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| The Dreamers by Lu Kella |
The Dreamers
By LU KELLA
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories Winter 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bathed in moonlight pouring between scudding black clouds is a toasty brown bun that is only twenty-five feet, six inches long, eight feet, three inches high and ten feet, four inches thick. Stretched invitingly in the bun is the pièce of resistance—the dog—and not the tasteless mongrel type, but the juicy Great Dane breed. There's also blue electric signs that say:
FRANKIE'S FRANKIE
Link One
A roadside diner that takes the eye, eh? Now come in and give the eye to the guy who dreamed it up. Light brown hair parted neatly on the side. Slightly unstraight nose. Round pink face usually having a grin that's geared to friendly brown eyes.
Okay, so you'd rather look at what's wearing the white sandals, yellow blouse and a green skirt that don't hide too much of tanned legs. Don't forget there's also sunny hair that sweeps up from small ears and turns to curls on which sets a sassy white thingamajig that reads: FRANKIE'S FRANKIE, Link One.
Also take a gander at them lake-cool blue eyes, the set of that nose and those red lips. No, buster, you aren't the only guy wonders just who's boss of who and what, especially when she takes that thingamajig off her head at the end of her shift and says, "Frankie, honey, did you latch the counter window?"
He knows the sweet-talk covers a bitter pill. "Sure," he says, shucking off his white jacket, which also has FRANKIE'S FRANKIE, Link One, on it, and reaches for his old Air Force jacket. "Well, Mary—"
"Well, you'd better make sure." She's looking into her compact and touching her hair here and there. "The other night you forgot and in walked some old crows."
"Owls." So Frankie looks at the counter window. And clears his throat to cover up the sound of turning a latch lever. "It's locked."
"It wasn't." She's applying lipstick just-so now.
"So I've lost my mind." He looks hopefully at who he's lost more than his mind to. "So how's about us taking in Vera Verina in "Love Me" at the Rivoli?"
She even lets him help her with her coat before telling him. "Jake's picking me up."
"That back-stabbing pop peddler again!"
"Jake doesn't talk that way about you."
"Oh, no."
"Jake's always telling me how he's afraid you won't get enough sleep every night to be on the job all day so you'll make good here."
"Ha, ha. I'm laughing."
"Oh, is that what that is?"
Frankie struggles manfully for the dignity befitting an employer and capitalist. But there's a swish of tires on gravel and headlights flash through the window. A customer, perchance?
Oh-lee, oh-lay, too-loo! A so-called musical horn tootles.
And by the interior brightness of Link One fanning into the night Frankie watches his employee skip into the long convertible and park herself beside the character at the wheel.
"Be seeing you with a load of pop, pappy!" And the District General Manager of National Carbonated Beverages, Inc., guns his buggy around, rear wheels spraying gravel at Frankie and Link One.
"Dames!" Frankie says. "Bah."
The night has no answer for that, so Frankie climbs into his roadster behind Link One. He steps on the starter. Things whimper under the hood and finally the motor churns like it's got asthma. Also now, different sections of the car begin sounding like somebody's shaking a string of tin cans. Yeah, the buggy's ready to go, but where's there to go now? Frankie shuts the thing off.
In the grateful silence of the night Frankie eases himself off the sharp spring that keeps poking him through the seat. He also turns a knob. There's a whining, a mess of sputtering, and from under the dashboard there's music and words. Maybe it sounds different where it begins at but the whole thing arrives here like it's being run through a loose drain pipe.
Well, when a guy's sunk every dollar he can beg, borrow and legally lay hands on into his business here, what can he expect—Vaughn Monroe in person? But at least the music's company. So Frankie sits with his head parked back on the seat. That Mary Mulvaney, he thinks. Well, there'll come a day, Miss Mulvaney!
This is only FRANKIE'S FRANKIE, Link One. Soon as this one gets going good there'll be Link Two. Then Link Three. Then Four and Five. FRANKIE'S FRANKIEs—linking the country from border to border and coast to coast. Harvey did it. Johnson did it. Stanalovski can do it.
