Stephen Marlowe

“ 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?" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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.... ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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." ”