Excitement for sale
Date: 2024-05-26T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Adventure stories; Women -- Fiction; Happiness -- Fiction; Housewives -- Fiction; Sales personnel -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Excitement for sale

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Title: Excitement for sale

Author: Stephen Marlowe

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: May 26, 2024 [eBook #73704]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1957

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73704

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXCITEMENT FOR SALE ***

EXCITEMENT FOR SALE

By STEPHEN WILDER

Suppose a salesman knocked at your door and said: "I'm selling happiness—any kind your heart desires. Every shape, size or description—and the price is right." Would you know instantly the thing you wanted above all else? Maybe you'd better think it over in advance. The salesman might turn up any day.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Fantastic January 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

He was a mood-merchant, a happiness-huckster, peddling dreams from door to door.

Mary-Jean closed the cover of the current Woman's Home Journal with a little sigh and walked into the kitchen to put a light under the stew she was cooking for supper. One thing about Tom, she thought—Tom was her husband—there was no problem with leftovers because Tom liked stew.

But there ought to be a law, Mary-Jean thought, against such magazines as Woman's Home Journal. She sighed again, remembering the many stories she had read to pass the afternoon hours, as if, despite the careful pattern and routine of the household chores, killing time was still the most important function of the housewife.

There ought to be a law, all right. The heroine in the first story Mary-Jean had read went off to Caracas, Venezuela, in search of petroleum with her husband. The heroine of the second story was an Army nurse stationed in divided, exotic, intrigue-filled Berlin. The heroine of the third, Mary-Jean thought dreamily, had spent a memorable summer with the son of a fabulously wealthy Oriental potentate in Shalimar, Kashmir.

Mary-Jean went upstairs to take her daily shower, still thinking of Shalimar, Kashmir. The Vale of a Thousand Delights, it was called. Do I have one? thought Mary-Jean. Just one genuine delight like the girls in those stories? Oh, there's Tom: Tom's good natured, but an accountant. An accountant. She shuddered slightly as she got ready for her shower. And Tommy, Jr., aged seven. But Tommy, Jr., showed every sign of being a normal, everyday boy who would grow up into a normal, workaday man like his father.

Sighing again, Mary-Jean stripped before her mirror for the daily scrutiny preparatory to showering. I'm only twenty-eight, she thought. No sags in the wrong places. No excess fat and no gawky bones sticking out, either. But let's face it, Mary-Jean, you're no raving beauty. You're just a normal, plain, supposedly well-adjusted housewife who—

Who has been waiting every minute of every day of her life, Mary-Jean thought with unexpected bitterness, for something thrilling to happen to her. Only, it never did. There was the dulling, oddly frightening hand of routine, and nothing else. No Vale of a Thousand Delights, Mary-Jean thought, and laughed at her own unexpected, childish pipe-dreams.

She had already stepped into the glass-enclosed shower stall when the door chimes rang pleasantly through the house. Momentarily she debated answering or pretending she wasn't home. But even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman would break the routine with his chatter, she decided, and slipped into a dressing gown on her way downstairs.

Tom, who had a do-it-yourself workshop in the basement, had installed an ingenious one-way looking slot in the front door sidelight, and Mary-Jean used this now to see who her visitor was. She frowned, almost regretting her impulse to answer the door.

A little old man stood outside, holding an enormous suitcase. He was obviously a peddler. He was a rotund little man with a cheerful-enough face, red-cheeked, eyes sparkling and an incongruous little rosebud pout of a mouth under a long—make that, Mary-Jean observed, an incredibly long nose. He wore nondescript clothing—except for the hat. The hat was one of those sporty Tyrolean things which went so well with the tweeds and the college set. Yet oddly, the natty headpiece did not seem out of place on the rotund little man's head.

Suddenly the little old man did a curious thing. He smiled at Mary-Jean. Smiled at her through the one-way glass. It could not be, she told herself, a coincidence. He was smiling right at her, smiling eye-to-eye, as it were, although he could not possibly see through the one-way glass. He removed the Tyrolean hat from a round bald dome of a head and executed a little bow. Mary-Jean fought down a crazy impulse to curtsey and instead opened the door with a quick, almost an angry motion. Her heart was pounding.

"You called, madam?" the little old man demanded in a chirp of a voice. Chirp was the only word Mary-Jean could think of. The little old man sounded just like a bird.

"Called?" Mary-Jean said in some confusion as the rotund peddler brought his enormous suitcase into the living room and unsnapped it on the sofa before Mary-Jean could stop him. There was an iron-clad, if unwritten rule, in Mary-Jean's household: nothing unclean ever visited that sofa. And the little peddler's bag looked as if it had spent time in every sooty waiting room from here to—Shalimar, Kashmir.

"Not five minutes ago, you called," the peddler chirped. "Here I am. Now then, what will it be?" As he spoke, the peddler had arranged the enormous suitcase, now open, like a showcase. For some reason she could not fathom, Mary-Jean felt an unexpected thrill of fear clutch icily at her spine.

"You can show me whatever it is you're selling," Mary-Jean heard herself saying. "But please let's get one thing straight. I didn't call. I didn't send for you. You must be a cold-canvasser. Aren't you?"

The peddler rubbed plump hands together, shaking his head. "We Happiness Salesmen never canvass without being called."

"Hap-happiness salesmen?"

"I—" here the peddler returned the Tyrolean hat rakishly to his bald head—"am a Happiness Salesman."

"But what—exactly what—do you sell? Can I see?" Mary-Jean asked, edging toward the enormous suitcase.

"Specifically?" chirped the peddler.

"I—I can't seem to see anything in your bag. That's strange."

It certainly was strange, Mary-Jean thought. The suitcase was crowded with various items, she could sense that. Yet try as she might to see them, an eerie kind of haze seemed to be hanging over the suitcase. She could see nothing through it. Absolutely nothing.

"Naturally," said the peddler. "But to answer your question. I sell people."

"No. I don't want to know whom you sell. I want to know what you sell to them."

"I told you, madam. I made it quite clear. I sell people."

"People?"

"People."

"Really, if this is some kind of an elaborate sales pitch—"

"May I ask you a question, madam?"

