Free Live Free

Ego Vendo

Candy was in the bathroom, in the tub. As Barnes lay on his back, almost precisely where the table from which they had eaten had stood, he could hear her singing, and occasionally splashing.

He would get up, Barnes thought, and have a shower when she was finished. He wished he had clean underwear. Perhaps Madame Serpentina would not object if he washed what he had, and left them—undershirt. Jockey shorts—to dry on a towel bar. On the shower curtain rod. He would sleep in his pants and shirt. Would Stubb object if he pressed his pants under the mattress of the spare bed? No, he couldn’t do that. Tomorrow—today—he would have to get his bag, his sample cases, from the lockers in the bus station. They were good for only twenty-four hours. They had taken almost the last of his money. Would Madame Serpentina allow him to store them here? Surely she would, even if he couldn’t sleep here again. In the lobby, perhaps, for a time. If only she had gone naked to bed. He would have seen her, no matter how dark the room. He had seen more, much more, through the hole. It didn’t matter now—the house was gone anyway—the black ball swinging. He would have to sell something to get more coins for the lockers. His watch, perhaps. No, that was gone, already gone. The ticket was in his wallet. Free’s ticket? Could that have been what old Free meant? Was it in pawn, whatever he had possessed, the thing he had so obliquely spoken off? Or was it oblique, the knight hooking left, hooking right, the bishop sliding off to one side? Perhaps it only seemed so now, Free’s treasure. Money or bonds, Stubb thought. Madame Serpentina thought it was a crown, though she hadn’t said so. A treasure in a wall; a wall with a sign, Free had said. An unmistakable sign. The picture was in one sample case now, but the hole was no longer behind it. Would never, never be again. He slid aside the picture and reached through, drew forth a treasure … a what? A chest filled with gold and emeralds. Slithering from some childhood memory, an old cobra, white and blind, twined about them. Surely not that. That was not like Free at all, Free who had owned no turban, whose complexion had been, if anything, lighter than his own. And anyway such treasures are found under floors. This was in a wall. Did the others know? Candy, Madame Serpentina? Free had breakfasted with Candy, she said. Or Stubb, Stubb was much too clever to be safe, but he couldn’t sell. He hadn’t sold them on it, and he had wanted to so much. Perhaps because he was too clever, too clearly dangerous even for Candy who loved him.

No one, Barnes thought, has ever loved me. Possibly Little Ozzie would have if things had been different. I can sell, he thought, but in the end they find they’ve been sold a bill of goods, of bads. I’m never as good as they’ve been led to believe, never earned as much as they thought I would. Still I’ll have it on my stone, he thought, if I can. “He Could Sell.” If I were rich I’d have a gate so I could have a stone shield over it: Meus Vendo. Something like that—the ones who carved the shield would know. They’d have to.

There was a grunt and a heaving splash—presumably Candy was rising from the tub.

I wonder if she’s left me any hot water, Barnes thought, then remembered that he was in a hotel, with hot water enough for a thousand bathers. He wondered if she had left any dry towels. Meus vendo, ego salum. Lois had wanted a big house. He would show it to her sometime. “That’s the gatekeeper’s lodge, of course. We could follow the drive up to the main entrance, Lo, but the poplar walk is really nicer, and we might see some deer. That? Just a peacock, we’ve got quite a flock. Going to have one for Christmas dinner, just to thin them out.”

The bathroom door opened, releasing a gush of steam and blinding light. The towels of the Consort were voluminous indeed, and Candy had contrived, though barely, to wrap herself in one. Wet, her always tousled hair hung in ragamuffin curls. Her immense legs, thick as pillars at the thigh, glowed pink above feet like boiled shrimps. Barnes sat up. “Finished?”

Candy shook her head. “I just want to borrow a pair of tweezers, if I can. I need to do my eyebrows.”

The witch spoke from the bed. “I do not have them.”

“Sure you do. Come on, give me a break. I’ll give them back.”

“I do not tolerate the touch of iron unless I must.”

“Listen, I didn’t want to say this, but I’ve seen your eyebrows. They look very nice.”

“Shall I show you what I use?” the witch asked.

She threw back the bedclothes and stood up, all in one smooth motion. Her nightdress—if it was in fact a nightdress—was of an unrelieved black, not silk or nylon, Barnes decided, something rougher and less lustrous.

“Here. They are clam shells. What you call the razor clam.”

“Clam shells?”

“You hold them like this. You see, while he lived, the clam made a perfect seal between the halves of his shell. If the finest hair comes between them, it is caught. Come, I will show you.”

The bathroom door closed behind the two women, leaving the room in darkness again. Barnes put his hands under his head. Backed as it was with soft urethane, the carpet felt as soft as a mattress. Candy’s voice came faintly through the door: “Ouch!” From the doorway where he lay listening for footsteps in the hall, Stubb said, “Well, you never can tell. Sisters under the skin. Who said that?”

“Kipling.”

“He was right. You know, you don’t come over as smart, Ozzie, but I think you really are. That stuff with the salesmen was pure genius. The sneezing powder too.”

“I’m like Candy,” Barnes said. “I want a chance to sleep on it.”

“Sure.”

The bathroom door opened and the witch came out. Her nightdress, or whatever it was, was slit up the side—Barnes saw a flash of skin against the dark fabric. She slipped back into bed.

