LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 22

     The snow crunched under, and into, Matt’s shoes.  Not knowing the protocol of such things, he had gotten out of the cab and sent it away when he was still a goodly distance from the gate.  Seeing an uneasy man approach on foot, the gatekeeper, already disgruntled at being dragged away from Saturday morning cartoons in the gatehouse, had taken a lot of convincing before consenting to call the house to see if the Silberwetters were expecting a Matthew Benz.

     At the door, Matt kicked out as much snow as he could.  His ankles were cold and his toes were wet.  This was good.  If he died of pneumonia, at least Miss Skull wouldn’t get him.

     The doorbell sat in the middle of a pink triangle on a gold circle by the door.  Matt put one finger forward, and then stopped.  Would she have guessed he’d lie to his mother about where he was going?  No one would know where he was if this triggered a trap door to drop him into a dungeon.

     He shook his head.  This was one benefit of being a writer of fantasy.  Loke when Linda Nairn was out of the office for two days in November with no explanation.  Whenever his brain embarked on a fantasy of its own, Matt-the-Writer would be right there to growl, “This plotline will not fly.  Isn’t it a little far-fetched that some ultra-secret slave market would kidnap someone you know and pit her up for sale to some foreign billionaire?  And for you to rescue them, you know, you’d have to know where this subterranean slave market holds its auctions AND pass for a customer to be allowed in.  And how many slave auctions have you attended?  You wouldn’t know what to wear and you’d worry about it.”

     Matt took a deep breath.  Sex slave auctions was not a wise way for the brain to go, not at the Silberwetter household.  He set one finger against the little pink button.

     The door opened almost immediately.  Matt opened his mouth and then shut it, aghast at the sight of what could only be a butler.

     “Mr. Benz?”

     “Er, yeah.”

     “Do come inside.  Allow me to take your coat and I will inquire whether Mrs. Silberwetter is ready to receive you.”

     Whisking the coat away, the butler left Matt in the center of an off-pink vestibule.  The carpet was deep and thick; Matt noted this particularly, knowing his shoes were wet.  He thought about taking them off.  He shook his head again.  No way was he going to do any undressing at the Silberwetters’.  Besides, with his luck, Ada, or more likely Marshall, would come and tell him to go away.  Coatless, shoeless, he’d have to find another cab in this distant, silent street.  And it was a cinch the gatekeeper wouldn’t be in a hurry to help.

     Matt’s stomach reminded him it was there.  It was his usual progress.  First his throat seized up, then his stomach started to hurt, and if the suspense went on building, his palms and the webbing between his thumb and forefinger would start to itch.  He scratched at his palm.

     A grey and white ball of fur sauntered into the room and walked around the intruder.   One circle, two circles: then it walked toward a neutral corner and sat down to regard the tall visitor.  Matt wondered if it would be presumptuous to reach out a hand toward the cat.  Cats had very definite ideas about such things.  The gaze of those eyes was not disapproving, exactly, but they did seem to expect something.

     He was still mulling alternatives when a voice called, “Long time no see!”

     The butler had been dispensed with: a tousled Ada Silberwetter bounced in, wearing fuzzy blue slippers and a blue terry robe with the belt undone and tucked into the pockets.  She showed no sign of any allergy to mornings, as bright and alert, or even more so, as at the party.  The cat yawned and stalked away.

     “Come into the playroom.”  She seized Matt’s hand.  “And remember, I don’t have to give you anything but my name, rank, and serial number.  Unless you say pretty please.”

     Matt hung back a bit until the front of the robe slipped a little and a swath of white assured him that she was also wearing a nightgown.

     “It’s a pity you left when you did last night,” she said, looking back over one shoulder as she tugged him along.  “I thought of some vile things to say to you but you were gone.”  She batted her eyelashes at him.  “So now I shall have to save them for my memoirs.  Here we are.”

     One pink hand flattened against a door.  The other, letting go of Matt, reached in to flip a switch.  Matt stared in open-mouthed shock.

     A worn orange-and-russet carpet covered the floor.  Matt had seen its twin in a dozen doctors’ waiting rooms.  The walls were a kind of dirty beige.  Prim almost-officey furniture was tucked around the place: a plain maple desk, a battered couch, and a little table which held an electric coffee maker and a stack of Styrofoam cups.  Even the paintings on the wall were fluffy mock-Renoir yardart made specially for low-rent office spaces.

     He spun around as a lock clicked behind him, noting as he turned that the ‘playroom’ had no windows.

     Ada, paying no attention to his sudden alarm, strolled past him to the desk, from which she drew a thick manila envelope.  “Why don’t you pour coffee while I prepare the exhibit?”  She plumped down onto the carpet and tucked one foot under her robe.  Matt hurried to the coffee maker, his back to her.  That was not a nightgown.  It was a T-shirt.

     Behind the coffee maker, slightly above the table, hung a row of small framed photographs.  Matt recognized Marshall Silberwetter, while another showed the late Gus Thaxter.  “My husbands,” Ada called from below and behind him.  “Each and every one of them the only man I ever loved.”

     “Mm.”  Matt leaned toward the picture of Marshall.  There seemed to be a crack in the wall…no.  It was a long, even line all the way to the floor.  He glanced back at Ada, who was setting photographs on the floor, murmuring “He loves me, he loves me not” as she let each one drop.  He poked at the wall panel.

     It slid noiselessly.  Behind it stood a chalkboard and, rolled into a niche by the ceiling, a screen like the ones in half his school classrooms.  He set a hand on the panel and slid it shut again.  This all looked more like workrooms than playrooms, but he supposed that was just prejudice.  If Adsa Silberwetter called it a playroom, it was.  He would have expected red velvet on the walls, pillows in the corners, and a mirror on the ceiling, but there might be a lot….

     He checked the ceiling.  Nope.

     Taking two Styrofoam cups, he poured in obviously fresh coffee.  He bit his lip as he turned.  One lock of hair had fallen across her forehead as she concentrated on setting out the evidence.  This was too domestic: she in her robe, he bringing coffee.  It might as well be a TV commercial.

     Carefully averting his eyes, telling himself it was because he shouldn’t look at the photos until she had them in the order she was being precise about, Matt lowered himself to the floor.  From this angle, he could see an old typewriter tucked away behind the table, on a rolling typewriter stand.  He blinked.  Was it all just nostalgia for her old City job?