Almost, Mary-Jean was disappointed. It was coming now. After the snappy beginning to hook her interest, the sales routine was sinking into its familiar pattern. Are you satisfied with your present vacuum cleaner, madam? Did you know that I am the new Fill-strip Brushman in your community? Have you ever thought of owning your own encyclopedia, for when the children grow up? I have here in this suitcase, madam....

Mary-Jean nodded.

"When you were thinking, some ten minutes ago," said the little old man, "that it would be so nice if something unexpected, something thrilling, came into your life—did you have anything specific in mind?"

Mary-Jean's eyes widened and she felt the same icy fear race up her spine. How had the peddler known that? A shrewd guess because Mary-Jean looked like the typical late-twenties housewife who would be thinking such thoughts almost constantly? Or—something else, something Mary-Jean couldn't possibly explain. Instead of answering, she stood there open-mouthed as the peddler went on:

"Usually, it isn't anything specific. Usually, it's vague and general. Although—" here he smiled, revealing yellowed, wide-spaced teeth which made it look as if the healthy pink old-man's skin had been superimposed on a rotting skull—"although sometimes the specific nature of the daydream would startle you. When they're specific, though, they're atypical. I have had specific requests—granted, of course, for that is my function—for some mighty peculiar items. Are you interested? Come, come, are you interested?"

"In any peculiar—peculiar items, you mean?"

"Naturally."

"I'm interested in what's in your suitcase."

The peddler stood aside after making a flourish with his plump hands. Haze hung over the enormous suitcase like dense smoke.

"But I can't see anything," Mary-Jean protested as her curiosity got the better of her fright.

"Naturally you can't. Until you make your selection. You want something unusual, something unexpected to happen. You want to be lifted out of your humdrum life and given adventure, romance, a fling at the exotic and the improbable, an—"

"These are the things you sell?" Mary-Jean asked in disbelief.

"To women. Only to women such as yourself."

It was still a sales pitch, Mary-Jean told herself. An elaborate one, to be sure, but presently the peddler would come down to earth with the offer of some specific product, perhaps a beauty cream or perfume. Still, she had to admit that the strange haze over the open suitcase certainly was effective.

"What do you charge for selling—for selling a fling at the exotic, as you say?"

The peddler laughed. It was a birdlike sound, a chirping, twittering laugh. "Oh, no, my dear," he said, rocking with his laughter, "you don't understand. You've already paid."

"I already paid?"

"All your life, for every day of your life, you have paid. Every day you accepted the mundane and the humdrum, you have paid. You have paid a thousand times over."

"You mean I get this—this whatever it is you're selling—free of charge?"

"Very well. Call it that if you want. But shall we get down to business? I sell happiness. I sell happiness in the form of personal adornment."

Here it comes, Mary-Jean told herself. Personal adornment. Cosmetics? Jewelry? The pitch was coming down to earth.

"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, "to change your life, to remove it from the sphere of the humdrum, to—"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, come to the point," Mary-Jean snapped irritably. She did not want to admit that she was disappointed because the peddler seemed to be coming out of the clouds of her pipe-dreams and down to earth.

"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, unconcerned, "which each and every still-young housewife, every victim of the mundane and prosaic, craves. For example, if I were to ask you what personal adornment, either general or specific, you craved the most, what would be your answer?"

Mary-Jean perked up. There still was no beauty cream or hand-balm or one ounce of imported Parisian perfume. And there was, she had to admit, an intriguing question. Ordinarily, she found herself thinking, a girl would need days and days to decide on an answer to a question like that. But this wasn't ordinarily. This question had come on the heels of Mary-Jean's monthly reading of Woman's Home Journal. And what, Mary-Jean thought, did the young woman who had gone to Caracas, Venezuela, and the one who had been an Army nurse in divided Berlin, and the one who had spent a summer with the potentate's son in Shalimar, Kashmir—what did they all have in common? What was it they had which Mary-Jean so craved?

They attracted.

Attracted, she thought. And she did not merely mean attracted men, although that was part of it. To be sure, she told herself dreamily, all but forgetting the little peddler for the moment, sex-appeal was a part of it, perhaps a considerable part. But it was by no means all. For Mary-Jean did not want to attract men for their sake alone. She was happily, if mundanely, married. Universal sex-appeal was, thus, an adjunct to what she wanted, but not the sum-total of it. Mary-Jean wanted to attract, all right. She wanted to attract like the Caracas girl or the Army nurse or the Shalimar girl, the girl of the Vale of a Thousand Delights.

She said, "You—you won't think I'm silly?"

"My dear lady! I consider no requests silly, I assure you."

"Well, I—I find it difficult to put into words."

"Try, dear lady. I have sold happiness to a thousand women like you over a thousand years."

"You what? What did you say?"

The peddler looked as if she had insulted him. He said, his chirp of a voice getting shriller still: "Did you actually think that I restricted my sale of happiness to one block—or perhaps one postal zone number—here in your city, here on this particular day on this particular yearly calendar? My dear lady! My very dear foolish lady, please tell me what it is you wish."

Mary-Jean blushed now that she had decided to go through with it, to bare her soul to this strange little peddler in a way that she had never bared it even to her own Tom, her husband, the sharer of and provider for her mundane existence. Still blushing, she said,

"I want to—to attract adventure. I—I want to be like a magnet for—a magnet for the iron filings of adventure! I want romance and exciting things to—to embrace me."

She clutched her throat wildly. The words had expressed her thoughts precisely, but they were not her own words. Or, more probably, they had come from her throat almost of their own volition.

And the little peddler laughed and laughed.

Mary-Jean felt suddenly crestfallen and strangely cheapened. She deserved this. She deserved his laughter. It was a new sales pitch, she had to admit that. The prospective buyer is made to practice self-mortification and then, to rid herself of the only witness of her shame, she buys almost anything.

"All right, I fell for it," Mary-Jean said. "What do I have to buy? I'll buy whatever you want. Just get out of here quickly."

"But isn't it clear? I sell happiness. And you told me what kind of happiness you want. Since, as I have indicated, you have already made payment, it only remains for me to grant your wish and—"

"Then why were you laughing at me?"

