Small World (10 page)

He nodded vigorously and flopped a hand to welcome her hand. After that he felt lost, and could only think to stick his hands back in his pants pockets. She stood there, expectation all over her face. Then she looked significantly at a chair.

What next
came to him abruptly. He asked her to sit down, which she promptly did, in the graceful way he thought only ladies in automobile ads did, and then he offered to call room service for a drink or coffee. She said no thanks and Roger was on his own again.

Then she spoke quickly, i’m Dorothy Hardesty Douglas,’ she said. It was a puzzling for a moment, since Roger knew that, and then he realized she was trying to help again, to keep the old manners rolling, making him comfortable. Her eyes were, he fumbled for the right way to put it to himself,
kind
, but there was something more. Amusement?

‘The flowers were,’ she paused and looked straight at him, ‘extraordinary. How do you do it?’

Roger flushed with pride. He chuckled. ‘I can tell you,’ he told her, with what he hoped was a suitable degree of mystery, ‘I
don’t
grow 'em.’

The lady’s calm smile turned to bewilderment. She fumbled in her handbag, and Roger, recognizing the gesture, knew immediately what for. He whipped out his Winstons and offered her one. She took it with a grateful little puckering of her lips that made Roger feel weak, and stuck it in her mouth. Roger remembered he was supposed to light it, too. There was another box of matches from the famous restaurant in his suit pocket and he had them out in a jiff, scraping one down the side of the box so hard that it broke.

‘Flimsy,’ he muttered, and she nodded. ‘I didn’t really eat there,’ he confessed.

intelligent of you,’ she assured him warmly, ‘the food’s overpriced and wretched.’

Roger was inspired by her confidence to try another match. This was the magic one that lit the lady’s cigarette. Roger was thrilled. Here he was, lighting a cigarette, the other end of which was between the glossy lips of a famous, rich and still wickedly good-looking woman.

‘You don’t grow them?’ she repeated thoughtfully, coming back to the point. A fine blue puff of smoke shredded before her face. For a moment, hers was the cruelly beautiful face of the stepmother queen in
Snow White.
Roger remembered the Disney cartoon very well; it had scared him silly when he was old enough to have to pretend it hadn’t. But he had never forgotten the villainess, the best, he thought, of the whole long Disney line of witches and bitches, much more appealing and sexy than the simpering little-girl heroines.

‘Well,’ she continued, ‘they’re not manufactured. They’re real, goddamn it.’

The swear fell from her lips as easily as how-dee-do. Roger was almost too startled to enjoy this moment, so long imagined, come round at last. He breathed deeply.

‘I shrink ’em.’ he said calmly.

The lady’s rainwater-gray eyes widened for a fraction of a second and then narrowed, and she puffed her cigarette as if she were a stoker in hell.

Roger slipped a hand casually into his jacket pocket and curled it around the cool metal comfort of the bullet-shape car. He giggled just a little. Slowly, he brought it out, hidden in the fleshy rack of his hand, and held it out to her. She raised her eyebrows. Very slowly, one finger at a time, he uncurled his hand. Silence settled like a hundred years all around them.

She stared thoughtfully at the little pink car on his palm. After a moment, she dropped her cigarette into one of the hotel’s tinfoil ashtrays and produced, from the depths of her handbag, a jeweler’s loupe. Taking the car calmly from Roger, she slipped the loupe to one eye and studied the tiny vehicle for several long moments. Then she dropped the loupe into her free hand, placed the car on the table top, and sat back.

‘Anything else?’ she asked conversationally.

Roger admired her cool. Anybody else would be hysterical by now. Like his mother. He slid the small manila envelope over the table top.

Opening it quickly, with a barely perceptible tremble, she slid out a tiny rectangle. This time she gasped. It was distinctly satisfying reaction.

The jeweler's loupe went back to her eye. She had to steady the hand holding the miniature painting with her other hand. This time the examination did not take long. When the loupe dropped from her eye again, and she sat very still, the painting in her hand, she stared at Roger as intensively as she had at his wares. Roger felt vaguely uncomfortable, like a much-handled grapefruit in a market. She might as well have kept that bit of glass in her eye.

At length, she whispered, ‘How?’

i minimize them,’ Roger explained. ‘I have this device I call the minimizer.’

It was in the closet, in a neat leather camera case. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. He might be crazy but he was no fool.

‘Minimizer?’ she asked. Her mouth twitched with some joke to which Roger was not privy. But then her gray eyes clouded.

Roger could see she was having trouble with the whole concept. He whipped out the Winstons again. This time he helped himself, too.

‘I used to work for the government,’ he told her, offering her the butts, ‘on a project.’

She took one, nodded.

‘Well, the numb bastards, excuse me, shut down the project. Fired me.’ He lit her cigarette again, feeling like Humphrey Bogart.

She held up a hand peremptorily. ‘Let me get this right. There was a government project to shrink things?’

Roger shrugged. Close enough, and she was quick, too. ‘A little more complicated. That was one of the things they were looking for. It was pure research, but of course, they wanted something out of it. You know what I mean?’

She dragged on the cigarette. It must have tasted good. ‘The things that go on,’ she said around the butt, amused, again.

‘Yeah,’ Roger agreed. ‘The project actually started in your father’s administration. I was drafted for it about fifteen years ago.’

She no longer seemed very amused. One elegant eyebrow arched dangerously.

‘So, I finished it. Zap! I guess they don’t want it, anymore. I guess it’s mine.’

The lady puffed on. It was apparent to Roger that she followed his logic. To the user go the spoils. Hadn’t it made America great?

‘So how does it work?’ she asked.

‘Great,’ Roger said. ‘See?’ He pointed to the painting in her hand.

She looked at it again, and then back at Roger.

‘I see. I meant could you explain the mechanism to me?’

