Mayor of the Universe

  Millie had been visiting for more than a week but was hardly overstaying her welcome. She was a wonderful companion: partnering with Aunt Edna, she played crafty hands of bridge that always beat Deke and Melvina; attending two parties with her host, she entertained the hoity-toity folks of Palm Springs with tales of Deke as a dashing young man footloose and fancy-free in London (failing to mention, of course, both his internship as a thief and what postwar suffering he had shared with her); lounging poolside with him, she had no worries other than whether she needed more suntan lotion (“I’m already peeling like an onion,” she complained) or when Ames was going to serve the next round of gin and tonics.

  “It’s quite a life you got for yourself here, Deke,” she said, lapsing into the Cockney that liquor seemed to invite. “’Cept I thought there might be a Mrs. Drake by now.”

  “It may be I’ve got quite a life for myself,” said Deke, “precisely because there is no Mrs. Drake.”

  “Tandy,” said Millie to the maid who was bringing a pile of towels to the cabana, “don’t you think it’s a shame our Deke has never made an honest woman out of anyone?”

  “Perhaps Mr. Drake is not interested in honest women,” said the maid.

  Millie hooted. “You hear that, Deke? Even your maid can see through you!”

  “Oh, Tandy,” said Deke after she had made her towel delivery and was on her way back to the house. “Before you leave for your date with Clarence, tell Ames to lay out my dinner clothes, will you please?”

  Tandala mumbled, “Yes, sir,” and walked briskly back to the house, not bothering to tell Mr. Drake there would be no date with Clarence that evening.

  That morning as she’d been emptying the trash into the bins, Clarence had come out of the garage looking so sheepish Tandy wondered for a minute if he’d had a fender bender with Deke’s favorite Alfa Romeo.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, putting her arms around the chauffeur.

  “Fine,” he said, but as he wheedled out of her embrace she knew she wasn’t going to be.

  “Clarence, are you breaking up with me?”

  “Tandy!” said the chauffeur, and his face seemed to pale and blush at the same time. “Of course I’m not breaking up with you.”

  “I am sensing you’re doing something.”

  He wanted to kiss her then, and tried to, but she stepped back and made him miss his target.

  “I’m not breaking up with you, but I am breaking our date tonight.”

  Tandy picked up the empty wastebasket and held it to her chest. “Why?”

  “Because I have to see my mother. She’s not feeling so hot, and I can’t get out of it.”

  Tandy studied his face for a moment and then, not seeing any signs of lying, she said, “Then I’ll come with you! I would love to meet your mother—I could bring some of Cook’s chicken soup.”

  “No, no,” said Clarence, his head shaking in a barely perceptible motion. “No, I don’t think so, Tandy. I don’t think she’s ready for a woman like you.”

  She flushed, thinking at first Clarence was paying her a compliment, but seeing the shame and embarrassment in his face she realized he was not.

  “Because of how I look?”

  At Clarence’s nod, Tandy turned and walked toward the house.

  “Tandy, my mother’s old, and old-fashioned! She still thinks the Confederacy will rise again! You know I don’t feel that way!”

  He grabbed her arm and she dropped the wastebasket. Picking it up, he put it over his head. “You know how I feel about you, don’t you?” His voice was amplified and muffled at the same time.

  She suppressed a smile. “I hope so.”

  “We’ll go out tomorrow,” Clarence promised, taking the wastebasket off his head and handing it back to her. “We’ll see a double-feature!”

  And so that evening, instead of going out with Clarence to the drive-in movie theater as was their Friday night routine, Tandy locked herself in her room. She knew there was something wrong with Clarence’s mother that she would automatically dislike her because of her color, but still, it wounded Tandy deeply, and she slipped into bed, muffled sobs and sniffles the sad little lullaby that finally put her to sleep.

  She awakened a little past ten, ravenous with an appetite fueled by self-pity and loneliness. She padded to the kitchen, imagining building the Dagwood of all Dagwood sandwiches, when she heard a thump above her. This thump came from Miss Edna’s room and was not a welcome sound, as she was alone in the house: Ames was out with his laundress Helena, and Cook with her butcher, and Mr. Deke with Miss Millie.

