First Person Peculiar (16 page)

“Never, you foul fiend!” screams Malone.

“I thought
I
was the foul fiend,” says Dead End Dugan, who looks puzzled for a moment and then goes back to thinking dead thoughts.

“It is not Milton,” I explain. “Not only does Milton not have a way with women, but he cannot go through a single day without Mitzi McSweeney bloodying his nose and threatening his life. It is the money that has attracted all these woman.”

Of course every woman in the place denies it, and Stella Houston, who claims to be Stella Dallas’s better-looking sister, slinks up to Malone and offers to hold his money before Milton or I can steal it.

“So tell us, Malone,” says Loose Lips Louie. “Who’s the lucky woman?”

“I keep telling you,” replies Malone, looking even more exasperated than terrified, “I am
not
getting married.”

“Of course you are,” says Brontosaur Nelson. “You don’t think these lovely frail flowers are going to let you leave the place un-engaged, do you?”

“Hell, even Impervious Irving couldn’t make it out the door if he was in your place,” says Loose Lips Louie. “So who’s your choice?”

“I am not getting married!”
screams Malone. The nearest men jump back, startled, but the women merely look amused.

Benny Fifth Street walks over to me. “I smell a profitable enterprise here,” he says.

“That thought has not escaped my notice,” I say, turning to the room at large. “Let me make up a morning line, and then the book is open for business.”

“It is ten o’clock at night,” notes Gently Gently. “Unless you want them to stay here until daybreak, what we need is an evening line.”

“The man’s got a point,” agrees Benny Fifth Street.

“All right,” I say. “Bring me the blackboard on which Joey Chicago advertises the day’s special, and a piece of chalk.”

The place has fallen silent, as each of the men is studying the field and trying to decide where to put his money. It is not without incident. Almost Blonde Annie decks Charlie Three-Eyes when he tries to examine her teeth, and Mimsy Borogrove kicks Brontosaur Nelson almost to the ceiling when he tries to examine things down at his eye level.

“How’s it coming, Harry?” asks Bet-a-Bunch Murphy after a few minutes.

“I’m working on it,” I tell him.

“Who’s the favorite?”

“That is the one thing that requires no work at all,” I answer. “I make Bubbles La Tour the top-heavy favorite, you should pardon the expression.”

Impervious Irving nods his head in agreement. “She is truly the Secretariat of women.”

“Better,” adds Short Odds MacDougal.

“Now just a minute, Buster …” begins Stella Houston ominously.

“What are the odds on her, Harry?” asks Loose Lips Louie.

“I make it one-to-eight-thousand,” I answer.

“So if I bet eight thousand dollars on Bubbles La Tour and she wins what I think we shall call the Plug Malone Sweepstakes, all I win is a dollar?” continues Loose Lips Louie.

“That’s right,” I say.

“An underlay,” remarks Gently Gently Dawkins. “I make her one-to-ten-thousand, minimum.”

“If he proposes to Bubbles La Tour, there won’t be enough of him left to bury,” vows Mimsy Borogrove.

“We’ll kill him with such skill and dexterity that a jury will award us both ears and the tail,” chimes in Snake-Hips Levine.

“You know,” says Benny Fifth Street, “I never thought of it until just now, but I’ll bet all the other super-heroes who come equipped with just one or two super-powers apiece do not like Superman any more than these delicate feminine blossoms like Bubbles La Tour.”

“Shut up about her!” snaps Stella Houston.

“Right,” says Short Odds MacDougal. “Mentioning her in front of these lovely ladies is like mentioning Babe Ruth to a bunch of minor leaguers.”

Even Impervious Irving can’t pull the women off Short Odds MacDougal as fast as they pile on, and I call Dead End Dugan over to help.

After about three or four minutes MacDougal is uncovered and helped to his feet. Both of his eyes are blackened, what’s left of his nose is bleeding, and he spits out three teeth. Both knees and an elbow are exposed where his suit has been torn, and his face seems much larger than usual. Then Benny Fifth Street loosens his tie and suddenly he can breathe again and the size of his face goes back down to normal. He is about to say something, but then he looks into the unforgiving faces of the assembled ladies, sighs once, and trudges off to a corner.

In the meantime Gently Gently Dawkins has been whispering into his cell phone, and finally he puts it back into his pocket.

“Bubbles La Tour has scratched,” he announces.

