Fair Peril

by Nancy Springer

  The next morning Adamus was even larger than before. Excluding legs, and compared to a shoe, he had achieved about size 7 ½. Women’s, that is.

  Buffy went to work and fucked up mightily from lack of sleep.

  This could not go on. If the frog kept growing at the rate he was, and if he kept his pricky attitude, she was not going to be able to handle him. She needed some input.

  Over lunch hour Buffy went to the public library to see her good buddy LeeVon in the children’s room.

  LeeVon was one of those rare people who was so emotionally transparent that you had to like him even though he was incomprehensibly weird. He had a skinhead haircut, multiple piercings, and thick, black-rimmed Sartre glasses that seemed to serve some purpose other than to correct his vision; they had non-functional lenses. He wore black leather to work every day of the library year, rode a Harley with similar regularity, and had a tattoo of Peter Rabbit on one arm and Mr. McGregor on the other. When LeeVon flexed his biceps, Peter hopped and Mr. McGregor shook his hoe. The children adored the tattoos and LeeVon. Buffy had gotten to be friends with him through Storyteller’s Guild—he was a stellar storyteller, better than she was, but so lazy about self-promotion that his talents were largely confined to story hour at the library, where he had been a fixture since forever; the place might have fallen into rubble without him. A college dropout hired in more liberal days, back before degrees were de rigueur and parents started to look for child molesters under every peculiar haircut, he was now so firmly installed that even the protests of paranoid newcomers could not dislodge him—perhaps because no one else would have worked for the salary he continued to accept. Whatever. There he was, fingering his nostril rings and munching an egg salad sandwich on pumpernickel, his combat-booted feet up on the desk, when Buffy walked in.

  “Buffmeister!”

  “Hey, LeeVon.” After her mostly sleepless night, she could muster only tepid enthusiasm.

  “How’s it going?” Being LeeVon, he really wanted to know.

  But life was too weird to talk about, even to LeeVon. “It’s going okay.”

  “How’s your mom?”

  “I went to see her a week ago and she didn’t even know me.”

  “Alzheimer’s is hell,” said LeeVon with clean, satisfying sympathy.

  “What makes it worse is she hasn’t changed all that much.”

  LeeVon’s eyebrows levitated.

  “She’s been a mess practically since I’ve known her,” Buffy said. “Dad made her crazy.”

  “Have I ever met your father?”

  “I hope not. He’s dead.” Buffy changed the subject. “I’m looking for a rather specialized book about frogs.” Never mind that this was the children’s room; in this library, when you needed the right book you went to LeeVon.

  He sat up and beamed at her, his face angelic above his black leather collar. If you could see past the nose, lip, and eyebrow rings and all the rest of it, you had to notice that LeeVon was a beautiful man, ergonomically designed and porcelain-skinned and ageless even though he had to be as old as she was. He drawled, “Waaal, paint me green and call me Kermit! That gold-plated mother-in-law of yours was in here yesterday looking for books about frogs.”

  Buffy felt cold, incorporeal fingers run up her spine.

  LeeVon swung his feet down and peered at her more closely through his thick glasses. His delight faded. “What’s the matter, Best Beloved?” LeeVon called everybody Best Beloved, as in the Just So Stories. He adored Kipling, though if asked, he would explain that he had never kippled. “Something wrong?”

  “Nah.” Just lack of sleep. It was a free country; why shouldn’t Fay study up on frogs if she felt like it? “I’ve got this bullfrog at home,” Buffy said, “driving me crazy. Talking. Keeping me awake at night.”

  “Really? What’s it saying?”

  “Huh?” Buffy was feeling more than usually hazy. “At night he says, ‘Ribbet.’ The rest of the time he mostly says, ‘Kiss me and I’ll turn into a prince, you potbellied, snaggletoothed hag.’”

  LeeVon laid the remains of his egg salad sandwich to one side, positioned his elbows on his desk and his chin on his interlaced hands, and studied her. Then he said the only safe thing. “You are not snaggletoothed.”

  “Damn straight I’m not. He can be quite rude. I need some sort of how-to-train-your-frog book. Sort of the No Bad Dogs of frogs.”

