"_Jim_-mee," the lady said. She was pouting, so I pinched her earlobe
and patted her shoulders and bemoaned the tyranny of the business world
and helped her into her coat. She went back to her own apartment. I
tidied up the place, stacked the etchings in their corner, and took a
cab outside.
* * * * *
I tossed that part of it in to make it clear that on the face and the
underneath of it I could be readily classed as a normal, practical sort
of a guy.
I am. I shun unnatural, illogical things, like mysteries, or falsies, or
counterfeit bills. Or fourth dimensions. I like an item right on the
table where I can eye it and touch it and say, "That's a spade," or,
"That's a buck." If there's water on Mars I'll believe it when I drink
it, but until then I'll say, "So what's with Mars? It's one hell of a
long way off."
You see what I'm driving at? With me, James Gilbert Crisp, things are
either down to earth or they're nowhere. I'd never admit messing around
with something I couldn't put my hands on. If I touch it, I accept it,
and if it's willing I'm able.
"Jim!" said Willy, grabbing my hat. "Come in, come in!"
I grinned at the little guy assuringly and shook the rain from my coat
and tossed it on an easel. He shunted a chair at me and seated himself
nervously, rubbing his neck, on the other side of a monster coffee table
loaded with paints, bottles and oil-stained cartons. I was familiar with
this studio, the working half of Willy's ranch-style chalet. The studio
itself was as big as a barn and had more windows than walls; rain pecked
at the glass in the northerly-exposed roof.
Willy was tidy for an artist. Most of the boys on the agency's hook have
la Boheme delusions that class them apart from us hucksters; their
studios, which we see in spite of ourselves, _look_ like barns. But
Willy's neuroses, although conventional, were bearable because in a lot
of ways he was practical. He kept things where he could put his hands on
them. Like the cigarettes he now fished from a box on the coffee table
labeled 'caseins'.
I shifted uncomfortably; these new-fangled chairs they twist out of wire
will never replace the Morris. Willy drew furiously on the fag he had
forgotten to offer me. It was taking him longer than usual to warm up to
his subject. I shifted again.
"What's the problem, Willy?" I asked.
He jumped, then looked at me with his scared-spaniel eyes, butted his
smoke and reached for another. Just watching him was giving me the
heebies, but I flashed my old fairy godmom smile.
"Jim," he said finally, "I called you because, well, you're a practical
guy and can face things in a practical way. I've got to tell _somebody_
about it. I'm--it's driving me crazy, Jim."
I stifled a yawn and fixed my smile and found my mind wandering back to
the lady's earlobes. Now I'm not against a guy letting down his hair,
but I was sure that with Willy it couldn't possibly amount to anymore
than another fruitless crush on a model. He had them frequently, but
they always fizzled out before the girl got around to compromising him.
He was always a foot short of them, but he had money; the usual solution
was little more than another illo assignment which required a horsey
model of another color. I'd begun to suspect that the cause of neuroses
in little artists like Willy was too many here-now gone-tomorrow
beautiful babes. Transference, or something like that. It makes them so
dizzy they forget which is the real entity--the canvas reproduction or
the model. This and other things like a pithless pituitary loosens the
screws, and then they make from Bohemia. I don't pretend to be a
psychologist, but that's the way it adds up.
* * * * *
So I was half-thinking of getting the lady at the apartment to give
Willy a real down-to-earth tumble when he started his spiel. I must have
missed a few paragraphs of his monologue, because when I caught up to
the subject I was away off base.
"... so I've got to give it up, Jim. If I don't there's no telling what
it would lead to. You could--help me, with your drag at the agency you
represent. I could do account execking, or maybe be a consultant art
director-without-portfolio, anything--"
"Whoa down, Willy," I said, startled. "Give up illustrating? Just
because of a dame--"
Willy shook his head sadly. "She's got nothing to do with anything
_else_ I draw. She isn't at all like the models. Oh, I know what a goop
I've been about them, but Red has cured me." He paused and looked at me
quizzically, shaking his head. "I knew you had a level head, Jim--that's
exactly why I've told you this. But even so, your reaction--" He
frowned. His hurt-dog eyes narrowed resentfully. "You don't believe me."