"Dear lady! Because you thought your request would be so peculiar. Don't you realize, it isn't peculiar at all. It is the request of most young housewives. They are bored, they are fairly shriveling up with the hot desert blast of routine. They want change, adventure, intrigue, romance. They want to attract these things. Precisely as you want."

"Then—"

"Then, you may consider it a sale. Here...."

And as the peddler reached into his enormous suitcase, the obscuring haze vanished abruptly. With an eager little cry, Mary-Jean glanced over his shoulder—and saw nothing but row and row of small white bottles, like bottles of hand cream.

"But—" she began.

"Eh, dear lady? Oh, I see. Naturally, naturally you expected something far more exotic than a kind of lotion. Well, didn't you?"

"I—I guess I did."

"Which explains the haze. If you saw the bottles of lotion, you'd never bare your heart to me. If, on the other hand, you saw merely a closed suitcase, it would not intrigue you so much as an opened suitcase, its contents obscured by haze. Correct?"

Mary-Jean nodded as the peddler selected with his plump hand a small white jar from the second row. He placed it in Mary-Jean's hand and she felt a strange tingling as contact was made. Her fingers instinctively clutched the jar.

"One application," the peddler said, closing his suitcase. "One only: the entire contents of the jar, please."

"But where—how—?"

"Just apply the balm anyplace on your person. Then you may shower. Then—but then you will see."

"Yes, but—but isn't there going to be anything else. I mean, surely you must be selling something."

The peddler smiled, showing the broken yellow teeth again. "Dear lady, I have already sold it. May I wish you all the best of luck." He walked with the enormous suitcase to the front door. He opened the door and paused on the threshold. "There is one thing," he said.

So here it comes at last, Mary-Jean thought.

"I shall return in twenty-four hours to see what your decision is."

"My decision?"

"We allow our customers the right to accept our product on a twenty-four-hour trial basis. I shall return here in precisely twenty-four hours. I mean precisely; you see, my schedule is a busy one. If at that time you wish to become your old self again, you have merely to tell me. On the other hand, if you are satisfied with the change, with your new personality, all you have to do is not keep the appointment with me and the change will then be a permanent one. You understand?"

And, before Mary-Jean could answer, the old peddler had disappeared. Not walked up the flagstone walk and to the sidewalk. Disappeared. In the blinking of an eye. Simply vanished.

Mary-Jean shuddered with a sudden chill although it was early summer.

Then she ran upstairs clutching her jar of happiness balm.

She removed her robe and went to the mirror again, looking at herself critically. A nice little figure, she thought, thinking the word nice so it meant average and decent and ordinary, but nothing special. A moderately pleasing face, if she spent sufficient time making up. But she just wasn't the sort of person who would attract adventure. She never had been and never would be and her life would go right on, mundanely and prosaically, unless....

Wildly before she could stop the sudden impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the jar of happiness balm, took a big gob of the sticky white stuff with the vaguely exotic perfumy smell on each hand and began to rub it all over herself.

When she finished the brief operation, when the jar was completely empty, she felt a moment of shame. You're a fool, Mary-Jean, she thought. There's not a thing going to happen, not one solitary thing because of your happiness balm. Attract adventure, my foot! But strangely, the balm stiffened on her bare skin, began to tingle. She had never felt anything quite like it and soon the tingling became so strong that it began to alarm her. She ran into the shower and turned the needle-spray on full power. And, she told herself, showering was part of the happiness balm treatment. Oh, great. Just great, Mary-Jean. You're a baby. A big, twenty-eight-year-old pipe-dreaming baby. Because you really did fall for it, all right. If that practical joker of a peddler could see you now, he'd laugh his bald little head off. And this, she continued the silent monologue as she scrubbed herself with a cloth and soap, this is one harmless little escapade you'll never mention to Tom. Tom has no mercy that way. He'd laugh so hard he'd hardly be able to eat his supper.

His supper! Mary-Jean jolted herself with the sudden thought. She had forgotten all about the cooking stew. Probably, it needed more water. Probably, it was already burning, already ruined....

She rushed from the shower, clutched her robe, flung it over her shoulders like a cape and fairly flew downstairs. She ran into the kitchen and could just make out the first faint suggestion of a scorching smell. She removed the pot from the burner, assayed the damage, stirred the contents, added water, and replaced the pot with a little sigh of relief.

She went upstairs slowly, still wearing her robe like a cloak over her nakedness. And strangely, she realized all at once, although she had washed the so-called happiness balm off herself thoroughly, her skin still tingled.

And, now that she was growing accustomed to it, the tingling was a decidedly pleasant sensation. Decidedly. It was like a thousand thousand tiny fingers racing across her skin, racing, racing....

With a sudden wild impulse Mary-Jean flung the robe off and looked at herself in the mirror. Her knees went weak on her, so weak that she had to clutch the edge of her vanity table for support.

She was beautiful.

She looked again. The beauty, the delirious thought of that beauty, could wait. She was changed. Different. Changed utterly.

She wasn't Mary-Jean Wilson any longer.

The transformation left her breathless. There was no doubt about her new looks. She was beautiful. Her hair was not the washed-out dirty blonde it had been, but a gossamer veil of finest platinum blonde framing a lovely face, a face right out of the women's slick magazines she always dreamed over. And her body—she shivered with delight. She had always been a little shy about her body, even with Tom. There had never been any reason, not really: she had a perfectly adequate little figure and Tom always said, particularly at night, that he liked the way she was built.

But now she was statuesque. She turned slowly, nude, before the mirror. She had a long curving length of calf and bold firm swelling thighs and a sweeping arc of hip below a narrow, flat waist and proudly high breasts....

It was some kind of hallucination, she told herself. It had to be. You're Mary-Jean Wilson. You haven't changed. She moved away from the mirror uncertainly. The glorious apparition moved away, inside the mirror. She moved back. It moved back. She touched a hand to her bare throat. It touched a hand to its bare throat.

Mary-Jean Wilson, she thought. Cross out Mary-Jean Wilson. I'm a new edition. I'm ... I'm ... tears welled in her eyes. There wasn't any doubt about it: she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, in real life, in the movies, in the slick magazines, anywhere. She had been changed utterly. Transformed. Metamorphosed. Into a stunning, radiant creature.

The happiness balm?