  There was another thump, and even as Tandala’s heart thumped louder, she grabbed out of the refrigerator a bottle of RC Cola (Lodge 527 might use it for fuel, she thought, but I’ll use it for a weapon) and made her stealthy way up the stairs.

  It’s probably just the wind, she reasoned, and it might have been because she aired out Miss Edna’s room twice a week. That day, however, had not been an airing-out day.

  Tandala was a big woman, but she moved up the staircase and down the hall as quietly and deliberately as a big cat after its quarry. As she neared Miss Edna’s room, she slowed, moving along the wall like a shadow, and when she got to the slightly opened door, she tightened her grip on the pop bottle, held her breath, and looked through the three-inch crack.

  She clamped her free hand over her mouth to stop the gasp that rose in her throat, but the speed of sound is faster than even the quickest hand.

  Miss Millie stood frozen, one clenched fist drooling gold chains.

  “Tandy!” she said as brightly as a truant running into the school principal in a pool hall.

  “Millie!” said the maid, not as brightly.

  “Seems you’ve caught me at a rather inconvenient moment,” said Millie, dropping the jewelry into a black velvet bag. “Well . . . good-bye then.”

  Tandala was so shocked by the woman’s gall that she was paralyzed for a moment, even as Millie made quick haste toward the bathroom, which had an exit door into the hallway.

  Snapping out of her inertia, the maid commanded, “Not so fast!” but the thief ignored her, dashing toward the bathroom.

  She was fast, but an enraged Tandala was fast and powerful, and after several loping strides across the room, she jumped on the bed and after one bounce on the mattress sailed toward Millie, who was almost to the bathroom door but not quite.

  Tandy flattened her as if she were a fly on a tabletop.

  “Owwwww!” came Millie’s muffled cry. “Get offa me, you big ox!”

  That this so-called friend of Mr. Deke was stealing from him enraged Tandy and the name-calling only amped up her anger.

  “Big ox, eh?” she bellowed, tossing Millie on the bed as easily as if the Englishwoman were her baby doll. As quickly as Millie tried to scramble off, Tandy held her down, gathering Millie’s hands behind her back and encircling them with her own bathrobe belt.

  It was this scene that Deke, on his way to his own bedroom, came across.

  “Tandy?” he asked. “Millie?” Confusion, amusement, and alarm all played in his voice. “What’s going on?”

  “Your maid is mangling me,” said Millie.

  With her hands on Millie’s back, Tandala pushed her hard into the mattress and said, “You might ask why!”

  Deke leaned against the doorframe, a magazine model of elegance in his white dinner jacket and untied bow tie.

  “Why is Tandy mangling you, Millie?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “Because she’s a big brute! Because she’s unhinged! Because she’s—”

  Another push into the mattress cut off her last explanation.

  “And you’re a lying thief!” said Tandy. “Take a look at this, Mr. Deke!”

  She held up the velvet bag she had wrested from Millie’s hand. “How is it that your aunt’s jewelry got into this bag of hers?”

  As Deke looked quickly to the alcove where his aunt’s opened wall safe was, dismay and shock defla
ted his posture.

  “Millie,” he said, his voice heavy with disappointment.

  “You’re going to believe this big baboon?”

  As soon as she heard the word baboon, Tandy slammed her hard again into the mattress.

  “Deke, tell her to get off me!”

  “Tandy, you can let go,” said Deke softly. “She won’t be going anywhere.”

  Millie thought otherwise, for upon Tandy’s release she tried to hurl herself off the bed, but her progress was stopped by four hands.

  “Please, allow me,” Deke said to Tandy, who dropped her grip.

  With great courtliness, as if escorting an arthritic octogenarian across the street, Deke gently walked Millie across the room.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Manthey were so sorry you had to leave before dinner was finished,” he said amicably. “Has your headache cleared up?”