I cursed myself inwardly for not having paid more attention to him, but
his voice was the kind that would put a sympathetic Father Confessor to
sleep if he concentrated too hard on it. I'd been prepared to let him
get it off his skinny chest, pat him on the back and tell him to leave
everything to old Jim Fixit. But the quitting business was a looper. He
was too canvas-happy to give it up without a fight.
"Look," I said to cover up the fact that my ears had been closed, "what
you told me may seem unusual to you, but to me it's just one of those
things that aren't quite what they seem. Now, uh--go over it again in
detail and I'll apply myself to it completely from your angle this time.
Tell me _exactly_ where Red fits in, and where the--uh--trouble
started."
Willy slapped his knees and looked even more forlorn, reaching for a
smoke while he still had one in his mouth. "Sorry I doubted you, Jim,
but you can understand how I feel about it. Look--"
He stood up, butted the fresh fag, and walked across the room to the
drawing desk where he did his layouts.
"The best thing to do is simply show you," he said. I sighed and dragged
my chair over and sat to one side of him. He pulled out a layout pad,
opened his pastels and arranged them deliberately beside it. I wondered
how he could show me his love-troubles this way, unless it was by
diagrams.
"Nothing happens," he said, waving a pastel stick under my nose, "until
I've used the three basic colors and signed the illo. If there isn't a
balance of the three basics it's no good. That's why I arranged the
pastels that way."
He naturally assumed I knew what he was talking about. It meant nothing
more to me than a freak technique he'd developed. That signature
business sounded--neurotic.
* * * * *
Now this part of my story is important. Until he finished that sketch I
was the normal, practical guy I was telling you about. Nothing fizzed on
me unless it added up to four and I could feel the two and two of it. A
buck was a buck, a girl was a girl--
His grey pastel flew over the paper and as usual I marvelled at how
these guys could do it. Like the saying goes, all I can draw is flies
and rubber checks, and frequently a blank. I've seen a lot of artists do
their stuff, but none of them come up to Willy. You've seen his illos in
most of the big slicks--you know, the guy and gal in all angles on the
yellow beach under a pink sky, and the story title reads "When Will You
Come Back, Dearest?", or the cola series on the back cover where the
girl swigs and the guy gawks at her bathing suit, that sort of stuff.
The fat accounts, they all came running for Willy. With him on the
payroll the agency could have made a fortune.
I was considering ways to broach this subject so it would tie in with
the poor guy's dilemma when he started working the third color into the
sketch. Naturally it was a dame; he could draw them with his eyes shut.
The third color went into the bathing suit. He smudged chalk on his
finger and touched the sketch with quick strokes, moulding the form, and
what a form. I leaned forward, and half stood over his chair, marvelling
at the way he did it. Then, applying a dough rubber to pick out
highlights and stray smudges, he leaned back and reached for a pencil.
Noticing how tensed he was, I sank back into my chair and lit a
cigarette.
"There," he whispered, his hand poised with the pencil at the bottom
left-hand corner.
"So now what gives?" I asked. "Is she the--"
"So now I sign it." He looked around at me, spaniel-eyed. I gathered
that he was reluctant to sign it. I wanted him to get on with it and
explain how it tied in. I must have looked impatient.
"So go ahead," I said. "Sign it."
He signed it.
The girl got up off the paper and brushed herself off.
* * * * *
I felt the cigarette smoke burning my eyes, but was too frozen to close
them. I must have gone as white as the paper the girl got up off of.
Willy touched my shoulder. I looked blearily at his spaniel eyes, which
were puzzled.
"Didn't you believe me?" he asked.
[Illustration]
I made a noise in my throat, and suddenly wanted desperately to be back
in my apartment. Anywhere. But I knew that if I stood up my legs would
fold. So I just stared at the girl while my heart flopped like a beached
fish.