But of course. It had to be the happiness balm.

Wait until Tom saw her ... held her....

Tom?

She shuddered. How did you tell your husband? How did you reveal yourself? Here's the new me, Tom? How do you like it? How—how do you like the merchandise I bought from a peddler who came around in the afternoon.

She couldn't tell Tom. Not now, not yet. She wouldn't know how to approach him. Probably, he wouldn't even believe her. He'd never accept this beautiful creature as his mundane little wife. Never—

Then what did you do? Run away?

But she had nothing against Tom. Plain, steady Tom with his normal likes and dislikes, his pillar-of-the-community attitude, his pipe-smoking solidness, his liking for carpet-slippers and the newspaper after supper. She couldn't desert Tom.

But neither could she reveal herself—her new self—to him.

All at once she remembered. Twenty-four hours. Then the peddler would return. She looked at her watch. He would be back at exactly four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon. Exactly four-fifteen, she reminded herself. To be precise was crucial.

Very well, that decided it for her. She would have twenty-four hours before she had to tell Tom. Until four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon. Twenty-four hours. It wasn't a long time, but oddly it frightened her. Because there wasn't any doubt about the new body, the new face. They would attract—and she wasn't only thinking of sex-appeal. Naturally, they had sex-appeal. For a woman, that was part of—perhaps a large part of—attracting adventure.

Twenty-four hours, Mary-Jean told herself. Mary-Jean? It didn't sound right. It no longer fit her new personality. Then what? What name? Even a new name for the twenty-four hours. I know, she thought happily, her skin still glowing, still tingling strangely. I'll be Jeanne—Jeanne-Marie! It sounds so French and—and exciting.

It was almost the cocktail hour now, not that Mary-Jean went for cocktails. But Jeanne-Marie? Jeanne-Marie might. Indeed, she might. So Jeanne-Marie got into a cocktail dress which fit her properly for the first time. Actually, she found, although she looked much taller than Mary-Jean, she wasn't, not really. There were subtle structural differences which made her look taller, slimmer, statuesque. And the dress fit her like a sheath.

She scrawled a note for Tom. Plain, honest Tom, she thought, with some sadness. Dear Tom: Called out of town unexpectedly. I wish I could explain. I'll be back tomorrow afternoon. She wanted to add maybe but did not. There's supper for you and Tommy in the fridge. Don't worry about me because I'll be all right. I'll be fine. That's putting it mildly—I'll be just great. See you tomorrow. Love, Mary-Jean. Almost, she had signed Jeanne-Marie. She looked at the note, frowned, and tore it up. It would be an adequate note for Mary-Jean to write, but not Jeanne-Marie. She took a fresh sheet of paper and scrawled:

Back tomorrow. Called away suddenly. Mary-Jean.

That was more like it: a note with the trip-hammer, cryptic mystery of a telegram. The other note made it seem as if Tom took her for granted, would fortify any such notions he had. That might have been all right with Mary-Jean, but Jeanne-Marie wouldn't stand for such a thing. Satisfied, Jeanne-Marie went downstairs.

And the front door opened.

It was Tommy, she thought with sudden alarm, seven-year-old Tommy back from school and his cub scout pack meeting. She watched him come in. Mechanically, because there was nothing else to do, she continued down the stairs.

"H'lo," Tommy said, looking at her. "My mother upstairs?"

"Why, no, no, she isn't," Jeanne-Marie said. "She went away for the day. She left a note for your father."

"Who're you?"

"Oh, just a friend. Be—be a good boy until your father gets home, Tommy. Why don't you play with your trains?"

"Who told you I have trains?"

"Oh, your mother told me." She was at the front door now. "Your mother did. Well, g'bye."

"Bye," Tommy said.

A taxi was waiting at the curb. She had known—almost—that it would be. For Jeanne-Marie did not have to seek things out. They sought her—grateful for the privilege.

The cabbie stared at her with frank admiration and she didn't mind. She didn't mind at all. You couldn't consider it fresh. It was more like—more like homage. It was her due.

The cabbie's expected question: "where to, lady?" was replaced by a polite, "Madam?"

On impulse, Jeanne-Marie named the city's most fashionable cocktail and supper club, the Black Flamingo. Then she settled back in the cushions, relaxing. Traffic was heavy and the cabbie stole several admiring glances in the rear-view mirror, but still they made incredible time, as if all the other drivers knew that Jeanne-Marie had twenty-four hours of glorious adventure ahead of her and wanted to embark on it at once.

All the traffic made way for Jeanne-Marie. Naturally it did.

Homage was paid Jeanne-Marie at the Black Flamingo too. There she was ushered across the crowded floor and given a ringside table near the cocktail hour pianist. The sweet, seductive music he played, the dimness within the Black Flamingo, the almost abstract pattern of flamingos in motion on the walls, the cigarette haze, the constant humming buzz of cocktail chatter, the first cocktail—a gibson—Jeanne-Marie ordered, all combined for an effect of drowsiness, of time suspension, which Jeanne-Marie had never experienced before.

Then the conversational buzz receded, like a tide ebbing. Jeanne-Marie blinked. Most of the crowd was gone. She looked at her wrist watch and saw that two hours had passed, looked at the small round surface of her table with the Black Flamingo placemat and saw three cocktail glasses, all empty. Soon, Jeanne-Marie realized with a growing sense of disappointment, the before-theater crowd would bring the tide flowing back to the Black Flamingo again. But her disappointment stemmed from the fact that nothing had happened to her and it was now almost seven o'clock. Oh, she had been stared at, admired, ogled even—but what beautiful girl wouldn't be? It was not that Jeanne-Marie had taken her twenty-four hours of beauty for granted. Rather, it was not beauty—certainly not beauty alone—she had wished for. And it wasn't sex-appeal, either, she told herself. Jeanne-Marie loved her husband and had experienced no lewd, day-dreaming fantasies about a secret lover who would sweep her off her proverbial feet. But Jeanne-Marie had waited, with a mixture of patience and passion, all her life—for something to happen. Something out of the ordinary. Something thrilling, as far removed from the pattern of her humdrum day-to-day existence as—as the spiral nebula in Andromeda.

