The plumber was baffled. “What are you saying?” he asked. “How do you know all this? How do you know about this and how do you know about women? I don’t believe you. You have no credentials.”
“You want credentials! What kind of boor are you?” said the frog.
“You can’t just spout your opinions at me. I have to save the princess.”
“You’ll do no saving. What can you do? You have such puerile taste. There are many beautiful and willing women in the city, and lots of them would be happy with a man like you. What are you pursuing this sickly creature for?”
“Why are you killing the princess?”
“I’m not, you are.”
“I don’t believe this,” said the plumber, then he took his leave and got on a bus and ended up sitting next to the same little girl. Her eyes looked even more frightened than before, her hair was messed up, and there were dark blue circles where there should have been soft rosy cheeks.
“I’m still in the same nightmare,” she said mechanically.
“The princess doesn’t love me and is dying.”
He got off at his stop and the girl continued on in her nightmare. This time none of her hairs stuck to him. That night he slept a fitful sleep and when he woke in the morning the sky was a funny shade of purple.
“What’s happening to this world?” he asked, then got a dull sort of inspiration and built a box out of cardboard, but with folds such as the world had never seen.
Something was going wrong, he just did not know what or why.
He went again to see the princess, but this time the maid answered the door and said, “You have come too late. The princess is dead. Long live the queen.”
The man was devastated. “I’ll never find love now,” he said, and dragged behind him a bouquet of flowers. “I’ll never love again.” He sat down on a bench.
The frog, but not the same one from before, plopped down from a tree and rested its tired body on his shoulder. The frog said, “The world is changing faster and faster and I am becoming an old man. Just yesterday I had the spring of youth in my step, but today I do not even recognize my belly. I look at myself and see another frog, and I look at the frogs around me and all of them seem to be passing their lives by, doing nothing in particular, all of the time.”
“It is good to think of some things, some of the time,” said the man who was a plumber but had since lost that skill. He picked up from the ground a blade of grass, perhaps one he had thrown on the castle for luck the day before.
The grass said nothing, just lay in his hand. He examined it but received no wisdom.
“The world is changing,” he said, “but love stays the same.”
That made some things better, for some of the time. The man put his head on his chest and wept and wept like a child, and the sky let the snow fall. Then the man stopped crying like the snow stopped snowing, and the whole world was covered in white.
MERMAID IN A JAR
I HAVE A mermaid in a jar that Quilty bought me at a garage sale for twenty-five cents. The mermaid’s all, “I hate you I hate you I hate you,” but she’s in a jar, and unless I loosen the top, she’s not coming out to kill me.
I keep the little jar on my windowsill, right behind my bed, right near my head so if I look up in the middle of the night, up and back, I can see her swimming in the murky little pool of her own shit and vomit, and I can smile.
“Hello, mermaid! How are you this fine evening?” I can say, and sometimes do. “How very sad it is that you’re so beautiful, and you’re so young, and you’re so fucking trapped you’ll never get out of that bottle, ha ha!”
Once I went on a class trip and brought my mermaid along, just for the hell of it. We were going to Niagara Falls and I was thinking, “Right, well, maybe I’ll hold her over the rail, give her a little scare, put her in her place,” or about letting her loose down the falls and out of my life. But once we got there I forgot her in my little brown lunchbag with my hot cheese sandwich, under my seat in the yellow school bus. But she got jolted on the ride there and jolted on the ride back and that was enough for me.
Once I had a party and invited all my friends, seven little girls to play and sleep over, and having called every number flashing in our heads, and having already called for pizzas twice and seanced out of our minds, I just thought, “Oh, why don’t I bring my mermaid out to show? They could make their faces at it, they could have their fun, and we’d be able to toss it back and forth like a real little football.” But then Emma fell asleep, and then so did Wendy and Carla and the rest, and the mermaid just stayed locked in the closet where I’d put her that afternoon.
Once when I thought she needed a bit of discipline I rolled her measly bottle down Killer Hill in the ravine. Another time I threw her deep into my best friend’s pool.
Now she’s getting old it seems. I even saw a gray hair on Friday and wrinkles are spreading all across her skin, and as much as I liked her before, I like her even less now. I was thinking sort of what to do with her, but I think I’ll just keep her there a little while longer. At least until I’m happy again.
THE MISS AND SYLVIA AND SAM
A FRIVOLOUS YOUNG Miss, who was a little bit proper and a little bit delicate, stopped at a flea market stand and picked up a bottle and said to the woman, “And how much is this?”
“Seventy-five cents.”
“And how much is this?”
“Four dollars.”
“And how much is this thing?”
“A dollar ninety-five.”
“I’ll take it.”
She went on in that manner for the whole entire day, just wandering though stalls, lifting up buttons and handbags and monocles, and thinking nothing greater than, “And how much is this thing? And how much is this thing? And how much is this?”
When she got home that night she arranged everything she had bought on her little kitchen table, and tallied in her head the amount she had spent—seventy-four dollars and twenty-five cents—and took up the items separately in her hands and began to clean them one by one. First there was the feather baton, then the little top hat, then the picture frame with the picture in it.
After a few hours she yawned adorably and lifted up her arms. When she woke in the morning she returned to the market. One of the women at one of the stalls, an oval thing with a bob of gray hair, said to the Miss, “Hello. I think I know you. You look very familiar to me.”
“Yes,” replied the Miss. “I probably am. I was here yesterday.”
“No,” said the woman from behind the stall, and she put her hands on the glass and leaned a bit forward. “I feel I know you from another life.”
