“You said—”
“No, no. What do you want to call me?”
“Hmm. Mr. Mysterious?”
“Bull’s-eye. Where do I turn left, right, right, left, and right again?”
“Well,” I said.
And we motored off, me terrified of collisions and Mr. Mysterious, real nice and calm, made a perfect left.
Some people knit because their fingers need preoccupations for their nerves.
Grandma didn’t knit, but plucked peas from the pod. We had peas just about most nights in my life. Other nights she plucked lima beans. String beans? She harped on those, too, but they didn’t pluck as easy or as neat as peas. Peas were it. As we came up the porch steps, Grandma eyed our arrival and shelled the little greens.
“Grandma,” I said. “This is Mr. Mysterious.”
“I could see that.” Grandma nodded and smiled at she knew not what.
“He’s wearing a Hood,” I said.
“I noticed.” Grandma was still unaffected and amiable.
“He needs a room.”
“To need, the Bible says, is to have. Can he find his way up? Excuse the question.”
“And board,” I added.
“Beg pardon, how’s he going to eat through that thing?”
“Hood,” I said.
“Hood?”
“I can manage,” Mr. Mysterious murmured.
“He can manage,” I translated.
“That’ll be worth watching.” Grandma stitched out more green peas. “Sir, do you have a name?”
“I just told you,” I said.
“So you did.” Grandma nodded. “Dinner’s at six,” she said, “sharp.”
The supper table, promptly at six, was loud with roomers and boarders. Grandpa having come home from Goldfield and Silver Creek, Nevada, with neither gold nor silver, and hiding out in the library parlor behind his books, allowed Grandma to room three bachelors and two bachelor ladies upstairs, while three boarders came in from various neighborhoods a few blocks away. It made for a lively breakfast, lunch, and dinner and Grandma made enough from this to keep our ark from sinking. Tonight there was five minutes of uproar concerning politics, three minutes on religion, and then the best talk about the food set before them, just as Mr. Mysterious arrived and everyone shut up. He glided among them, nodding his Hood right and left, and as he sat I yelled:
“Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mr.—”
“Just call me Phil,” murmured Mr. Mysterious.
I sat back, somewhat aggrieved.
“Phil,” said everyone.
They all stared at him and couldn’t tell if he saw their stares through the black velvet. How’s he going to eat, hid like that, they thought. Mr. Mysterious picked up a big soup spoon.
“Pass the gravy, please,” he whispered.