“He’s laughing,” Mike whispered.
“That’s the funniest way I ever saw anyone commit sideways,” I said glumly. I reached out and smacked him across the puss. “Butch! Snap out of it!”
“Ooh!” said Butch. “You lousy heel. I’ll get you for that.”
“Sorry, Butch. But I thought you were strangling.”
“Guess I was at that,” he said, and started to laugh again. “Shorty, I couldn’t help it. See, that ol’ vinegar visage come in here and started staring at me. I stared right back. She bends over the bassinet. I grin. She grins. I open my mouth. She opens her mouth. I reach in and pull out her bridgework and pitch it out the windy. Her face sags down in the middle like a city street in Scranton. She does the steam-siren act and hauls on out o’ here. But Shorty—Mike”—and he went off into another helpless spasm—“you shoulda seen her face!”
We all subsided when Jonquil came in again. “Just tending to my petunias,” she said primly. “Why—you have dinner on the table. Thank you, child.”
“Round two,” I said noncommittally.
Around two in the morning I was awakened by a soft thudding in the hallway. I came up on one elbow. Mike was fast asleep. But the bassinet was empty. I breathed an oath and tiptoed out into the hall. Halfway down was Butch, crawling rapidly. In two strides I had him by the scruff of the neck.
“Awk!”
“Shut up! Where do you think you’re going?”
He thumbed at a door down the hall.
“No, Butch. Get on back to bed. You can’t go there.”
He looked at me pleadingly. “I can’t? Not for nothin’?”
“Not for nothin’.”
“Aw—Shorty. Gimme a break.”
“Break my eyebrow! You belong in that bassinet.”
“Just this once, huh, Shorty?”
I looked worriedly at Jonquil’s bedroom door. “All right, dammit. But make it snappy.”
Butch went on strike the third day. He didn’t like those strained vegetables and soups to begin with, and then one morning he heard the butcher boy downstairs, singing out, “Here’s yer steaks, Miss Timmins!” That was enough for little Percival.
“There’s got to be a new deal around here, chum,” he said the next time he got me in the room alone. “I’m gettin’ robbed.”
“Robbed? Who’s taking what?”
“Youse. You promise me steaks, right? Listen, Shorty, I’m through with that pap you been feedin’ me. I’m starvin’ to death on it.”
“What would you suggest?” I asked calmly. “Shall I have one done to your taste and delivered to your room, sir?”
“You know what, Shorty? You’re kiddin’.” He jabbed a tiny forefinger into the front of my shirt for emphasis. “You’re kiddin’, but I ain’t. An’ what you just said is a pretty good idea. I want a steak once a day—here in this room. I mean it, son.”
I opened my mouth to argue and then looked deep into those baby eyes. I saw an age-old stubbornness, an insurmountable firmness of character there. I shrugged and went out.
In the kitchen I found Mike and Jonquil deeply engaged in some apparently engrossing conversation about rayon taffeta. I broke it up by saying, “I just had an idea. Tonight I’m going to eat my supper upstairs with Bu … Percival. I want you to get to know each other better, and I would commune with another male for a spell. I’m outnumbered down here.”
Jonquil actually did smile this time. Smiles seemed to be coming to her a little more easily these days. “I think that’s a lovely idea,” she said. “We’re having steak tonight, Horace. How do you like yours?”
“Broiled,” said Mike, “and well d—”
“Rare!” I said, sending a glance at Mike. She shut up, wonderingly.
And that night I sat up in the bedroom, watching that miserable infant eat my dinner. He did it with gusto, with much smacking of the lips and grunting in ecstasy.
“What do you expect me to do with this?” I asked, holding up a cupful of lukewarm and sticky strained peas.
“I don’t know,” said Butch with his mouth full. “That’s your problem.”
I went to the window and looked out. Directly below was a spotless concrete walk which would certainly get spattered if I pitched the unappetizing stuff out there. “Butch—won’t you get rid of this stuff for me?”
He sighed, his chin all greasy from my steak. “Thanks, no,” he said luxuriously. “Couldn’t eat another bite.”
