Bright Segment (52 page)

He lowered her gently down on the linoleum and stood for a long time over her, crying quietly.

Then he put the iron away and filled the kettle and a saucepan with water, and in the saucepan he put needles and a clamp and thread and little slabs of sponge and a knife and pliers. From the gateleg table and from a drawer he got his two plastic tablecloths and began arranging them on the bed.

“I fix everything,” he murmured as he worked, “Fix it right.”

T
HIS IS THE STORY
of a Chinese silver cigarette case, some vaseline hair tonic, a gooseneck desk lamp, and two girls—one nearly always beautiful, and one always nearly beautiful. It also may or may not concern a creature called Arrara, so named because of its peculiar snarl.

The girl who was nearly always beautiful had been christened Organtina, but when she heard a snide and subtle remark about it from one of the long-haired gentry in Greenwich Village she determinedly omitted the first two syllables. Tina was attractive in an almost miraculous way, and struck such a perfect balance in the color of her hair between blonde and brunette that one can only describe it as being the color of hair which is soft in the shadows, and breathtakingly bright in the sun.

Tina sold seashells in Chelsea, a fact which caused her considerable difficulty in describing her occupation whenever she became emotionally agitated. In her colorful little shop on the fringes of the Village, she displayed seashells and parts of seashells arranged and assembled into dolls, turtles and comedy masks.

She also conducted a flourishing trade in geegaws and a very special assortment of bric-a-brac and izthattas. The izthattas differed from the geegaws and the bric-a-brac in that the latter are unfunctional but pleasing decorative things, whereas the izthatta is a purely functional object. She loved both the izthattas and the geegaws and she made them as fast as she could. And so accomplished was her artistry that they sold like hotcakes. She knew because she had received comparative figures on hotcakes from Eddy Southworth.

The merchandising of an izthatta is very simple. You make up an object by cementing a razor-shell to a sea-snail, crowning it with a clam and spraying on some Paris Green. Almost certainly the next
customer in the place will ask: “Is that a napkin ring?” or “Is that a paper weight?” or “Is that a salad-fork holder?” The correct reply should be: “I really like to deal with customers who show both good taste and insight. But of course it is! And this morning a lady was in—”

Your next cue is to laugh gaily while the customer reaches into her jeans for the exorbitant price of the izthatta, Chelsea being near enough to the Village for jeans on ladies to be
de rigeur
.

Tina’s window displays were changed weekly, and brought in a lot of trade. Now it would be a spread of fragile coral-lace and crab-claws, largely labelled: SKELETON ART. (No mussels). And next week the display would be a highly abstract piece of business all made of urchin-quill and mother-of-pearl, captivatingly captioned: UNCONCHIOUS ART, without, of course, a conch in sight.

In the third week of a warm March, Tina was busily working with tweezers, cement, Swiss pattern files and a set of surgical tools. She worked in a small alcove separated from the rest of the shop by a curved partition, with a splendid assortment of her wares spread out under a gooseneck lamp of high voltage.

The opening in the partition between the workroom and the shop was small—but so was Tina. Her knowledge of a customer’s advent was gained in two ways. First, there was the photo-electric beam which crossed the outer doorway, in such a way that its interruption would actuate a mellow chime. Second, there was a hole cut through the partition. The aperture was at her eye-level as she sat at work and it enabled her to see clearly everything that went on in the shop.

Imagine, then, her astonishment when she looked up from her work and saw through the peephole that there was a man in her shop. Eddy Southworth, whose hobby was electronics, had assured her that no one could possibly pass through the outer door without breaking the photo-electric beam. Yet the chime had not rung, and indisputably there was a man in the shop—a slender, graceful man with black hair like a carapace and heavily knitted brows.

Tina rose quickly, straightened her hair and squeezed through the partition. “Yes?” she inquired, confronting the intruder so abruptly that he recoiled a step.

“Yes indeed,” said the man. He was young, and he had a voice like the middle register of an oboe. He looked up quickly and back to the showcase on which he had been leaning, the darting swiftness of his glance subtracting nothing from its thoroughness. Tina felt like a file-drawer from which inventory cards had been quite deliberately spilled.

“Would—would you like something?” she asked faintly.

