"I'm glad you've explained it all," Mitch said.
"Um," the kid said.
"Oh, you're brilliant, darling," Stasi said. "I've never understood all about stealing home before!"
The kid gulped like a fish, and a pretty stupid one at that.
"I wondered if there were leftovers," Mitch said. "And where you put them."
"They're taking up the whole icebox," Stasi said without budging. There was a wicked gleam in her eye. "You can't miss them."
She was actually going to make him do it. "I wanted more mashed potatoes," Mitch said. "Please, may I please have more mashed potatoes?"
The wicked gleam was followed by a still more evil smile. "Didn't you finish dinner an hour ago?"
"I have a pretty big appetite. Please may I have more potatoes?"
"Because?"
"Because they're the most wonderful mashed potatoes in the history of the world." Behind him there was a sound like Alma trying not to choke. "Please would you do me the very great favor of letting me have some more?"
Stasi got up. "Since you ask nicely," she said. She put her cigarette in the proffered ashtray. "I suppose."
He opened the kitchen door for her with a bow. "After you."
Stasi swanned in and leaned against the sink. "Oh thank God," she said as the door closed. "Darling, I hate football! Why is it everything everyone talks about? An entire holiday devoted to listening to football on the radio! It's not as though one can even see the game. It's just men shouting about things you can't see."
"You might like it better if you could see it," Mitch said, rummaging in the icebox. "I used to play football."
"Did you?"
"In high school." They were damned good mashed potatoes, especially eaten straight out of the bowl with an iced tea spoon. "I was pretty good, but not quite good enough to play college ball. Not at Duke. Trinity, it was called then. Before Old Man Duke gave them enough money to change the name of the college and call it after him."
"Is that a good school?"
Mitch shrugged, his head still in the icebox with the potatoes. "Good enough. Not as good as Jerry's. Jerry went to Harvard and then the University of Chicago. Duke's second tier. Not an Ivy League school, but ok." Considerably more than ok, but it was poor manners to brag. The facts ought to speak for themselves.
Stasi was leaning on the edge of the sink. "What did you take a degree in?"
"Classics." Mitch took another spoonful of potatoes. "I was supposed to read law, not join the army."
"Well, aren't you glad you didn't? Does the world really need more lawyers?"
He didn't look around. "It's good, steady work," he said. "Respectable." Not like flying planes and living over your friend's garage instead of having a house and a proper life, the kind of life his parents had saved and scrimped to give him.
"Oh, that," she said airily. "But it doesn't actually produce anything at the end of the day, does it? Not like rebuilding an engine or moving pallets of goods from here to Omaha or even like digging up things that have been buried for centuries. It's just wealthy men talking to each other, trading around the means of production while the workers get nothing."
Mitch looked around. "You sound like a Communist."
"Darling, I am a Communist." She smirked from the edge of the sink. "Or I was. Before that turned out to be just one more scam."
He shut the icebox. "I never know whether to believe you or not."
"Of course not, darling," she said, and her eyes were opaque. "I don't want you to know."
"So you tell me a lot of BS and there's something true in there, but I'll never know which parts were real," Mitch said.
"Precisely."
"So even when you're telling the truth it sounds like you're lying." He put his head to the side. "Why?"
She looked away. "It's all I've got, isn't it?" She paced over to the door, looking out at the gathering night. "And damn I could use a drink."
"You could come up for a nightcap," Mitch said. "I have a radio that doesn't have to be tuned to football."
She turned back with that brittle smile. "That sounds ideal, darling."
"I'd still like you," he said. "If you were a Communist."
"Ex-Communist," she said. "I've given up on causes. Except for staying alive. I believe in that one very much."
"Yeah, me too," Mitch said, and opened the kitchen door quietly. "I'm planning to live to be ninety."
"I'm glad to hear that, darling," she said. "There's quite enough young and doomed in the world."
He stopped just outside the door, hearing a catch in her voice, and turned around. "That's not me," he said. "I'm not going to die young and I'm not going to throw my life away."
