The Evening Line
This one was a positive delight to write. Harry the Book is a continuing character, a bookie in a Damon Runyonesque fantasy New Year, and this is his twelfth story. (3 or 4 more and I’ll have enough for a collection.) It was commissioned by Gardner Dozois for Rip-Off, the anthology’s conceit being that each story must begin with a line from a public domain classic. I used the opening line of Carol’s favorite book, Pride and Prejudice.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife,” says Benny Fifth Street.
“I don’t want to hear this,” replies Plug Malone.
“I do not think that what you want enters into this,” says Benny.
“What is this all about?” asks Joey Chicago, who is polishing glasses behind the bar. Well, not really polishing them, but at least flicking a semi-damp towel over them.
“I hit three longshots in a row when I was at Aqueduct this afternoon,” explains Malone, “and no matter what Harry’s stooge says, I plan to enjoy my winnings on my own.”
“I am his flunky, not his stooge,” replies Benny with dignity.
“Big difference,” snorts Malone. “Either way, I am not in want of a wife.”
I am sitting in my office, which happens to be the third booth at Joey Chicago’s 3-Star Tavern, sipping an Old Peculiar and minding my own business, which at the moment consists of doping out the odds for the fight card at the Garden that night, when Benny turns to me. “What do you think, Harry?”
“I think Kid Testosterone lasts about thirty seconds of the first round against Tidal Wave McTavish,” I say. “Forty-five if he’s lucky.”
“No, I mean about all the women who will soon be pursuing Plug Malone with a single-minded intensity.”
“How much did you win today?” I ask Malone.
He looks furtively around to make sure no one else is listening. “Fifty-three large,” he answers.
“That is nothing,” says Gently Gently Dawkins, munching on a candy bar as he enters the tavern. “I myself am a fifty-eight large.”
“We are talking about money, not pants sizes,” says Benny. “Our friend Plug Malone has had a remarkable run of luck at Aqueduct.”
“Spend it fast,” says Dawkins, “before some filly spends it for you.”
“No one knows except you three, and Joey Chicago here,” says Malone. “No one will know.”
“That’s like saying no one will notice an earthquake because it happens on the next block,” says Dawkins.
“Then no one will care,” says Malone. “I will share a confidence with you. My real name is Jeremiah Malone. I know you think Plug is for the chaw of tobacco I usually have in my mouth except when I am in classy establishments like this one”—he glares at Joey Chicago—“where they do not even have the courtesy to furnish a spittoon, but in truth is it is short for Plug Ugly, which is a nickname they gave back at P.S. 48 and which has stuck with me ever since. I am the ugliest, least attractive husband material in Manhattan, maybe in all of New York. You have never seen me with a woman. Women take one look at me and run in the opposite direction.”
“Which direction is the opposite direction?” asks Dead End Dugan, who has been more than a little confused ever since he became a zombie, and is standing in the farthest, darkest corner of the tavern.
“Do not bother yourself with such trivialities,” I tell him. “Go back to staring peacefully at a wall and thinking dead thoughts.”
“You’re the boss, Harry,” replies Dugan, and suddenly he is as still and silent as a statue again. Benny and Gently Gently do most of my errands for me, but every now and then, when someone is reluctant to make good his marker, it is nice to have a six foot ten inch zombie on my team.
“So what are the odds of Malone’s looks frightening away potential brides?” asks Benny.
“Yesterday, three thousand to one no one will give him a second look,” I answer. “Since he won the fifty-three large, half a million to one that they will.”
“But nobody knows!” wails Malone.
“It goes out on the wind, like news of antelope drinking at a waterhole goes out to a hungry lioness,” I say. “They’ll start showing up any minute now.”
No sooner do the words leave my lips than Mimsy Borogrove walks in. She slithers right past my two flunkies and sidles up to Malone, who acts like he has never been sidled up to before.
“Got a light, Big Boy?” she half says and half breathes.
“A light what?” asks Malone.
“Come back to my place and we’ll talk about it,” she says, reaching out for him.
“Unhand that man!” says a voice from the doorway, and we all turn to see Almost Blonde Annie standing there.
“Unhand me?” repeats Malone, staring at his hands in horror and then trying to tuck them into his pockets. “But I need them!”
“Of course you do,” says Almost Blonde Annie. “After all, you have to sign the marriage license.”
“I beg your pardon,” says Mimsy Borogrove, “but I got here first.”