‘No,’ he replied flatly. He was pleased to note from her stunned expression that he’d thrown her a loop. Apparently the lady didn’t hear no too often.

‘Why not?’ she persisted. Her cigarette was getting the shit ground out of it in the ashtray.

‘Because I can’t.’

‘Oh. You’re sure?’

it’s much too complicated. There’s probably only two or three people in the whole world capable of understanding how it works, assuming they had the proper theoretical information. And me, of course, and I’m not too sure myself sometimes that I’ve got it right.’

Roger felt the pack of Winstons carefully. She was going through them fast. He hesitated, then offered it to her again.

‘I think I understand what you’re saying,’ she said slowly. She lit up again, taking the match from his hand. ‘Can’t you tell me a little of the theory. I’ll try hard not to be stupid.’ She smiled dazzlingly.

It didn’t matter if he did tell her, he knew. She couldn’t do anything with it.

He sat down in the chair opposite hers.

‘You sure?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Her eyes all bright and eager.

He thought for a minute and then plunged.

‘Well, when I was a little kid, I used to think the world was run by buttons. I suppose I heard people talking about pushing The Button and just figured if there was a button that could destroy the world, then there must be other buttons. Maybe even buttons that ran people. It’s crazy, but I really thought everything that happened, happened because someone, somewhere, pushed a button. Some adult. I used to go around feeling under chair arms and things, looking for the buttons.

it really worried me. I didn’t know how you were supposed to know which button did what. I was afraid I might accidentally hit one, maybe
the
button, and, whoosh, there goes the world, down the hopper. Or the one that would kill my mother.

‘Probably it seems like a silly story to you.’

She looked puzzled but was still listening.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘in the course of the research I was doing for the project, I found out that my crazy kid idea was right. I found one of the buttons. Yeah, there really are buttons.’

He was wet with sweat but somehow relieved, as if he had confessed some childhood transgression to his mother. Someone else knew, now.

‘Someday,’ he mused, ‘when I get enough money, I’m going to look for the other buttons.’

The lady’s cigarette had gone dead between her fingers. Her mouth was a little open, the tip of her tongue slipping nervously along the inside margin of her upper lip. She cleared her throat.

‘But you can control it effectively?’

Roger nodded. He leaned forward, his hands clasped on

hisknees. ‘You mean, can I shrink what I want as much as I want?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Sure,’ Roger said casually. He gestured to the painting and the car, sitting on the table between them. ‘You want either of these things? I have to make back my investment.’

She started, apparently thinking about something else. She sat a little straighter, and sucked in a long, shaky breath.

‘I have no use for the car. My dollhouses are period pieces, you know. It wouldn’t do to have anachronisms in them. None of them even has a garage.’

That was fine with Roger. He had a soft spot for the little car. It was a good-luck charm. It had been luck that he wandered into that shopping center just as the old cock walked away from his gorgeous racer. It had been luck to have the minimizer with him. He couldn’t question, whenever he held it in his hand, that in some fundamental, mysterious way, his luck had changed.

‘The painting,’ she paused delicately, ‘well, I can’t hang it in one of the dollhouses, now, can I?’

Not good news, but Roger understood. He was prepared to write it off. How was he supposed to know stuff like that? It seemed this business was a little more complicated that he had figured. But at least he had proved to the lady that he could produce a better miniature anything than her daughter-in-law.

‘Still,’ she continued, startling him, i’ll take the painting. It has associations for me. And I suppose I could hang it privately.’

Roger clapped his hands. ‘Great.’

She fondled her cigarette and smiled at him. Then she socked him again. ‘I don’t suppose you’d let me buy the device from you?’ she asked lightly.

Roger was stunned to silence. He glanced nervously at the closet and then reddened when he realized she’d seen him look. Now her smile said she shared his secret. He felt panicky.

‘No,’ he blurted. ‘No.’

‘Just thought I’d ask,’ she said soothingly. ‘But we’ll have to work out financial arrangements and what exactly I will be buying.’ She relaxed into her chair.

‘Sure. ’ He was willing and eager to get down to brass tacks. And change the subject.

She looked at her wrist watch and frowned, it’s getting on. Perhaps the best course of action would be for you to come to my apartment and see the dollhouses I have there. Unfortunately, my best one isn’t there right now.' She smiled apologetically. ‘We can talk more comfortably there. Have dinner. I can teach you a lot about miniatures.’

Roger’s heartbeat bounded. She was right. And he’d never had dinner with a beautiful woman in a fancy apartment before. It was not an experience he was going to pass up. She was still beaming at him, as if she wanted to pat him on the head.

Almost without being aware of it, he went to the closet and retrieved the minimizer from the closet.

‘Might want to take some pictures, for reference,’ he mumbled.

She stood up and slipped her hand around his left arm. Roger breathed heavenly air. He allowed himself to be led away.

Dorothy Hardesty Douglas lived in one of those glass towers. Roger wondered, staring up at it as they passed it on the street below, how much window washers were paid for a job like that.

They entered through an underground garage packed like a box of Christmas ornaments with Mercedes-Benzes, Rolls-Royces, and a sprinkling of yet more expensive and exotic vehicles. Roger could imagine the lot of them shrunk to matchbox size and tucked neatly into a shoebox. The place smelled like a garage and looked like a garage, but it summoned for Roger memories of celebrity funerals at Forest Lawn, when there were lines of dinosaur cars like these, rolling slowly by, as if to some nearby tar pit.

A pair of security guards watched a short, glossy lobby that led to elevators. The guards were courteous but not what Roger would call warm. They looked about eight feet tall. Their eyes passed over Roger, seeing him and not seeing him, like the klieg lights in prison movies. Or perhaps more like X rays, looking for malignancies, but not much interested in recording the presence of healthy tissue.