     “He loves me!” crowed Ada, setting down the final picture with a flourish.  “There!”

     She had set out ne rows of nine pictures each.  Matt took in the first row at a glance and his eyes proposed a leap from their sockets.

     “You know,” said Ada, applauding his expression, “I used to be a proper little girl who wore white gloves every Sunday.”

Do Not Adjust Your Set

     Our ancestors, to judge by postcard cartoon art, certainly were a gaudier lot than they seem in those black and white photos in the family album.  We have discussed hereintofore the frequent appearance of checkered coats and trousers for men (the larger, the more likely).  And as far as stripes and polka dots are concerned, the ladies were not far behind.  Now, a little of this is simply accurate depiction of bygone ages.  We like to ascribe to our ancestors outdated attitudes and dress, and our mind leaps to cartoon Puritans, in stark blacks and whites.  But the artists had another reason for pursuing wild, variegated fashion.

     Working on a postcard provides only a small space, and the printers were not always to be depended on.  Breaking up clothes with easily distinguished colors and patterns helps the viewer see what’s going on.  A black suit and a dark (though not black) dress are separated by that light blue jacket, so the eye is not confused by the picture on its way to the joke.

     Accurate to the times though this may be, the artist has chosen this particular shade of trouser because it won’t blend in with the tailed jacket.  The hero’s predicament is clear to us.

     A line of men in identical suits would blend together, diminishing their plight.  By choosing contrasting colors and patterns, they emphasize the length of the line.

     This farmer is wearing checks, yes, but our eyes go straight to the polka dots, and then on to the stripes.  Solid colors, properly modeled, might have done the same thing, but solid colors can slip, if the printer is careless, or even be left out.  The patterns are insurance, reassuring persnickety postal inspectors that the ladies ARE wearing suits.

     You can see for yourself the sorts of things that can happen if colors are too much the same.

     Postcard artists did, of course, also employ gaudy patterns to make fun of the wearer.  This chap would have look smaller, somehow, in a plain blue serge suit.

     And, as we have noted aforetimes, the average hobo, tramp, or bum is frequently shown in stripes and checks, suggesting that such clothes wind up being worn by people desperate for any garment.  (While, and at the same time, adding variety to the picture AND, in this case, emphasizing the wearer’s size.  By the way, why are so many bums in cartoons so doggone plump?  Do these overweight mendicants begging for food a remark about the Undeserving Poor, or just more fun to draw?)

     Farmers, it is hinted, wouldn’t know any better than to wear stripes with checks.

     And here we are making fun of the back-to-nature bridge players by giving them gaudy lingerie.  (Note how much detail Ray Walters has put into these undies, which, even if the color is accidentally left off, can NOT be mistaken for a nudist card party. As opposed to the young lady facing us, who is holding her cards in a way to lead us into doubt.)

     Here we have two lines of men, each in varied clothing.  The IN line shows us various clothes to represent a certain diversity of the civilians entering the Army, but the varied outfits of those coming out makes a joke about the tailoring available in military issue outfits.

     Sometimes, of course, the varied clothes is just a matter of self-expression.  With only two couples on the floor, and so far apart, there was no real need to separate them with gaudy outfits.  But it fits the artist’s bright cheery theme.  Sometimes, as in the example at the top of this column, the whole point is just to brighten up the artist’s life, and provide a chance to show off something fun.

     And, on that theme, we can end (so to speak) with this trio of interesting dress designs.  No one liked drawing…female fashions like Walter Wellman.

Postcard Jukebox

     We have discussed this hereintofore, but more cards come into the inventory and I need to venture anew into the fact that the cartoonists who produced pictures had the whole of pop culture to draw upon.  One of the easiest ways to get a grin or a nod from a prospective buyer was to refer to a popular song.  By 1949, when Guy Lombardo premiered THIS number, the custom was dying away.  Were music publishers getting more pugnacious about not getting any royalties for this, or was the radio public switching to new number ones too fast for the postcard companies to keep up?

     In the earliest part of the century, listeners had to rely on sheet music and their phonograph records, which resulted in a slower turnaround.  (Can you imagine an age when you had to PAY to listen to new songs?  Yeah, I thought you could.)  This sad, uncertain chap rode his postcard in 1907, but the song “If I But Knew” made its debut in 1903.

     The previous postcard uses the song pretty much the way the lyricist intended, but the real fun came in repurposing a lyric.  The scene would NOT have appeared in the original song.  (If there was one.  The only song I can find with this title was written by Stephen Sondheim around 1970.  It WAS, however, written for a musical which takes place about the time this postcard was published.  Now, I am NOT suggesting Sondheim was inspired by the couple on this postcard.  And yet….)

     This is a better illustration of the principle.  THIS song, popular for a decade or more after its introduction around 1902, is a sentimental tale of devotion to an elderly relative.  But the humorists at Bamforth couldn’t resist this application.  (Though they also published a series showing the lyrics of the original illustrated by a little girl and her Grandpa.  This was another thing about pop songs: you could market to those that wanted it straight as well as buyers who liked a joke.)

     And this was a comic song of 1909 or thereabouts, about a “preacher and Sunday Schoolteacher” who keeps finding himself in the wrong place.  In the song, however, he is NOT a mosquito.

     This card, too, expresses pretty much what the song is about.  (I refer specifically to the song where a farmer named Hiram goes to the big city and encounters club life, determined to stay so long as he can still write home and say “Sell another cow”.  There are several songs with this title: figuring out which comes first, the song or the catchphrase, is work for dissertation writers.)

     Speaking of home not being like this AND dissertation topics, this refers to a song popular during both World Wars.  However, there are subtle differences between the versions sung during the two conflicts.  The 1917 original was “We’re In the Army Now” and uses a melody subtly different from the one you’re humming now.

     By World War II, though the lyrics stayed the same, the melody had become the one we know from the cartoons and movies of the time, and the title had changed to “YOU’RE In the Army Now.”  (And yes, in the sheet music of both, the line is “never get rich while digging a ditch” and NOT the version that was so well known that at least one animated cartoon assumed everyone knew the other version by simply going instrumental for that passage.)

     Let us conclude with the work of Albert Carmichael, who doesn’t so much alter the context of the 1908 standard “Cuddle Up a Little Closer, Lovey Mine” as ADD to it. The original lyrics simply neglect this, but it adds tension to the chorus if we see the song COULD be about how much a woman wants chocolate.  Or does it?  Maybe that’s why my country album hasn’t found buyers yet.  Or is it just that no one’s making postcards for MY lyrics?

