Unnatural Creatures

“If only you were…If I might make a suggestion, Wolfe, why don’t you come over to the temple tonight? We’re having very special services. They might take your mind off Glo—off your troubles.”

“Thanks, no. I’ve always meant to visit your temple—I’ve heard the damnedest rumors about it—but not tonight. Some other time.”

“Tonight would be especially interesting.”

“Why? What’s so special of a feast day about April thirtieth?”

Fearing shook his gray head. “It is shocking how ignorant a scholar can be outside of his chosen field…But you know the place, Wolfe; I’ll hope to see you there tonight.”

“Thanks. But my troubles don’t need any supernatural solutions. A couple of zombies will do nicely, and I do not mean serviceable stiffs. Goodbye, Oscar.” He was halfway through the door before he added as an afterthought, “’Bye, Emily.”

“Such rashness,” Fearing murmured. “Such impetuosity. Youth is a wonderful thing to enjoy, is it not, Emily?”

Emily said nothing, but plunged into typing the proposed budget as though all the fiends of hell were after her, as indeed many of them were.

The sun was setting, and Wolf’s tragic account of his troubles had laid an egg, too. The bartender had polished every glass in the joint and still the repetitive tale kept pouring forth. He was torn between a boredom new even in his experience and a professional admiration for a customer who could consume zombies indefinitely.

“Did I tell you about the time she flunked the midterm?” Wolf demanded truculently.

“Only three times,” said the bartender.

“All right, then; I’ll tell you. Yunnerstand, I don’t do things like this. Profeshical ethons, that’s what’s I’ve got. But this was different. This wasn’t like somebody that doesn’t know just because she doesn’t know; this was a girl that didn’t know because she wasn’t the kind of girl that has to know the kind of things a girl has to know if she’s the kind of girl that ought to know that kind of things. Yunnerstand?”

The bartender cast a calculating glance at the plump little man who sat alone at the end of the deserted bar, carefully nursing his gin-and-tonic.

“She made me see that. She made me see lossa things and I can still see the things she made me see the things. It wasn’t just like a professor falls for a coed, yunnerstand? This was different. This was wunnaful. This was like a whole new life, like.”

The bartender sidled down to the end of the bar. “Brother,” he whispered softly. The little man with the odd beard looked up from his gin-and-tonic. “Yes, colleague?”

“I listen to that potted professor another five minutes, I’m going to start smashing up the joint. How’s about slipping down there and standing in for me, huh?”

The little man looked Wolf over and fixed his gaze especially on the hand that clenched the tall zombie glass. “Gladly, colleague.” He nodded.

The bartender sighed a gust of relief.

“She was Youth,” Wolf was saying intently to where the bartender had stood. “But it wasn’t just that. This was different. She was Life and Excitement and Joy and Ecstasy and stuff. Yunner—” He broke off and stared at the empty space. “Uh-mazing!” he observed. “Right before my very eyes. Uh-mazing!”

“You were saying, colleague?” the plump little man prompted from the adjacent stool.

Wolf turned. “So there you are. Did I tell you about the time I went to her house to check her term paper?”

“No. But I have a feeling you will.”

“Howja know? Well, this night—”

The little man drank slowly; but his glass was empty by the time Wolf had finished the account of an evening of pointlessly tentative flirtation. Other customers were drifting in, and the bar was now about a third full.

“—and ever since then—” Wolf broke off sharply. “That isn’t you,” he objected.

“I think it is, colleague.”

“But you’re a bartender and you aren’t a bartender.”

“No. I’m a magician.”

“Oh. That explains it. Now, like I was telling you— Hey! Your bald is beard.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your bald is beard. Just like your head. It’s all jussa fringe running around.”

“I like it that way.”

“And your glass is empty.”

“That’s all right too.”

“Oh, no it isn’t. It isn’t every night you get to drink with a man that proposed to Gloria Garton and got turned down. This is an occasion for celebration.” Wolf thumped loudly on the bar and held up his first two fingers.

The little man regarded their equal length. “No,” he said softly. “I think I’d better not. I know my capacity. If I have another—well, things might start happening.”

“Lettemappen!”

“No. Please, colleague. I’d rather—”

The bartender brought the drinks. “Go on, brother,” he whispered. “Keep him quiet. I’ll do you a favor sometime.”

Reluctantly the little man sipped at his fresh gin-and-tonic.

The professor took a gulp of his nth zombie. “My name’s Woof-woof,” he proclaimed. “Lots of people call me Wolfe Wolf. They think that’s funny. But it’s really Woof-woof. Wazoors?”

The other paused a moment to decipher that Arabic-sounding word, then said, “Mine’s Ozymandias the Great.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“I told you, I’m a magician. Only I haven’t worked for a long time. Theatrical managers are peculiar, colleague. They don’t want a real magician. They won’t even let me show ’em my best stuff. Why, I remember one night in Darjeeling—”

“Glad to meet you, Mr…. Mr.—”

“You can call me Ozzy. Most people do.”

“Glad to meet you, Ozzy. Now, about this girl. This Gloria. Yunnerstand, donya?”

“Sure, colleague.”

“She thinks being a professor of German is nothing. She wants something glamorous. She says if I was an actor, now, or a G-man— Yunnerstand?”

Ozymandias the Great nodded.

“Awright, then! So yunnerstand. Fine. But whatddayou want to keep talking about it for? Yunnerstand. That’s that. To hell with it.”

Ozymandias’s round and fringed face brightened. “Sure,” he said, and added recklessly, “Let’s drink to that.”