“And I got here last,” says Snake-Hips Levine, entering the tavern and undulating right up to Malone. “Come on, Sweetie,” she says. “We don’t want to have anything to do with these other broads.”
“Do I know you?” asks Malone.
“Wouldn’t you like to?” says Snake-Hips. “Look at me,” she continues, running her hands over her body just the way any healthy male of the species would like to. “Isn’t this worth fifty-two thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars?”
“Fifty-three thousand,” says Mimsy.
Snake-Hips shakes her head, and everything else she has just naturally shakes with it. “Fifty-two thousand, two hundred and twelve. The other seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars was the money he bet that was returned to him when he cashed in.” She stares compassionately at Mimsy. “You’d better get a new source of information, Honey.”
Gently Gently Dawkins leans over to me. “Perhaps we should do a little something to save him from this veritable plague of potential fiancés,” he whispers.
“I am a bookie, not a marriage counselor,” I say. “Plug Malone’s pre-marital problems are his own.”
“I think Mimsy may take a poke at Snake-Hips,” says Dawkins. “What will we do then?”
“I will practice my trade and offer eight-to-five that Snake-Hips takes her out in straight falls,” I answer.
As we are conversing, four more women have entered the tavern, and now it is Joey Chicago who approaches me.
“Harry,” he says, “we have a problem. All these women are taking up space at the bar, and none of them are buying any drinks.”
“I hope you are not suggesting that I should buy drinks for the house,” I reply. “Along with everything else, I have long suspected that Almost Blonde Annie has a hollow leg.”
“Can’t Milton cast a spell that either makes them buy drinks or go home?” he asks, “I will tear up your tab if he does.”
“All right,” I say, because my tab has reached almost six dollars, and I hate spending my own money. “I will talk to him.”
“Good. Where is he?”
“Where else?” I say. “In his office,” I head off to the men’s room, which is where Big-Hearted Milton, my personal mage, has set up shop for the past two years. I find him, as usual, sitting cross-legged inside a pentagram he has drawn on the floor just next to the row of sinks, and there is a black candle burning at each point of it.
“Milton,” I say, “I need you to cast a spell.”
He holds a finger up to his lips. “In a minute.”
He began chanting in a language that bears a striking resemblance to ancient Mesopotamian, or possibly French, and finally he snaps his fingers and all the candles immediately go out.
“Hah!” he says, getting to his feet. “That will show her!”
“Mitzi McSweeney again,” I say. I do not ask, because these days it is always Mitzi McSweeney.
“We are sitting at a table in Ming Toy Epstein’s Almost Kosher Chop Suey House, and she remarks that one of her garters is pinching her, so I reach under the table to adjust it, and she hits me in the face with a plate of sweet and sour pork.” He frowns. “Me, who hasn’t had pork since he was bar mitzvahed!”
“So what kind of terrible curse did you put on her this time?” I ask in bored tones, because somehow Milton’s curses never seem to wind up bothering anyone but Milton.
“Oh, it’s a good one,” he assures me with an evil smile. “Since it is her garter that causes this humiliation, I curse every garter she owns. Now none of them will work!”
“That is very brilliant, Milton,” I say. “Now whenever she is out in public …”
“… her garters will unsnap …” he laughs.
“Right,” I say. “And she will have to stop right there on the street and lift her skirt and try to re-snap them, and of course some handsome man will see this lovely lady with even lovelier legs in distress and will come to her aid, and try to help attach her stockings and doubtless introduce himself and tag along with her in case the garters give her further trouble, which of course they will.”
“Damn!” growls Milton. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
He relights the candles, stands in the middle of the pentagram, chants something in another unknown language, makes a mystical gesture, and then rejoins me by the door.
“All done,” he announces. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“Not for me,” I say. “It seems that Plug Malone made a big score and is being whelmed over by women.”
“What is wrong with that?” asks Milton.
“They are taking up space at the bar and not buying anything, and Joey Chicago wants them to spend money or go home.”
“Hell, have Plug Malone treat ‘em all.”
“There is a school of thought that opines that Plug Malone has never so much as spoken to a woman, except perhaps for his mother,” I say.
Milton cracks open the door and takes a peek at the bar.
“Her?” he says. “And her too? And is that Sugar Lips Sally? And …”
He studies each of the dozen women who have gathered so far, and shakes his head in wonderment. “I have not seen such an outstanding field since the 1997 Belmont Stakes,” he says at last.