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter Twenty-One

     The first glimmer of sunlight was a great relief to Matt.  As long as it was dark, he felt rather obliged to stay in bed and try to sleep.  Whenever he dozed off, however, he found himself in the year-end party room full of corpses he had imagined for fictional purposes, except that at THIS party, naked pink women kept jumping on the shoulders of men wearing ski masks, and riding at him, firing guns.  Dream Matt tried to run, but this did no good: skull-faced pipe cleaner dragons twined up his legs.

     It was enough to make a morning person out of anyone.

     After long consideration of his closet, he decided to dress casual-formal, putting on one more from his collection of white shirts with tiny stripes, but with a sweater over it instead of a jacket.  Once his mirror told him he was presentable enough for the Silberwetters, he checked his alarm clock.

     He sat down, slapping his hands on his knees.  Seven was probably too early to go dropping by.

     A stroll to the kitchen for an apple and a can of pop used up a few seconds, but not nearly enough.  He took his breakfast back to the typewriter, setting his back to the clock.  Almost immediately, he checked his watch.  Eight: he would get into action at eight.  Eight would give him time to explain, twice, find a cab, and head out there.  Even if traffic cooperated and the lights were right, he would hardly get there before nine.  Surely anybody who was getting up at all this morning would be up by nine.

     What time would Mother get up?  He leaned a little toward the door.  Then he shook himself and drew out the pages for the current chapter of “Ascent”.  He set these down in front of himself, pushed backward from the desk, and tiptoed over to peek out at the door of the other bedroom.  Really, this was as bad as Christmas morning.

     Glancing at the closet, where he’d hidden the presents, he saw his collection of exhibits from last night’s party.  A pen and an impossibly real gun sat on top of the coat.  Farther bask, on his dresser, the late Gus Thaxter’s bifocals flashed the morning sun at him, completing the grisly exhibit with a mocking memory of the last time murder (and Ad Silberwetter) had come his way.

     Matt walked over to finger the evidence, as he had a dozen times already.  The coat had a label to tell him very little, and nothing to tell him more.  There were no pockets, which meant no chance to be like his mother’s characters, turning up a book of matches with a nightclub’s address outside and the phone number of a sultry brunette inside.  The gun was just a gun to Matt.  He checked the safety again, and looked around again for a safer place to put it.  Was he likely to get into trouble for just having the thing around?

     The pen, he thought, hopefully, might not be a clue at all.  Anybody could carry a novelty pen, not just people from Down.  Anybody could have dropped it, at any time.  Depending on how often that piano got moved, it could have been sitting where he found it for weeks, or months.

     He twisted the pen between his fingers.  Was Miss Skull someone from Down?  Now that the assailant in the coat was not before him, it was impossible to be sure where he had seen that stance, that figure, before.

     The word “figure” inevitably brought Ada Silberwetter to mind.  She MIGHT be quick enough to have been Miss Skull in ski mask and pocketless coat.  She might have known a shortcut to the room with the grand piano.  Why would she want to kill him, though?  For his failure to lunge at her, drooling, when she stepped out of his closet after Thaxter’s demise?  What if he just didn’t keep his date with her this morning?

     He shook his head.  Now was no time to quit.  Miss Skull—who was almost certainly not Ada—would have no way of guessing he’d backed out, and would still come after him.  As long as he was going to be a target anyhow, he might as well go on trying to find out what this was all about.  Kind of his job anyhow: as an Information Specialist, he was meant to sort through chaos and bring it into something useful.

     He set the pen down and touched the gun.  The episode was not a total disaster: Matt felt a little puffed up about getting this gun without also getting shot.  Unpleasant, but anyhow he hadn’t fainted or gone into hysterics.  He had shown a little backbone.

     Euphoria was brief.  Miss Skull was still at large.  She wouldn’t be as easy to fool next time.

     Matt set the gun down.  Nearly dying was the second most upsetting feature of the attack.  (A freelance writer with 7,438 rejection slips had very little to live for, but Matt DID wnt to make it to 7,500.)  The worst feature was that the attempt was his first real indication that anybody besides Ada Silberwetter and his mother thought there was anything to investigate.  Before last night, there was a chance the whole thing might turn out to be a joke.

     Back at the typewriter, once he forced himself back to his chair, the words at his elbow seemed to make very little sense.  But that was normal, and there might be some purpose in retyping them anyhow.

     Between pages or in difficult passages, between paragraphs, his sleeve came back to expose his watch.  Two Minutes.  One Minute.  At 7:59.31, he pushed himself back from the typewriter.  It would take thirty seconds to get his coat out.

     By now, sunlight filled the apartment.  It was a beautiful day not to go to the Silberwetters’.  Even retyping more pages would be a better use of such a nice morning.  He could break off around ten and watch his tape of Maria’s wedding on Sesame Street.

     There was no sound of movement.  Matt sidled down the hall to his mother’s door.  Something rustled beyond him.

     He followed the sound back to a sun-drenched dining room.  All the lights were on, too, but even so, Mrs. Benz had to raise the Miss Skull letters to her nose to read, them while her free hand scribbled something on a legal pad.

     Matt scratched his head: he hadn’t heard her come out at all.  Surely he’d have heard her in the kitchen.

     “Have you had breakfast?”

     Her nose continued to brush the page while her right hand scribbled on.  “Lots of times.”

     He turned around and checked the kitchen.  A breakfast half-built sat in various containers on the counter.  No silverware: that was it.  She could be mighty quiet when she thought he was sleeping late, but to be silent in the silverware drawer called for powers beyond those of ordinary mortals.

     Matt poured and stirred what was required and brought a cup, a glass, and a bowl to the table.  His mother glanced at them and then turned her nose back against the letter she was studying.  “Oh, thank you.  Your friend never mentioned anybody named Skull, did she?  A real name, I mean: Jenny Skull or Lorelei Skull.”

     “Um.  No.  That would be too easy.”

     “Of course.”  She set the letter down.  “The reader spots that and says, ‘Oh, this is way too easy’ and while he’s patting himself on the back, you slip in the mickey.”

     “I see.”  Matt nodded gravely.  “Any new insights on who really did it?”

