AN EYE FOR THE LADIES

He was a plump fellow in about the approximate dimensions of a penguin, and as stiffly dressed. Since I'd been an insurance investigator last week but had become a private detective this, and since he was my first potential case, I was needless to say interested.

"It's my wife," he said.

"Your wife," I repeated, searching for but not finding some of the sharp P.I. dialogue I'd read in the books by Chandler, Evans, Marlowe and others.

"You see, we're tourists from another planet. My name is Xlptl."

I just sat there.

"Mrs. Xlptl is missing."

"Ah," I said, leaning forward. This was something I could understand. Maybe I had heard him wrong about that name.

"Missing how?" I asked.

"Mrs. Xlptl," said my potential client, "failed to re-transmigrate."

"To do which?"

"Re-transmigrate. To get out of her Earth body after touring Earth."

A nut, I thought. Your first case, Brody, and he's a nut. Ah, well, there goes the retainer. But you might as well humor him. "And did you," I said, "ah, get out of your Earth body?"

"Goodness, yes," said Mr. Xlptl promptly, removing his jacket. "You never saw an Earthman without shoulders, did you?"

He wasn't kidding. I gawked until he put the jacket back on. His neck slanted down gradually, widening as it went, to the broad waist. He had no shoulders to speak of. No wonder he looked like a penguin.

"You see," he said in a confidential voice while I continued to gawk, "Mrs. Xlptl thinks she doesn't want to transmigrate back. She thinks she wants to go on being an Earthwoman. Naturally she's wrong. Naturally we ought to go home. Na—"

"Home where?"

"It's a star you can't even see with your biggest telescopes," said Mr. Xlptl, waving his hand deprecatingly. "I want you to find her and bring her back to me. I can make her see the error of her ways and re-transmigrate."

I wondered how you went about finding an un-retransmigrated Mrs. Xlptl, but before I could open my mouth and say something bright, Mr. Xlptl told me: "You see, she disappeared in a busload of honeymooning brides who had been on a quiz program which each week interviews and gives prizes to the half dozen or so prettiest new brides they can find. Now, as the expression goes, the honeymoon is over and each bride has gone home. I have all their addresses. Mrs. Xlptl is hiding in one of their bodies. I'd go and find her myself by transmigrating into the bodies of the respective husbands until I ran across her, but I find an Earth body somewhat uncomfortable and I'm willing to give you fifty dollars a day and expenses for your services if you'll do the job for me, locate her, and bring her back. Is that satisfactory?"

"You mean, I'll transmigrate? I'll get into the bodies of those six husbands of those six pretty new brides—like the husbands were suits of clothing or something?" Humor him, Brody. He's nuts.

"Exactly, Mr. Brody. You will do it?"

I nodded. Mr. Xlptl gave me a check. I decided in advance that it would make like a rubber ball, but I put it in the middle drawer of the desk, anyhow. I reached into the bottle drawer and took out the office bottle. "Have one?" I said.

"Alcohol?" asked Mr. Xlptl in horror. "To me alcohol is extremely toxic."

"Maybe," I said, "you got something there." But I took a small one anyhow and when I looked up there was a sheet of paper with a list of names and addresses on the desk.

"Take them one at a time," Mr. Xlptl told me. "Just think about the name and you'll transmigrate. I've already given you the power."

"You have?"

He assured me he had. That was when I blinked my eyes. It was a mistake. Because when I opened them, Mr. Xlptl had disappeared. He didn't walk out of the little office. He didn't jump from the window. The door and the window were both closed. Mr. Xlptl simply vanished.

I took another drink. It was some kind of trick. An optical illusion or something. I thought over what Mr. Xlptl wanted me to do. Six pretty new brides. Me. Jack Brody, their collective husbands. I whistled. Well, that was what a private eye dreamed about in all the shamus books—unlimited access to beautiful womens' boudoirs. I sighed. If only that Xlptl wasn't a nut, I thought. If only what he told me was possible. If only....

I sighed again. Better call up one of the dames from your little black book, Brody. No use sighing over what can never be. But automatically I looked down at the list. Study the first name, Xlptl had said. I smiled at my own amazing credulity. Well, chalk it up to wishful thinking.

The first name was Mrs. Hal Drummond (nee Janet Dawes). I thought of the Drummonds and their address, which was in San Francisco, almost three thousand miles from here.

Something buzzed in my ears.

Louder and louder.

The buzzing became a hissing sound. I couldn't place it at first. Then I realized it was the sound a shower makes in the next room. I looked around. A second ago I'd been in my office, in New York. Now I was sitting on a bed. There was a newspaper alongside me. I did a double-take. It was the San Francisco Chronicle .