But, Jeanne-Marie told herself, I don't seem to attract adventure—not even when I'm beautiful. Would she then have to spend all the rest of her life waiting, waiting for that sudden knocking at the door, for the face of the unknown to make itself thrillingly known?

She sighed and ordered another drink. She sipped it slowly, and sipped it, she knew, as if she spent much time sipping cocktails. Naturally, Mary-Jean's consumption of cocktails had been limited—generally to one a year, and that on the day of her wedding anniversary. But an ability to drink cocktails in a sophisticated manner seemed to go with the new body—with Jeanne-Marie.

When Jeanne-Marie was staring in moody silence at the little pickled pearl onion in the bottom of the now-empty cocktail glass, she was aware that someone had sat down beside her. A thrill of surprise and delight went through her body, making her shiver. This was the unexpected, she told herself. She knew it would be a man without looking. Knew it would be a good-looking fellow with the stamp of the man-of-the-world on his features. He could be nothing else.

And so it was.

Then Jeanne-Marie turned around slowly, not knowing if she should smile. When she faced the man now seated at her table, she gave him a cool quizzical look. He was a big man somewhere in his mid-thirties, with a craggy but handsome face and very wide shoulders. He was dressed, Jeanne-Marie decided, in quite good taste but expensively.

He muttered, "Didn't expect you to be so pretty."

Cocktail patter, thought Jeanne-Marie. "That's a very funny way to put a compliment."

The man said, still in hardly more than a whisper, "Fellows looking around. Three or four of them. Act like you know me. A thousand dollars. You're my wife or something like that."

He had already arranged the cocktail glasses on the table so that it looked as if both of them had been drinking. He said, "Well?"

"What did you mean about not expecting—?"

"You. Back of your head was all I saw. A girl, I thought. Obscurity of a couple when they're looking for a single man. But you. You stand out like Niagara Falls in the middle of the Sahara. See what I mean?"

"Thank you," Jeanne-Marie said. "Who is looking for you?"

"Remember what I said. Start looking like we mean something to each other."

And, before Jeanne-Marie could offer a protest, the man slid his chair around the small table, clutched at Jeanne-Marie's hand with one of his hands and put his other arm around her shoulder. He smiled at her, his face inches from hers, holding a cocktail glass up as if making a toast. He seemed to be relaxed and having fun, but this close Jeanne-Marie could tell his face was set tensely, rigidly, in an easy cocktail smile. When she saw the tension leave, she knew that whoever it was who sought him was gone—at least for now.

"All right," she said coolly. "I've shielded you. Now get out of here."

"I said a thousand dollars, but you haven't earned it yet."

Jeanne-Marie gave him the kind of scathing look which went very well with her new face but which, on Mary-Jean's face, would have been ludicrous. "Do I look as if I need a thousand dollars?" she asked.

"No, but—"

"So if you'll just find yourself another table."

Actually, Jeanne-Marie did not mean those words. Her new face and body were designed to attract adventure. Were they, then, bait for this man? She decided that they were, but the conversation had taken a natural course which she instantly regretted.

"But I can't do that," the man said. "Maybe they caught a glimpse of me here. Not enough to recognize me, but enough to know I belong with the gorgeous dame at such-and-such a table. See what I mean?"

"Who are you?"

He smiled, still holding her hand. He squeezed it. "Call me Lucky. But I don't know about tonight—lucky or not, I mean."

"Are they the police?"

"Yeah. They're the police."

"You did something?"

"What do you think they're doing, practicing?"

"I—I'm sorry. What did you do?"

"Let's drop it. You wouldn't want to know."

"Oh, but I would."

"You'd make me beat it. Or you'd call them."

"I will—if you don't tell me."

He smiled. "I guess you kind of got me."

"What did you do?"

"It was a meeting. Call it a board of directors meeting and you'd be close. We—"

"Board of directors of what?" The questions came quickly, unbidden almost, to Jeanne-Marie's lips. She felt suddenly very quick-minded and very capable.

"Well, call it a syndicate."

"The national syndicate of crime? Is that what you mean? Are you one of the directors?"

He nodded slowly and said admiringly, "Baby, you're not only beautiful, you've got a mind like a trip-hammer."

"Go on."

"There was the last thing such a board of directors would ever want. A fight."

"Someone was hurt?"

"Killed."

"Oh, I see." But she did not see. The words came automatically. What did Jeanne-Marie—or Mary-Jean—know of murder?

"I was fingered," Lucky said.

"You did it?"

"I say I didn't do it. Who do you believe?"

"I don't believe anyone," Jeanne-Marie said, the words coming quickly to her, apparently plucked from air. "I never believe anyone. What's the difference?"

"Plenty of difference. Because I'm getting out of here. But I'll never get out alone. They're looking for a single man. I can get out with you, I think."

Just then, before Jeanne-Marie could answer, he leaned forward quickly and kissed her. Jeanne-Marie stiffened and then relaxed for a moment, then stiffened again. She pushed him away gently, saying curtly, "Don't try that again."

"I can't figure you out," he said. "One minute you talk like a woman who's been around, the next like some dilly of a housewife from suburbia. What do you think I kissed you for? Just because you're beautiful? Hell, I've seen beautiful girls before. Plenty of them, and some as beautiful as you. Well, almost, anyway," he added, and they both smiled. "I kissed you because one of the cops drifted through. Listen, baby. Will you be my passport out of here?"

"Why should I be?" Jeanne-Marie asked him coolly.

"Because I'm asking you. Because maybe fate meant we should meet like this tonight—"

"Oh, now, really," Jeanne-Marie said. "You don't mean that and you know you don't. One sure way not to get me to do anything for you is to throw me a line like that."

Lucky shrugged. "O.K., baby. If you were in my place, what would you do?"

"Umm-mm. I see what you mean. But I wouldn't throw you such an obvious line if I threw you a line at all."

"Can I force you to come with me?"

"I don't know. Can you?"

"O.K.," Lucky smiled. "Let's try it. I've got a gun in my pocket, baby."

She grinned back at him. "That's nice."

"Maybe I'm pointing it at you under the table. Well, it's possible, isn't it?"

"It's possible."

"How'm I doing?"

"Pretty good—if I thought you had a gun. Anyway, I like it much better than the line."