     “Mm,” she replied.  She set the letter down and brought the legal pad to her nose.  “You want someone who’s good-naturedly wicked.”

     Matt didn’t think he wanted to meet any such people.  “Good natured?  Thise letters?”

     “Well, look.”  She waved the legal pad over the stack of correspondence.  “It’s all overdone.  There’s so much relish in every letter: you can tell Miss Skull thinks she’s the smartest bear in the woods.  She’s having so much fun writing the letters I don’t believe she ever really would kill anybody.”

     Matt had already decided not to tell her about the character in the coat and ski mask.  “You’re just prejudiced in favor of writers.”

     She set the legal pad down, sipped at the orange juice, and grimaced.  “You know it’s all going to turn out to be a big joke.  On New Year’s Eve or April Fool’s Day somebody’s going to admit it and the poor man who died will turn out to be a coincidence.”  She tried the orange juice again and shook her head.  “All very unsatisfactory for my readers.  I’ll need to switch something.”

     Closing her eyes, she drained the orange juice and set the glass as far away from her as she could.  “Now what do I name her?  Carmilla Skull or Camellia Skull?  Where did I put my copy of ‘Starnames For Baby’?”

     She rummaged in the clutter of papers but found no books.  “It must be on the desk. Matt….”

     Her eyes came up, and squinted at the coat on his arm,  “Where are you off to now?”

     Matt shrugged.  “Just a little Christmas shopping.”

     “Is it that late already?  No.  Are the stores open yet?”

     Matt had not considered that detail when formulating a cover story.  “Oh, well, you know…they will be by the time the bus gets there.”

     Mrs. Benz nodded.  “I wish you’d take me one of these times.  I have all those grandchildren to provide for.”

     “Maybe next week.”

     “It takes thought, you know.  Thought and time.”  She picked up the legal pad again, apparently just to shake it at him.  “You have to get a present good enough to keep them from sulking about Grandma’s dumb presents but not SO good that your children send you hate mail.  It’s an art.  You just wait ‘til you have grandchildren of your own.”

     “I can wait.”  Matt thought suddenly of Ada Silberwetter’s step-grandchildren.  “Besides, having grandchildren means you’re o-o-o-old.”

     Her nostrils flared.  “Huh.  It takes all kinds to make a world.”  She reached for her coffee.  “Not YOUR kind, though.”

     “Well, you and Miss Skull have fun,” he said, turning to go.  “Um, don’t let anybody in while I’m gone.  I, er, might not be back in time for lunch.  You know what it’s like out there.”

     She had picked up a letter.  “This is not fair at all,” she said, pushing her nose against the typed words.  “It’s like pictures seen at midnight.”  She looked from the letter into the upturned palm of her other hand, a mannerism she had picked up from her late husband, who had spent years as a waiter with a pad in that hand.  Ever after, when confronted with a thorny problem, Dad would stare at his left hand as though it still contained a piece of paper with all the answers.

     Just in case she had not quite caught the gist of what he’d said, Matt said, “Um, so long.  Don’t let anybody in.”

     “What?”  His mother looked up.  “Where are you going?  Oh, right: Christmas shopping.  Well, look for things for my darling grandchildren.  Look for things for the other ones, too: they won’t all be darling by the twenty-fifth.  Will you be home for lunch, do you think?”

     “Um, no.  Um, you know what it’s like out there.”

     She nodded and picked up another letter.  “Murder.”

      Matt licked his lips.  “Yeah.”

     He paused by his bedroom door, pulling on his coat.  Then he stood very still before walking into the bedroom.  The gun was still there.  It was heavy.  He checked the mirror.  Oh, anybody could tell that pocket was weighted down.  He put the gun back.

     Outside the apartment, he shoved the Down button and waited.  Once he started back for the gun, but then he didn’t.  The elevator arrived and it was too late to change his mind.

     He relaxed.  Now he could worry about more  concrete concerns, like how much to tip the cabbie.

FICTION FRIDAY: Fae Fashion and Grooming

     “Wow!  You flattened all seventeen zombies with one blast!”

     “Yes, Mortal Woman, but I fear this is only the Grim One’s advance party.  Now we must move to the inner sanctum of the forest, where I may rebuild my strength.”

     “Of course, prince, but…while we’re there…there’s something  I’ve been meaning to ask you this since I found my way to your sacred glade.”

     “Yes, My Lady?”

     “Do you mind…would you object terribly….”

     “Yes?”

     “If we did NOT have sex?”

     “I beg your pardon?”

     “I apologize for being so direct but…so many of you alpha elves in other worlds seem to operate with just the one thought and….”

     “I rule a vast kingdom of multiple types of being.  I hardly think I can be described as….”

     “Hey, I’ve read my fair share of romantasy and I know all about that.  Arriving from an alternate dimension just seems to act as an aphrodisiac with you guys.  And I don’t deny you look like you’d be a good time.  But that’s not why I looked up those ancient dimensional travel spells.”

     “Then what do you seek in my domain?  Treasure?  Power?  Those are won only with difficulty, and now that you have warned me….”

     “No, no, no.  I am NOT setting up one of those Enemies to Lovers plot lines.  If you want the truth, Prince…I came around for the wardrobe.”

      “The….  You don’t have seamsters or looms in your world?”

      “We do.  But I wanted a world where the wind is always blowing back my hair (which I seem to have more of here), and where I can stalk around wearing big boots and a swordbelt.  You can’t go out in public with a sword in Chicago.”

     “What sort of barbaric place is this you speak of?”

     “And here my clothes could have pockets, and I could wear jewelry in places where it would just draw unwanted attention back home.”

     “Well.  I knew when first I saw you in the glade that you were different, but I did not fully understand how much.  Come into my private shrubbery.”

     “I’m serious, Prince.  I can return any time I press this….”

     “I hope you will think better of that, Mortal.  `I think you may be the special force warrior I need to fend off other dimensional intruders looking for fae booty.”

     “I think you could defend your own gold and silver, the way you knocked over those zombies.”

     “That is not the kind of booty I mean.”

     “I didn’t think anyone in this dimension….”

     “Have I that expression right?  There have been other visitors from your world.  But your priorities are on a higher plane.  Become the glade’s Booty Guardian.  I can pay in clothing.”

     “Swords and pockets and boots?  Oh my!”

     “Indeed.  A different outfit for each paperback cover.  How are you at looking roguishly back over your right shoulder?”

