was such lyrical sweetness in the voice uttering this foreign-sounding babble that Elgar was suddenly homesick for the South Sea islands he had never seen, until he realized how thoroughly he had been tricked.
He turned helplessly, masticating his rage, and studied the names which were variously scribbled, printed, and embossed on the mailboxes. Copee. Perkins. Cumberson. And, in raised gold script letters, P. Eldridge DuBois. Elgar copied each name onto the cover of a separate rent book, using the laborious block printing that was the only thing he had taken away from his desperate years at day school. That P. Eldridge character. Hmmm. Elgar smelled trouble there.
He went outside again and stared at the signs for a full five minutes, deliberately allowing his fury to build to a molten froth as he read:
Madam Margarita
Readings $2
Ring 2 Bell
(If No Anser Ring 1 Bell)
and:
Fanny Hair Styling
$3 Up
Ring 1 Bell
(If No Anser Ring 2 Bell)
Obviously, there was collusion at work here. A conspiracy among his tenants to ruin him. Elgar went back into the vestibule and rang all the bells. Simultaneously, steadily, with the full, unforgiving pressure of his arm.
There was an immediate response that made him jump. It came from the third mailbox, the only one which boasted a tricky little microphone and speaker. Out of this elegant, custom-installed device came a click, the spooky burr of static, and then a crisply insulting, British-style voice.
“State youah business, please.”
“What?” roared Elgar. “Who the hell are you?”
“Dubwah heah,” the gadget replied silkily. “State youah business.”
“Well, Mister DuBois, you’d better state your business. I am the new owner. Do you know anything about those signs out front?”
“I do not participate in the vulgar activities of this establishment, suh,” was the suave answer.
“Well, do you participate in vulgar money-making activities, like the rest of us? Readings, for instance? Or Hair Stylings?”
“I, suh, am a Creole,” the device answered, settling the question forever.
“I don’t give a damn what you are!” Elgar bellowed. “You better pay your rent American!”
The thing was offended. “Rally!” it exclaimed breathily, and clicked off.
Elgar had still not gained admittance to his own house. And, in a typically Elgaresque blunder, he had left the keys at the real estate office. Biting his lip to contain a really royal flow of curses, he folded his arms and leaned all his weight against the bells.
In response, a blur of crimson like a full-blown anemone exploded into the vestibule.
“Where’s Walter Gee? Have you seen him?”
Scarlet silk emblazoned with golden dragons, slippery and, he hoped, precarious, was the only covering of the softest, smoothest expanse of beige skin Elgar had ever seen, and Elgar was a connoisseur of such matters. You could drown in skin like that, and die happy.
As his eyes slowly traveled upward, a rounded knee obligingly peeked out from beneath the robe. Elgar’s eyes halted there. It was a long time before he reached the face, but that was satisfactory too. Adorable, in fact, if you had a taste for the exotic. Slightly Mongoloid features, almond-shaped black eyes with a flat, exciting glitter, shaded by lashes that almost swept the floor. Now batting at the rate of eighty bats a minute. Helplessly, fatuously, Elgar smiled.
“Where is Walter Gee?” she repeated crossly. “Mister, have you seen my little boy?”
“There was a kind of a pygmy con man hanging around here when I came in,” Elgar replied. “He got a dime out of me and disappeared.”
“Ooh!” she shrieked. “You gave him a dime? To buy that nasty green Wop ice cream? A dime’s enough for two of those things. He gets sick to death from one. If I have to take him to the hospital, I’ll sue you.”
“How much?” Elgar asked, thinking, Take it all, take everything I’ve got. It’s yours, if you’ll just let that robe slide down a little lower on the left side. Ah, there.
She ticked it off on her fingers. “Ten thousand for damages to my child’s life and limbs. Ten thousand for court costs and lawyer fees. Ten thousand for medical expenses. Ten thousand for my mental anguish, and ten for my husband’s mental anguish. That’s fifty thousand dollars if he don’t die. If he does—”
She looked up at Elgar suddenly, the lashes batting like moth wings, the eyes beaming an expression soft and seductive as a Univac’s.
“You’re kinda cute, though. For a white man. Who are you?”
“I’m the new landlord.”
Her eyes widened. “Maybe I won’t sue you, then. Maybe I’ll just settle for five years’ free rent. I’m Fanny Copee.”
“Charmed,” he said. “Always wanted to meet the Dragon Lady.”
She was not smiling. “You go find my little boy,” she said. “Walter Gee Copee. He’s only four years old. Find him quick, before he eats that nasty, rotten green poison. Then you come in and have a little talk with me.”
“Delighted,” Elgar said. “I was intending to have a little talk with you anyway. About, uh, the hairdressing.”
Her hand darted out and brushed Elgar’s hair, sending a jagged shiver to his toes.
“Oh, you don’t need nothin’, Landlord. Except maybe a little dandruff treatment and scalp massage.”
She wiggled her fingers by way of illustration. Elgar giggled helplessly while she looked him up and down, assessing her power. It was complete. Then, by God, she winked.
“I give body massages, too. Real good ones, Landlord.”
Just as he reached for her, she whirled and vanished in a storm of crimson petals. Leaving him to speculate on how a tailor in Hong Kong could have known exactly where to embroider a golden dragon to tantalize him so acutely in America.
Oversexed because underloved, that was what Borden said. A common problem. As if that made it better, not worse. Once the love-index rose, the sex-hunger would fall off.
Meanwhile, his blood stirring, his head reeling, Elgar leaned back absent-mindedly against the row of bells and tried to make sense of things that defied all reason. Haughty Creole aristocrats, scheming Samoan midgets, litigious Dragon Ladies—all, obviously, stark staring mad. What had God wrought? What had he bought? The Mental Health annex of the World Health Organization?