“So can you do one or the other?” I say. “Send them home or get them to part with some money?”
“I will not send them home,” announces Milton. “There is always a chance Mitzi McSweeney will refuse to see me again, She complains that she is getting arthritis in her hand after the last forty times she bloodied my nose.”
“All right,” I say. “Then cast a spell that makes them spend their money.”
“Look at all those skin-tight dresses, Harry,” he says. “They cannot possibly be hiding three dollars between them. I will hex Malone into buying drinks for all of them.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I think Joey Chicago will go for that.”
So Milton mutters a spell, and suddenly Malone gets the strangest, most puzzled expression on his face, and announces that he is buying for everyone in the house.
“Everyone?” repeats Joey Chicago with a happy smile.
“Every man and woman in the place,” Malone assures him.
“What about zombies?” asks Gently Gently.
“Do zombies drink?” asks Almost Blonde Annie.
“I don’t know,” admits Malone. “Hey, Dugan!” he shouts. “Do zombies drink?”
Dead End Dugan blinks his eyes a couple of times, and frowns. “I don’t know,” he answers. “It’s been so long …”
“Besides, even if he started, it would probably all pour out through those holes in his chest,” says Benny Fifth Street.
“Probably,” agrees Dugan unhappily. “Or maybe where I got my throat slit. That was … let me think … the fourth time.”
“How many times have you been killed?” asks Malone.
“Five that I can remember,” says Dugan.
“That’s horrible!” says Snake-Hips Levine with a shudder that attracts the attention of every man in the place.
“It hardly hurt at all after the third time,” Dugan assures her. He makes a face. “I really hated it when they dumped me overboard though. You think they’d have been more considerate, what with all the ice in the East River.”
While all this high-brow discussion of life and death is occurring—or to be totally accurate, death and more death—word seems to have gone out on the wind that Malone is paying, because suddenly almost a dozen men enter the tavern and ask for drinks.
Brontosaur Nelson, who is a midget wrestler, asks for a tall one, which cracks everyone up, and the laughter attracts Loose Lips Louie, who is just walking by, and Impervious Irving, who is between bodyguard jobs, and Charlie Three-Eyes (who has a scar where he claims his third eye used to be, though word on the street is that it is simply where his ever-loving wife bites him when she finds he has been watching Bubbles La Tour’s Dance of Sublime Surrender at the Rialto every night, and try as he will he cannot convince her that he goes for the music, which any ever-loving spouse will agree is like buying Playboy for the articles.).
Everyone keeps drinking and having a good time, and finally Loose Lips Louie says, “So who’s the lucky lady, Plug?” and two seconds later you can hear a pin drop. And this is not a figure of speech; Gently Gently is loosening the pin that is holding his shirt together where he has popped a button after his fourth hot fudge sundae of the day, and so silent does the tavern become that I can hear it hit the floor fifteen feet away.
“I’m not the marrying type,” says Malone.
“Are you the type who buys drinks for the house?” asks Loose Lips Louie,
“Certainly not,” says Malone.
“Well, there you have it,” says Loose Lips Louie. “Now, who’s the lucky lady?”
Malone looks like a deer caught in the headlights, except no deer ever looks so frightened, even when surrounded by a pack of elephants or whatever it is that has a taste for freshly-killed deer, and suddenly he frowns and points a finger at Milton.
“This is your doing!” he yells. “I would never stand for drinks unless I was hexed, and you’re the only mage here. You’re the reason all these gorgeous man-hungry women are after me!”
“If I am the reason all these women are here,” answers Milton calmly, “than I am also the reason you win fifty-three large at Aqueduct, and I would like my fee, please.”
“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 a 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.”
“So you’re carting them all off as a favor to him?” she screams.
“Certainly not,” says Milton. “Women don’t interest me at all. I prefer you.”
“WHAT?” she bellows.
“I didn’t mean that,” says Milton, his hands stretched out defensively in front of him as he begins backing away toward his office.
“Just don’t let him vanish all your clothes,” says Mimsy Borogrove as Mitzi McSweeney walks by her in pursuit of Milton. “I didn’t realize how cold it was in here until—”
She does not get to finish the sentence.
“You vanished her clothes?” demands Mitzi.