     “What?”

     “I’ll explain later.  The fitting room is over here.”

In So Many Words

     We have been here before, I know.  But new postcards come into the inventory and I have to decide whether certain readings of the scene were intended by the twentieth century artist, or whether it is a creation of twenty-first century sensibilities.  It’s a game, really: the prize being NOT getting kicked off a sales website for showing nasty things.  The Powers That Are seem to agree that the choice of finger here was accidental, and is okay.  I have my doubts (I think the artist was putting one over on the boss) but I’ll take a win.

     THIS gesture does not leave a lot of room for interpretation.  I assume this was a political comment, showing an Italian diplomat defying some other country.  Just HOW obscene the move is apparently depends on your place of origin.  Desmond Morris’s study of obscene gestures claims in some places this is a rude but friendly gesture among friends while in other places the only honorable response is death.  I’ll see what customers online think but this one’s rude.

     This one is largely considered UNrude: the man is tossing and turning because he has so many girlfriends he can’t choose.  One or two people insist he is picking out a bedtime fantasy, but they are a minority.

     No argument here, though.  You see the removed clothing of two people AND the two glasses next to the bottle and cigarettes.  But this was a naughty arcade card: the regulations are a little relaxed here.  (And the fact that you do not see the couple puts this in my mother’s distinction between naughty jokes and dirty jokes.  By the way, having that sort of mind, I would like to observe that this seems an awfully small office for this kind of action.  Where’s the couple?  Wedged between the chair and the file cabinet, or over in front of the window?  We see it’s a Casting Office, but why would a guy with such a small office have that many phones?  And why is the chair sitting on that side of the…where were we?)

     Speaking of offices, this is another Naughty Cartoon: we are allowed to guess what she means.  The drawers gag is a Fine Old Joke, seen previously in this location on a card from around 1910.  The joke is even more common on British cards, since the word, with the right accent, is pronounced “draws”, which leads to further possibilities involving raffle tickets and weather.  (“Winter draws on.”  “How clever of you to have brought a pair!”)

     No, sorry.  The hammock is suggestive, but they are simply taking turns kissing her.  (Yes, this was naughty in its day, but even in its day, only MILDLY naughty: other hammock postcards of the era ease farther along the road.)

     I have been working on this but cannot begin to figure out what’s going on.  Scottish verdict: Not Proven.  I know I can rely on the Interwebs to send complaints my way if this is someone’s red hot fetish.

     These are cute little kids, and I dislike the attitude of some commentators to always pick the most obscene definition of a common word.

     My mother, mentioned hereintofore, tried to break herself of using the phrase “Let’s blow this joint” because “now I know what that MEANS”.  She declined to elaborate, leaving me confused.  THIS pun, about blowing one’s money, refers to a plain slang phrase used by Tolkien in early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, where Bilbo has to leave town because he has blown all the gold he brought home from Smaug’s hoard.  I think we are on solid ground if the word is safe enough for a Hobbit.

     I have, um, concerns…but this went through the mails in 1911.  It HAS to be just two cute kids, right?

       Oh, I don’t even want to play any more.  We can go on about how this meant a huge mistake, but it’s Ray Walters, the artist who gave us one of the best “Nice little ass you’ve got there” donkey postcards.  And without doing research that would startle my algorithms…let’s give up this game and just look at cute little bunny  postcards.

     No, wait.

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 20

     Opposite the restroom and the janitor’s closet, in the little side corridor, was an open doorway screened for tonight with a large grey cubicle partition on wheels.  At other times, the cozy room beyond might serve to house small gatherings of men and women whose decisions would be blazoned in large black letters in the next day’s newspapers.  Tonight it was a storeroom, holding extraneous potted plants and sidetables which would have gotten in the way of the festivities in the main assembly room.

     The room was lit only by what seeped in from the party.  Matt raised a hand to the wall but found no light switches.  While he was at it, he realized that his other hand was still holding the paper plate he had unconsciously rolled into a tube while watching Ada Silberwetter.  He looked down at it, remembered her face, and then wadded it into a ball.

     His guide, meanwhile, was looking around the room in some confusion.  “I asked him to wait for you here, sir.  Wait one moment, if you please.  I will go find out where he might have gone.”

     Matt nodded and the waiter went out.  Spying a wastebasket, Matt strolled over to toss the balled paper plate away.

     The wastebasket was tucked next to three stacks of chairs and a big tree in a pot that was too small for it.  It needed water, too.  Beyond these, up against sliding doors that led out to the snowy balcony, sat a grand piano.

     Looking around at the other supplies stacked here, Matt spotted a yellow telephone on a small table.  Maybe the message was from Mother, or, worse, some doctor in the emergency room.  He strode over to the table and lifted the receiver.  A dial tone told him the phone was hooked up, so he squatted low enough to read the numbers.

     He had punched in the first two when he heard something move.  Turning and straightening up in one motion, he watched a figure emerge from behind the piano.

     This apparition wore a brown coat that brushed the floor.  It did not coordinate well with the blue and white ski mask that hid all of the face but half-closed eyes.  Matt did not study the eyes; the outfit was accessorized with a large black gun.

     This gun was up where Matt would be sure to see it.  The fingers of the ungunned hand made a gentle caressing downward motion.  Matt understood, and set the phone receiver down, just a little behind where it belonged.  He hoped this phone was like other City phones.

     For Matt’s brain was racing.  Worry always made him freeze up, but a gun was nothing to worry about.  A gun was something to be afraid of.  Fear drove out worry.

     This had to be Miss Skull.  Matt tried to see a skull pattern on the blue and white facemask, and failed.  He did make out the letters LUTH on the forehead, but this meant nothing to him.

     The gun pointed at his stomach.  The empty hand beckoned.  Matt moved forward slowly, raising his hands to shoulder level.  How long was sixty seconds?  Would the waiter come back first?

     Miss Skull was considering that same point.  A thumb on the free hand jerked impatiently at the glass door.  Marr looked outside and then down, as she reached out and slid the door open half a foot.  Then this WAS Miss Skull, and this was murder, not robbery.  Between ice and wind, she might not even need to shoot, though a bullet would make matters certain.

     Matt took a deep breath.  This HAD to be sixty seconds now.  She couldn’t shoot him before he was out on the balcony, or she’d have his body to carry.  And she wasn’t that big.  She was about the same size as….