  Carefully LeeVon said, “I did understand you to mention that this is a talking frog, Best Beloved? As in, uh, a frog that talks?”

  “Right. One of those kiss-me frogs like in the fairy tale.” Buffy saw the look LeeVon was giving her and her voice rose. “C’mon, LeeVon, it’s not like I believe he would turn into a prince. But he does talk.”

  “In English.”

  “Absolutely in English. Look, I figure there’s a logical explanation.”

  “Of course. You are a logical, rational person, Best Beloved, which is why you won’t accept alimony from your rich-lawyer-politico ex.” The sarcasm was gentle. “May I ask at what pet shop you acquired this remarkable animal?”

  “Prentis? He came from the pound.”

  This quip amused Buffy far more than it did LeeVon. While she yawped and hooted, he merely sighed and waited, chin on hands, brown-eyed gaze steady, for her to quiet down.

  “Sorry,” Buffy said, subsiding into chuckles.

  LeeVon shrugged. “Every conversation has to bottom out.” He straightened and stretched. “I have no frog-training books,” he said. “Frogs are not like dogs. Frogs are not known to come when called. I do, however, have this.” He reached down and pulled a fat green tome out of the cubbyhole at his feet. A wide, mischievous smile jingled his various facial rings. “I will have you know I did not offer this special volume to Fay,” he said. “That woman gives me the horrors.”

  “LeeVon, how very unprofessional of you.”

  “Thank you.” Aglow with humble pride, he passed it over.

  Buffy took it in both hands, then found that she needed only one; it was oddly lightweight for so sizable a volume. On the plastic-sheathed cover, a large frog in a green evening suit and creamy waistcoat ogled back at her. The title shone in ornate letters of embossed gold: Batracheios. No author.

  “You are not going to be able to train your frog,” LeeVon said. “I wouldn’t try it. But this may help you to understand your frog a little better. What’s his name, by the way?”

  “Adamus.”

  LeeVon looked thoughtful.

  “Prince Adamus d’Aurca. To hear him tell it.”

  “Huh. Well, you gotta watch those princes. Be careful, Best Beloved.”

  After she thudded out the door, LeeVon got up from his desk and stalked to the window, looking out. Watching her stride away.

  “There she goes,” he muttered.

  Behind him, a carbuncular kid who probably should have been in school was asking for a book about birth control. LeeVon ignored him.

  There she goes, and she has it and she doesn’t know what to do with it. But me, I know all about it, and I don’t have it.

  I don’t have anybody and I probably never will.

  Another lonely weekend loomed ahead. The same useless mating games. The same crowded bar.

  The pimply kid was getting plaintive. LeeVon said, “Just a minute,” and watched Buffy disappear around the corner, her large buns pumping under her teal-blue work slacks. There, she was gone.

  His friend. He liked the Buffmeister about as much as he liked anyone. But sometimes friends were no damn help.

  The carbuncular kid was becoming frantic. Probably in danger of getting his girlfriend pregnant. LeeVon said, “All right, okay,” and returned to his chair. Once there, he tried to focus his attention on the kid. Just a normal, nice kid, he sensed. Well intentioned, a little dense, thought he was invincible until he got in trouble and then he panicked and didn’t know what to do. More responsible than most. LeeVon said, “A book on birth control. It so happens that I have one
right here.” He reached under his desk, where he kept a stack of blank books he bought heavily discounted at various remainder stores, most recently Ollie’s Outlet, Good Stuff Cheap. Chintzy flowered covers. Pulpy blank pages.

  LeeVon passed his long hands over the top one, and it was neither flowered nor blank anymore.

  “Here.” He passed it to the importunate kid. “This will give you everything you need.”

  When the kid had left, LeeVon went to the staff bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. A foggy old mirror. Everything seemed dark in it, including his own reflected face.

  “A little too goddamn weird,” he muttered.

  Driving home after work, with the green book called Batracheios lying on the car seat by her side, Buffy listened to a woman on talk radio describing how she was going to fill her ex’s convertible with tapioca pudding. It sounded like a wonderful idea. Too bad Prentis didn’t have a convertible; he hated tapioca.