  Stopping in front of his aunt’s safe, he looked inside, and seeing the opened jewelry box half empty of its contents, he said cheerfully, “Looks like you did a good job of cleaning out her cash, Millie, but how could you miss this?” He plucked a diamond brooch from its satin compartment. “And this?” He held up a sapphire ring.

  “Deke, you’ve got it all wrong!” said Millie, struggling to loosen the bathrobe tie that tethered her hands behind her back. “The maid did it—it was I who caught her breaking in!”

  Not so gently this time, Deke led Millie to his aunt’s vanity table and pushed her onto the velvet-cushioned stool.

  “Why’d you do it, Millie? Was this why you visited me in the first place—this is what you planned to do all along?”

  “I tell you, I didn’t—” began the accused, but seeing Deke’s face in the vanity mirror, her denial faded like a far-off church bell. Dropping her head, she stared into her lap, and Tandy was glad to see the thief finally expressing what looked like shame. But Millie’s moment of ignominy was broken with a snort of laughter that tipped back her head.

  “Aw, Deke, come on,” said Millie, speaking to his reflection. “It’s what I do.”

  “To friends?” asked Deke.

  “When opportunity presents itself,” she said with a shrug, “one forgets about things likes friends.”

  “Things like friends,” repeated Deke slowly, and a flush spread up Millie’s neck.

  “Oh, right. You can take a woman to bed and then steal the jewels she’s left on the bedside table, but I help myself to an old woman’s safe, and suddenly there are different standards?”

  “Friends don’t steal from one another.”

  Millie snorted again. “I didn’t steal from you! I stole from your aunt!”

  The two thieves with a different code of ethics stared at one another in the mirror, Deke’s eyes full of disappointment, Millie’s defiance.

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Call the cops!” offered Tandala.

  Deke still held Millie by the shoulders, but now his grip softened, and he began to rub her shoulders. Millie looked to his reflection and was inspired to smile, feeling as if this tender massage signaled they would be able to work out this misunderstanding without the bother of calling in the law.

  Deke smiled back, but it was the wistful smile of someone remembering something long gone and never to be found again. Millie bowed her head in real shame, knowing that he wasn’t going to turn her in but he was going to turn her out.

  “Mr. Drake, don’t let her get away with—” began Tandy, but her words were lost in a convergence of speed, light, and sound.

  14

  In the zamoosh, the debonair facade of Deke Drake remained, but it was definitely Fletcher who slammed into the small classroom chair. He sat for a moment until the sensation of swirling stopped, and then with a small groan he stood up, took a deep breath, and brushed off the sleeves of his dinner jacket.

  “So it’s back to the pinnacle of higher learning,” he said, looking at the ABCs above the blackboard, the balloon chart near the door. He stretched to the left (it had been a particularly rough zamoosh) and stretched to the right. He watched as the minute hand of the big wall clock ticked forward and then spasmed back half a space before settling onto the mark it would stay on for its full minute. He noticed the achievement charts near the door, seeing that Katie’s Helper balloon was still the highest and her star had overtaken Matt on the Star Students list.

  “Tandy,” he said aloud. “Where are you?”

  Trying to convince himself that he was restless rather than worried, he walked up to the blackboard and wrote 17 under the neatly written problem 6 + 11 = . At the windows, he looked out at the empty playground before pulling down and then releasing the ring of a canvas shade. He said hello to the gerbil in the Zoo Corner, tapping on the glass wall of its cage. He sat at the piano and with two fingers battered out a version of “Chopsticks.” He played the simple melody over and over, until in a gust of wind Tandy was slammed against the end of the piano, the bass notes making a loud bark of protest.

  “Uhhnn!” she grunted and taking a step forward rubbed her posterior, which had made hard contact with the keyboard. Although her hair was gray and collected in a bun and she wore the wire-rimmed glasses she had worn as the leader of the Excellence 1212 program, she was still wearing her maid’s uniform.

  “You planning on doing a little cleaning?” asked Fletcher.

  Tandy looked down and smoothed her apron. “I . . . I . . ."

  “Say, are you all right?”