     “BEEE-up!  BEEE-up!  BEEE-up!”

     Miss Skull jerked toward the phone as it complained about being left off the hook.  Matt pounced, smashing a hip on the keyboard of the piano.  His hands plunged and twisted.  Miss Skull kicked, but whether it was that which nearly tripped him or the foot hitting the piano leg.  But the gun had changed owners.

    Jabbing an elbow against the piano, Matt pushed himself up and back.  Miss Skull obligingly fell back herself, clutching a twisted wrist against the front of the coat.  Rain and ice slashed in at her face mask.  The eyes behind the eyehole were wide.

     Matt, meanwhile, had things to worry about again.  He had the gun: now what?  In five summers as a bouncer at his father’s bar, he had learned to handle guns.  But “handle” meant only “take away so the customer can’t play with it.”

     Here there was no manager calling police.  He couldn’t toss the gun under the bar and go back to work.

     The combatants looked each other over.  The height, the way Miss Skull stood, some fragrance: there was something familiar here.  Matt knew he ought to know.  That hand now resting on the edge of the piano: he’d seen a hand resting that way more than once.  On a desk?  On a file cabinet?  On the buffet?

     Miss Skull blinked, and that hand swept up against stacks of cheap tinfoiled ashtrays.  Matt couldn’t keep track of three things at once.  His main goal was to keep the gun quiet and what attention he could spare from that went into dodging apparently metal projectiles.  When he had attention to spare for Miss Skull she was around the piano and out of the room.

     Matt rushed after her, stumbling as his feet crushed the low-bidder ashtrays.  At the door he pulled up short, remembering the gun.  That would NOT be tolerated at a City party, and there was no sense giving people the wrong idea.  He slid it gently into his jacket pocket.

     One glance at the main assembly told him she hadn’t gone that way.  There would be more excitement, more turned heads, if anyone in a long brown coat and ski mask gone running through.

     There were other possibilities.  Licking his upper lip, he pushed through the door of the Men’s.

     “Ow!  What thif…get outa the way!”

     The man who had been on his way out tried to keep going out, stomping down hard on the big shiny shoes Matt tried to pull out of the way.  This raised a flag.  The last time Matt ran into someone so intent on smashing all his toes, he’d been on the bus and cost him his wallet and checkbook.  He slapped a hand down over his wallet pocket.

     “Why, you big…calling me a pickpocket?”  The little round redfaced man looked a bit like Marshall Silverwetter’s third son, the one who lost the election.  It was hard to be sure: Matt had seen him only on campaign brochures, and you couldn’t expect even the photos on those to be more than approximately truthful.

     The little man’s give him one hand in what was half a shove and half a punch.  Matt sidestepped most of this.  Glancing up, the man aimed a second shot.  He stopped before it could be delivered.

     “Hey, din’t I see you talking to m…Marshall Silberwetter?”

     Matt, hating himself for it, simply smiled.

     “Um.  Stupid of me to be standing right at the door of the john this time of night.”  The little man eased to one side, making himself even smaller.  “Um.  Making a fool of myself.  I…I’ll just go do that somewhere else.”

     If anyone who did not know Mashall Silberwetter met this man in the next ten minutes, there’d be trouble.  Matt felt sorry for somebody, but couldn’t decide who.  So he pushed on into the Men’s.  No coat and ski mask waited there.

     Back in the corridor, he found the waiter, rushing forward with all the desperation of someone who sees a certain tip slipping away.  “I’m afraid I can’t find him, sir.”

     “It was a man, then?”  Matt moved directly in front of him.  “What did he look like?  Was it one of the guests or someone from outside?”

     The waiter tipped back a little as if only now realizing how big Matt was.  “Is there…a problem, sir?”

     Matt shook his head.  “Never mind.  He told you to bring me back here?”

     The waiter took two backward steps.  “He was…not a young man.  More than thirty.  I thought he was a guest, sir, as he had on a suit, but he must have come from outside, or he could have just looked for you at the party.”

     Matt slid a hand into a pocket.  The waiter took another step away, turning  little.  Matt rattled his change in what he hoped was an encouraging way.  “Did he tell you anything about his message?”

     The waiter, face brightening, thought things over.  “Actually, sir, he did not even mention he had a message.  He said there WAS a message for Mr. Matthew Benz, and could I find him.  It may be the messenger came to him, and he came to me.”

     Further questioning brought Matt no ore than that: a man who was elderly (over thirty) in a suit, and maybe no more than a go-between.  Matt felt this level of information merited no more than a quarter, but he raised it to fifty cents and said “If you see him again, find me and let me know.”

     Not waiting to see the waiter’s opinion of a tip that did not fold, he started for the exit and elevators, waiting among the partygoers demanding to know where their hats were and didn’t they check gloves with this, refining his question.  (“Did anybody check a long brown cat that might have had a ski mask in the pocket?”)  He gave up and meandered back through the party: no one was going to remember a brown coat in this mob, and if they did, they would know no more than a ticket number.

     Back in the dim restroom corridor, he tried the janitor’s closet.  It was unlocked, shallow, and a great relief.  Now there was no call for him to barge into the Ladies’ room.

    The mask wasn’t there—that likely went into a pocket—but this certainly was the coat he’d seen.  He started to turn up the collar to check underneath but changed his mind.  Tossing the coat over one arm, he strolled as casually as he could back into the darkened room with the piano and glass doors.

     He crawled around under the piano for a while without much satisfaction.  “Where’s your magnifying glass?” he grumbled.  He stood up before he was quite clear, and banged his head at the same time his knee scrunched something hard and angular.

     Cursing, Matt rubbed his head with one hand and reached down with the other, flopping the coat down across whatever he’d hit.  Pulling the coat away, he cowled at a ballpoint pen with a green fuzzy dragon wrapped around the shaft.  Rising, and now rubbing his knee, he eventually added this doodad to the pocket with the gun.

     The party was thinning when he returned, but far from dead.  Matt studied the crowd of dedicated party animals.  Ada Silberwetter was with her husband and three other appreciative men, deep in an animated discussion about which Matt had no curiosity whatsoever.  Now, she had proven she could change clothes in very little….

