“Pet would like that!”
Stan sighed deep and long. “June,” he said. “Take a good long look at your little sister.”
I wanted to disappear.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
June stared at me with real fury.
“Now then. Do you really believe that she’s fat?”
“Yes!”
Even though I hadn’t had breakfast, my stomach began to swell like a balloon.
“You need stronger glasses then,” he said. “The problem is in your eyes and not in her body.”
“I suppose you’re going to say that I’m the one who’s fat,” June said.
“Well.” His voice was mild. “Well, yes.”
“YOU DON’T LOVE ME!” June screeched.
I closed my eyes and willed myself into another dimension.
“We’re here,” said June. “And it’s a real dump.”
I opened my eyes and found that we were driving down one of Hot Springs’ ancient city streets, the elevated sidewalks three steps above traffic level. Elderly couples in long, shapeless overcoats strolled so slowly that they seemed hardly to be moving at all. The glass storefronts, which seemed to comprise the entire downtown, were filled with odd merchandise, not the kind of stuff you see in regular shops—cupids with clocks in their stomachs, mismatched china, old jewelry and tools.
“Are those antique shops?” I asked Linwood.
“They’re auction houses,” said Stan.
Auction houses! So exotic. They reminded me of Bob Barker on Truth or Consequences, the only game show of June’s I could watch. I thought Bob Barker was really handsome, and he’d make a great auctioneer.
“The guidebook,” said Linwood, “says they’re overpriced and the merchandise is defective. But once this was supposed to be charming, part of the whole resort bit.”
Well, who cared about the dumb old guidebook? Something about the ambience got my attention—the strolling couples, the charming sense of days, years, eons gone by.
And then I saw a familiar-looking figure duck into one of the auction houses. A pecan-skinned gentleman in a clam-colored suit.
My arms prickled up and blood danced through my body like those waltzing flowers in The Nutcracker Suite.
Our car zipped around the corner, but not before I took one last look at the building:
Maybe you didn’t have to use the spell to get Sammy. Maybe you just had to have it.
“There’s the hotel!” June pointed.
“The Hotel Roosevelt,” Linwood explained. “That’s where we decided to eat.”
She took out her compact and began to powder her nose. It had a funny blunt end, overly round, like the edge of a shelf that’s been painted too many times. The story went that she’d been in two serious car wrecks, both with sports cars and drunk dates, before she was seventeen. One of the boyfriends had read to her every day while she was in the hospital, stopping from time to time to weep because of the pain he had caused her and how he had ruined her nose. But I liked the bump particularly; I wished I’d been born with one too. Because of Deane, I would never have teenage boyfriends, never go cruising at night on the fire-fast freeways, hair streaming out behind you.
My fate was something entirely different.
“After lunch,” you could hear the weasely caution in my voice, “do you think we could go to one of those auction houses?”
Stan pulled the car into the hotel parking lot. “We’re supposed to meet the realtor at three.”
“Just for a minute?”
“They’ve just got a bunch of crap in there, Pet.” Stan used his authority tone.
“It looks like a haunted house!” June was staring at the spindly, dark, multi-eaved old ramshackle building. Spooky, but that’s all.
Somehow, I knew I’d get to Smiling Sammy’s Showroom.
We paraded in the front door and were all struck dumb by the opulence, gold as the treasure room in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Stan had taken us to see it one night last week in Texarkana, and it was even better than Jason and the Argonauts. I liked the part where the princess was tiny and Sinbad carried her around in the special box—sort of a chair—that he’d made specially for her. Six inches tall, really cute. She wasn’t even upset when she discovered she’d been shrunk. All she did was tease handsome Sinbad about how he couldn’t still love her if she was so small. But her size didn’t make any difference to him. He was nice to everyone and said his prayers to Allah.
June’s favorite part was the Cyclops, either when he had his eye put out with fire or when he wrestled to the death with the dragon. The Cyclops had a log cage full of skeletons, but the dragon reminded me slightly of the sweet beagle we used to have, Freckles.
Anyway, what with the gold cupids and the lamps encrusted with glittering stones, you could see that the Cyclops would have considered the hotel lobby as loot. Except this place was dingy and tarnished, if you stared a moment. As if the party had left already and been gone awhile.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” the bellboy asked Linwood. He was decked out in a green velvet suit with gold trim. His young face was an even, all-over pink, very pleasant, but one eye seemed to focus away, as if he saw a spirit hovering behind you.
“The Arabian Room.” Linwood reserved that lofty voice for waiters and sales clerks.
“Of course.” He bowed and we followed him.
“Dressed up like Jocko,” June muttered in my ear.
Obediently, I winced. On my fifth birthday, someone had given me a monkey with a hard plastic face and a heart-shaped felt pad on his bottom, and he, Jocko, looked evil to me. There was something terrible about animals with human faces, not to mention the disconcerting combination of stuffed-toy softness with plastic-face hardness. The worst was the grisly story Stuart Little, in which a human couple give birth not to a real baby but to a mouse!
“Lordie,” said Stan.
We were in the Arabian Room. Enormous gilt pineapples topped an impressive series of windows, and colored silk drapes wafted out from them, pink and coral and flamingo and salmon. The velvet booths were patterned in purple brocade, a little worn but still pretty.
“It looks like a harem,” said Linwood. “Or should I say bordello.”
The waiter seated us and the bellboy vanished. You expected those brocade cushions to sink you like a stone, but actually they were rather hard.
“A vodka martini. Very dry.” Linwood looked right through the waiter, but you could tell he loved it. The meaner she was to people like that, the more they seemed to love her.
“Double bourbon on the rocks,” said Stan. “And two Shirley Temples with extra cherries.”
June beamed.
Linwood allowed Stan to light her cigarette and then surveyed the room in that chin-high, non-looking way she had, which made everyone stare at her as if she were famous or beautiful. “Everyone” in this case turned out to be two or three aged couples, their jewelry showing more light than their skins.
That aloofness, that was a kind of power you’d think I could create for myself. It was attitude, separation, indifference. I straightened my spine and surveyed the room with equal dignity.
“Why did the moron throw the clock out the window?” June asked me.
I ignored her, my chin up like Linwood’s.
“Say ‘Knock knock,’” she suggested to Stan.
“Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?” June asked.