“Never!” protests Milton, his back to the door of the men’s room. “That was Morris the Mage’s spell. I cannot vanish anyone’s clothes unless I say barota nictu!”
And as quick as the words leave his mouth, Mitzi McSweeney’s clothes disappear.
Milton’s eyes widen, more in terror than lust. He swallows hard and leans back against the door, which starts giving way. “You’re looking …uh …well today,” he says, then turns and races hell for leather into the interior of his office.
Mitzi is one step behind him as the door swings shut and they vanish from sight. There follows a great deal of noise, a few shrieks of pain and terror, a crash, and a lot of words I never knew existed, all screamed in a feminine voice.
“Now magic them back—or else!” yells the voice.
There is a brief pause, and then a fully-dressed Mitzi McSweeney emerges from Milton’s office. She pauses and turns to him just before the door swings shut.
“I’ll talk to you later!” she snaps and walks out of the tavern.
I head toward the men’s room, with Benny and Gently Gently falling into step behind me. Just before I get there I call Dead End Dugan over, in case the carnage is so great that only a zombie can endure it on an empty stomach, and then the four of us enter.
“Any sports fans see this and they will never talk about Mohammed Ali or Mike Tyson again,” says Benny.
“Who would have guessed that there was that much blood in a body?” asks Gently Gently.
“It’s not in him,” notes Benny. “It’s on him.”
“And there wasn’t a mark on her,” adds Gently Gently in awestruck tones.
“Thad’s because I ab a gendulmad,” says Milton, holding a blood-soaked handkerchief to his nose. “Helb ged me on my feed.”
We help him up. He sways a bit, but then Dugan steadies him.
“Thag you,” he says, blowing some more blood out of his nose. “Thad woman has a left you wouldn’t believe.”
“I think we’re missing a bet here,” says Gently Gently.
“Oh?” I say.
“Have Milton cast a spell to marry Mitzi McSweeney off to Malone. No one’s bet on her, so you’ll win all the money, and this way Milton will at least live til his next birthday.”
“No!” says Milton. “She is the love of my life, or at least the goal of it. I will give her time to cool off and then throw myself at her mercy.”
“Last time you throw yourself at her mercy you miss,” I remind him, “and she is somewhat less than pleased with what you hit.”
He winces in pain at the memory. “Maybe I had better just extend my hand in friendship.”
“And the last time you do that,” adds Benny, “she is bending over watering her flowers, and you know what happened.”
“I am the greatest mage in Manhattan,” groans Milton. “In all of New York City, even. How can this keep happening to me?”
“Luck,” suggests Dead End Dugan.
“Luck?” repeats Milton uncomprehendingly.
Dugan nods. “With a left like she has, you should have been as dead as me months ago.”
We escort Milton back to the bar, where all the other mages are still arguing over the evening line, and all the women are eyeing Malone not unlike the way a healthy cat eyes a crippled mouse.
“The women are still here!” snaps Malone, reaching into Milton’s pocket and taking back his ten large.
“I see you are having your usual fine luck with the opposite sex,” notes Morris the Mage.
Milton, whose nose has started bleeding again, mutters a curse. It comes out as “Blmskph!”
“Let us be charitable here,” adds Spellsinger Solly. “You have to admit that Mitzi McSweeney is about as opposite as sexes get to be.”
“You are speagig aboud the woman I love!” growls Milton. “Well, lust for, anyway,” he amends.
“Let us get back to the man we all lust for,” says Almost Blonde Annie. She turns to her mage, Sam Mephisto, who does most of his magicking in the Bronx. “I paid you good money for a husband. I want him.”
“I am working on it,” says Sam Mephisto. “These things take time.”
“Work faster!” she snaps.
“Not to worry,” he says. “If worst comes to absolute worst, I’ll marry you myself.”
That is when we learn that interacting with the female of the species is not a problem unique to Big-Hearted Milton, but may very well affect all mages. Dead End Dugan and Impervious Irving wait until she pauses for breath and lift him up to the bar, where Joey Chicago douses his face with water.
Sam Mephisto blinks a few times, then slowly sits up. “That was a most amazing experience,” he says. “For a minute there I dream I am back in Egypt, mounted on my camel and leading my men into battle against General Sherman.” Which is when we know he is not entirely recovered, unless General Sherman went further astray than most history books would have us believe.
He gets down off the bar, blinks his eyes a few more times, and finally speaks. “It has been a long, hard night,” he says. “I think I am going to take a little nap.” And with that he slides down to the floor and lies there, snoring up a storm.