A gag, I thought. It had to be a gag. I got up. I was wearing a bathrobe and slippers. I passed a dresser with a mirror on top. This time I gaped. There was a tall, dark guy standing there in the mirror, staring back at me. I had nothing against him.

Only, he wasn't Jack Brody. That is, he was me—but I wasn't who I'd been a couple of seconds ago.

I felt weak. I sat down on the bed again. There were two doors in the room, besides the closets. One led out to a hallway. The other was closed. From behind it came the hissing of a shower. Suddenly a girl started to sing in there. She had a nice voice. She was singing about all the ways she loved me.

There was a picture on the dresser, one of those cardboard backed wedding souvenirs. The girl I was leading from the wedding ceremony was a lovely-looking blonde.

The singing stopped. The girl called: "Hal. Hal, honey! Will you come in and scrub my back please?"

I looked in the mirror. The guy looking back at me had a very pale face. He'd been tan a moment ago. My mind was whirling with happy but stage-struck thoughts. Just like Don Juan, I thought. Only Don Juan had to go out over balconies and things. Me—I could get away with it.

"Come on, Hal, honey," the girl called again. I headed for the bathroom door. Well, I'd been invited, hadn't I?

I opened the door. The hissing became louder. There was a lot of steam in the room from the hot shower. The shower stall had one of those translucent glass doors. I could see her through it. She was a tall, statuesque blonde with her hair cut so short she could be in there in the shower without worrying about a shower cap. She was long and tan and pink and delightful.

She slid the shower door back with a wet hand. I got splashed.

She said, "The robe, silly."

I stood there gawking. Finally I got the idea. She didn't want me to get all wet. Or, she didn't want my robe to get all wet. She wanted her lovely back scrubbed. Or maybe we could do some mutual scrubbing. She wanted me there in the shower with her.

I began to take the robe off. She smiled at me through the half-open sliding door of the shower. She glistened with water. She looked all tan and silvery and sleek, sleek as if she were made out of tight-stretched leather.

And then chimes rang. We both heard them. She looked at me and sighed. I looked back at her. I hoped it wasn't too obvious. I hoped my tongue was between my lips and back a bit. She smiled and leaned against me and gave me a shower-water-wet and playful kiss. "Oh, well, darling," she said, as if we could do later whatever we hadn't had a chance to do now. "I guess that must be the Fosters. I guess they're early. Better get the door. I guess I'll have to scrub my own back."

The shower door slid shut.

I remembered Mr. Xlptl and his mission. There was no doubt about it now, it was going to work out exactly as Mr. Xlptl said it would work out. He'd given me the power, all right. I said: "Janet, there's only one thing."

"What?" she shouted over the hiss and roar of the shower.

The chimes sounded again.

"Mrs. Xlptl," I said in a loud voice.

"What was that? What did you say?"

"Mrs. Xlptl," I repeated.

"Why, what a funny name!" she cried with a little laugh.

"Name?" I said, clearing my throat. "I was only clearing my throat." No doubt of it, Mrs. Xlptl wasn't hiding here.

I went into the bedroom and through it to the hallway. The chimes sounded a third time. To hell with this Hal Drummond guy, I thought. Let him let in his own Fosters. I had a moment of panic, but found the list of names in a pocket of my-Hal-Drummond bathrobe. I studied the second name and address on the list. Chicago, Illinois. Mrs. Dan Carboy (nee Dawn Daring). The address was, Club Chuckle. Dawn Daring, I decided, was in show-biz. This sounded like fun. I thought of the name.

And buzzed out of there just as the bewildered Hal Drummond reached the door....

I was dancing with a medium tall redhead whose wonderfully supple figure was all but glued to me. I looked down at her face. She looked up at mine. Her own face was pretty and heavily war-painted, so it would look good behind a baby-spot. She was in show-biz, all right.

We danced slowly to music I hardly heard. Every now and then she leaned up and kissed the side of my chin with her red, red lips.

"If you really want me to quit, Dan," she said.

"No, that's all right," I said automatically.

"But you just a minute ago said you wanted me to quit show-biz and settle down to being your wife."

"Oh, did I?" I said.

"Of course you did," she said, slightly exasperated. I felt her move away from me an inch or so. It made a lot of difference. They broke into a mambo suddenly. We both could mambo very well. That meant something. It meant more confirmation of Mr. Xlptl, because Jack Brody, private eye, didn't know a mambo from a mango.

"When do you go on?" I said.

"You know when. In half an hour."

