Bagombo Snuff Box (15 page)

“He’s blown every dime of it on parties, nightclubbing, his
house, and clothes for his wife,” said Hal.

“Hooray,” I said. “That’s the investment advice I always
wanted to give, but nobody would pay for it.”

“Well, Krummbein is perfectly happy with his investments,”
said Hal

“What made him think he might just possibly need a little
help was a call from the Internal Revenue Service.”

“Oh, oh,” I said. “I’ll bet he forgot to file a declaration
of estimated income for the coming year.”

“You lose,” said Hal. “This genius has never paid a cent of
income taxes—ever! He said he kept expecting them to send him a bill, and they
never did.” Hal groaned. “Well, brother, they finally got around to it. Some
bill!” “What can I do?” I asked.

“He’s got bundles of money coming in all the time—and
insists on being paid in cashier’s checks,” said Hal. “You take care of them
while I try to keep him out of prison. I’ve told him all about you, and he says
for you to come out to his house right away.”

“What bank does he use?” I said.

“He doesn’t use a bank, except to cash the checks, which he
keeps in a wicker basket under his drafting table,” said Hal. “Get that basket!”.

Otto’s home and place of business is thirty miles from town,
in a wilderness by a waterfall. It looks, roughly, like a matchbox resting on a
spool. The upper story, the matchbox, has glass walls all the way around, and
the lower story, the spool, is a windowless brick cylinder.

There were four other cars in the guest parking area when I
arrived. A small cocktail party was in progress. As I was skirting the house,
wondering how to get into it, I heard somebody tapping on the inside of a glass
wall above. I looked up to see the most startling and, in a bizarre way, one of
the most beautiful women of my experience.

She was tall and slender, with a subtly muscled figure
sheathed in a zebra-striped leotard. Her hair was bleached silver and touched
with blue, and in the white and perfect oval of her face were eyes of
glittering green, set off by painted eyebrows, jet black and arched. She wore
one earring, a barbaric gold hoop. She was making spiral motions with her hand,
and I understood at last that I was to climb the spiral ramp that wound around
the brick cylinder.

The ramp brought me up to a catwalk outside the glass walls.
A towering, vigorous man in his early thirties slid back a glass panel and
invited me in. He wore lavender nylon coveralls and sandals. He was nervous,
and there was tiredness in his deep-set eyes.

“Mr. Krummbein?” I said.

“Who else would I be?” said Otto. ‘And you must be the wizard
of high finance. We can go into my studio, where we’ll have more privacy, and
then”—pointing to the woman—“you can join us in a drink.”

His studio was inside the brick cylinder, and he led me
through a door and down another spiral ramp into it. There were no windows. All
light was artificial.

“Guess this is the most modern house I’ve ever been in,” I
said.

“Modern?” said Otto. “It’s twenty years behind the times,
but it’s the best my imagination can do. Everything else is at least a hundred
years behind the times, and that is why we have all the unrest, this running
to psychiatrists, broken homes, wars. We haven’t learned to design our living
for our own times. Our lives clash with our times. Look at your clothes! Shades
of 1910. You’re not dressed for 1954.”

“Maybe not,” I said, “but I’m dressed for helping people handle
money.”

“You are being suffocated by tradition,” said Otto. “Why don’t
you say, ‘I am going to build a life for myself, for my time, and make it a
work of art’? Your life isn’t a work of art—it’s a thirdhand Victorian whatnot
shelf, complete with someone else’s collection of seashells and hand-carved elephants.”

“Yup,” I said, sitting down on a twenty-foot couch. “That’s
my life, all right.”

“Design your life like that Finnish carafe over there,” said
Otto, “clean, harmonious, alive with the cool, tart soul of truth in our time.
Like Falloleen.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “Mostly it’s a question of getting my
head above water first. What is Falloleen, a new miracle fiber?”

“My wife,” said Otto. “She’s hard to miss.”

“In the leotard,” I said.

“Did you ever see a woman who fitted so well into surroundings
like this—who seems herself to be designed for contemporary living?” said Otto.
‘A rare thing, believe me. I’ve had many famous beauties out here, but
Falloleen is the only one who doesn’t look like a piece of 1920-vintage
overstuffed furniture.”

‘‘How long have you been married?” I said.

“The party upstairs is in celebration of one month of
blissful marriage,” said Otto, “of a honeymoon that will never end.”