“Why?” asks Brontosaur Nelson.

“She must have thrown a shoe,” muses Bet-a-Bunch Murphy.

“She says she remembers Malone, and would not marry him if he was the last man on Earth.”

“This is unheard of,” says Murphy. “When has a horse ever rejected his jockey?”

“Well, that makes it a more competitive field,” says Loose Lips Louie. “What is the evening line now?”

“I will have to re-compute it,” I say. “Losing Bubbles La Tour in the Plug Malone Sweepstakes, is like doping out the odds in a golf match where Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods all fail to make the cut. It is clearly a wide-open race.”

But in just a handful of minutes we are given to realize that it is not as wide-open as it had seemed, because who should walk into the tavern but Morris the Mage. He walks right up to Mimsy Borogrove and holds out his hand. She puts a couple of C-notes into it, he pockets it, nods, and shakes her hand.

“What is going on here?” demands Milton, who does not like having his territory encroached upon.

“I have been retained by this lovely spinster here,” announces Morris as Mimsy kind of growls deep in her throat at the word ‘spinster,’ “to help her nab—uh, to help her
wed
—the man of her choice.” He looks at Mimsy, smiles, makes a mystical sign in the air, and says
“Presto!”
—and suddenly instead of wearing what looks like an exceptionally wide black satin belt and not much else, Mimsy is decked out in an elaborate wedding gown.

“Lacks a little something,” muses Morris. “Ah! I have it!
Abra cadabra!”
And just like that, Mimsy is carrying a huge bouquet of flowers.

Almost Blonde Annie frowns. “Is that fair?”

“Don’t worry,” says Bet-a-Bunch Murphy. “She is still nowhere near as heavy a favorite as Bubbles La Tour was before she scratched.”

The other women aren’t paying much attention to Murphy
or
Mimsy. Each of them is speaking into their cell phones, and we know what is coming next, just not in what order.

Spellsinger Solly is the first to arrive. He pauses just long enough for Snake-Hips Levine to fork over some cash. Then he snaps his fingers, and Mimsy Borogrove’s gorgeous wedding gown has suddenly turned into some severely-tailored widow’s weeds.

“Get me outta these things!” she screams, tearing at the clothes, and Impervious Irving and Gently Gently Dawkins go over to help her, and suddenly she is standing there in nothing but her lacy underthings, and there’s not much of
them
, and she is glaring at Morris. “
Do
something!” she bellows.

Morris takes a good look at her, of which an awful lot is exposed for looking at, and applauds.

“Something
else
, damn it!” she snaps.

Morris mutters a spell, and she is back in the dress she entered with.

“That’s a relief,” says Benny Fifth Street.

“Is it?” asks Joey Chicago curiously.

Benny nods. “Another ten seconds and I’d have proposed to her myself.”

The other mages start showing up, each finds his client, and I am hoping that we are about to have a Mexican standoff, because as far as I can see the alternative is a Mexican shootout.

The mages each have a drink, and then I assume that they begin mentally bombarding Malone with marriage proposals, because he claps his hands over his ears, scrunches up his eyes, and screams “I
ain’t
getting married!”

“What are
you
doing?” demands Morris, as I work on the blackboard.

“I am adjusting the odds,” I reply.

“How?” asks Bet-a-Bunch Murphy.

“I had Mimsy Borogrove as the nine-to-five favorite,” I answer, “but now I put her at six-to-one.”

“Why?” demands Morris, who is clearly concerned for his client.

“She gets dressed,” I explain.

“Is
that
all?” he says, muttering a spell and pointing to her—but just as he points she turns to the bar to order another drink, and the spell hits Gently Gently Dawkins full force, and suddenly he is standing there in his colorful boxer shorts and his undershirt and not much else.

“Petunias!” giggles Loose Lips Louie, pointing to the flower design on Dawkins’s shorts. “Ain’t that sweet?”

“He may not be much,” I whisper to Milton, “but he’s one of ours. Do something.”

“Right,” Milton whispers back. He mumbles a spell and a bumblebee crawls out of one of the petunias, flies across the room, and stings Loose Lips Louie on the nose.

Louie bellows in pain, and Stella Houston, who is standing beside him, laughs.

“Lady,” says Louie, dabbing his wound with a napkin, “you might as well go home. You ain’t ever gonna get a husband with an attitude like yours.”