“Some mage!” snaps Almost Blonde Annie, making the same kind of disgusted face I make whenever I see Gently Gently Dawkins pour Tabasco sauce on his oatmeal. She glares from one man to another, and finally says, “I am a woman alone, without representation. Isn’t anyone going to do something about it?”
I decide that she has a point, so I walk over to the blackboard when I have posted the evening line and raise her odds to forty-to-one.
She takes a glass of beer off the bar, throws it in Sam Mephisto’s face, and stalks out into the night, leaving him licking his lips while still snoring.
“Well, that’s one less to worry about,” says Malone with a sigh of relief.
“Two,” says Benny. “Stella Houston’s probably still chasing Willie the Wizard all over Manhattan.”
“Right,” adds Gently Gently, surveying the tavern. “Fourteen more and you’re out of the woods.”
“Well, til tomorrow, anyway,” agrees Benny.
“I hadn’t even thought about tomorrow,” says Malone.
“Well, you had better be prepared for it, because how long do you think you can keep something like fifty-three large a secret?” says Gently Gently. “Why, even now, I’ll bet women are approaching from Connecticut and New Hampshire and New Jersey, maybe even from as far away as Delaware.” He furrows his brow in thought. “It must be borne on the wind, like phera … phero … those things that perfume tries to copy.”
Even as he speaks three more women enter the tavern, looking neither right nor left, but eyes trained straight ahead on Malone.
“Milton, do something!” says Malone, his voice shaking.
“I ab doing subthig!” snaps Milton, still holding his handkerchief to his face. “I ab bleeding!”
One of the three newcomers notices all the mages, and immediately pulls out her cell phone and speaks to it in low tones. The other two soon follow suit.
“Well, whatever the result,” says Joey Chicago happily, “at least we are doing some business.”
“Why don’t they all want to marry you then?” asks Malone.
“Because I lose all my money betting with Harry on everything from horses to politics,” answers Joey. “Why, just last night I bet on Horrible Herman to win a steel cage match at the Garden.”
“And does he?” asks Malone.
Joey Chicago shakes his head. “The steel cage beats him without drawing a deep breath.”
Two mages walk in the front door and a third materializes by the juke box, so I walk over to the chalkboard and adjust the evening line again.
Suddenly I am confronted by Morris the Mage.
“You really think my entry is no better than a six-to-one shot?” he says pugnaciously.
“It’s a well-matched field,” I say. “And unless it comes up mud, I still make Snake-Hips Levine the favorite.”
“Maybe we should make her carry extra weight,” suggests Gently Gently.
“Shut up!” snaps Morris. He turns back to me. “Six to one, that’s your final odds?”
“Not necessarily,” I reply. “The starting gate is far from full yet.”
“But you don’t expect her odds to go any lower?”
“Not unless Snake-Hips Levine or Bodacious Belinda scratch,” I say.
“All right,” says Morris, pulling out his wad and peeling off a dozen hundred-dollar bills. “I’m putting twelve C-notes on her to win the Plug Malone Sweepstakes.”
This makes all the other mages look like they lack confidence, and soon they are all lined up, putting bets down on their entries, and when they are all done the purse is up over fifteen large, and one or two of the women are looking at me the way they look at Plug Malone, but then they remember I will have to pay most of it to the winner, and I am back to being a wallflower again.
“Well, Plug baby, where shall we go on our honeymoon?” asks Lascivious Linda.
“We don’t need a maid coming along with us, Plug honey,” says Bedroom Eyes Bernice. “Tell her we want to be alone.”
“Tell them both,” chimes in Bodacious Belinda. “It’s me that you love.”
“I don’t love anyone!” yells Malone.
“It’s me he’d better love,” says Bodacious Belinda, glaring at her mage.
“Harry, this is becoming intolerable,” says Malone. “Hell, I’d almost marry the woman who tried to kill Milton if that would make the others go away.”
“You can’t!” says Milton, who has finally unclogged his nasal passages. “She’s mine!”
“She sure didn’t act like it,” says Malone.
“It was just a lovers’ spat.”
“If the Third Reich could spat like that we’d all be speaking German,” says Malone.
“Just keep away from her,” says Milton. “She’s mine.” Then he pauses and adds: “Potentially.”
“All right, all right,” says Malone. “It was a silly thought to begin with.”