“How nice,” I said. ‘And now, about your financial picture—”

“Just promise me one thing,” he said, “don’t be depressing.
I can’t work if I’m depressed. The slightest thing can throw me off—that tie of
yours, for instance. It jars me. I can’t think straight when I look at it.
Would you mind taking it off? Lemon yellow is your color, not that gruesome
maroon.”

Half an hour later, tieless, I felt like a man prowling
through a city dump surrounded by smoldering tire casings, rusting bedsprings,
and heaps of tin cans, for that was the financial picture of Otto Krummbein. He
kept no books, bought whatever caught his fancy, without considering the cost,
owed ruinous bills all over town for clothes for Falloleen, and didn’t have a
cent in a savings account, insurance, or a portfolio.

“Look,” said Otto, “I’m scared. I don’t want to go to prison,
I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I’ve learned my lesson. I promise to do anything
you say. Anything! Just don’t depress me.”

“If you can be cheerful about this mess,” I said, “the Lord
knows I can. The thing to do, I think, is to save you from yourself by letting
me manage your income, putting you on an allowance.”

“Excellent,” said Otto. “I admire a bold approach to
problems. And that will leave me free to work out an idea I got on my honeymoon,
an idea that is going to make millions. I’ll wipe out all this indebtedness in
one fell swoop!”

“Just remember,” I said, “you’re going to have to pay taxes
on that, too. You’re the first man I ever heard of who got a profitable idea on
his honeymoon. Is it a secret?”

“Moonlight-engineered cosmetics,” said Otto, “designed expressly,
according to the laws of light and color, to make a woman look her best in the
moonlight. Millions, zillions!”

“That’s swell,” I said, “but in the meantime, I’d like to go
over your bills to see exactly how deep in you are, and also to figure out what
allowance you could get by on at a bare minimum.”

“You could go out to supper with us tonight,” said Otto, “and
then come back and work undisturbed here in the studio. I’m sorry we have to go
out, but it’s the cook’s day off.”

“That would suit me fine,” I said. “That way I’ll have you
around to answer questions. There ought to be plenty of those. For instance,
how much is in the basket?”

Otto paled. “Oh, you know about the basket?” he said. “I’m
afraid we can’t use that. That’s special.”

“In what way?” I said.

“I need it—not for me, for Falloleen,” said Otto. “Can’t I
keep that much, and send you all the royalty checks that come in from now on?
It isn’t right to make Falloleen suffer because of my mistakes. Don’t force me
to do that, don’t strip me of my self-respect as a husband.”

I was fed up, and I stood irritably. “I won’t strip you of
anything, Mr. Krummbein,” I said. “I’ve decided I don’t want the job. I’m not a
business manager, anyway. I offered to help as a favor to Hal Murphy, but I
didn’t know how bad working conditions were. You say I’m trying to strip you,
when the truth is that your bones were bleached white on the desert of your own
prodigality before I arrived. Is there a secret exit out of this silo,” I said,
“or do I go out the way I came in?”

“No, no, no,” said Otto apologetically. “Please, sit down.
You’ve got to help me. It’s just that it’s a shock for me to get used to how
bad things really are. I thought you’d tell me to give up cigarettes or
something like that.” He shrugged. “Take the basket and give me my allowance.”
He covered his eyes. “Entertaining Falloleen on an allowance is like running a
Mercedes on Pepsi-Cola.”

In the basket was five thousand-odd dollars in royalty
checks from manufacturers and about two hundred dollars in cash. As I was
making out a receipt for Otto, the studio door opened above us, and Falloleen,
forever identified in my mind with a Finnish carafe, came down the ramp gracefully,
carrying a tray on which were three martinis.

“I thought your throats might be getting parched,” said Falloleen.

“A voice like crystal chimes,” said Otto.

“Must I go, or can I stay?” said Falloleen. “It’s such a
dull party without you, Otto, and I get self-conscious and run out of things to
say.”

“Beauty needs no tongue,” said Otto.

I dusted my hands. “I think we’ve got things settled for the
time being. I’ll get down to work in earnest this evening.”

“I’m awfully dumb about finances,” said Falloleen. “I just
leave all that to Otto—he’s so brilliant. Isn’t he!”

“Yup,” I Said.

“I was thinking what fun it would be to take our whole party
to Chez Armando for dinner,” said Falloleen.