She stepped hopefully behind the showcase, but to no avail. He promptly turned his back, to gaze up and across, down and around the shop.

“The old shell game,” he said as if in amazement to himself.

“There was a time,” she said pleasantly, “when I had only heard that once in connection with this business, which was founded by my grandfather. Is there anything—uh—inanimate here which appeals to you?”

“Oh yes,” he said, turning finally to face her. He had, it appeared, disturbingly ironic eyebrows. “Where were you on the night of March twenty-fifth, two years ago?”

She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“I certainly am,” he said soberly, “I would really like to know. It’s difficult for me to explain, but you must believe that it’s important to me.”

“I don’t think I can—Wait now.” She tilted back her head and closed her eyes. Two years ago. Of course. She had been in Rochester, and—“I do remember!” she said. “It’s strange that you should ask me. I was staying with an aunt in Rochester that spring, and I had a violent quarrel which seems very silly now. I was quite the Girl Scout then. I was so angry I got my kit and headed for the hills. I didn’t see a soul I knew for almost two weeks.”

“No one?” He stared at her intently. “Think now. Didn’t anybody know where you were?”

“Not a soul,” she said positively. “And where were
you
that night, if I’m not being too curious? Just where, precisely?”

He smiled a very white smile. His teeth seemed to be pointed. “I
am
sorry,” he apologized. “That was very rude of me. Would you
like to make some money?”

Tina nodded energetically. “By selling seashells.”

“I mean real money.”

“How? By selling thousands of seashells?”

He sighed. “There’s one thing I’m sure of,” he said. “You are being stupid on purpose.”

“I shall take that as a compliment,” she said, and added, “I wonder how much more I’ll have to take.”

He laughed engagingly. “Your sense of humor seems to stay with you no matter what the provocation. I’ve noticed your window displays, for example. Laughing in the face of a business recession. You’d probably remain buoyant in the face of any menace.”

“You try me,” she said without inflection. “I rather think you’d be surprised.”

The eyebrows tensed like the wings of a gliding gull. “Perhaps I will.”

“What has my sense of humor to do with all this,” she asked, meeting his gaze defiantly.

“More than you might suspect. I have a job to do, and I need a girl like you to assist me.” He straightened, his long face all clear planes and forced patience. “Cigarette?”

He took a silver cigarette case from his pocket and offered it to her unopened.

She stopped her head in mid-shake and took the case. “What a lovely thing!” she exclaimed.

“Is it?” said the man.

“Surely there can be no doubt about it. What a beautiful dragon!”

“There are seven dragons,” he pointed out.

“Sev—Oh, I see. Two around the edge here, all curled around each other. Uh-huh—and one peeping around the pagoda.”

“There are a good many pagodas around Peiping, too.”

“Hey!” she laughed. “That was my line. Now, let’s see—that makes four dragons.”

“There are two more on the back,” he murmured.

She turned the case over. “I don’t
like
those. They look positively ferocious.”

“They’ve been fighting again. But most dragons do look ferocious.”

She looked at him quizzically. His calm, handsome face had grown, if anything, more sardonic. Recognizing that he was willing to let the impossible conversation go on until closing time, she dropped her eyes to the case.

“Where’s the seventh dragon?” she asked.

Arrara-arrara
said the case. It spoke softly, like a lisping child with moist red lips. Tina gasped, and closed her eyes. The case moved gently but firmly in her grasp, just as if someone were trying to twist it away from her. She trembled and opened her eyes. The young man was trying to pry it from her fingers. She raised it with a shudder of revulsion.

Arrara
, said the case indignantly. The man said, “Shut up, you.”

Tina said, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Not you,” he said to Tina. “I was just thinking aloud, in reference to something else. Cigarette?”

“Thanks no,” said Tina swiftly, her eyes on the case in horrified disbelief as it went back into the man’s pocket. She wet her lips. “The other dragon’s inside, huh?”

“That’s right. Now, about this little job. I can make it decidedly worth your while if you’ll come in.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Tina, moistening her lips. “But if I should consider it I’d like to know in advance what it is I may have to say ‘No’ to.”

“Well, it’s like this. I have a friend who wants to get married, in a manner of speaking, and you’re the ideal—Oh, see here now. Stop shaking your head like that.”