     No.  Of course not.  No time.  And the ski mask would have mussed up that hair.  That was it: Linda, Holly, and Maryann should be in the clear as well.  Although perhaps the way Holly’s hair was arranged, it might be hard to tell.  Matt’s expertise in female hair was minimal.  Or would someone who came to a party with a gun and a ski mask have the forethought to also bring a comb and brush?  Or even a wig?

     Matt felt he was missing something vital, but had no idea what to do next.  This was where he needed Felicia Lowe.  What would her detectives, the Changs, be doing now?

     There was…the police.  Matt felt a little faint.  Call the police to this party?  Where his boss was?  And his bosses’ bosses?  And the bosses of the Police Department, come to that?  He shook his head.  Not without knowing what he was up against.

     He shrugged.  He couldn’t wander around the party carrying this coat.  Best to get his own coat and just go home.  He’d had enough party games for this year.

     The line was still long at coat check, long enough for worry.  Why assume Miss Skull had just one gun?  Would she be  waiting just outside?  Maybe he could just check this coat and stay a little longer at the party.  Or would Miss Skull be counting on that?      Somehow he got his coat back and put it on while hanging onto the other.  The elevator was packed; he nearly didn’t get on.  Good place for knife work: nowhere to dodge.  But they were all looking at him, so he squeezed in.  On the first floor, and out on the windswept sidewalk, he stayed with them all, keeping toward the middle of the pack.  He di

Fine Old Jokes: The Mother-in-Law

     It occurred to me, looking over the postcards dealing with the, um, difficult bits of married life for our series on couples of contrasting size that I had ONE more size issue to examine.  It was a popular genre once, the tales of what happened in some of those cases where a married couple became a trio.  No, not the Baby makes Three jokes or even the large collection dealing with marital infidelity.  We need to take a quick look over the Mother-In-Law joke.

     The mother-in-law joke is traced by a number of scholars to the Roman writer Juvenal, who made a couple of wisecracks about mothers-in-law about 2200 years ago.  The jokes are international, and so traditional that we find writers in the 1870s complaining about how stale and unfunny these jokes are.  So complaining about mother-in-law jokes is nearly as traditional as the jokes themselves.

     What we wanted to talk about, though, is how the postcard artists almost always show the Mother-in-law as bigger, in every way, than the straight man and his wife.  This is symbolic, as the main problem of the Ma-In-Law, we are told, is that she is nosy, intrusive, and dictatorial.  She looms large in the household.

     The husband in these gags is generally shown as a confused and gormless chap, already finding it difficult to understand his wife, suddenly outnumbered two-to-one by these mysterious female creatures.  The viewer knows he hasn’t got a chance now; this is a joke of the “Better you than me” variety (i.e. schadenfreude.)

     Women, we are told by social scientists, find these gags inoffensive but also unfunny; the “That’s Not Funny” folks who infest the Interwebs nowadays deem them both sexist and ageist.  AND every now and then a professional humorist will establish credentials by noting “I don’t DO Mother-In-Law jokes.”

     Somehow, the phenomenon of women telling jokes about their HUSBAND’S mother, which goes back at least as far as the 1950s (and, if you like, could be traced into the Finnish folk epic the Kalevala, in which one bizarrely heroic man informs his household that he expects his new wife to be treated with the same respect as his mother.)  And, out of curiosity, why is there no tradition of FATHER-In-Law jokes.  As far as I can tell from the postcards in stock, HIS role ends after he attends the wedding (generally toting a shotgun.)  He has to pay SOME role in this drama: after all: his wife keeps going off to spend a month or so with his daughter.

     In any case, here are some frequently round and often tall women against whom the poor male involved has very little recourse.  The joke is old and perhaps passe, but traditional.  (Who, by the way, named a variety of the Dragon Plant also known as St. George’s Sword, “Mother-in-law’s Tongue”?  Is that still permitted?)

MIDWEEK FICTION: Never a Godmother Around When You Need One

     “Ankle ankle ankle ankle ankle….”

     “Sir?  Sir?”

     “I beg your pardon.  I….my brain…I’m sorry.  They call it post-traumatic….  What was the question?”

     “I’m afraid I was being rude, sir, but I DO wish to know what your ANGLE is in applying for a job for which you are clearly overqualified.”

     “I seek a position with moderate authority, so I can avoid the stresses of my previous post.”

     “Yes, as personal assistant to Prince Charming, you seem to have had a great deal of opportunity for self-supervision.  But here you would be expected to toe the line.”

     “Toe toe toe toe toe toe….”

     “Sir?  Sir, please!  Are there many words which trigger these seizures?”

     “I’m sorry.  Not many.  You see, my major assignment at the end was to carry a glass, er, garment to be tried on the…person of various young ladies.”

     “I understand you, sir.  But how did this trigger your difficulties?”

     “Do you know how many young single women lived in our realm?  And you NEVER find what you’re looking for until you’ve tried….  Eighteen thousand fourteen.  Eighteen thousand fourteen right…right….”

     “Yes, sir. So when you carried this glass…garment into the homes of thousands of beautiful young….”

     “Beautiful?  Perhaps elsewhere.  But eighteen thousand….  And I’d arrive in the middle of the afternoon—in summer, mind you—and they hadn’t….  It was grotesque!  Just the dirty…nails I had to push into….  I told the Prince, “Let them know when we’re in town so they can at least take the garden hose and rinse off their….”

     “And in spite of this, you continued right to the finish?  I am impressed by your perseverance, sir.  That is a very useful trait.  I think you are very likely the sort of dedicated employee the Duke is looking for.”

     “Reay?  And I wouldn’t…be anywhere near the…the wardrobe?”

     “No, sir.  That is exalted sort of work is never entrusted to you footmen.”

     “Foo….  Nooooooooo!”

     “Oh dear.  Hendrik, send in the next applicant.  And see that that window is repaired.”

LIKE A MIGHTY QUONKER, Chapter 19

     Her eyes flashed with the petulant outrage of a little girl caught in the cookie jar, thinking it very unreasonable of you to have come into the kitchen at that precise moment.  Then her eyelids lowered.

     “Your mother think of that?”

     “I don’t need all my fingers to count to nine,” Matt informed her.  “If that box had been mailed with just those pictures, it would have been crushed.  And if that stack of pictures had been alone, the ends would have been curled.  To keep the prints flat and the box unbroken, that box must have been nearly full.”

     Ada cocked her head and unleashed a sweet little smile.  “You’re so clever,” she murmured.  “Any time you want to go to hell, I’ll lend you my handbasket.”

