"My dear lady! I consider no requests silly, I assure you."
"Well, I--I find it difficult to put into words."
"Try, dear lady. I have sold happiness to a thousand women like you
over a thousand years."
"You _what_? What did you say?"
The peddler looked as if she had insulted him. He said, his chirp
of a voice getting shriller still: "Did you actually think that I
restricted my sale of happiness to one block--or perhaps one postal
zone number--here in your city, here on this particular day on this
particular yearly calendar? My dear lady! My very dear foolish lady,
please tell me what it is you wish."
Mary-Jean blushed now that she had decided to go through with it, to
bare her soul to this strange little peddler in a way that she had
never bared it even to her own Tom, her husband, the sharer of and
provider for her mundane existence. Still blushing, she said,
"I want to--to attract adventure. I--I want to be like a magnet for--a
magnet for the iron filings of adventure! I want romance and exciting
things to--to embrace me."
She clutched her throat wildly. The words had expressed her thoughts
precisely, but they were not her own words. Or, more probably, they had
come from her throat almost of their own volition.
And the little peddler laughed and laughed.
Mary-Jean felt suddenly crestfallen and strangely cheapened. She
deserved this. She deserved his laughter. It was a new sales pitch,
she had to admit that. The prospective buyer is made to practice
self-mortification and then, to rid herself of the only witness of her
shame, she buys almost anything.
"All right, I fell for it," Mary-Jean said. "What do I have to buy?
I'll buy whatever you want. Just get out of here quickly."
"But isn't it clear? I sell happiness. And you told me what kind of
happiness you want. Since, as I have indicated, you have already made
payment, it only remains for me to grant your wish and--"
"Then why were you laughing at me?"
"Dear lady! Because you thought your request would be so peculiar.
Don't you realize, it isn't peculiar at all. It is the request of most
young housewives. They are bored, they are fairly shriveling up with
the hot desert blast of routine. They want change, adventure, intrigue,
romance. They want to attract these things. Precisely as you want."
"Then--"
"Then, you may consider it a sale. Here...."
And as the peddler reached into his enormous suitcase, the obscuring
haze vanished abruptly. With an eager little cry, Mary-Jean glanced
over his shoulder--and saw nothing but row and row of small white
bottles, like bottles of hand cream.
* * * * *
"But--" she began.
"Eh, dear lady? Oh, I see. Naturally, naturally you expected something
far more exotic than a kind of lotion. Well, didn't you?"
"I--I guess I did."
"Which explains the haze. If you saw the bottles of lotion, you'd
never bare your heart to me. If, on the other hand, you saw merely
a closed suitcase, it would not intrigue you so much as an opened
suitcase, its contents obscured by haze. Correct?"
Mary-Jean nodded as the peddler selected with his plump hand a small
white jar from the second row. He placed it in Mary-Jean's hand and she
felt a strange tingling as contact was made. Her fingers instinctively
clutched the jar.
"One application," the peddler said, closing his suitcase. "One only:
the entire contents of the jar, please."
"But where--how--?"
"Just apply the balm anyplace on your person. Then you may shower.
Then--but then you will see."
"Yes, but--but isn't there going to be anything else. I mean, surely
you _must_ be selling something."
The peddler smiled, showing the broken yellow teeth again. "Dear lady,
I have already sold it. May I wish you all the best of luck." He walked
with the enormous suitcase to the front door. He opened the door and
paused on the threshold. "There is one thing," he said.
So here it comes at last, Mary-Jean thought.
"I shall return in twenty-four hours to see what your decision is."
"My decision?"
"We allow our customers the right to accept our product on a
twenty-four-hour trial basis. I shall return here in precisely
twenty-four hours. I mean _precisely_; you see, my schedule is a busy
one. If at that time you wish to become your old self again, you have
merely to tell me. On the other hand, if you are satisfied with the
change, with your new personality, all you have to do is not keep the
appointment with me and the change will then be a permanent one. You
understand?"
And, before Mary-Jean could answer, the old peddler had disappeared.