“Oh, that’s impossible!” laughed the Miss. “This is the only life I’ve had.” She had heard about women like this before, women who believed in reincarnation, though she’d never actually spoken to one. She felt unsure of how to act. “Good-bye,” she said, by way of explanation, and moved precisely down the aisle.
The woman ran out from behind the table and grabbed the Miss by the arm. “Wait!”
“Ow!”
“I know you from another life!”
“I told you! I was here yesterday,” said the Miss, and she pulled her arm from the woman’s grip.
“But I’ve had dreams about you.”
“No, that’s ridiculous. I don’t believe in any of that stuff.” And the Miss turned and lost herself in the bustle, not looking back. The woman slowly returned to her stall but kept her eyes on the delicate form that was not being kind.
THAT NIGHT, AS the Miss was falling asleep, a ring came from the telephone. She felt too tired to pick it up, but on the seventh ring she did. After all, it could have been her new boyfriend, who was so new he was practically not even a boyfriend at all.
“Yes?” she said into the receiver.
“This is Sam.”
“Hello!” she squealed, brightening and sitting up a little. “I was just falling asleep.”
“Were you thinking of me?”
“Of course I was.” She began to blush and played with the neck of her nightie a bit. “I was thinking it would be you. I’m psychic you know.”
“You’re not psychic. What are you wearing?”
She told him its color and texture. Then she said, “And how was your day?”
“Can I come over?” His voice was a bit of a whine.
“No!” she said, quite astonished. “It’s nearly one in the morning!”
“But you’re up, aren’t you?”
“No,” she said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.” They said a few more words to each other and then she fell asleep, a little bit perturbed.
IN THE MORNING, as the sun was tiptoeing in through the blinds and she was shifting in her sheets, a knock came from the door. “Oh, darn,” she said, and pulled on her new bathrobe and pulled on her slippers and went down the hall to answer it. “Who is it?” she asked as she was unfastening the chain, but when she saw who it was she cried, “Oh no!” and pushed her weight against the door. “This is not right,” she said through the wood, and was just about to fasten the lock when the visitor popped herself in and slammed the door shut.
“I haven’t been following you,” said the woman from the market, who seemed to have dyed her hair overnight, for now it was orange, not gray. “We have a friend in common: Sam.”
“Sam!”
“Sam’s my brother,” the woman said lightly. “Can I sit down?”
“Why—” the Miss was nervous. “Sam’s not your brother!”
THREE WEEKS LATER the whole thing was arranged. The Miss was going to marry Sam, and Sylvia, the woman from the market, was going to be the flower girl.
Sitting around a card table under a dim light, Sylvia went on throwing out her thoughts. “I’ve always wanted to be a flower girl! All my life! Remember when we thought Uncle Mervin was going to get married and I was going to be a flower girl then, but he just never did, and the whole wish just floated away?”
“You’re real funny,” said Sam, smiling. He hadn’t stopped smiling since he had met the Miss, and now the two were leaning into each other, and grinning so broadly, and giving each other sweet little looks out of the corners of their eyes.
Sylvia leaned back in her chair across from them, and she was all smiles too. “I’m so happy for you both. I’m so happy. I just know it’s going to work out.”
“I’m going to help Sylvia with the business,” said the Miss eagerly, as though Sam had never heard it.
“I know.”
“She’s really going to do it, Sam!”
“I know!”
The Miss had always loved antiques, and now she was going to help with the business! It really was something else.
THAT SATURDAY, SYLVIA and the Miss were down at the market, under a cloudy sky, resting their heels behind a table, when a woman came up to them. She was similar in color and build to the Miss, and she kept her eyes on the wares, touching ornaments from Christmases half a century ago. “How much is this? And how much is this? And how much is this?” It was a horrible day and suddenly it began to rain. Everyone started packing up their things to move them quickly inside. “But how much is this! And how much is this!” Her terrible eyes were brown and fierce and she pushed her face toward them as they hurried to box it all up.
“You can follow us inside,” said Sylvia harshly. “We have to get these items in before they’re soaked by the rain.”
The woman didn’t want to leave. “I want to buy these ornaments!” she cried.
The Miss was getting scared.
Sylvia repeated, “You must wait till we’re inside! Please stay out of our way.”
“This is inexcusable! I’m a valid shopper!”
“Oh, please don’t fight!” cried the Miss, her eyes all alight, her whole chest fluttering. “Don’t fight. Don’t fight. You can have them for twenty dollars, the set.” She glanced at Sylvia for approval, but Sylvia only rolled her eyes. She was trying to get everything into boxes.
“Good,” said the woman. “Thank you. That’s the courtesy I was looking for.” And she reached into her bag to get the money, but before she could pull out the bills a tiny thunderbolt came from the sky and shot straight down through the woman shopper’s head, striking her to the ground.
“Good God!” screamed the Miss, and she fell to her knees, shrieking and sobbing hysterically, patting her fingers against the charred-up body. “She was just standing here! Just standing here!” She continued to bawl as the rain poured down, harder and faster, drenching everyone and everything.
Sylvia continued to put away objects, but she was nervous and spooked. She said quietly to herself, “I don’t understand. I told her to go. I told her not to hang about.”
THE WEDDING FOR the Miss was three weeks away. As they gathered around a fountain, talking over plans, it was Sylvia who came up with all the ideas and who was the most excited. The Miss and Sam mostly sat there holding each other. “What marvelous day,” the Miss kept saying. “What a beautiful marvelous day with tons of sun!”