I tasted the peas tentatively, held my nose and gulped them down. As I swallowed the last of them I found time to direct a great many highly unpleasant thoughts at Butch. “No remarks, Percy,” I growled.
He just grinned. I picked up his plates and the cup and started out. “Haven’t you forgotten something?” he asked sleepily.
“What?” He nodded toward the dresser and the bottle which stood on it. Boiled milk with water and corn syrup added. “Damned if I will!” I snapped.
He grinned, opened his mouth and started to wail.
“Shut up!” I hissed. “You’ll have them women up here claiming I’m twisting your tail or something.”
“That’s the idea,” said Butch. “Now drink your milk like a good little boy and you can go out and play.”
I muttered something impotently, ripped the nipple off the bottle and gulped the contents.
“That’s for telling the old lady to call me Percy,” said Butch. “I want another steak tomorrow. ’Bye now.”
And that’s how it came about that I, a full-grown man in good health, lived for close to two weeks on baby food. I think that the deep respect I have for babies dates from this time, and is founded on my realization of how good-natured they are on the diet they get. What really griped me was having to watch him eat my meals. Brother, I was earning that thirty grand the hard way.
About the beginning of the third week Butch’s voice began to change. Mike noticed it first and came and told me.
“I think something’s the matter with him,” she said. “He doesn’t seem as strong as he was, and his voice is getting high-pitched.”
“Don’t borrow trouble, beautiful,” I said, putting my arm around her. “Lord knows he isn’t losing any weight on the diet he’s getting. And he has plenty of lung power.”
“That’s another thing,” she said in a puzzled tone. “This morning he was crying and I went in to see what he wanted. I spoke to him and shook him but he went on crying for almost five minutes before he suddenly sat up and said, ‘What? What? Eh—it’s you, Mike.’ I asked him what he wanted; he said nothing and told me to scram.”
“He was kidding you.”
She twisted out of my arms and looked up at me, her golden brows just touching over the snowy crevasse of her frown. “Shorty—he was crying—real tears.”
That was the same day that Jonquil went into town and bought herself a half dozen bright dresses. And I strongly suspect she had something done to her hair. She looked fifteen years younger when she came in and said, “Horace—it seems to me you used to smoke.”
“Well … yes—”
“Silly boy! You’ve stopped smoking just because you think I wouldn’t approve! I like to have a man smoking around the house. Makes it more homey. Here.”
She pressed something into my hand and fled, red-faced and bright-eyed. I looked at what she had given me. Two packs of cigarettes. They weren’t my brand, but I don’t think I have ever been so deeply touched.
I went and had a talk with Butch. He was sleeping lightly when I entered the room. I stood there looking down at him. He was awful tiny, I thought. I wonder what it is these women gush so much about.
Butch’s eyes were so big under his lids that they seemed as if they just couldn’t stay closed. The lashes lay on his cheek with the most gentle of delicate touches. He breathed evenly, with occasionally a tiny catch. It made nice listening, somehow. I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye—his hand, clenching and unclenching. It was very rosy, and far too small to be so p
erfect. I looked at my own hand and at his, and I just couldn’t believe it …
He woke suddenly, opening his eyes and kicking. He looked first at the window, and then at the wall opposite. He whimpered, swallowed, gave a little cry. Then he turned his head and saw me. For a long moment he watched me, his deep eyes absolutely unclouded; suddenly he sat up and shook his head. “Hello,” he said sleepily.
I had the strange sensation of watching a person wake up twice. I said, “Mike’s worried about you.” I told him why.
“Really?” he said. “I—don’t feel much different. Heh! Imagine this happening to me.”
“Imagine what happening?”
“I’ve heard of it before, but I never … Shorty, you won’t laugh at me, will you?”
I thought of all that baby food, and all those steaks. “Don’t worry. You ain’t funny.”
“Well, you know what I told you about me being a changeling. Changelings is funny animals. Nobody likes ’em. They raise all kinds of hell. Fathers resent ’em because they cry all night. Mothers get panicky if they don’t know it’s a changeling, and downright resentful if they do. A changeling has a lot of fun bein’ a brat, but he don’t get much emotional sugar, if you know what I mean. Well, in my case … dammit, I can’t get used to it! Me, of all people! … well, someone around here … uh … loves me.”