“I can’t help it. That ‘in a manner of speaking’ just about does it. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye. My name is Lee Brokaw. I’m a dancer—adagio.”

He looked her up and down and smiled. “Of course I didn’t really mean ‘good-bye.’ I wish you would save both of us the trouble involved in my becoming insistent,” he said smoothly. “How about dinner tonight?”

For reply she marched to the doorway and stood there. The photocell
chime crooned from the back of the shop. She threw up a firm thumb. “Come along, little man. Actually, it’s past my customary closing hour.”

As if this were a cue, he nodded with feigned resignation and passed through the door. “See you tomorrow,” he promised.

Shaking her head, Tina went back into the shop. She was sharp-witted enough to realize that she must depend for the support of her unusual trade on unusual people. Of these she certainly had had more than her share, from the gentleman who would buy no ornament at which his schnauzer would not wag its tail, to the woman who had three rooms of her house redecorated to suit a purple tie-rack she had purchased at a fire sale. But this Lee Brokaw character was strictly eggs in the beer. What
was
it he kept locked up in that cigarette case?

II

Tina had dinner with Eddy Southworth. He was an artist who lived and worked in the Village, but unlike most artists, he put in regular hours. He was locally well-known, and his works were considered delicate, tasteful and distinctly on the light side. He made flapjacks in the window of the Blue Tower Cafeteria, and anyone who watched his ambidextrous hot-cake-tossing knew that here indeed was an artist. Having dinner with him meant sitting across the counter, snatching phrases between servings, and filtering romantic comments through a mouthful of the
spécíalité de la maison
, as follows:

“Hya, cinth.”

“Lo, quacious.” This was a routine, an intimacy, and a mental exercise. “Stack them with cherry syrup.”

“Food of the Gods! How’s it with you, Tina?” Before she could reply he was gone to the front of the place, to fill the air with somersaulting pancakes. On his way back with a batter-bucket, she determinedly clipped his elbow.

“Eddy, what kind of a man could walk between a photocell and a light and not ring an alarm?”

“A ghost,” said Eddy solemnly. “Or a vampire. Did you have one in the shop today?”

She nodded. “That’s nice,” he said, automatically. He went to the mixer at the back of the cafeteria and began to fill his bucket.
“What?”
he bellowed suddenly, and came back. “What about this guy? Did he wear a black cloak? Did he have a widow’s peak, pointed teeth and a demon in his pocket?”

“No—I mean, yes. And he has a dragon in his cigarette case.”

Her hotcakes arrived. Eddy sprinted to the front, tossed and stacked eight additional cakes, rocketed to the back and tuned off the batter-cock just as the batter was forming a reverse miniscus. Then he peered over the edge of the bucket, and went back with it at a dead run, the bucket describing one single arc, like a pendulum-bomb, from the mixer to the griddles, without losing a drop. Someone up the line applauded. Eddy squirted a dozen discs of batter onto the griddle and came back to Tina.

“Are you kidding?”

“Ah thirtny am mot,” she said through a hotcake.

“You just mean a wolf. Not a werewolf.”

“Ath a matter of ah,” she said, and swallowed, “he isn’t. I mean, he didn’t seem to be. He wants me for something, he says.”

He nodded eagerly. “But he’s not a wolf. You’re sure of that?”

“I think,” she twinkled—and it cost her an effort—“that he wants me for a fate worse than a fate worse than death.”

She changed her mouth from a bow to an O, and stoked. Eddy picked up two turners instead of one, a sign of deep thought.

“What’s with this dragon you spoke about?” he asked.

“It’s in the most gorgeous silver cigarette case you ever saw.”

“What does it do?”

“It goes
arrara.”

Eddy jumped back. “Don’t do that,” he gasped. “For Pete’s sake—”

“I’m sorry, Eddy. Terribly sorry. But that’s exactly what it does. I—I’d like some coffee.”

“Black with one!” Eddy bellowed. “Where does this apple tend bar? Or does he panhandle on the Bowery?”

“He’s a dancer,” Tina said. “When he left he pointed to the Mello Club and said, ‘Look at that.’ After I shut up the shop I looked. He’s
billed there—‘Brokaw and Rapunzel, adagio.’ ”