  But unexpectedly, her thoughts veered with rueful insight to Adamus: was a pissed-off paramour what had happened to him? Was he some vengeful ex-girlfriend’s idea of joke’s-on-you? Was he really a man in a green skin, turned into a bullfrog by a maddened mistress? All the fairy tales ever said was that a wicked witch had cast a spell. They never said why. Wicked witch; was that male chauvinist folklore code for “angry woman”? Angry with a reason?

  Or was Adamus a victim, a scapefrog, an innocent?

  A thousand years. Either way, a thousand years was an awfully long time.

  Not that she believed any of this.

  She had to find out his story; she just had to. When she got home, perhaps he would ask her to tell him a story. He liked her stories. God bless him for liking her stories. If he did not ask to hear one, she would offer. And she would think of one that would prompt him to tell her his.

  She smiled. It was a plan.

  But when she walked into her skewed little dwelling and looked to the aquarium, he was not there.

  Four

  The wire mesh top was knocked clear off the glass prison and lay on the floor, bricks and all. One brick had taken the Gro-Lite down with it to sprawl on the linoleum like a corpse made of twisted metal and a shattered glass bulb; the aquarium hulked dark. At first Buffy thought Adamus might still be in there. Classic denial. She turned on the ceiling light and thundered over to look.

  No frog.

  Where was he? Had somebody broken into her house and stolen her frog? No, the evidence pointed to an escape. A kitchen cabinet door hung open. An empty Cheerios box lay prostrated amid oat dust. Hungry frog. Oh, poor baby. He had probably leaped at the top of the aquarium until it fell off. Strength of desperation.

  “Adamus!” Buffy called.

  There was, of course, no answer.

  “Addie, I’m sorry, I’ll fix you breakfast from now on.” He’d better damn well like Pop-Tarts. “Where are you?”

  No answer.

  Could he have left the house? Buffy checked the doors and windows, feeling cold and afraid for unexamined reasons—there was no time to analyze her emotions; she needed to find Adamus.

  The windows were locked, the doors likewise. He had to be still in the house. She didn’t see how he could have gotten out.

  “Addie!”

  Nothing.

  She searched, forced to assume that he was hiding from her—but where? She tried watery places. The toilet—thank God he wasn’t in there. The bathtub—no. The laundry tub and washing machine in the basement—no. The kitchen sink, then under the kitchen sink—nothing.

  Then she started over and simply looked every place she could think of. In the deep, dark, dirty corners of kitchen cupboards. Under tables. Behind furniture.

  Three hours later, Buffy had made her third full sweep of the house. She had moved every piece of furniture. She had emptied every cubbyhole large enough to hold a frog. Years’ worth of quiet, peaceable dirt had been disturbed and now aspired to the status of dust in the wind, agitating her sinuses. The place looked like somebody had turned it upside down and shaken it; even the attic dirt was on the move. Buffy hadn’t had her supper and what was worse, she didn’t want any. And she hadn’t found Addie.

  He just wasn’t anywhere. He was gone. Just plain gone. Somehow he must have found a way out of the house while she was at work.

  It was dark outside.

  She gave up, sat her hunkers on a kitchen chair, and stared at the darkness outside the window as only an exhausted middle-aged woman can stare. Adamus. Gone. Now she was never going to know his goddamn story.

  Now he would not listen to hers anymore.

  Damn it, for all that he talked and talked, he was the only one who listened to her. Talking frog, hell, what she needed was her listening frog back again.

  Why did everybody have to go and leave her?

  She stood up. “I’m going to bed,” she muttered, although there was no one to hear her or care. She walked to the desolation of her bedroom—it looked as though a bomb had dropped in there—pulled some clothes off, crawled onto her cheap mattress, and huddled under her blankets. At least she would get a good night’s sleep for a change. There was nobody around to bother her.

  Story of her life.

  She wept.