     “It was full, wasn’t it?  What were the other pictures?”

     “Well, I can’t talk about it here.  Not with all these City ears open.”  She waved at a passing ear.  “Come over to the house in the morning and we’ll talk.”

     Matt frowned.  “In the….”

     She spread five pink fingers toward the crowd.  “Marshall never gets up until three or four in the afternoon when we’ve both been to a party like this.  It’s the best time.”

     “Hung over?”

     “It’s the food,” she confided, leaning in.  “He loses track of how much he eats and goes into hibernation.”

     He took the page of notes from his shirt pocket, found a clean space, and wrote “Morning.”  “No hangovers for you?” he inquired, refolding the paper so a clean sheet was outermost.

     “Oh, that’s such a waste of time.”  She craned forward to peek at the paper as he slipped it away.  There was nothing for her to see, but Matt had a view of more Ada Silberwetter than he needed.

     She knew it, too.  “Come over good and early and you can stay for lunch.”  Her lashes fluttered at him.  “You could tuck me in for my afternoon nap.”

     Matt stepped back, realizing he had lost the initiative in this match and was paying defense again.  He raised his empty paper plate between them, almost as a shield as she slid forward some more.

     “Stay for supper,” she purred, “And I‘ll get out all the family albums for you to study.  I have some bearskin poses you wouldn’t believe.”  Big round eyes bored into his; it didn’t help when she suddenly closed them.  The eyelids created rounded mounds which echoed what he was trying to ignore.

     “Oh dear,” she said, her voice devoid of any surprise or dismay as the wine glass slipped from her hand.

     It was empty.  She started down.  “No!” cried Matt.  “I’ll get it!”  Anything to keep her from bending over any further.  He stooped to snatch at the stem, and felt the pens and pencils in his pocket start to slide free.  His left hand, paper plate and all, clapped up to avert the avalanche.

     “That’s what I like about you,” she said, plucking the glass from his right hand.  “Thank you.  You always think of unexpected things to do.”

     Matt muttered something ungrateful as he peeled the plate away and began to pick little lumps of cheese from the front of his jacket.  Ada came forward to help.

     “People come to parties to have fun, you know,” she murmured.  “It’s not ALL about murder and extortion  Those aren’t Christmassy.”

     “This isn’t a Christmas party,” Matt pointed out, brushing crumbs from one lapel.  “It’s the year-end get-together.”

     Ada took hold of the other lapel and, before he could pull back, pressed her head against t and rolled wicked eyes up at him.  “It shouldn’t be hard to unwind and enjoy yourself.  I could help.  I’m soft and I’m handy.”

     “Yes.”  Matt looked for a way to pry that lapel loose.  “Like toilet paper.”

     “Oh, how very blush-making.”  She stepped away, a hand on one hip and the other at her throat, as if preparing to clutch pearls.  Mock affront spread around her smile, and not a sign of a blush at all.  Her nose came up, and she sniffed.  “So I suppose a piggyback ride is out of the question?”

     Matt shuddered, rolling the paper plate between his hands.  Did he want to apologize or not?

     Ada’s trilling laugh decided that for him.  He gritted his teeth, and kept his lips pressed against each other.  She put a hand to his necktie.  He resisted, just, the impulse to slap it.  Like a mosquito, she’d be out of the way and let him hit himself.

     “I suppose I’m one of those girls your mother warned you not to play with.”

     She pointed one toe straight ahead of her and looked down at it.  Matt tried not to, mumbling something about Marshall’s mother not warning Marshall.

     “Why, I’m the very best kind of wife for him!”  She released the necktie. one hand flipped up behind her head.  “You know how sensitive people so high in the City are to gossip.  But if anyone starts telling stories on me, everyone says ‘So what else is new?’”

     She closed her eyes very slowly and opened them again.  “Besides, I’m never going to turn into one of those bright tidy women with high cheekbones, who smile all the time and blink whenever they talk.”

     This was true.  Matt wound his hands around the paper plate and swallowed hard.

     Her eyes glittered.  Matt started to turn away, but her pupils did first, sliding all the way to her left.  She did not have the kind of eyes that could do this and go unnoticed.

     “And,” she went on, a little louder, “I’m not one of those little pattycakes who have legs like matchsticks with all the wood scraped off.”

     Holly MacTaggart and her retinue had moved close enough for Matt to see them too as Holly stiffened and stopped.  The half dozen men around her halted as well.

     Holly’s head did not turn toward her relative.  “Didn’t you say you were just in California?” she demanded, breaking in on a comment by a tall, reedy young fan.  Her voice was a little high, a touch brittle.  “One of my grandmothers was in Hollywood for a while.  I think she expected a screen test, but some producer just needed a ton of tits and ass to sprinkle around the pool.”

     Ada’s shining eyes were turned on Matt again.  “Besides,” she said, “I was an asset around the office.  My typing was so-so, but could I take dictation!  I had to work for it, you know: my grandfather was a garbage collector.”

     “Excuse me.  Are you Mr. Benz?  Mr. Matthew Benz?”

     Matt turned, missing Holly’s remark about trash.  One of the waiters, a thin man with a broad face and such excellent diction that English could not have been his first language, was standing on his left.

     “I am.”

     “Mr. Benz, there is a man with a message for you.  This way, if you please.”

     Matt turned to Ada, whose eyes were now turned toward his midsection.  Looking down, he found his hands had rolled the paper plate into a cylinder while witnessing the combat.

     Those eyes rolled toward the ceiling.  “And I thought you didn’t care.”

     Matt opened his mouth but said nothing.  She was entitled, after that toilet paper remark.  He followed the waiter back to the corridor he had so recently left.

     Progress was slow, moving among the roving bands of celebrants.  When he and the waiter paused to let a quartet pass, Matt looked back.  Holly, a little red of cheek, was leading her fan club away, but one of the men was looking with interest at Ada Silberwetter.  He leaned forward to make an observation.  The jerk of Holly’s head and the man’s expression of surprise gave Matt a hint about the reply.

     Holly moved on.  The straggler looked from her to her stepgrandma.  Then he shrugged and started after Ada, who was undulating away as if she didn’t know he was behind her.

     Matt turned to follow when the waiter started again.  Then he stopped, with one more glance back.  He frowned.  Exactly what kind of photographs would Ada Silberwetter feel she had to hide?