“Not me,” I said quickly, backing away.
“I know, not you.” He gave me a sudden, birdlike glance and said softly, “You’re a pretty good egg, Shorty.”
“Huh? Aw—”
“Anyway, they say that if any woman loves a changeling, he loses his years and his memories, and turns into a real human kid. But he’s got to be loved for himself, not for some kid he replaces.” He shifted uneasily. “I don’t … I can’t get used to it happening to me, but … oh oh!” A pained expression came across his face and he looked at me helplessly. I took in the situation at a glance.
A few minutes later I corralled Mike. “Got something for you,” I said, and handed her something made of layette cloth.
“What’s … Shorty! Not—”
I nodded. “Butch’s getting infantile,” I said.
While she was doing the laundry a while later I told her what Butch had said. She was very quiet while I told her, and afterward.
“Mike—if there is anything in all this fantastic business, it wouldn’t be you, would it, that’s making this change in him?”
She thought it over for a long time and then said, “I think he’s terribly cute, Shorty.”
I swung her around. She had soapsuds on her temple, where her fingers had trailed when she tossed her bright hair back with her wrist.
“Who’s number one man around here?” I whispered. She laughed and said I was silly and stood on tiptoe to kiss me. She’s a little bit of a thing.
The whole thing left me feeling awful funny.
Our thirty days were up, and we packed. Jonquil helped us, and I’ve never seen her so full of life. Half the time she laughed, and once in a while she actually broke down and giggled. And at lunch she said to us, “Horace—I’m afraid to let you take little Percy back with you. You said that those people who had him were sort of ne’er-do-wells, and they wouldn’t miss him much. I wish you’d leave him with me for a week or so while you find out just what their home life is like, and whether they really want him back. If not, I … well, I’ll see that he gets a good place to live in.”
Mike and I looked at each other, and then Mike looked up at the ceiling, toward the bedroom. I got up suddenly. “I’ll ask him,” I said, and walked upstairs.
Butch was sitting up in the bassinet trying to catch a sunbeam. “Hey!” I said. “Jonquil wants you to stick around. What do you say?”
He looked at me, and his eyes were all baby, nothing else.
“Well?”
He made some tremendous mental effort, pursed his lips, took a deep breath, held it for an unconscionable time, and then one word burst out. “Percy!”
“I get it,” I said. “So long, fella.”
He didn’t say anything; just went back to his sunbeam.
“It’s O.K. with him,” I said when I got back to the table.
“You never struck me as the kind of man who would play games with children,” laughed Jonquil. “You’ll do … you’ll do. Michaele, dear—I want you to write to me. I’m so glad you came.”
So we got our thirty grand. We wrote as soon as we reached the shack—our shack, now—that no, the people wouldn’t want Percy back, and that his last name was—Fay. We got a telegram in return thanking us and telling us that Jonquil was adopting the baby.
“You goin’ to miss ol’ Butch?” I asked Mike.
“No,” she said. “Not too much. I’m sort of saving up.”
“Oh,” I said.
The Anonymous
WHEN CHLOE HOOKED GABE, there was quite a ripple about it. The ripple, as such things will, spread in widening circles from office to drugstore to nightclub to the society columns, and everyone said, “Oh, the lucky girl, to get such a handsome fiancé!” Or, conversely, “Imagine being married to a man as good-looking as that! The poor kid!”
No, they weren’t society, but it hit print all the same. What notoriety—for such it was—surrounded the engagement was Gabe’s. He was a Figure. He Stood for Something. Pictures were taken of him and published in magazines, and the pictures were clipped out and hoarded by unprepossessing girls of all ages. He was Glamour—he was the Unattainable. Men disliked him because he was a byword of masculine desirability among all the girls they knew. Girls went coiffure over leather-lifts about the gentleman, following him, pestering him, forming a living halo of studied spontaneity about him. Some said he was Hayundsome. Some said he was just too, too. Most just said, “Oh, my!” at the first glimpse of his noble profile, and lapsed into ecstatic sighs. Oh, he was a killer.