For a moment there was something utterly naked in her face, as though all her powder and lipstick had been stripped off, leaving just her bare face shining through. Then she gave a sideways smile and reached back to close the door. "You're not young now, darling."
"True," Mitch said. "If I'd meant to die young and heroically I would have done it a long time ago. So I'm not. I'm going to be a crotchety old bachelor who scares neighborhood children."
"You couldn't scare a child if you tried." Stasi followed him across the yard. "You're much too nice."
"I am not nice!"
"You are too! You're nice."
"That hurts," he said, heading up the outside stairs to the apartment over the garage. "Nice."
"Nice enough to get a girl a nightcap?"
"Definitely that nice," Mitch said.
Stasi supposed the apartment over the garage had originally been intended for a hired man, back when the farmhouse was part of a working farm, but it had been made over in the last ten years. The inside was completely finished, with round windows at both ends and electric lights. There was a wood stove which kept it warm very nicely. No plumbing, of course, but there was a washstand behind a screen, and one could always go in the house to take a bath if one wanted. It was a little old fashioned as apartments went, but perfectly nice. Well, other than being a bit small. There were only so many places one could put furniture, which meant that Mitch's bed took up the middle of the floor, surrounded by the aforementioned stove and sanitary facilities and a wardrobe and about five bookcases, one of which was surmounted by a state of the art cathedral radio.
Mitch turned it on right away, playing with the tuning knobs until he brought in KFXF in Denver, In the Still of the Night washing over them, lush and sweet. "Better than football?" he asked.
"Much better," Stasi said, sitting down on the end of the bed and kicking off her shoes. There wasn't anywhere to sit in Mitch's apartment besides the bed, and he did have a very nice radio. She liked to sit up here and listen to programs with him. He liked detective shows like The Shadow as much as she did, and he always had good magazines lying around. One was lying open across the bed right now, and she picked it up.
A mostly naked blond sprawled across the cover, wearing nothing except a bronze brassiere, a pair of ankle bracelets, and a strategically draped scarlet printed shawl. Her eyes were closed, the better to miss the shadow of a man with a knife leaning over her.
Stasi turned it over to where it had been propped open. "Demons of the Film Colony?"
Mitch looked vaguely embarrassed. "It's a good story."
"It looks highly entertaining," Stasi said, folding her legs feet under her. "I do have to wonder, though. Why don't they ever have men wearing next to nothing on the cover? I should think women would buy Weird Tales in droves if there was a fellow on front wearing nothing but a little tea towel."
"That's this month's issue." Mitch picked up another magazine off the top of the radio and tossed it to her. "Buccaneers of Venus."
"Oh that's more like it," Stasi said approvingly. A very muscular gentleman wearing nothing but a belt and a little red loincloth stood on the prow of a Viking ship battling a sea monster with a spear, his long black hair blowing in the wind behind him, a decided bulge to his little red loi
ncloth. "November is a definite improvement over October. Not that she's not pretty," Stasi said, considering the covers carefully. "I suppose we'd make a nice contrast, but she's not really my type."
Mitch shook his head, a grin spreading across his face. "Ok, that's an image I'll never get out of my head."
Stasi leaned back against the footboard, back arched in a parody of the cover girl. "I'll wear a bronze brassiere if you'll wear a little red loincloth."
"Sadly, I'll have to pass," Mitch said. He was laughing as he plumped up the pillows at the other end of the bed. "I'd probably get arrested for running around Colorado Springs dressed like that."
"Well, so would I, darling. Now didn't you say something about a nightcap?"
"I did." He went over to the other bookcase where a tray held a decanter full of moonshine. "Straight up or with water?"
"A little water, darling," she said. "I'd like to be able to see tomorrow. Mix me half and half."