Not walked up the flagstone walk and to the sidewalk. Disappeared. In
the blinking of an eye. Simply vanished.
* * * * *
Mary-Jean shuddered with a sudden chill although it was early summer.
Then she ran upstairs clutching her jar of happiness balm.
She removed her robe and went to the mirror again, looking at herself
critically. A nice little figure, she thought, thinking the word nice
so it meant average and decent and ordinary, but nothing special.
A moderately pleasing face, if she spent sufficient time making up.
But she just wasn't the sort of person who would attract adventure.
She never had been and never would be and her life would go right on,
mundanely and prosaically, unless....
Wildly before she could stop the sudden impulse, she unscrewed the
cover of the jar of happiness balm, took a big gob of the sticky white
stuff with the vaguely exotic perfumy smell on each hand and began to
rub it all over herself.
* * * * *
When she finished the brief operation, when the jar was completely
empty, she felt a moment of shame. You're a fool, Mary-Jean, she
thought. There's not a thing going to happen, not one solitary thing
because of your happiness balm. Attract adventure, my foot! But
strangely, the balm stiffened on her bare skin, began to tingle. She
had never felt anything quite like it and soon the tingling became so
strong that it began to alarm her. She ran into the shower and turned
the needle-spray on full power. And, she told herself, showering
was part of the happiness balm treatment. Oh, great. Just great,
Mary-Jean. You're a baby. A big, twenty-eight-year-old pipe-dreaming
baby. Because you really did fall for it, all right. If that practical
joker of a peddler could see you now, he'd laugh his bald little head
off. And this, she continued the silent monologue as she scrubbed
herself with a cloth and soap, this is one harmless little escapade
you'll never mention to Tom. Tom has no mercy that way. He'd laugh so
hard he'd hardly be able to eat his supper.
His supper! Mary-Jean jolted herself with the sudden thought. She had
forgotten all about the cooking stew. Probably, it needed more water.
Probably, it was already burning, already ruined....
She rushed from the shower, clutched her robe, flung it over her
shoulders like a cape and fairly flew downstairs. She ran into the
kitchen and could just make out the first faint suggestion of a
scorching smell. She removed the pot from the burner, assayed the
damage, stirred the contents, added water, and replaced the pot with a
little sigh of relief.
She went upstairs slowly, still wearing her robe like a cloak over her
nakedness. And strangely, she realized all at once, although she had
washed the so-called happiness balm off herself thoroughly, her skin
still tingled.
And, now that she was growing accustomed to it, the tingling was
a decidedly pleasant sensation. Decidedly. It was like a thousand
thousand tiny fingers racing across her skin, racing, racing....
With a sudden wild impulse Mary-Jean flung the robe off and looked at
herself in the mirror. Her knees went weak on her, so weak that she had
to clutch the edge of her vanity table for support.
She was beautiful.
She looked again. The beauty, the delirious thought of that beauty,
could wait. She was changed. Different. Changed utterly.
She wasn't Mary-Jean Wilson any longer.
The transformation left her breathless. There was no doubt about her
new looks. She was beautiful. Her hair was not the washed-out dirty
blonde it had been, but a gossamer veil of finest platinum blonde
framing a lovely face, a face right out of the women's slick magazines
she always dreamed over. And her body--she shivered with delight. She
had always been a little shy about her body, even with Tom. There had
never been any reason, not really: she had a perfectly adequate little
figure and Tom always said, particularly at night, that he liked the
way she was built.
But now she was statuesque. She turned slowly, nude, before the mirror.
She had a long curving length of calf and bold firm swelling thighs
and a sweeping arc of hip below a narrow, flat waist and proudly high
breasts....
* * * * *
It was some kind of hallucination, she told herself. It had to be.
You're Mary-Jean Wilson. You haven't changed. She moved away from the
mirror uncertainly. The glorious apparition moved away, inside the
mirror. She moved back. It moved back. She touched a hand to her bare
throat. It touched a hand to its bare throat.
