Holding out his hands, seeing that the fingers did not tremble with excitement, he eased the great bowl to the lathe and was about to make the first tiny cut of the millions that would go into the masterpiece.
Somebody knocked on his door and rattled the doorknob.
Sebastian Long did not move or look toward the door. Soon the busybody would read the sign and go away. But the pounding and the rattling of the knob went on. He eased down the bowl and angrily went to the window, picked up the sign, and shook it at whoever it was—he couldn’t make out the face very well. But the idiot wouldn’t go away.
The engraver unlocked the door, opened it a bit, and snapped: “The shop is closed. I shall not be taking any orders for several months. Please don’t bother me now.”
“It’s about the Demeter Bowl,” said the intruder.
Sebastian Long stared at him. “What the devil do you know about my Demeter Bowl?” He saw the man was a stranger, undersized by a little, middle-aged…
“Just let me in please,” urged the man. “It’s important. Please!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the engraver. “But what do you know about my Demeter Bowl?” He hooked his thumbs pugnaciously over the waistband of his denims and glowered at the stranger. The stranger promptly took advantage of his hand being removed from the door and glided in.
Sebastian Long thought briefly that it might be a nightmare as the man darted quickly about his shop, picking up a graver and throwing it down, picking up a wire scratch-wheel and throwing it down. “Here, you!” he roared, as the stranger picked up a crescent wrench which he did not throw down.
As Long started for him, the stranger darted to the workbench and brought the crescent wrench down shatteringly on the bowl.
Sebastian Long’s heart was bursting with sorrow and rage; such a storm of emotions as he never had known thundered through him. Paralyzed, he saw the stranger smile with anticipation.
The engraver’s legs folded under him and he fell to the floor, drained and dead.
The Mindworm, locked in the bedroom of his brownstone front, smiled again, reminiscently.
Smiling, he checked the day on a wall calendar.
“Dolores!” yelled her mother in Spanish. “Are you going to pass the whole day in there?”
She had been practicing low-lidded, sexy half-smiles like Lauren Bacall in the bathroom mirror. She stormed out and yelled in English: “I don’t know how many times I tell you not to call me that Spick name no more!”
“Dolly!” sneered her mother. “Dah-lee! When was there a Saint Dah-lee that you call yourself after, eh?”
The girl snarled a Spanish obscenity at her mother and ran down the tenement stairs. Jeez, she was gonna be late for sure!
Held up by a stream of traffic between her and her streetcar, she danced with impatience. Then the miracle happened. Just like in the movies, a big convertible pulled up before her and its lounging driver said, opening the door: “You seem to be in a hurry. Could I drop you somewhere?”
Dazed at the sudden realization of a hundred daydreams, she did not fail to give the driver a low-lidded, sexy smile as she said: “Why, thanks!” and climbed in. He wasn’t no Cary Grant, but he had all his hair . . . kind of small, but so was she . . . and jeez, the convertible had leopard-skin seat covers!
The car was in the stream of traffic, purring down the avenue. “It’s a lovely day,” she said. “Really too nice to work.”
The driver smiled shyly, kind of like Jimmy Stewart but of course not so tall, and said: “I feel like playing hooky myself. How would you like a spin down Long Island?”
“Be wonderful!” The convertible cut left on an odd-numbered street.
“Play hooky, you said. What do you do?”
“Advertising.”
“Advertising!” Dolly wanted to kick herself for ever having doubted, for ever having thought in low, self-loathing moments that it wouldn’t work out, that she’d marry a grocer or a mechanic and live
forever after in a smelly tenement and grow old and sick and stooped. She felt vaguely in her happy daze that it might have been cuter, she might have accidentally pushed him into a pond or something, but this was cute enough. An advertising man, leopard-skin seat covers . . . what more could a girl with a sexy smile and a nice little figure want?