Free Live Free

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.”