room felt embarrassed for him. It was almost as if he was ashamed of his real name.
The brownie took a drag and stared at his shoes.
“Let’s pick our own name for him, Daddy.”
Jan raised her little hand and emerged from her hiding place. “Me, me, me!”
“Okay, Jan, what do you want to name the brownie?”
The three-year-old looked at her yellow toy vehicle on the parlor floor and said, “Airybus!”
“Can we keep him, Daddy?” said Claire.
“We’ll see.”
“Pleeease! I wouldn’t have invited the brownie over if you had let us have a pet.”
Truth be known, the girls wanted a dog but first got a goldfish that lasted all of two days. The family compromised with a pet hamster that did the trick for a few weeks until Jan left the top off its hamster home and it was never found again much to the dismay of Chelsea.
“We need to learn more about him before we invite him to stay,” Booker said. He was worried about immigration laws and getting busted for having an illegal alien working in the house. “Let’s see your proof of citizenship with full name.”
“Whoa, Daddy’O. I don’t carry no birth certificate on me.”
“Fair enough. You’ll need to answer some questions.”
The brownie stood up from the chair, took a long drag, tossed the cigarette on the marble floor that surround the fireplace, and crushed it out beneath his shoe. He propped an elbow on the large fireplace mantle, exhaled a tributary of smoke, and said, “Bombs away.” Immediately he waved his hand and let the family know he was only kidding. He did not appear to have a violent bone in his thin frame.
Before Booker or Chelsea was able to ask their first question, the girls began their inquiry. Claire wanted to know what about the brownie’s favorite animal.
“Groovy. Donkey is my favorite animal. Fox is my least favorite. If there was one around I would pummel it; beat it right down to the ground with my bare fists. They are on my jive list. Don’t care for the elephant much, either.” Airybus then rambled on and on about his other favorite torva bestia. This brownie loved to talk, or at least to hear himself talk, and he also enjoyed looking in the parlor mirror while he did it.
Booker thought the brownie’s choice of likes and dislikes in animals was directly opposite to his. He chalked this up to yet another in the growing list of strange events and ideas surrounding the new visitor in the Alabaster Mansion.
“Best nut?” asked little Jan.
At that, Airybus announced that the acorn was his favorite of all the many and varied nuts in the world.
Claire tugged on her father’s silk pajamas and once again asked him, “Can we keep him?”
Booker looked over at Chelsea and shrugged. “Looks harmless enough.”
“And he is funny looking,” added Claire.
“I just don’t know,” said Chelsea.
Hearing that, the brownie made outlandish promises to every member of the Alabaster Mansion in the hopes they would let him stay. To Booker, Airybus offered to turn his company around single handedly, to start hiring all those he laid off, and on top of that, to employ personnel at no cost. Speaking to Chelsea, who still refused to make eye contact with him, the brownie promised her greater rights in the household to which she had never experienced. The girls were offered free sports lessons and admittance to any school of their choosing. Yes, they all became his special interest and were all confused as to how the creature was to perform such miracles.
But alas his stupendous promises found a home in the minds of the Tarwicks, built on a foundation of hope more than reality. It was Chelsea who turned back to the brownie and warned in a stern voice, “You may stay as long as you keep out of our room and the rooms of the girls. Got it?”
“Shar ‘nough, Lil Gurl. Or should I say ‘Big Gurl’ after what I saw in the bathroom?”
Chelsea nearly wretched at the comment and ran from the parlor.
Booker sternly warned the brownie that there was to be no smoking in the house and went to toss the fish he remembered he was holding.
IV. A New Home
Weeks passed as the Tarwicks got to know their new Brownie. As expected, he was mischievous in the grand style and tradition of those from Scottish and Irish lore. Practical jokes were foisted on the family at all hours of the day and night. They were harmless and the girls participated in many of them.
Booker spent his usual long hours at the office and had little interaction with the creature other than casual observance. Chelsea was sure to keep her distance from him. She frequently complained to Booker, when he arrived home, of the latest antics of Airybus. Booker maintained that he was harmless.