"Half and half it is." He poured the moonshine and water into two tumblers while she thumbed through Buccaneers of Venus. Maybe she'd borrow this one. It didn't look too hard. Her spoken English was a lot better than reading. Well, hard enough to do things in a third language when she'd never had much instruction in her first or second. But this looked like fun.
He handed her one glass and went to feed the woodstove, his glass in hand. The moonshine was rough, but with water it went down no worse than truly dreadful vodka. Which did give her an idea for a riff. "Did I ever tell you about the time I was lost at sea with nothing but a cask of vodka?"
"Do tell," Mitch said, opening the stove door with one hand and picking up a log with the other.
Her eyes fell on the sea monster and Mr. November. "I'd been traveling by ship, darling, and I was castaway in the North Sea. Fortunately, I managed to grab a cask of vodka, which kept me afloat. However, there was a narwhal that got a little too interested in my person…."
"…only you were rescued by a handsome Viking," Mitch finished. He put another log in. "I think I see where this is going."
"No, darling. It was aliens from space."
Mitch blinked. "Ok, that's different." He shut the stove door and stood up.
"Buccaneers from Venus, in fact."
That made him laugh. "You're a lot of fun."
"So are you, darling." Which was true. When she was around him she felt like fun, like one of those peerless dames in Black Mask who were ready for anything, rather than anything more realistic she might feel like. But who needed the real world anyway? It certainly had its way of making itself known in no uncertain terms when it wanted to. Why give it the time of day otherwise? Better to live the story. Best to find someone else to play it with you.
She tossed off the rest of the drink and stood up as the music changed, every bit the dame who gets Sam Spade in a corner. "Dance with me, darling. Our own private club."
Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadian Orchestra made a fine backdrop for a quick hesitation waltz. He put his glass down. "Sure." One hand on her back, just close enough, three beats to wait to start on the beginning of the verse, left and back, precisely as drill, her steps the same length as his. He was easy to dance with, a good strong lead: never shy about telegraphing what he planned to do, every hesitation the perfect full stop. Two or three times a week it came to this, dancing around the apartment to the radio for the pure joy of it. Club Garage was a very nice club indeed.
"I've got to have you every day," the singer crooned, "As regular as coffee or tea. You're getting to be a habit with me."
Squeezing her hand, his arm around her releasing, and a nice spin out as pretty as Ginger Rogers, a perfect spin back, his hand right where she thought it would be, the kind of sparks that looked so nice on a dance floor, that had everyone else watching. And again just for the fun of it, the music ending just as they did.
"Oh lovely," she said. Mitch was grinning.
The announcer broke in. "And now, cats and kittens, the king of swing, the duke himself, Duke Ellington! Cause you know It Don't Mean A Thing. Blow, daddy, blow!" The heavy drum beat came up, followed by the sax.
"You Charleston, don't you?" She took his hands again.
"Can you Charleston to this?"
"Why not?"
It took a minute to find the step, but the timing was the same. The scat calls made it sound different, but the beat behind it wasn't any different. And that smile was worth it, only occasionally tripping over each others' feet.
"We're really very good," Stasi said when the music ended. She pushed back an errant piece of hair that had fallen out of her pins, somehow not letting go of his hand. "We should go to Denver sometime. There must be a hotel there with a ballroom."
"There is," he said. "But we'd have to drive back really late. We couldn't stay over."
"Why not, darling?" She sat down again, drawing him down to use him as a nice warm thing to lean on while she caught her breath. He didn't object.
Instead Mitch shrugged. "You, me, hotel? We'd shock everyone."
"I expect so," Stasi said smugly. "Dissolute modern youth. No respect for tradition and decency."
"I'm forty. I'm not sure I qualify as youth. And you must be…." Mitch broke off. "Nearly twenty," he finished.
She laughed. "Well saved!"
"How old are you anyway?" Yes, not moving from behind her, letting her lean on him very comfortably.
"Never ask a lady her age."
"Ok. When were you born?"
"February!"
Another laugh, and his arm slid around her. Oh very nice. "So you're an Aquarius?"