“What’s so silly about sharing a bed with Mitzi McSweeney?” demands Milton pugnaciously.
“I get the feeling that the bed is a hospital bed,” answers Malone. “And that Mitzi McSweeney isn’t sharing it, but is signing the papers about not using extraordinary means, like giving me food and water, to keep me alive.”
Milton is about to object, but then he realizes that he agrees down the line with Malone, and just nods his head instead.
“It is getting near midnight, and the object of our affection still hasn’t made his choice,” announces Mimsy Borogrove. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am getting tired of waiting.”
“Me, too,” says Lascivious Linda. “But what do you propose to do about it?”
“I say if he hasn’t chosen one of us by midnight, we draw straws for him,” says Mimsy.
“We could have a nude mud-rasslin’ tournament, with Malone going to the winner,” suggests Joey Chicago. “At least we’d get to charge admission.”
The mages all nod their heads in approval, but Bodacious Belinda points out that the wrong kind of mud could ruin their complexions and did anyone really trust Joey Chicago to supply the right kind, and they spend the next five minutes arguing about what kind of contest to have, but there is no question that they plan to resolve the problem before morning comes and a whole new crowd of women shows up.
“Damn!” mutters Malone. “I wish I’d never won that money to begin with.”
Which is when I begin to get a truly profound inspiration.
“Do you really mean that?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “Look at these women. Now I know how a seal feels when he finds himself in the middle of a flock of sharks.”
“I think it is a pride of sharks,” says Gently Gently.
“No, it is a school,” says Benny.
“Don’t be silly,” says Gently Gently. “Sharks don’t go to school.” Suddenly he frowns. “Well, not in this hemisphere, anyway. I can’t say anything about African sharks.”
“Shut up!” I snap at my flunkies. I turn back to Malone. “Well?” I say.
“Yes, I really mean it.”
“Bet me the fifty-three large that twelve plus twelve equals seventy-three,” I say.
“But it doesn’t,” replies Malone.
“I know,” I say.
Suddenly his face lights up. “That’s brilliant, Harry!” he exclaims. He raises his voice so it can be heard throughout the tavern. “Harry the Book, I will bet you fifty-three large that twelve plus twelve equals seventy-three.”
“No!” cries Snake-Hips Levine. “Do not make that wager!” Everyone turns to her. “Twelve plus twelve is sixty-seven.”
“I think it is forty-one,” says Mimsy Borogrove.
Even Spellsinger Solly gets into the action, opining that it is ninety-four.
“I am sticking by my guns,” says Malone. “Fifty-three large says that the answer is seventy-three.”
“The answer is twenty-four, and I will thank you for my money,” I say.
Everyone pulls out their pocket computers, and they finally admit that I am right, and suddenly I am surrounded by women.
“Good,” I announce in a loud voice. “This will just about pay off the money I owe Hot Horse Harvey for that Daily Double he hits this afternoon.”
“But Hot Horse Harvey is tapped out and hasn’t laid a bet since—Ow!” says Gently Gently as I kick him in the shin while all the women and their mages are stampeding out the door.
Finally there is just Joey Chicago, Plug Malone, my flunkies and me, and then Malone walks up and shakes my hand.
“Thank you, Harry, for saving me from a fate worse than death.”
“You’ve really never spoken to a woman since you were a kid?” I ask.
“Well, except for Granola Gidwitz,” he says. “She seemed less intimidating, what with her cock eye and her triple chin and …” His voice trails off and he stares wistfully off into space for a minute. “You know, it’s strange, but I miss her. I wonder if she still lives over on West 22nd Street?” He heads off toward the door. “I think maybe it’s time I paid her a visit.”
Then he is gone, and no sooner does he leave than Mitzi McSweeney re-enters the tavern.
“You came back!” says Milton excitedly.
“I have decided to forgive you this one time,” says Mitzi.
“And I will never give you cause to regret it,” says Milton, reaching his arms out to her and walking forward to embrace her. But he forgets that Sam Mephisto is still sprawled out on the floor, and he trips over him, and he reaches out his hands to grab hold of something, anything, to stop himself from falling, and as you can imagine Mitzi is somewhat less than thrilled with what he grabs hold of, and a moment later he has retreated to his office, she has followed him in, and the rest of us conclude that World War III will sound pretty much like the sound coming from Milton’s office, only less violent.