Otto looked askance at me.

“We were just talking about love and money,” I said to Falloleen,
“and I was saying that if a woman loves a man, how much or how little money the
man spends on her makes no difference to her. Do you agree?”

Otto leaned forward to hear her answer.

“Where were you brought up?” said Falloleen to me. “On a
chicken farm in Saskatchewan?”

Otto groaned.

Falloleen looked at. him in alarm. “There’s more going on
here than I know about,” she said. “I was joking. Was that so awful, what I
said? It seemed like such a silly question about love and money.” Comprehension
bloomed on her face. “Otto,” she said, “are you broke?”

“Yes,” said Otto.

Falloleen squared her lovely shoulders. “Then tell the
others to go to Chez Armando without us, that you and I want to spend a quiet
evening at home for a change.”

“You belong where there are people and excitement,” said
Otto.

“I get tired of it,” said Falloleen. “You’ve taken me out
every night since God knows when. People must wonder if maybe we’re afraid to
be alone with each other.”

Otto went up the ramp to send the guests on their way,
leaving Falloleen and me alone on the long couch. Fuddled by her perfume and
beauty, I said, “Were you in show business, Mrs. Krummbein?”

“Sometimes I feel like I am,” said Falloleen. She looked
down at her blue fingernails. “I certainly put on a show wherever I go, don’t
I?”

“A marvelous show,” I said.

She sighed. “I guess it should be a good show,” she said. “I’ve
been designed by the greatest designer in the world, the father of the
Krummbein Di-Modular Bed.”

“Your husband designed you?”

“Didn’t you know?” said Falloleen. “I’m a silk purse made
out of a sow’s ear. He’ll design you, too, if he gets the chance. I see he’s
already made you take off your tie. I’ll bet he’s told you what your color is,
too.”

“Lemon yellow,” I said.

“Each time he sees you,” said Falloleen, “he’ll make some
suggestion about how to improve your appearance.” She ran her hands dispassionately
over her spectacular self. “Step by step, one goes a long way.”

“You were never any sow’s ear,” I said.

“One year ago,” she said, “I was a plain, brown-haired,
dowdy thing, fresh out of secretarial school, starting to work as secretary to
the Great Krummbein.”

“Love at first sight?” I said.

“For me,” murmured Falloleen. “For Otto it was a design problem
at first sight. There were things about me that jarred him, that made it impossible
for him to think straight when I was around. We changed those things one by
one, and what became of Kitty Cahoun, nobody knows.”

“Kitty Cahoun?” I said.

“The plain, brown-haired, dowdy thing, fresh out of
secretarial school,” said Falloleen.

“Then Falloleen isn’t your real name?” I said.

“It’s a Krummbein original,” said Falloleen. “Kitty Cahoun
didn’t go with the decor.” She hung her head. “Love—” she said, “don’t ask me
am more silly questions about love.”

“They’re off to Chez Armando,” said Otto, returning to the
studio. He handed me a yellow silk handkerchief. “That’s for you,” he said. “Put
it in your breast pocket. That dark suit needs it like a forest needs
daffodils.”

I obeyed, and saw in a mirror that the handkerchief really
did give me a little dash, without being offensive. “Thanks very much,” I said.
“Your wife and I’ve been having a pleasant time talking about the mysterious
disappearance of Kitty Cahoun.”

“What ever did become of her?” said Otto earnestly. A look
of abject stupidity crossed his face as he realized what he’d said. He tried to
laugh it off. ‘An amazing and amusing demonstration of how the human mind
works, wasn’t it?” he said. “I’m so used to thinking of you as Falloleen, darling.”
He changed the subject. “Well, now the maestro is going to cook supper.” He
laid his hand on my shoulder. “I absolutely insist that you stay. Chicken a la
Krummbein, asparagus tips a la Krummbein, potatoes a la—”

“I think I ought to cook supper,” said Falloleen. “It’s high
time the bride got her first meal.”

“Won’t hear of it,” said Otto. “I won’t have you suffering
for my lack of financial acumen. It would make me feel terrible. Falloleen
doesn’t belong in a kitchen.”

“I know what,” said Falloleen, “we’ll both get supper.
Wouldn’t that be cozy, just the two of us?”

“No, no, no, no,” said Otto. “I want everything to be a
surprise. You stay down here with J. P Morgan, until I call you. No fair
peeking.”