Little Doors (3 page)

Here at last, on the facing page, was title and author:

LITTLE DOORS

by

Alfred Bigelow Strayhorn

Crawleigh flipped to page one and began to read.

Once upon a time … began the story Princess Ordinary was trying to read but couldn’t.

Odd opening, thought Crawleigh. He had expected to be introduced right away to the heroine mentioned by Judd Mitchell, named Judy. Oh well, auctorial intentions were not always immediately fathomable, even (especially?) in children’s literature. On with the story.

Princess Ordinary finally gave up and tossed the book of fairy tales down with a pettish sigh.

“Drat it all!” she exclaimed, and kicked her satin hassock with her pretty little velvet-shod foot. “Why can’t I enter these old tales as if they were my own dreams, as I once did when I was a child? Surely one doesn’t lose talents as one grows older, but only gains new skills, moving on from strength to strength. At least that’s the way things should be.” The Princess paused for a moment. “At least they should be that way for princesses, who are special, even if they’re as ordinary and drab as I fear I am.”

The Princess stood up then, and moved to a wood-framed mirror that stood across the room from her. (The Princess was to be found this morning in her luxurious bedroom, for that was where she liked best to read, and lately she had taken to staying in the one room almost all day.)

At the mirror, she pirouetted with rather more abandon than she felt, holding out her full skirts with one hand to add a little extra graceful touch she had seen her mother employ at royal dances. But in spite of all her airs, Princess Ordinary was forced to admit that the reflection greeting her gaze was that of a young woman whom no one would ever call beautiful. Her hair was an awful coal-black—everyone in this kingdom thought only golden hair was to be admired—and her nose and chin were sharp in a way that betokened a certain sullenness. No, the Princess was just what her name implied: a common sort of girl who, except for the accident of her royal birth, might just as easily have been found waiting on customers in a shop; which of course is not to say that she hadn’t a good heart and soul that were to be cherished as much as those of a real beauty, but only that they could not be so easily inferred from her appearance.

Princess Ordinary spun the mirror—which was mounted in a frame on pins through its middle—so that the glass faced to the wall. Now, curiously enough, the wood used for this mirror had once been a door (there was a shortage of lumber at the time) and it still retained its handle on the back side. Seeing the silly handle to a door that could never be opened, the Princess laughed, but only for a moment. She was soon sober again.

“Not only am I ordinary” she cried in a fit of pique, “but the whole world is quite unimaginative and boring! There isn’t a single thing in it that interests me any more, and I wish I could leave it all behind!”

At that exact moment, the Princess’s tutor appeared in the door. He had come looking for her for her daily lesson (for the Princess wasn’t so old that she had quit learning, nor should any of us ever be), and when he heard the Princess’s wish, he was moved to let out a blast of steam.

The tutor, you see, was a mechanical man named Steel Daniel, and had been constructed especially to be Princess Ordinary’s companion. Consequently, he had great affection for her and did not like to see her upset.

“Is that really what you desire, Princess?” asked Steel Daniel. “To visit another world where things are perhaps more to your liking, but definitely not as they are here?”

“Yes,” said the Princess, stamping her foot (the one that had not kicked the hassock, for that one was a trifle sore). “Any world must be better than this one. I’ll go anywhere that extends a welcome.”

The Princess did not stop to think about how she would be leaving her mother and father and Steel Daniel behind, and truth to tell, she didn’t precisely care just then.

“Well, in that case,” said Daniel, “I have no choice but to obey your commands. I will tell you whom you must visit to satisfy your wish. It is Professor Mouse, who lives far away, over much treacherous terrain. You must journey to him on foot, disguised as a commoner, and no one can help you. The only aids I can proffer are these.”

Steel Daniel opened a little door in his chest and took out a magic stone and a magic leaf. Princess Ordinary took them, and, before you could say tara-cum-diddle, she was clothed like a peasant girl and marching down the path leading from the castle gate, without so much as a fare-thee-well …

Perplexed, Crawleigh shut the book. Where were the characters itemized by Mitchell? Except for Professor Mouse, they were nonexistent. Had Mitchell gone over the edge at the end, beset as he was with personal troubles? Did Crawleigh even have the same book?

Whatever the explanation, Crawleigh would have to proceed as if this were the text to be dissected. What else could he do? He would take Xeroxes (Audrey’s job, that), and use them to refute anyone who sided with Mitchell’s version of the book.

But for now, he had had enough of
Little Doors
. The reading had left him with an unexplainable headache, and he resolved to go home for the day.

* * *

When Crawleigh arrived to pick up Audrey, he found her still packing. The shade was up today, letting Saturday sunlight spill in, and Crawleigh found the room foreign-looking. Audrey was frantically rummaging through her dresser and closet, tossing clothes into an open suitcase. Her cheap turntable was spinning, and loud music filled the air.

“Oh, Jerry,” she cried when he let himself in after knocking. “What am I gonna pack? What kind of restaurants will we be going to? What kind of people am I gonna meet? Oh, Christ, why didn’t I buy that goddam dress I saw on sale last week?”

Crawleigh refrained from telling Audrey that she wouldn’t be meeting any of his colleagues if he could help it. The MLA conference—held in San Francisco this year—was just the place where news of his perfidies would disseminate the fastest. Audrey would have to stay in the hotel room until he was free to be with her; or otherwise amuse herself inconspicuously during the day.