Well, there is one husband she is never going to get, and that is Loose Lips Louie, and she starts pummeling him with such intensity that it looks like no one else is ever going to get him either, unless they are heavily into necrophilia, but finally her mage, Willie the Wizard, pulls her back.

“Why are you stopping me?” she demands.

“You only give me three C-notes,” he says, “which is fine for a wedding, but nowhere near enough to get you out of stir after you have been arrested for murder. Let us concentrate on marrying you to this poor unassuming bozo who has no idea what misery is in store for him.”

It is entirely possible that he is going to say more, but suddenly Stella Houston starts pummeling
him
instead. He gets loose and runs out into the street with Stella in hot pursuit.

“Another scratch,” says Benny Fifth Street. “This field is getting smaller and smaller.”

“Right,” says Gently Gently, who actually looks more comfortable without his suit and shirt, which are about four sizes smaller than he is. “I figure we are down to maybe only a million eligible women.”

“Let us eliminate all those women who are not attracted to Malone because of the money he is carrying around with him.”

“Right,” says Dawkins. “Now we are down to nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven, give or take.”

“Let’s be reasonable,” suggests Bet-a-Bunch Murphy, which I personally think would make a pleasant change. “There are so many mages on the scene that there is no way, now that Bubbles La Tour has scratched, that any woman without a mage has a chance.”

“You know, he’s got a point,” says Brontosaur Nelson.

I find that I have to agree with him, and shortly thereafter I come up with the evening line, which reads as follows:

Snake-Hips Levine, 9-2

Bodacious Belinda, 5-1

Mimsy Borogrove, 6-1

Almost Blonde Annie, 6-1

Penelope Precious, 8-1

Lascivious Linda, 8-1

Bedroom Eyes Bernice, 10-1

And the rest go up in odds from there.

“Harry, you must be out of your mind,” whispers Benny Fifth Street. “You’ve got Lascivious Linda down there at eight-to-one. Why, she can take Snake-Hips Levine in straight falls.”

“They are all utterly charming morsels of femininity,” I say, “and I would never try to rank them in order of desirability, at least not without a set of body armor. But I am not ranking the ladies so much as I am ranking their mages.”

“Aha!” says Benny. “Now it makes sense.”

“You are forgetting something vitally important,” says Malone.

“Oh?” I say. “What is that?”

“I ain’t marrying
none
of them!”
he bellows.

“Please do not interrupt us when we are having a serious discussion,” says Benny. And he goes on to tell me which mages he thinks I am ranking too high.

“Milton,” says Malone, with just a note of panic in his voice, “you’re the resident mage here. Make them all go away.”

“All the other mages?” asks Milton. “That will leave you at the mercy of the very people you wish to have nothing to do with.”

“Not the mages,” says Malone. “The
women
.”

“Probably their mages would object,” says Milton, “and looking around the tavern I see twelve … no, fourteen of them.”

“That is no problem,” says Malone. He takes my chalkboard away and lays on the far end of the bar. The mages all gather around it, studying the odds and arguing about whether their prices are too short or too long. “You see?” continues Malone. “They are only concerned with where Harry ranks them. Their interest in the women starts and stops with their fees.”

Milton takes a good hard look, and sure enough, none of the mages is paying any attention to the women.

“What the hell,” says Milton. “Give me ten large and I’ll vanish them all.”

“Forever?” asks Benny Fifth Street, who seems to have taken a liking to, or at least an interest in, Mimsy Borogrove.

Milton shakes his head. “Not for a lousy ten thousand dollars. But I’ll vanish them long enough for Malone to take what remains of his stash and head out into the wild, untamed wilderness of New Jersey.”

“It’s a deal,” says Malone, and he peels off the ten large and hands it to Milton, who stuffs it into a pocket.

“Now I’m only going to have time to cast this spell once before the other mages notice what is happening, so I need to gather all the women close together.”

Having said that, Milton starts leading each of the women over to the farthest part of the bar from where the mages are. He

has twelve of them standing together and is just leading Lascivious Linda over when we hear a female voice bellow from the doorway: “Since when did you become a collector?” and in walks Mitzi McSweeney with blood in her eye.

“You misunderstand, my dear,” says Milton nervously, backing away a few steps as she approaches him with her hands balled up into fists. “I am just doing a service for Plug Malone here, who has no desire to be near any of these women.”