Mary-Jean Wilson, she thought. Cross out Mary-Jean Wilson. I'm a new
edition. I'm ... I'm ... tears welled in her eyes. There wasn't any
doubt about it: she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, in
real life, in the movies, in the slick magazines, anywhere. She had
been changed utterly. Transformed. Metamorphosed. Into a stunning,
radiant creature.
The happiness balm?
But of course. It had to be the happiness balm.
Wait until Tom saw her ... held her....
Tom?
She shuddered. How did you tell your husband? How did you reveal
yourself? Here's the new me, Tom? How do you like it? How--how do you
like the merchandise I bought from a peddler who came around in the
afternoon.
She couldn't tell Tom. Not now, not yet. She wouldn't know how to
approach him. Probably, he wouldn't even believe her. He'd never accept
this beautiful creature as his mundane little wife. Never--
Then what did you do? Run away?
But she had nothing against Tom. Plain, steady Tom with his normal
likes and dislikes, his pillar-of-the-community attitude, his
pipe-smoking solidness, his liking for carpet-slippers and the
newspaper after supper. She couldn't desert Tom.
But neither could she reveal herself--her new self--to him.
All at once she remembered. Twenty-four hours. Then the peddler
would return. She looked at her watch. He would be back at exactly
four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon. _Exactly_ four-fifteen, she reminded
herself. To be precise was crucial.
Very well, that decided it for her. She would have twenty-four hours
before she had to tell Tom. Until four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon.
Twenty-four hours. It wasn't a long time, but oddly it frightened her.
Because there wasn't any doubt about the new body, the new face. They
would attract--and she wasn't only thinking of sex-appeal. Naturally,
they had sex-appeal. For a woman, that was part of--perhaps a large
part of--attracting adventure.
* * * * *
Twenty-four hours, Mary-Jean told herself. Mary-Jean? It didn't
sound right. It no longer fit her new personality. Then what? What
name? Even a new name for the twenty-four hours. I know, she thought
happily, her skin still glowing, still tingling strangely. I'll be
Jeanne--Jeanne-Marie! It sounds so French and--and exciting.
It was almost the cocktail hour now, not that Mary-Jean went for
cocktails. But Jeanne-Marie? Jeanne-Marie might. Indeed, she might.
So Jeanne-Marie got into a cocktail dress which fit her properly for
the first time. Actually, she found, although she looked much taller
than Mary-Jean, she wasn't, not really. There were subtle structural
differences which made her look taller, slimmer, statuesque. And the
dress fit her like a sheath.
* * * * *
She scrawled a note for Tom. Plain, honest Tom, she thought, with some
sadness. _Dear Tom: Called out of town unexpectedly. I wish I could
explain. I'll be back tomorrow afternoon._ She wanted to add _maybe_
but did not. _There's supper for you and Tommy in the fridge. Don't
worry about me because I'll be all right. I'll be fine. That's putting
it mildly--I'll be just great. See you tomorrow. Love, Mary-Jean._
Almost, she had signed Jeanne-Marie. She looked at the note, frowned,
and tore it up. It would be an adequate note for Mary-Jean to write,
but not Jeanne-Marie. She took a fresh sheet of paper and scrawled:
_Back tomorrow. Called away suddenly. Mary-Jean._
That was more like it: a note with the trip-hammer, cryptic mystery of
a telegram. The other note made it seem as if Tom took her for granted,
would fortify any such notions he had. That might have been all right
with Mary-Jean, but Jeanne-Marie wouldn't stand for such a thing.
Satisfied, Jeanne-Marie went downstairs.
And the front door opened.
It was Tommy, she thought with sudden alarm, seven-year-old Tommy back
from school and his cub scout pack meeting. She watched him come in.
Mechanically, because there was nothing else to do, she continued down
the stairs.
"H'lo," Tommy said, looking at her. "My mother upstairs?"
"Why, no, no, she isn't," Jeanne-Marie said. "She went away for the
day. She left a note for your father."
"Who're you?"
"Oh, just a friend. Be--be a good boy until your father gets home,
Tommy. Why don't you play with your trains?"
"Who told you I have trains?"