  Never in her life had Buffy learned to cry with any modicum of dignity. Once, when she was a child of about ten years old and she was crying and being annoying, her mother had ordered her to look into the mirror and see how ugly she was. The twisted redness of her own face had shocked her, and ever since then she had resisted crying and was therefore all the more fated to cry unaesthetically. Some women could cry graceful, silent Audrey Hepburn tears; Buffy was not one of those. She wonked, she honked, she bellowed, she quacked, she bawled, she roared. Her own noise humiliated her and made her cry louder. She traumatized the house to its foundation with her crying. Definitely not a princess. Who cared; there was nobody to hear her. Nobody gave a damn.

  Buffy cried her pillow wet, blew her nose on it, then turned it over, gave a few final yawps, and slipped into sleep.

  Bent over like a fishhook, Mom picked at the lawn. It was not dignified or seemly for a woman outside, where people could see her, to get down on her hands and knees like she was scrubbing a floor, so Mom bent from the waist to pick the bits of twig and maple wing, oh those messy maple trees, to pick the leaf stems and the litter the inconsiderate squirrels and chipmunks and birds had left behind, half-gnawed acorns, seed husks, scraps of eggshell. She had bent from the waist this way so long and so often that this was her body’s shape now, like the crook of somebody’s cane. Her hands had grown crooked too. She didn’t like it. Her back hurt, and her legs. She sniffled to herself; there was nobody else to hear her. Everybody else was in bed, but she had to get it done or he would be angry at her. She had to pick up all the mess off the lawn. It wasn’t fair. There wasn’t enough light for her to see properly, even with all those tall lamps on poles all over the place, but she still had to do it. Her trembling hands groped deep in the grass for leaf trash, separating the brown from the green. She had to get all the brown out, or he would be angry. She had to get every little bit, even though her back hurt and her legs hurt, too, and her hands were dry and crooked and sore, caked with brown, the skin of her fingertips cracking, rubbed open. Her bare knobby feet, too, they were getting sore. But she had to get the lawn clean. He would be angry if she didn’t.

  “Mrs. Murphy!”

  Bent over, Mom had only a peripheral sense of something white moving, a person walking up to her.

  “Mrs. Murphy! What are you doing out here? It’s nighttime.”

  It was one of those nice young women, nurses. Mom felt herself start to cry as she turned to her, unable to straighten as she held up the evidence. “Look at my poor hands!”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Look what he’s making me do. I have to pick up all this.”

  “Your husband? He’s dead, Mrs. Murphy. Nobody’s making you do anything.”

  “He
’ll be angry if I don’t get it finished soon.”

  “It’s time to sleep.”

  “No, I can’t. He’ll be angry.”

  Her back hurt. Her legs hurt. Her hands were cracked and seeping. And the nurse, trying to lead her away, still didn’t seem to understand. Nobody had ever understood, except maybe that other little girl in white, what was her name, somebody’s daughter, wide bride, got married way too young, what was that poor child’s name? Mattress? Madness? Maddie?

  Sometime later in the night, Buffy awakened to the touch of chilly hands slithering up over the edge of the bed. “Heard ya calling me, baby,” whispered a throaty voice.

  Buffy’s eyes popped open to encounter pop-eyes at close range. Huge, glistening golden eyes. She was so startled that she could not move or scream; she just gawked.

  “What a babe.” He hoisted himself onto the mattress with a grace perhaps owing to years of mounting lily pads. “You lay the eggs, baby,” he said in a voice froggy with emotion, “and I’ll squirt the milt on them.”

  Buffy yelped, thrashed her way out from under the blankets, and grabbed him.

  “Addie?” She hoisted him by the armpits. It took both hands to lift him. He was as big as a year-old baby. How had he gotten so large so fast? But it was indisputably Prince Adamus d’Aurca; she would recognize that green-lipped smirk anywhere. “Addie!” She was so glad to see him that she almost kissed him, which would not have been a good idea—but then she realized where he had placed his clammy four-fingered hands. “You grabby little creep!” Reacting with more force than forethought, she thrust him away from her, throwing him against the wall.

  “OW!”

  Buffy gasped, terrified that she had hurt him and equally terrified that he would turn into a prince with kind and beautiful eyes. The latter she need not have worried about. He merely plopped to the floor, where he sat, green and not at all symmetrical.

  “Addie!” Buffy lurched toward him.

  He cowered, whimpering, “Mercy, voluptuous one.”