I looked down at her. Would Dan Carboy kiss his wife now? Probably, I thought. This version of Dan Carboy would only if he thought the real Carboy would. I waited for her to make some kind of a gesture, to take the play away from me. We just danced. Then the music stopped and we went to our table where drinks were waiting. Mine was a martini. From the color, it looked very dry. And it was.

"Xlptl," I said.

"What?" She'd heard me. She didn't understand. Her face showed absolutely nothing.

She obviously wasn't Mrs. Xlptl. "Hiccup," I said, searching surreptitiously through my suit-jacket pockets for the list of names. She smiled at me. I smiled at her. I couldn't find the list. I didn't want to make it obvious, so I didn't go digging down into my pants pockets. That could wait for when she went on. What did she do? I wondered. Sing? Play the piano maybe? Her gown told me nothing. It was long and sheath-like, in a bright scarlet which almost matched her hair in the dim lighting.

Finally there was a fan-fare. She patted my hand. "Maybe you're right, Dan," she said, getting up. "Maybe after this month I will quit."

There was a round of polite applause. Dawn drifted over to a little stage and swayed herself onto it. The music began and the applause increased. Dawn smiled. The room went dark.

The smile she gave him was the one she reserved for her husband.

Dawn found a zipper somewhere and did with zippers what you will do with them when they are closed. Down went Dawn's robe. What she was wearing underneath was exactly what a stripper will wear under her sheath-like outer garment.

Spangles and tassles flashed in the light of the spot. Dawn danced. A spangle here and a tassel there was removed. There was more applause. I blushed for Dan Carboy. Dan could take it from there. I dove into my pants pockets and found the list of names. The next one was Mrs. Angel Martell, (nee Sally Benton), with an address in Philly. I looked up. Dawn was down to red hair, skin and a G-string. I thought of Mrs. Martell.

"Angel!" she coo'd. "You're so stro-ong!"

She was a real tiny thing, but pretty. I sat in a room with lockers and a rubdown table. I was wearing trunks and a robe. I looked at my hands. They weren't taped. Either Angel Martell was a boxer with considerable time to go as yet before he was on, or he was a wrestler. I shuddered. I didn't know one damn thing about boxing or wrestling. Street fighting, yeah—but how the hell would street fighting help me here?

"Quit showing your muscles off to the little woman," a voice said. The voice belonged to a tired-looking little man with glasses.

I said, "Sure."

Little Sally pouted. "In fact, Mrs. Martell," the tired-looking fellow told her, "it might be better if you find your seat out front now and wait for it to get underway. You're liable to make Angel nervous in here."

"Well, if you say so," she said doubtfully but timidly. She went to the door.

"Wait!" I called. I was going to ask her about Xlptl.

"Wait, nothing!" the man who must have been my manager said. "Out she goes."

The door closed behind Sally. I shuddered. I had to find out about Xlptl before I could leave her. Which meant I had to go through with whatever was waiting for me in the arena.

After a while my manager came over and taped my fists. So it was boxing, I thought. That was worse even than wrestling. In wrestling there was a script, and the participants followed it. In boxing I could—and probably would—get my head handed to me.

We went upstairs. The manager, still looking tired, didn't say a word. The arena was small, noisy, and smoke-filled. The ring seemed very close. Too close. We reached it too soon. I climbed through the ropes awkwardly, almost stumbling and falling across the ring. Someone hooted.

The other guy was already there, dancing in the resin corner. He looked very big and menacing. He was already wearing his gloves. My gloves were put on. There was a bell and some fighters in street clothes were trotted out to show off their padded muscles. There was another bell. I was sitting on a stool. A spotlight found me and my manager shoved me to my feet. I lumbered to the center of the ring and heard a booming voice declaim:

"In this corner, that ever-popular slugger from the Bronx, New York, weighing two hundred and five pounds and undefeated in his last six thrilling contests with a record of fifteen knockouts in the last two years, Angel Martell!"

There was polite applause. I drifted back to my corner. I wondered where Sally was sitting. If I could just ask her about Xlptl before this thing got started.... But I couldn't see her out there any place. The announcer continued.

"... this corner, the undefeated heavyweight from our own Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who has knocked out all but two of his opponents in twenty-one stellar clashes here in this arena and elsewhere, Mickey Magoon!"

Magoon came out looking flashy and dancing and raising one hand in the victory sign. I looked around desperately for Sally. Maybe I'd seen her, I thought, shuddering. Maybe I'd forgotten what she looked like.