"Oh, your mother told me." She was at the front door now. "Your mother
did. Well, g'bye."
"Bye," Tommy said.
A taxi was waiting at the curb. She had known--almost--that it would
be. For Jeanne-Marie did not have to seek things out. They sought
her--grateful for the privilege.
The cabbie stared at her with frank admiration and she didn't mind.
She didn't mind at all. You couldn't consider it fresh. It was more
like--more like homage. It was her due.
The cabbie's expected question: "where to, lady?" was replaced by a
polite, "Madam?"
On impulse, Jeanne-Marie named the city's most fashionable cocktail and
supper club, the Black Flamingo. Then she settled back in the cushions,
relaxing. Traffic was heavy and the cabbie stole several admiring
glances in the rear-view mirror, but still they made incredible time,
as if all the other drivers knew that Jeanne-Marie had twenty-four
hours of glorious adventure ahead of her and wanted to embark on it at
once.
All the traffic made way for Jeanne-Marie. Naturally it did.
* * * * *
Homage was paid Jeanne-Marie at the _Black Flamingo_ too. There she
was ushered across the crowded floor and given a ringside table
near the cocktail hour pianist. The sweet, seductive music he
played, the dimness within the _Black Flamingo_, the almost abstract
pattern of flamingos in motion on the walls, the cigarette haze, the
constant humming buzz of cocktail chatter, the first cocktail--a
gibson--Jeanne-Marie ordered, all combined for an effect of drowsiness,
of time suspension, which Jeanne-Marie had never experienced before.
Then the conversational buzz receded, like a tide ebbing. Jeanne-Marie
blinked. Most of the crowd was gone. She looked at her wrist watch and
saw that two hours had passed, looked at the small round surface of
her table with the _Black Flamingo_ placemat and saw three cocktail
glasses, all empty. Soon, Jeanne-Marie realized with a growing sense of
disappointment, the before-theater crowd would bring the tide flowing
back to the _Black Flamingo_ again. But her disappointment stemmed
from the fact that nothing had happened to her and it was now almost
seven o'clock. Oh, she had been stared at, admired, ogled even--but
what beautiful girl wouldn't be? It was not that Jeanne-Marie had
taken her twenty-four hours of beauty for granted. Rather, it was not
beauty--certainly not beauty alone--she had wished for. And it wasn't
sex-appeal, either, she told herself. Jeanne-Marie loved her husband
and had experienced no lewd, day-dreaming fantasies about a secret
lover who would sweep her off her proverbial feet. But Jeanne-Marie
had waited, with a mixture of patience and passion, all her life--for
something to happen. Something out of the ordinary. Something
thrilling, as far removed from the pattern of her humdrum day-to-day
existence as--as the spiral nebula in Andromeda.
But, Jeanne-Marie told herself, I don't seem to attract adventure--not
even when I'm beautiful. Would she then have to spend all the rest of
her life waiting, waiting for that sudden knocking at the door, for the
face of the unknown to make itself thrillingly known?
She sighed and ordered another drink. She sipped it slowly, and sipped
it, she knew, as if she spent much time sipping cocktails. Naturally,
Mary-Jean's consumption of cocktails had been limited--generally to one
a year, and that on the day of her wedding anniversary. But an ability
to drink cocktails in a sophisticated manner seemed to go with the new
body--with Jeanne-Marie.
* * * * *
When Jeanne-Marie was staring in moody silence at the little pickled
pearl onion in the bottom of the now-empty cocktail glass, she was
aware that someone had sat down beside her. A thrill of surprise
and delight went through her body, making her shiver. This was the
unexpected, she told herself. She knew it would be a man without
looking. Knew it would be a good-looking fellow with the stamp of the
man-of-the-world on his features. He could be nothing else.
And so it was.
Then Jeanne-Marie turned around slowly, not knowing if she should
smile. When she faced the man now seated at her table, she gave him a
cool quizzical look. He was a big man somewhere in his mid-thirties,
with a craggy but handsome face and very wide shoulders. He was
dressed, Jeanne-Marie decided, in quite good taste but expensively.