And Chloe—well, she got cuffed around plenty, behind her back. It was amazing the way her friends dropped away from her when the news got around. The girls wondered in noisy whispers how she had managed to catch him, with all her obvious flaws, none of which had been worth mentioning before. One said, “She must have compromised him. She couldn’t possibly have done it any other way.” Another agreed delightedly, for such is the feminine way, and said, “I don’t know how she has the gall to face us. If I were her I’d blush to the dark roots of my blonde hair.” A third chimed in wistfully, “But Gabe’s so wonderful. Chloe is really lucky,” and was so pitied for her attitude that she was frozen out of the conversation. As for Chloe’s men friends, they took the attitude that they were beaten, hopelessly outclassed, and might just as well take their efforts elsewhere.
Chloe was hardly deserving of such treatment. She was a taffy-blonde, with long green eyes and a build something on the order of a Coca-Cola bottle. She had brain-power and differed from the ordinary run of brainy women in that she used hers. She caught Gabe by the simple tactic of refusing to “Oh!” and “Ah!” his every word and gesture, and he found this so refreshing that he asked her to marry him. Her head whirled violently at that, and, by sheer power of will, she had the whirling generate centripetal force enough to keep her from flinging herself into his arms. She smiled tremulously and squeezed his hand, and that was that.
As for Gabe, he liked it—the whole idea of it. It was generally taken for granted that Gabe was one to be envied. He had everything, hadn’t he? He had looks, and he had the kind of job that could keep him clothed to suit those looks, and he had the natural manner for clothes like that—he would have been a distinguished man even if he had a face like the hunchback of Notre Dame. As it was, he had the face of a Greek god after a beauty treatment.
It wasn’t just his features, though Lord knows they were superspecial enough, what with his olive skin and his arched, pomegranate lips and his inscrutable eyes, and his rich dark hair. It was the way he used them, too. He was credited with a thousand virtues he couldn’t possibly have possessed. To look
at a woman wasn’t a mere matter of focussing his eyes on her. It was to look deep into her crystal orbs—under his glance a woman’s eyes immediately became crystal orbs—with a gaze so full of deep intent, of subdued and thrilling passion, of such age-old understanding, of such fright-fraught desires, that the poor girl found herself—insisted on being—a willing slave to him. And it was most embarrassing to him, because he was quite without intentions of any sort except to be agreeable. Gabe, you see, was rather a simple soul.
And his voice—Why, the man was incapable of raising it without its being warmly vibrant, or of lowering it without transmitting unspoken messages. The tones of it were as the bugle to the military man, the gong to a racehorse, as the piper’s flute to the children—and rats—of Hamelin. At the first sound of it, spinsters left their crocheting, maidens their movie magazines, and wives their husbands. And he had a hell of a time getting rid of them. If he tried to be polite about it, they were sure he was being considerate of their ex-current paramours, and that made him very noble and self-sacrificing, and they loved it. If he called a spade a spade, or even a dirty old shovel, they thought he was being dominant, and loved that too. If he tried making them jealous by going with another woman, why then they got jealous, and he had the other woman on his hands.
But with Chloe it was different. She was that rare type of woman—there are such—who carried a constitutional resentment of magnificent men. Gabe was a bit more magnificent than most, but she doggedly stuck by her guns and treated him the way she had always treated what she called “his kind.” She took for granted that if a man were better-looking than average, he was correspondingly more vain, more conceited, more narrow-minded, more self-centered and more stupid than one who had to rely on his personality to ingratiate himself with her. Any man who treats extra-beautiful women in this fashion has the right idea; but for a woman to take this tack is dangerous, as it is not an invariable rule, and she can get herself disliked by handsome men, categorically. She then has no alternative but to be less finicky about the men she is unpleasant to, and ultimately she will find all men desirable and all of them detestable. Chloe was headed in that general direction when she received Gabe’s surprising proposal.
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