The referee gave us our instructions. We went back to our corners. A whistle sounded. My manager rubbed my back. A bell clanged and something propelled me toward the charging Magoon.

I put up my hands. Magoon danced around me cautiously. He jabbed and it didn't look like much but my head went shooting back and something made a noise in my neck. He jabbed again. He jabbed a third time. Then the jabs got blurry. I thought they would take my head clean off.

I clinched. The referee got us apart. Magoon came after me with that jab. I swung my left and right, but Magoon picked them off in air. I couldn't win and I knew it. I didn't have a chance. I wondered how long it would take before Magoon knew that too. Magoon was a pro. Once he learned it he wouldn't waste any time with caution. He would come in and cut me to ribbons. I'd be all right if I could keep him cautious, respectful, until I could find out what I had to about Sally and then look at the next address and give Angel Martell back his body....

The next address!

But the list wasn't here! How could the list be in my boxer shorts? The bathrobe? I wondered. I turned around to look at my corner.

Something clobbered my head and the next thing I knew I was on my face on the canvas. There was a sound of thudding feet and a roar and then someone began to count. At five I got up to one knee. Magoon was in one corner, a neutral corner, banging his gloves together eagerly.

"Seven, eight...."

I got up. The crowd was very quiet. They sensed the kill now and were waiting for it. The referee rubbed my resin-powdered gloves against his shirt-front, then Magoon came tearing across the ring toward me. I backed into my own corner, then sidestepped desperately as Magoon came at me. He went by and whirled and we clinched and I saw my manager's face down there behind him and I opened my mouth to say, "Where's my bathrobe? See what you can find in the pockets, for gosh sakes!" But it came out all mumbled. I'd forgotten I was wearing the big, clumsy mouthpiece to protect my teeth.

Magoon swung at me. Somehow I eluded that blow. Maybe it was a reflex action on the part of Angel Martell's trained body. Magoon swung again. I walked into a clinch and he pounded my back and kidneys before the referee broke us apart. Magoon gave me a peculiar look then. I didn't understand the look. But I would soon.

He hit me in the chest. It wasn't much of a blow, and I countered with a flurry of lefts and rights. Magoon retreated. This surprised the hell out of me. I hooked my left and crossed my right and Magoon's knees wobbled. I hit him again and he bounced against the ropes. He came off them with a look of hate and rage in his eyes. He swung wildly three times with his right. The third one caught me flush in the mouth and I fell down, sprawling toward my own corner. I spit out the damn mouthpiece. The referee began to count.

"My robe!" I hollered to the manager. "Look in the pockets."

"You bum," he said.

"Huh?"

"You bum."

"Six, seven, eight, nine...."

I got to my feet. The bell rang before me and Magoon could get together again. I went to my corner. Suddenly behind my manager I saw Sally's worried face.

"You all right, honey?" she asked as I sat down. Someone squeezed a sponge of ice-cold water over my head. It made me shiver. Something was passed under my nose with a strong smell. I gagged.

"You rat," said the manager. "You want to get us all killed?"

"What the devil's eating you?" I asked. I was taking the punishment out there, not him.

"Ha, ha, ha," he said.

"No. Tell me."

"Tell you. You know damn well you was supposed to go into the tank, to take a dive in the very first round. We got paid for it. We're gonna get paid a different way now, boy."

"Are you all right?" Sally asked.

"Mrs. Xlptl," I said in a low voice. I never thought it would be Sally.

But she whimpered: "Oh, you found me! You found me...." She sounded at once excited and disappointed.

"I'm not your husband," I said. "But I'm taking you back to him."

"I don't want to go back."

"Think about it. You ought to go back. He wants you back."

"What are you two talking about?" the manager shouted.

"I don't know what to say," Mrs. Xlptl told me.

"It's happened before, hasn't it? But you always went back."

"That's true. I—I—well, I guess you're right."

Just then the warning whistle sounded. I looked across the ring at Magoon. The manager said: "At least dive in this round, you louse. Maybe they'll only let us off with a warning."

I didn't say anything. A fixed fight, I thought. I felt pretty good now, as if the tricks learned by Martell had gone into the storehouse of his muscular knowledge, along with walking and running and talking and how to hold a spoon, and were coming out now for my own use.

"Don't forget," the manager pleaded. "You promised before the fight. Gee, this wouldn't be the first one you dumped for money."

Martell, I thought. You're some athlete. Suddenly I didn't like the body I was occupying. But I liked the man across the ring even less.