"Good. If you don't get up and walk with me, quietly, walk right out of here with me—I'll use the gun. I'm desperate. Do you believe me?"

"No," Jeanne-Marie said promptly. For all his hard, capable good looks, Lucky seemed crestfallen. "But," Jeanne-Marie added slowly, "I'll go with you. As far as the street and no further."

Lucky squeezed her hand and signaled for the waiter. "I'll pay the check," he said.

"You're darned right you will," she said, and they both laughed.

Two hours in my new body, Jeanne-Marie thought, and I'm helping a murderer to elude the police. A murderer? Well, he says he's not. His word is the only word I have so I guess I can go through with it with something like a clean conscience. Clean conscience or not, she knew she'd act as Lucky's passport out to the street. Because Lucky, she could somehow sense, was the adventure that the new Jeanne-Marie, the peddler's Jeanne-Marie, had summoned.

The bill paid, they got up from the table. Lucky slipped his arm through hers and, their flanks together, they walked toward the exit. The pianist was playing a rhythmic rendition of the September Song. The pre-theater crowds were out now, Jeanne-Marie knew, filling the Black Flamingo and the other cocktail places, and the street as well. Once on the street, Lucky could probably make good his escape.

They went by the hat-check booth now, and out across a carpeted hallway, to a French door which led, up a little flight of stairs, to the street. A doorman swung the French doors out.

"Stop!" someone cried behind them.

Acting on instinct, the doorman slammed the French doors. Lucky whirled and swung his right fist brutally at a man running up behind them. Jeanne-Marie screamed as the man fell heavily. Then, incredibly, Lucky did have a gun in his hand. He pointed it at the doorman and said something and magically the doors swung open. Still holding Jeanne-Marie's arm and all but dragging her, Lucky sprinted up the short flight of stairs to the street. Footsteps pounded up after them as Lucky waved down a cab.

Jeanne-Marie tried to pull herself away from him, but his fingers dug into her upper arm painfully. "I'm not playing now," he said, his voice brutal. "Maybe it was a more subtle line than you thought, baby, but I'm not playing now. You're still my passport and you're going on being my passport till I tell you different."

He threw open the rear door of the cab and heaved Jeanne-Marie inside. She fell against the leather upholstery and heard the driver say:

"Hey, what the hell is this?"

Voices shouted outside the cab. Feet pounded across the sidewalk. "I don't want no part of this!" the driver shouted. It was almost a wail.

Lucky waved the gun and said in a quiet voice which still must have thundered in the driver's ear. "Start driving and start driving fast."

A moment later the cab leaped away from the curb.

As they joined the heavy stream of pleasure-bound traffic, Jeanne-Marie felt an instant of intense panic. Lucky had admitted it: Lucky's smooth line inside the Black Flamingo, his suave man-of-the-world attitude had been the real decoy. And Jeanne-Marie had fallen for it. But smooth line and man-of-the-world attitude, she knew now, hid a desperate fugitive who would stop at nothing.

Lucky wasn't watching her now. His eyes were glued to the rear window of the cab, watching the traffic behind them; looking for signs of pursuit.

"How about a break, Mac?" the driver asked. "I could let you off at a bus stop or a subway or something. I could—"

"You could keep on driving out to the expressway and keep going north on the expressway until I tell you different."

But at that moment the cab braked slowly to a stop for a red light. On the far side of the street, on the curb, Jeanne-Marie spied a policeman. Watching the cab-driver's face, she knew he had seen the uniformed patrolman too. A muscle throbbed in his jaw and Jeanne-Marie knew suddenly he was going to try something.

A word, she thought. One word between them could mean so much. Because if she could help him, if she could occupy Lucky's attention at the precise moment the cab driver tried to signal the policeman....

But Lucky must have seen it too. He leaned forward and slashed the automatic across the driver's neck, barrel-first, the sights raking the flesh and leaving a twin track of blood. The driver shook his head from side to side, like a fighter who has taken too much punishment. He opened his mouth to yell but Lucky's arm went around his throat.

"Don't," Lucky said. "I've killed a man already tonight. I can kill you too and it wouldn't make any difference. Just drive."

There, thought Jeanne-Marie, it was out now. He had killed a man. He admitted it. All sham, all pretense was gone. The charming man of the world was now completely gone, replaced by the ruthless killer.

The light changed to green—had been green for some time now. Horns blared behind them. The driver shifted gears and they began to drive again.

Still standing on the corner, the policeman had seen nothing.

Three hours later, they were still driving. The city was behind them now. They had sped through the darkness and obscurity of the northern suburbs as night fell and now were in a rural area. The expressway rimming the city had become the state parkway going north, and some twenty minutes ago they had left the parkway behind them, traveling a two-lane black-top road.

"Next left," Lucky told the frightened driver, and moments later the cab braked and turned up a dirt road hardly more than a trail.

"Friend of mine used to own this place," Lucky explained as they stopped before a small log cabin. Actually log, Jeanne-Marie thought, only ninety-some miles from the city. It was totally unexpected. "Used to use it for a hunting lodge."

He opened the door and held it that way for Jeanne-Marie, who climbed out of the cab. Then Lucky leaned in across the driver and removed the ignition key from the dash, pocketing it. "You get out of there, too," he said.

"I thought I'd just be going now, mister."

"That's very funny."

"I thought—"

"I said, get out."

"Look mister, the wife will start to worry. If the wife worries, she calls the company. The company makes a check and realizes I haven't called in. We got a two-way radio hook-up and you're supposed to call in on all fares. If the company sees I haven't called in, they start looking. Then where would you be?"

"Right here," Lucky said. "With you. And they'll never find you here. Any other questions? No? Then get out. That's right. Go inside the cabin. You ought to find some canned goods in there, and some sterno. Whip up supper for us, will you?"

Grumbling, the driver went up the split-log railed porch and into the cabin.

"It isn't locked?" Jeanne-Marie said.

"No lock on it. Nice here, isn't it?"

"Who cares if it's nice or not? You're a fugitive, you're running away, I'm a hostage. That's all that matters."

"Is it? You know, baby, there's something nice about being desperate. Something real fine. I don't even know your name. You don't know mine. Except Lucky. And you know something? I'm not even going to ask you your name. I can suddenly start admiring things, too. Like the scenery."