But time enough to tell her this when they were on the plane.

“Listen, dear, just take what you consider to be most stylish, and I’m sure you’ll look fine. We don’t have much time, you realize, if we’re going to make our flight.”

Audrey frantically stuffed loose shirttails and sleeves and legs into the battered suitcase. “Jesus, I’m gonna forget something important, I just know it.”

While Audrey finished, Crawleigh moved idly about the room, still bemused by how strange it looked to him today. He picked up the empty cardboard record-sleeve lying by the turntable and studied it. It was good to know a few names in the rock and roll world to drop in front of students, and Crawleigh relied on Audrey for this knowledge, in addition to the carnal variety.

This particular record cover showed a fuzzy close-up photo of a katydid, and said:

STEELY DAN

Katy Lied

As Crawleigh read the title, the singer’s words leaped into sonic focus.

A kingdom where the sky is burning,

A vision of the child returning.

Any world that I’m welcome to,

Any world that I’m welcome to,

Is better than the one I come from.

A shiver ran down Crawleigh s spine with the velocity of chilled honey.

How in the hell—? What synchronicity could account for the close parallel of this song with Princess Ordinary’s lament? Was it simply that these pop-prophets had somehow read the obscure book he was currently researching, or was it all coincidence, a mere common concatenation of certain sounds, simply a new linguistic shuffle bringing up the same sequence, after nearly a century?

Crawleigh probably would have let the mystery bother him if Audrey hadn’t yelled loudly then, and begun to swear.

“Yow! Oh, Christ, I broke a frigging fingernail! Why the hell aren’t you helping me Jerry, if we’re so late?”

Crawleigh hastened to Audrey’s side and together they got the stuffed suitcase closed and locked.

Aboard the jet, Crawleigh tried a dozen times to find a way to tell Audrey of the peculiar conditions that bore on her accompanying him. But she was enjoying her first air-journey so much that he hadn’t the heart right then.

In the middle of the flight, as their plane crossed a seemingly limitless desert, she turned a radiantly excited face toward him and said, “Oh, Jerry, this is all just like a dream. I feel like—I don’t know. Like the princess in that book you let me read a year ago.”

Crawleigh’s stomach churned.

In the lobby of the hotel, he had a nervous fifteen minutes as they registered together, fearing that some acquaintance would surely see them. Crawleigh’s luck held, however, and they got up to their room without being accosted.

Audrey threw herself down on the queen-size bed, bouncing and squealing.

“What a palace,” she said. “This room’s bigger’n my whole apartment.”

“Glad you like it,” Crawleigh said, fiddling nervously with the luggage where the bellhop had set it. “I picked it with you in mind.”

With this as an opening, he plunged ahead and told her.

Crawleigh had always thought that crestfallen was just a word. But when Audrey’s face underwent the transformation he witnessed and her whole body seemed to cave in on itself, he knew the reality behind the word.

For a minute, Audrey sat as if devoid of breath or spirit. Then she shot to her feet and faced Crawleigh quivering with rage.

“You—you fucking liar!”

She pushed past Crawleigh, elbowing him in the gut, and raced out the door.

Crawleigh sat on the bed, an arm across his sore stomach. His free hand—behind him for support—felt that the cover was still warm from Audrey.

Well, this was not turning out as he had planned. But perhaps he could still salvage the star-crossed seminar somehow. Audrey had to return to the room. He held the plane tickets and all the money. And when she did, he would have an eloquent speech ready that would soothe her ruffled feathers and have her falling all over him.

When Crawleigh’s midriff felt normal, he got up and unpacked his bag. Lying on top was
Little Doors
. He had hoped to get some work done amid everything else this trip, and he had still not finished the book.

After pacing anxiously a bit, Crawleigh determined to read to pass the time until Audrey came back. He settled down in a chair.

When the Crow approached Princess Ordinary, she was nearly dying of hunger.

The Crow, fully as big as a human, alighted beside the famished Princess in the midst of the desert she was then traversing. His appearance was quite frightening, and Princess Ordinary wished she still had either the magic stone or the magic leaf to protect herself with. But the stone had been used up saving her from the Jelly-Dragons, and the leaf had crumbled up after expanding into a flying carpet and carrying her over the Unutterable. Consequently, lacking either of these two tokens, she had to hope that the Crow possessed a nature belied by his exterior.

“Oh, help me, please, good Crow,” cried out the Princess. “I am dying in this wasteland, and will surely end my days here unless you come to my aid. Let me mount you so that you may carry me away.”

“That I cannot do,” said the Crow, “for I can support only myself in the air. However, I can bring you sustenance that will enable you to make it out of the desert under your own power.”

“Oh, please do then.”

The Crow flew away with mighty beats of his wings. Princess Ordinary found herself disbelieving his professed inability to carry her, but what could she do about it? Soon he returned, bearing a bright red berry in his beak.

“Eat this,” Crow said, speaking around the fruit.

“It won’t do anything bad to me, will it?”

“Of course not!” replied Crow indignantly.

The Princess took the berry then and swallowed it. It was the sweetest food she had ever tasted. But as soon as it hit her belly, she knew she had done wrong. She was revitalized, but another thing had also happened. Placing a hand on her belly, the Princess cried out: