“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? The official U.N. nut-hatch?
Good, steady, reliable tenants, my foot. Ooh. Wait till he got his hands on that rotten, lying little real estate agent. He’d wrap his crooked incisors around his slimy fangs, by God; he’d make his mouth resemble the rubbish heap at the Royal Doulton factory.
The vivid details of Elgar’s plans for the real estate agent were interrupted by a rumbling like a locomotive in the hall.
“Fanny Copee,” it boomed, “you get out of the way and let me handle this!”
The owner of the voice flung open the door and steamed toward Elgar, full speed ahead.
“You got till I count to ten. Then you better be off these premises.”
Elgar stared up at the darkest, most massive woman he had ever seen. About six feet tall and four wide, wearing sinister rimless glasses, trembling even more than he was, and pointing a gun at him.
He had always been afraid of the dark, and at the sight of all that blackness coming at him, narrowing and concentrated to the point of the black steel barrel that would finally diffuse his paleness into atoms, something loosened the stopper that kept Elgar’s compartments watertight, and all of his guilty fears flooded down to his knees. He almost desired her to pull the trigger.
“I count fast. I went to the tenth grade in school. So you better move.”
“Wh-why are you pointing that thing at me?” he managed.
“My powers told me evil was coming my way this morning. ‘Expect evil on your doorstep,’ they said, so I was prepared. Get movin’ before I call the police on you.”
At the word “police” there was a toccata of high heels, and Fanny blazed into the vestibule again.
“Police? Miss Marge, have you lost your mind? My Charlie just got back home from his last sentence!”
“Don’t worry, honey,” Marge said. “They won’t be after Charlie this time. This time they’re gonna take away a white man. For breaking and entering.” Marge shrugged. “Though why you want that troublesome husband of yours home anyway is more than I can see. If you had any sense, you’d of let me dispel him for you long ago.”
It had been like this all his life. No one ever recognized Elgar. Everyone refused to grant him an identity.
“But I’m the new owner of this house!” he spluttered.
“Sho,” Marge said. “And I’m the First Lady of the United States.”
“He is, though,” Fanny said. “He’s the new landlord.”
“How do you know, you simple-minded child? Just because he told you? Did you think