She smiled at me, then turned to Willy.
"Who's your friend?" she asked in a voice proportionate to her size,
which was about a foot.
Willy looked at his hands. "Just a friend." Turning to me he said
imploringly, "You _did_ believe me, didn't you, Jim?"
I felt like asking him what the hell difference it made whether or not
I'd believed him, but I merely swallowed and cleared my throat. I worked
my jaws. I took the cigarette from my mouth and looking at it, then at
my hand, moving it back and forth to adjust the focus. I didn't want to
do any thinking about it because I knew I'd be scared senseless by the
conclusions. So I made my mind a throbbing blank and to the cigarette
said the first thing that popped into my head.
"She's pretty."
The girl smiled coyly and seated herself on the blank layout pad.
"Of course I'm pretty," she said. "I'm Willy's ideal. He wouldn't have
drawn me if I weren't." She blinked her eyes demurely.
Willy just sat there looking woebegone, so I went along with it.
"What's your name?"
"Red."
It fitted. The first basic had gone into her hair. I felt myself
beginning to twitch. The reaction was setting in again. I found myself
wishing that Willy would do something, and not just sit there with his
jaw drooping to the floor. I wondered if he could erase her with his
dough rubber. I clung to that thought because it seemed funny. I started
to laugh. The girl pouted. Willy looked up at me and frowned.
"What's so funny," Red asked.
I took a deep breath and gritted my teeth, but the shakes were coming
and this time they wouldn't be deferred. I wheeled from the chair and
charged for the door. Willy was up and grabbing at my arm.
"Don't go, Jim! Please! I've only started to--"
I swung around at him and threw his hand off, panic making my actions
loose. Then I saw his spaniel eyes, sad, pleading. I glowered at him and
ran my hand through my hair. Looking back at the pint-sized beauty I
socked my fist into my hand and stalked back to the drawing desk. I
reached out for her. She squeaked and cowered away.
Willy let out a holler that just about scared the pants off both of us,
and was tugging at my arm again.
"I just want to _touch_ her," I roared. "I won't kill her."
"You touch her like that and you _will_ kill her," Willy cried. "Sit
down, will you? Listen to me--"
"If I can feel her with my hands," I said, still whoozy but cooling
down, "I'll believe she's there. Otherwise I go home and sleep it off."
I rubbed my forehead. "This kind of stuff isn't for me, kid. You keep
your bloody mirages--"
"Please, Jim."
* * * * *
I scowled and dropped into the chair. Willy fumbled for his cigarettes
and offered one to me and then in his nervousness proffered one to the
redhead, who had held her palms pressed to her ears while we shouted at
each other. Red shook her head, smiling. Willy chuckled his
embarrassment and sat down in the other chair. We were both facing the
desk but I couldn't bring myself to look at the girl.
Suddenly she leapt from the desk and was standing in my lap. While I
groaned and held my breath she stretched her arm out.
"You may touch me, if it will make you feel better."
I glanced at Willy, who nodded, and touched the point of my finger to
her palm. She was there all right. I drew my hand away quickly, and she
laughed. It sounded precisely like the voice of a full-length girl
coming from another room. I studied her with my chin resting on my fist,
and saw that she was indeed a beautiful creature. Full-size, she'd be a
knockout; I'd be falling, as the saying goes, all over her. But a foot
high!
Then I remembered that Willy had sketched her. She was a drawing.
Tri-dimensional, but nonetheless a figment of Willy's imagination. Yet
she was solid. I was getting confused again, trying to tie it, so to
fend off a return of the shakes I forced another blank into my mind. It
was easier, this time. The whole thing was so ridiculous it was
intriguing.
"Who is she, Willy?" I asked. It was easier to talk to him.
"Like I told you. Red. My dream girl."
I looked at him. "Yeah. M-hmm." I looked down at Red. She was sitting on
my kneecap, combing her hair. "So just what seems to be the problem?"