"You're talking in circles."

"No, I'm not. When you're a fugitive, with utterly nothing to lose, and when you happen to have as a hostage the most beautiful girl you've ever seen, and if your capture puts a permanent end to seeing any kind of girl—let alone such a beautiful one—now do you see?"

Instead of answering him, Jeanne-Marie walked quickly up the hill from where the cab was parked to the cabin. The driver wouldn't be much help—but his presence alone might stop Lucky....

But Lucky caught her before she had covered half the distance to the cabin. "Figure I'm a dying man and well, like it's the wish of a dying man to—to—listen, baby. You're very beautiful."

He held both her arms now, pinning them to her side. She struggled fiercely against him, but he was very strong. She managed to tilt her head back—and screamed.

Lucky let her go at once, and slapped her face very hard with his open hand. She staggered back and tripped over something and fell heavily. The cab driver appeared on the porch, but Lucky motioned him back inside.

"There's no one else around," he said, "as far as I know. But don't you ever try that again. Don't you see I have nothing to lose? Aren't you convinced by now. I could try to make love to you because I have nothing to lose—but I could also kill you for the same reason. Be sensible, will you? Which would you rather I did?"

Jeanne-Marie stood up. For a moment her feet felt as if they might buckle under her, but presently her strength returned. "Neither," she said, walking toward the cabin again. "And if you try that any more, I'm going to start hollering again. If you want to kill me, go ahead and kill me."

In spite of her best efforts to control it, her voice caught on the last words. Lucky laughed softly but harshly, and followed her into the cabin.

She ate without knowing what the food was. Her mind was a blank slate now. Impressions came and made tracks on it like chalk on a blackboard, but they were immediately erased. She couldn't concentrate at all. It was a state not far from hysteria, she knew. Lucky meant everything he said.... Lucky, yes—Lucky.... It was so hard to concentrate. Lucky might try to kill her or might try to make love to her or might try....

"... clean up and make it snappy," Lucky told the driver.

"What's your hurry? Going someplace?"

"When I'm in the mood for wisecracks, I'll crack them. Just clean up in a hurry, that's all."

The driver did so, while Lucky sat smoking a cigarette. The cabin's single all-purpose room was lit by a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling on a big hook and casting uneven shadows as the wind came through the open windows and stirred it. Jeanne-Marie felt herself dropping off to sleep and had time to register amazement. She should have been horrified, afraid for her life, beyond the point where sleep was possible. Mary-Jean surely would have been.

Yes, she thought dreamily, Mary-Jean would have been. Which was one lesson she learned from Jeanne-Marie at least. Useless fretting had always been part of Mary-Jean's make-up. But then, it was not owned exclusively by Mary-Jean: useless fretting probably took more energy from more housewives....

She awoke with a start. She felt instantly refreshed. Somehow, she had known she would. In that way, the beautiful Jeanne-Marie had a certain animal-like quality about her. Sleep—and a quickening of the self. She felt alert and capable, almost as if she had been dosed with benzedrine.

She heard a noise outside and went silently to the window. Lucky was on the porch. He had found some rope and was tying the cab driver there. Lucky—with a psychopath's mind. Not insane, of course. An insane person was badly oriented. Lucky knew what he was doing—but he didn't care about the consequences, as they affected other people. A psychopath. A fugitive murderer psychopath with absolutely nothing to lose whether he tried to make love to her or decided to kill her....

Adventure, Jeanne-Marie thought. This was adventure, all right. This was what she had overlooked.

In adventure—always—was the element of danger. It was part of the definition of adventure. And a housewife—a mother with responsibility—had no business craving adventure.

No business?

Well, maybe once. Once only—to cure her. Or once, to keep with her all her life through the dull times and the humdrum days. Provided, Jeanne-Marie thought with a strange little smile, she lived through it.

"I see you're awake," Lucky said, coming inside the cabin. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing you would understand. Why did you tie him out there, Lucky?"

"Why do you think? Do we have to talk about it?"

"Not if you don't want to, I guess."

"I found something to drink," Lucky told her. "Want some?"

She shook her head and Lucky poured just one drink. He downed it in a gulp and Jeanne-Marie told him, "Keep drinking like that and you're going to get drunk."

He poured and drank another. "Don't I know it, baby. But they won't have any liquor where they want to send me, either. A man gets to appreciate—sure you don't want some?"

"I'm positive, thank you." He's very matter-of-fact about it, Jeanne-Marie thought. He's as matter-of-fact about enjoying his liquor now as he is about killing me if I try to get away or about making love to me if I stay here.

She looked at him. Lucky's altered behavior had not changed the fact that Lucky was an attractive hunk of man. And that's what she was here for, wasn't it? Romantic adventure. If in choosing the easy way out, she also satisfied a lifelong whim too.... What am I thinking about? she asked herself. It would satisfy him now and maybe afterwards, with the drink and everything, he'd even go to sleep and I'll be able to run somewhere for help. And anyway, it isn't me. It isn't my body. It isn't Mary-Jean. It's Jeanne-Marie. But there's no such person as Jeanne-Marie. Tomorrow, when I see the peddler at precisely four-fifteen back home....

If I see him, she thought wildly. Because I'm a prisoner now.

She looked again at Lucky, who was drinking steadily now. Drinking hard. Drinking so he could forget the fact that it would be all but a physical assault if he got what he wanted.

It's not Mary-Jean, it's Jeanne-Marie, she told herself again. But that didn't matter. All at once she knew it didn't matter at all. She would feel unclean all the rest of her life and she could never say an honest word of endearment again as long as she lived to her Tom, even if it did help her to escape. She shuddered at the thought.

"Come here," Lucky said. "Getting late now, so come here." His voice was thick and he took great care to enunciate each word distinctly.

Jeanne-Marie got up slowly and went across the room to him. He got to his feet unsteadily, preparing to meet her halfway. He walked an exaggerated straight line, as if to prove how sober he was. "Come here," he said again, more thickly this time.

She let him take her in his arms. She let him kiss her lips and her throat. That much, to allay his suspicions—and more. That much so she could apparently return his caresses while he surrendered drunkenly to the heat of the moment, while she....