  “Why, yes . . . I,” she began, looking around the classroom as if for the first time.

  “Tandy,” said Fletcher, gently taking her hand and pulling her next to him on the piano bench. “What’s the matter?”

  The alien stared at the keyboard, her hands folded on her lap.

  “It was just harder than I thought.”

  “What was?”

  As tears sparkled in her eyes, Tandy offered Fletcher a shy smile.

  “Saying good-bye to Clarence.”

  It took Fletcher a moment to synthesize this information.

  “Clarence, Deke’s chauffeur?”

  “Do we know any other Clarence?”

  “You don’t have to snap at me.”

  Tandy’s brow remained wrinkled for a moment before easing into smoothness.

  “I’m sorry, Fletcher. It’s just that Clarence was so . . . unexpected. And so nice.” She sighed a big sigh that lifted her epic chest. “You Earthlings really do know a thing or two about courtship.”

  She struck a note on the piano, and then another.

  “Clarence would take me for drives in that convertible of yours,” said Tandy. “Along the ocean with the radio playing.” She reached up the keyboard, striking a few more notes, a sweet high tinkling. “Fletcher, Lodge 1212 can move at the speed of light, but honestly, I never felt more transported than I was in the open car, smelling the sea breeze and listening to Eartha Kitt and Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee.”

  Fletcher whistled. “That sounds like a heck of a radio station he tuned in to.”

  “Your music,” said Tandy and Fletcher heard a quaver in her voice. “Hoola, baby—I was not prepared for your music.”

  “I’ll take you to a symphony. And an opera. And maybe a Temptations concert.”

  “You’re a nice man, Fletcher,” she said, squeezing his arm. A second later she blew air through her generous lips and shook her head. “But as usual—I digress! It’s you we must be focusing on. So tell me, how would you rate your Deke experience?”

  Fletcher pressed his thumb against middle C and dragged his finger down two octaves and back again.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “my Deke never had all these complications. My Deke was all dash and intrigue . . . a guy having a great time living the high life. I never imagined him getting betrayed by the woman who taught him everything—”

  “—Millie never should have done that—”

  “—or going to war.”

  Tandala shook her head. “I did not expec
t that either. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t—”

  A loud clatter made her gasp, and Fletcher popped up like a slice of toast. But after this initial burst of action, he was stymied as to what to do next. The small blonde woman emerging from the cloakroom, armed with an umbrella, did not suffer from such inertia.

  “Who are you?” she asked, jabbing the air with her umbrella. “Why did you come back to my classroom?”

  “Miss Plum!” said Fletcher, his relief tinged with an odd sense of elation. He sat back on the bench and took a deep breath. “How are you? Remember us?”

  “Shh!” she hissed, waving her sword-umbrella. “Now I am going to ask you once more, and you will give me an answer. Who are you?”

  “Why, we’re the staff of the Excellence 1212 program,” said Tandy smoothly. “We met earlier, remember?”

  Miss Plum banged the tip of her umbrella against the floor. “Don’t give me that baloney! I’ve been in the cloakroom the whole time! I heard your conversation!”

  “You should have made your presence known,” suggested Tandy.

  “You’re the ones who invaded my classroom!”

  If ever there was a time to reassure the second grade teacher, it was now, but all Fletcher could think of to say was, “I like your top.”

  Miss Plum started. It was true, it took a lot of time and effort to create the signature fruit blouses she knew delighted her students—the fabric of the one she was wearing now was imprinted with cherries—but she hardly thought it was the time and place to comment on it. Still, good manners were important enough to her that she felt obliged to say a quick thank you.

  “But don’t think you’re distracting me from getting an answer! I need to know what you’re doing here!” She had put her hands on her hips, the umbrella handle looped around her wrist, but her face suddenly did not match her authoritative body language, slackening as it did into fear.

  “Oh my goodness,” she said, as a shocking new idea occurred to her. She raced to the bank of windows and looked out. “Is this a worldwide invasion? Are we under alien attack?”

  “Miss Plum, there’s no worldwide invasion. There’s no invasion at all, there’s just—”