"Aquarius with a Leo moon," Stasi said. "I have an absolutely fascinating chart full of amazing contradictions."
"I expect you do." He looked at her sideways. "But you really are an Aquarius, aren't you?"
"You're getting good at figuring out the truthful bits," she said. Too good, sometimes. It was hard to keep the upper hand. "Still, I wish we could go dancing."
He glanced down at the quilt, at their entwined hands, his over hers, fingers laced. "There's a dance at the Legion on Christmas Eve. With a live orchestra and everything. We do it every year. It may not be a big hotel in Denver, or as nice as a club in LA…."
"…I'd love to, darling! That sounds perfect." She flexed her fingers under his, liking the feel of his big hands, the way it stretched the skin between her fingers, sensual in what was surely a perfectly innocent way. Even the most strict Edwardian would be hard pressed to object to persons of mature age holding hands. Especially a person of forty and a person who was just a shade shy of thirty six. Not that ladies had ages. "But I don't suppose the Charleston will shock them."
"Probably not," Mitch said. The set of his shoulders relaxed. Did he really think she'd say she didn't want to go? "Even in Colorado Springs we've seen the Charleston for ten years."
"And you'd like to shock people," she said. Of course he would. Fast cars and fast planes and faster women, or at least the best illusion of the latter she could muster. He could have that back. And she could give it to him. He could be the guy everyone envied, the one that everyone was sure was getting some prime hoochie. The idea came all at once, breathtaking in its simplicity, a full plot completely formed from her enormous brain, like giving birth to a Jazz Age Athena. "Darling, have you ever seen a Danse Apache?"
"Only in the movies," he said. His breath caught a little, and she knew she had him.
"I think we should do one at the American Legion dance," she said, twisting around to see him better.
A slow grin spread across his face. "Women would faint. Dogs would bark. There might be a rain of frogs."
"That would be worth seeing," Stasi said. "Don't you think?" She turned her hand over in his, twisting her fingers between his, her thumbnail sliding across his palm. "And fun."
"We'd have to practice a lot."
"I expect we would," Stasi said innocently. "Hours and hours. We'd have to work out all the steps and practice incessantly. But I
imagine it would be worth it."
"I don't mind a little hard work," he said fervently.
"Good," Stasi said. "Because I'm planning to work you."
Chapter Four
New York,
November 25, 1932
The one thing that was bad about being in New York was that it was hard to get around. The buses and subways were difficult to manage with his wooden leg, and the cabs were expensive. Sometimes it seemed as though every dime he saved eating at the Horn and Hardart he spent on taxis. He reached for his wallet, but Iskinder was there before him, waving away his attempt to pay. Jerry swallowed his protest — God knew, Iskinder had the money to spare even now — and levered himself out on the sidewalk.
The broad sweep of steps that led to the museum's main entrance were difficult at the best of times, and at the moment it was filled with people descending in the fading light. The museum would be closing soon, and mothers were tugging children toward the bus stop, while young couples dawdled on the steps, stretching out a holiday. Jerry led Iskinder north toward the staff entrance, where the guard admitted him with a nod and laid out the book for him to sign.
"I didn't think anybody would be in today, Dr. Ballard," he said. "And I think you're about the last."
Jerry glanced at the names above his own. Mostly the junior men, as one might expect, plus Professor Yarnold, who came in every day except Sunday, weekday, holiday, or doomsday. Even Yarnold had only stayed a few hours, and Jerry guessed they would have the basement more or less to themselves. "Ras Iskinder is my guest, of course," he said. "I'd like his opinion on a couple of items. I don't expect we'll be long."
"If you stay past closing, you'll have to leave by the park entrance," the guard said, and Jerry nodded.
"Of course."
He led the way through the maze of corridors to the stairs that led to the basement, his cane and wooden leg loud on the tiled floors, and worked his way carefully down, keeping his eye on the worn metal edges. He was aware of Iskinder braced behind him, and spoke without looking back.
Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 Page 77