Clutched at him wildly with her hands until he was used to the rather unexpected sensation of her clutching hands—then, still clutching but quite coldly and efficiently, searched his pocket for the cab-driver's ignition key.

She found it and she said, breathlessly, "Lucky. I think I'll take that drink now, Lucky."

He nodded, poured it and poured one for himself. "A toast," he said, "to—"

He didn't finish. For Jeanne-Marie, smiling sweetly up at him, flung the contents of the glass in his face.

He shouted hoarsely, rubbing at his alcohol-burned eyes. He lunched around the room after her, but blinded like that it was a comparative easy manner for her to stick out her leg and trip him near the door.

As he went sprawling, she got out of there.

"I'll send help back for you!" she called to the bound taxi-driver, and sprinted across the porch and down the hill toward the cab. She got in and slammed the door and with trembling fingers tried to insert the ignition key. She finally shoved it home and heard footsteps pounding across the wood of the porch. That would be Lucky. That meant only seconds remained to her....

The starter ground and ground. The car wouldn't kick over.

She was still trying when Lucky reached her. At the last moment she realized that the car was on a hill. If she released the handbrake she would at least coast downhill away from him.

The car began to move as she tried the starter button again. Then the door across from her was pulled open and Lucky threw himself into the car, sprawling across the front seat toward her. At that moment, the engine kicked over and Jeanne-Marie put the car in gear.

It started with a clashing of gears, leaping forward with a surge of power. The door on Lucky's side was still open and swung back and forth. Lucky was sitting up now, reaching for her, trying to pull her away from the wheel.

They struggled while the car skidded from side to side of the road. Jeanne-Marie kept her foot on the accelerator, though, and their speed increased. The car swerved wildly and, she knew, might even overturn on one of the steeper turns in the country road.

It swerved again, rocking. It went up on two wheels, the tires screaming. Now the open door banged and grated against asphalt. Lucky had a strong grip on her shoulder and his face was very close to her own and she told him, "You'll kill us, you fool!"

"You think I care? You care, baby. I don't—"

She felt her fingers being pulled inexorably from the steering wheel. If she lost her hold, the car, doing fifty now, would be entirely out of control.

The car swerved again, went up on two wheels, lurching. Her right elbow was suddenly free and she jabbed with it, hitting something. The car lurched again, as if deciding whether to right itself or go over on its side.

And Lucky, arms and legs flailing, went out the open door.

Jeanne-Marie braked the car quickly. She could see him in the rear-view mirror, a dark shadow on the surface of the road, not moving. She stopped the car and used its two-way radio to call the cab company. Then, making sure that the still form of the man on the road was not moving now, she allowed herself an unexpected feminine reaction.

She fainted.

It was two o'clock the next afternoon. Rural sheriff's station, full of city police now.

And Lucky: real name George Carmine, a prisoner.

And confused police.

"But, miss. You caught him for us. The reward is yours. Don't you want the reward?"

"No, please. Not if I'll have to identify myself."

"Afraid you will. There's no identification on her, Captain. Can you tie it?"

"I can't tie it," said the captain. "No one could tie it."

"We have the whole story, miss. All but you. Who you are, how you happened to find him. Fingerprints don't match any in Washington, miss. We've already checked. You won't tell us your name. Description doesn't match any missing persons. Have a heart, miss."

"I haven't done anything, have I?"

No, she hadn't done anything.

"Then just let me go. Please?" She had to hurry. Driving fast, she could just make it back home in time for the peddler. She had to make it. If she did not, the peddler would assume she wanted the adventure-procuring face and body of Jeanne-Marie all her life....

"We'll have to insist on your name and address. We'll have to insist on a routine investigation of you, to close out the case, you understand."

"Really, I'll have to be going."

"We'll have to insist.... Just go with the matron. Wait back there with the matron. Perhaps (hopefully) you'll talk to the matron?"

She would not talk to the matron. But she would go with the matron if they wanted her to.

The cabbie was just going outside. She said good-bye. He said good-bye. He said he was very grateful. He had said almost nothing but that for hours. Lucky, who had a broken collar bone, said nothing.

They passed a street door. After Lucky, it would be easy. Anything would be easy. She shoved the matron. She opened the door and went outside and slammed the door and ran.

"Holy Mac," the cabbie said, getting into his car.

"Show me how grateful you are?"

"I can't—"

"Just to the city line and a subway station. Please? But you've got to hurry...."

He uttered an understandable curse and let her in and they sped away before the matron could come outside and see in which direction her charge had disappeared....

At precisely four-fifteen, the cab turned into her block. The driver had changed his mind, had taken her all the way there. She was about to point out her house—knowing she could never be checked there because instead of Jeanne-Marie the police would find, praise be, plain Mary-Jean—when suddenly she spotted him on the street.

Rotund little man, long nose, enormous bag. The peddler. "Stop here," she said. The driver needed no coaxing.

"I was grateful," he said. "But we're even now, lady. There won't be any charge." And away he went.

"Hello, there," she said.

"Hello," said the peddler.

"I made up my mind."

"Naturally."

"What did you say?"

"Naturally, my dear lady. They always do. You've decided you'd had enough of adventure, right?"

"Well—y-yes."

"Always do. All right."

"Don't you have to do anything to change me back?"

"Nope. They always do. It wears off, you see. Besides, the memory of it keeps them happy, sort of. Or content. I don't know. Never was a housewife. Well, good-bye, dear lady. Got a job down the block."

"Right down this block?"

"Someone you know? Of course, it's someone you know. You'd be surprised how many housewives we Happiness Salesmen do visit. They keep it secret, of course, like you'll keep it secret."

And the peddler walked off with his enormous bag.

Jeanne-Marie watched him for a while. While she was watching him, she became Mary-Jean. She could feel it. The electric tingling was gone from her skin. The ravishingly beautiful face and the million-dollar figure were gone.

She went toward the front door of her house. She was just plain Mary-Jean now. She liked it suddenly. She never thought she would like it.

Mary-Jean suddenly knew, without knowing how she knew, that sooner or later the Happiness Salesman visited almost every housewife there ever was.

Somehow, the thought of it made her feel very good.

THE END

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