The girls loved their new playmate. When he was not in his chair by the fireplace munching on acorns, he was outside playing games with them and tugging away at a cigarette. Basketball was his favorite game. When the girls weren’t around, he would break out a game of Around the World for he claimed people knew and loved him worldwide. Booker was astounded at the narcissistic nature of the funny-looking creature who did many things to anger the owners in his first few days in the Alabaster Mansion. He tried to change many things in the manse even if it meant excluding members of the family. One example was that Airybus would not let the girls play basketball with him. It was clear he enjoyed playing with himself, of which he was very adept, bouncing the ball at all hours of the night on the west side of the house. This infuriated Booker and Chelsea who heard the noise all the way up on the third floor bedroom.
The Tarwicks observed that golf was his other favorite sport. Many afternoons Airybus was spotted hacking away on the verdant lawns of the Alabaster Mansion—divot after divot, clumps of grass chunking into the air, dirt flying. The first Wednesday after he arrived, Airybus shanked a nine iron. The ball went crashing through a greenhouse window. Chelsea saw it all on one of the security monitors. A look of horror crept over the Brownie’s face. Head bobbing, hips swaging, hands cupping out behind him, he strutted over to see the damage. When Airybus arrived at the outbuilding he was distraught to find the hole in the top of the outbuilding and immediately began covering it up. He was either trying to hide the damage or very concerned about greenhouse gases that might escape. To Chelsea it appeared to be the latter since he was trying to fit small pots in the hole.
The girls and Chelsea immediately ran out to survey the damage. They found the brownie cross-legged on the floor, acting more cool and mellow than ever, smoking herbs he had found in the greenhouse. They told their father as soon as he got home from work, as they knew smoking was bad and had been frequently reminded of this as Airybus flaunted his habit around the manse.
Booker stomped into the parlor where he found the brownie sitting in his chair, shoes on the grate. “I heard about the greenhouse,” he informed. “I demand that you inform these little girls you did not inhale the herbs in the greenhouse today.”
“Oh, I inhaled alright. t was fantastic. A little turn on, that’s all. You got some fine herb . . . out in the greenhouse, Daddy’O. Real fine.”
“You blackguard,” Booker responded in distaste.
“That’s salty. The pot had better not call this kettle black.”
V. Smoke
The financial problems at Tarwick Timber Corporation weighed heavily on Booker. His time at work extended into most weekends and when he got home, his time “finishing up odds and ends” in the library went late into the night.
Airybus, in his effort to help the dire state of Booker’s company, had unilaterally hired not one, but two secretaries to help the CEO in his efforts at turning the storied company around. One had international experience and one domestic. They were hired at no cost (as promised). Booker at first was thankful for the gesture. After all, the brownie was staying in the manse for free.
When Booker first met the secretaries, he was shocked at the base ugliness of the big-haired secretaries. Crow’s feet shot out from their squinty eyes, their cheeks sagged i
nto the points of their pinched lips. A turkey’s waddle had attached itself to their necks. They wore heavy makeup and rueful perfume that caused Booker to gag. This, of course, made Chelsea happy and she had no concerns with her husband staying up late working with the ladies. She admitted for the first time that the brownie had a few redeeming qualities.
On one particular evening, Chelsea wandered sleepily down to the first floor and into the library where she found Booker dictating notes to the secretaries who sat eagerly across from his desk with computers spread across their ample laps. It was ten minutes to midnight.
Above the click-clacking of keyboards he said, “Final notes to the Board. I promise.”
“When’s it going to end, Booker?” asked Chelsea. “This . . . this vicious cycle. The more you work the more you have to do.”
“I am almost finished with my last letter.”
“It’s not this one letter . . . or the next. You need to step back from it all. We need a vacation; just you, me and the girls.”
The Tarwicks owned a lake house in the Northeast that had served as a retreat for them for over two decades. When Chelsea wanted to take a restful vacation, Booker knew where they were heading.
Booker, a captain agreeing to take a rest while his ship was sinking into the abyss, asked one of the sea hags across from him to lock in the next commercial flight. He had stopped using the private jet of Tarwick Timber Corporation months