“Stubb,” Barnes asked, “how do you spell your name?”

“Ess, tee, ewe, bee, bee. Why do you want to know?”

“I just wondered. I never came across it before, and I write down a lot of names, taking orders and so on.”

“There used to be an Eee on the end. We lost it someplace.”

“Stubbe,” Barnes said, pronouncing it stew-bee. “I think it means a room. Something like that.”

“Stubb,” Stubb told him. “Now it means me.”

The witch announced, “I am going to sleep. The one who wakes me will be very sorry.”

Stubb told her, “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got a bed.”

“I have a knife also. Anyone who enters this bed will learn where it is.”

“Sure.”

No one else spoke. The imposing gate loomed at the end of a road that wound among mountains. Ego Vendo. The red car had right-hand drive and was as long as a bus.

Little Ozzie peeped out his window as the dark woods gave way, past the wall, to lawn and grounds. “Is there broken glass on top?”

His father nodded. “I don’t like unexpected company to wake me up.”

“Gosh!”

The big car tooled along the drive, rolling over some gleaming substance Barnes could not quite identify. Other drives branched to right and left, and eventually he took one. Lions roared, confined in big, gilded cages like birdcages.

“We let them roam at night,” he told Little Ozzie. “Here.” He took something from his pocket and hung it around Little Ozzie’s neck on a silver chain. “This’ll protect you if you go outside after dark. Don’t run, though. Let them smell you.”

“Gee!”

“When they get used to you, you can even ride on one. Would you like that?”

A million stories down, the doorman’s whistle blew faintly. Who would want a cab at this time of night? Barnes lifted his wrist, but no scarlet numbers burned there. The last parties were leaving the bar where Candy had sung, the street-level bar, and all the other bars, all over the city. Glass clinked in the bathroom. Madame Serpentina’s toiletries must be in there, he thought, and the fat girl’s using them. Wonder if she minds.

“Here’s the main bath for your suite. The copper door leads to the hot pool, the marble arch to the cold one. We tried just putting in temperature controls when we built this place, but it took too long to cool the water down or heat it up. Want to see the cold one first? Seals, polar bears, stuff like that? All tame.”

“Gee, it sounds neat.”

“It is neat.”

Little Ozzie thought, his small face puckered with effort. (That was good. He’d have to think when he took the helm at Barnes Industries, Inc.) “The hot one. I want to save the cold one. What’s in the hot one?”

“Mermaids.”

The bathroom door opened with another burst of light. “All through, Ozzie. You still want that shower? Hey, you asleep?”

Barnes sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Almost.”

“I’m going to sleep over here. That all right with everybody? Jim, you said there was a spare blanket?”

“In the bottom drawer there,” Stubb told her.

Barnes got to his feet. “Boy, my suit’s going to look like hell tomorrow.”

Stubb said, “I’ll show you a place that’ll press it while you wait for fifty cents.”

“Do you wish a pillow?” the witch asked Candy. “They will not think there is more than one if both pillows are mussed—many sleep with two. I require only one.”

“That’s great. Just toss it.”

A dim blob of white seemed to float across the room. Candy caught it as Barnes shut the bathroom door.

The bathroom was so brilliantly lit that it hurt his eyes, although the mirrors were blind with condensation. Using a wet washcloth for a glove, he unscrewed all but one of the bulbs. His trousers he hung on a towel bar; the steam would take out what remained of their creases, but it would take out the wrinkles too. He hung up his shirt and tie and threw undershirt, shorts, and socks into the tub, got in with them and washed them out with hand soap and trod them underfoot in the accumulating water until no more bubbles came, then hung them on the bars inside the shower doors.

With what remained of the little bar of yellow, scented soap, he scrubbed his whole body. He was a hairy man, and the hair was black and curly. Each time he looked at it, he felt glad he had no daughter; she would have gotten that from him, and she would (rightly, he felt) blame him for it. Little Ozzie’s hair, though, was brown instead of black. Not very curly either, unless he got it wet plunging with the penguins and porpoises. But Little Ozzie was really his son. He remembered how he had looked as a boy, and there was something of that in Little Ozzie’s face. Not that it wasn’t likely Lois had played around. God knows she’d had a right to.

When the soap was gone, he made the water colder and colder until he was shivering as he watched the suds stream away. He stretched his arms as wide as he could in the shower, slapped himself, then did a little dance under the stinging spray. By the time he had turned off the water and stepped from the tub, most of the steam was gone from the mirrors. He had left his eye on the shelf over the bowl, and there was something of Popeye in his reflection, he thought. “I yam what I yam.” As he dried himself, he paused to caress the stubble of his chin.

The eye would make his socket sore if he wore it all night, but he felt he could not leave it in the bathroom. He hung up his wet towel and wrapped himself in a dry one, the next-tolast dry one, he noticed, before he opened the door.

Candy was standing there wrapped in her blanket. “Have a nice shower, Ozzie? You finished now?”

“Yes, certainly.” He slipped past her.

“I’ve just got to go. I won’t be a minute. Jesus, it looks like a laundry in here.”

As he had hoped, the room felt warm after his cold shower. He folded his suitcoat for a pillow, covered himself from the waist down with his topcoat, and moved the thick, dry bathtowel up to his chest. He felt very snug.