woman shook her head. “It was the six P.M. Morning Report.”
Stubb grunted. “They had it taped, Mrs. Baker. Maybe even from before we moved in, when a lot of people were protesting the new ramp. What else did these ladies say?”
/> “Nothing match. Just that they had been looking for poor Mr. Free because he had crash coming, but when they got there he wasn’t here. Factually, the whole kitten caboose of you wasn’t. A missus as good as a mile, like they say, even if maybe they were married. They didn’t take their gloves off, either one.”
“They must have given you their names.”
Mrs. Baker hesitated, chin tucked in. She was sitting in the vanity chair, her back as straight as its own.
“First names? Last names? Anything?”
“I know they said them, but I was in a fluster. Then the little one saw Puff and asked what’s Puff’s name, and I told her Puff, and she run over and hid under the divan like she does, and I never thought to ask again. Do you think it’s a lot of crash?”
Stubb shook his head.
“Still, it might be a lot to him. The widow’s might, it’s called, I believe. You could call it the widower’s might nearly as good. Mr. Free was a widower, I expect.”
“But you don’t know?”
“He always seemed so widower-weedy, if you know what I mean. Not like a old bachelor—they’re always so crispy. The worst old women is the ones that wear pants in the family, they say. But I think old bachelors are worse even, and Mr. Free is so sweet. He casts his spelling over you.”
The witch asked quickly, “Just what do you mean by that?”
Mrs. Baker smiled her vague smile. “Why if I could say, it wouldn’t be spelling, would it? But Mr. Free used to come over and chew the rug now and then. The late Mr. Baker was a deer bomber in the war, and Mr. Free liked to hear about that and talk about his old company that he used to work for, Louise Clerk I think it was.” She sighed. “The closest I can put it is I never felt truffles was important when he was around. He had a beam in his eyes, like the Bible tells, and it lit up within.”
Barnes nodded and cleared his throat. “You know, I felt like that too. I felt like it wasn’t all that important whether I made the sale. I made some good ones too, just before we had to leave.”
“Yesterday I saw you go out my window,” the old woman said. “It wasn’t nosiness, it’s just that looking at the street’s more real-like, sometimes, than TV. I knew you were sailing because of those big valances you carried, and I thought someday you’d come to my door to sell me pans or bicyclopedias. You’d have thought I fell for your line hook and ladder, because I would have let you in and looked at everything. If you’d have told me about Mr. Free, I might have bought a new rooster too. I need one.”