It was a fast and furious round. Magoon came out swinging from the bell. I felt my legs go wobbly. I was driven back into the ropes. I took a lot of punishment around the head and upper body. Then Magoon shifted his attack to the waist. I came in over it with a flurry of my own at his face. He backed up. I followed him. He caught me with a looping right coming in and I went down to one knee. I rested there, taking a count of nine. I felt almost like a pro now. And if this Magoon had an unblemished record, I found myself thinking quite calmly, it was because other guys had gone into the tank for him. Oh, he was competent enough, but he wasn't another Marciano. Or even close.

I got up at nine. Magoon thought he had me. He came in with his hands low, ready to bring them up from his belt and finish me. The crowd was silent, waiting. I blocked a vicious right cross with my left glove. I swung my own right and it hit Magoon below the ear. I hooked my left at his other cheek. I brought the left down low, striking just under Magoon's heart. He spit his mouthpiece out. I hooked my left again and crossed my right. He swung back at me feebly. The crowd was roaring. I brought my right uppercutting at his jaw. His feet left the canvas and his whole body sank down on it, not falling, but slowly as if it were being lowered on strings.

He was counted out. The crowd screamed. The tired-looking manager held up my hand. He said nothing. We went back to the dressing room through throngs of well-wishers. They let little Sally come with us.

The door of the dressing room closed behind us. Two grim-looking characters were in there. They jerked their thumbs toward the door as if they were a team. The manager gulped and got out. I looked at Sally. Sally looked at me.

"You crossed us, Angel," one of the men said.

Martell had crossed them, all right. I could get out of this and leave Martell to take his medicine. But they'd beat him to a pulp before he knew what was happening. He was a rat, I thought, and he deserved what he got, but the least I could do was give him a little head start. Then he could take it from there.

They came at me with blackjacks. Sally screamed. I brought up my forearm and one of the blackjacks blurred down toward it. My arm went numb. There was no pain. It just went suddenly dead.

The second blackjack numbed my other arm. They were very good at it, all right. They knew where to strike. I was a boxer without any arms to use....

A blackjack came down. I bobbed out of the way. The other guy was behind me, raising his own blackjack. The first one hit him accidentally, crushing his shoulder. He screamed. I butted my head at the guy in front of me. It took the wind out of him. As he slumped I leaned over him and brought up my knee and it made a loud clicking sound as it struck his jaw and drove his teeth together. He fell down and he lay there.

The second guy was better now. He came at me with the blackjack. I backed off toward the rubdown table. My arms were beginning to tingle. I thought I might be able to use them if I had to. I leaned back on the rubdown table getting set to meet the blow. He lunged at me and I brought up my foot, smashing it against his chest. He staggered back. Sally stood to one side, her face white, her hand at her throat.

I followed the guy with the blackjack. He swung at me. He looked scared now. I ducked inside the blow and brought up my tingling right fist in a short, chopping blow. It threw his head back. He turned with a little whimper and got the hell out of there. His friend was still unconscious.

"Well, Mrs. Xlptl," I said, "shall we go?"

"I—I guess so. You were so strong! Even stronger than the real Martell. You were wonderful, really you were." She was small but very pretty. She had a funny look in her eyes. "That's what I like about Earthmen," she said. "They're so strong. They're so virile...."

She took my hand. We concentrated on getting out of there.

When I saw Mrs. Xlptl again, she wasn't little Sally. She was a shoulderless almost-human, penguin-like creature from somewhere. "So strong, so virile ..." she said again. That look was in her new eyes.

It was a living room. I wished to hell Xlptl would come. I didn't like that look. I knew what she wanted. I wasn't buying now. I'd had enough for one day with almost scrubbing beautiful backs and watching strippers perform and almost getting clobbered and then having Mrs. Xlptl look at me that way, her eyes saying she wanted one final fling on Earth, in the person of a private eye named Brody.

And she wasn't going to give up easily. She moved toward me, then stopped and looked down at herself. "It wouldn't be much fun with this—me—" She made a hopeless gesture.

I wanted to be polite. "But it was fun while it lasted."

"Yes. Maybe there's some way we could do it again—just once more before I go back—"

Her offer was tempting. I had to admit that. But things were different now. What was over was over and she had to understand. "No—no," I said. "You'll be happy back where you belong."

Her eyes flashed anger. "I belong here! With you! We can do it again!"

"Xlptl!" I called. "Hey, Xl—"

He came in. He went over to his wife. She sighed, looking disappointed.

"You're going back now?" I asked Xlptl as he paid me.

"Yes. And I have a souvenir."

I went outside. In the hall were two valises and something else. Xlptl had the right idea. He'd be able to keep his wife happy at home henceforth.

The something else was a set of barbells.

THE END