And Stanalovski won't be living in no two-by-four hole in the behind of Link One, either. I'll build a house—say seven, eight, maybe couple dozen rooms—plenty space for flowers and kids to grow good. And I'll have buggies fancier than any Jake Winer ever seen. Airplanes and yachts too. And will I go fancy-panting? Hollywood. South America—that Brazil place. France. All them places. Hobnobbing with all the other Big Shots and Fancy Janes.
Ain't this America? Where a guy can start from the bottom and hit the top?
So what? So Mary Mulvaney can't see nothing but some curly-head pop peddler with a dinky fringe under his beak.
"Know just how you feel, Frankie." Some old guy's voice—coming out the radio? "I mean you, Frankie Stanalovski."
Frankie blinks.
The old guy's voice has a kind of smile to it. "Don't think this is on the square, eh?"
"Okay, wise guy—what's the gag?"
"No gag."
"Oh, no? Then who're you and where you at?"
"Name doesn't really matter. But I can tell you where I am."
"Okay, where?"
"On the moon."
"Now listen here, bud. Can't nobody live on no moon. I read all about it in a Sunday paper once. Ain't no air up there. Besides, the sun bangs down fit to fry a horse to a cinder."
"Climate doesn't bother me."
"Aw, we're both nuts."
"Just look at the right-hand eyebrow, Frankie, of what most people call the man in the moon."
"Now I ask you—how can nobody with a naked eye see nobody that far away?" But having nothing to lose, Frankie takes a squint.
And just like that, he's on top a mountain with some old guy who's got long white hair and whiskers and twinkly blue eyes. The guy's got an old chair with a cushion tied to the seat and back of it and just sits rocking away, comfortable as you please.
"Well, hey," Frankie says. "From the earth the moon always looks like a big fat cheese. But now that I'm up here on the thing, it really is all deserts and steep mountains of almost every color under the sun. Maybe there ain't no air. Maybe the sunlight's hot enough to fry a horse. Maybe. But I sure don't feel no bum effects, either—yet.
"And another thing. I always suspected a guy on this here moon'd be gaping down at the earth. But here I'm gandering up. It's looney, all right, but I can see everything there—oceans and continents, towns and rivers and roads—the whole shebang." And Frankie feels a puff of pride too. "Link One shows up pretty good from here too."
The old man rocks away, his chair creaking a little tune. "Can also see inside the Rainbow Gardens near your town there."
"Yeah?" Sighting on that fun place, Frankie can see inside, sure enough. Not many couples, just one that interests Frankie.
"Looks like Mary enjoys dancing with Jake," the old man says.
"Huh." Frankie watches them prancing around the juke box.
"Yep, Frankie," the old man says, "that's quite a specimen of girl."
"Unh," he grunts.
But now Mary and Jake sit at a table in one corner—and that pop peddler's shoving a diamond ring on Mary's finger!
"Dames." Frankie shuts his eyes and feels sort of sick. "Blah."
"Nice girls in Hollywood, Frankie," the old man says.
"Huh." But Frankie ganders out that way. "Hey—how come we can't see into these Hollywood joints when we could gander into Rainbow Gardens?"
"Have to be discreet about this, Frankie. Can't poke into anyplace unless it's fitting for us to."
"Yeah? Well, how's about seeing what Vera Verina's doing now?"
"Take a look into Ciro's, Frankie."
Frankie does and just like that, he's decked out in a dress suit and parked at a table in that fancy beanery. And who's with him? Only who's ballyhooed from border to border and ocean to sea as The Every American Girl.
Yeah, Vera Verina's voice is like her eyes—deep and warm. "I'm so glad you brought me here tonight, Frankie."
Frankie don't remember nothing about that part of it. But he's mannerly. "Oh, it ain't nothing."
Nothing? Vera's wearing her pale blonde hair long. Her face is everything the close-ups at the Rivoli say it is. And her figure in that dress she's wearing—Frankie knows if he sits here doing nothing but look another minute he'll bust a gasket.
So he says, "Maybe we should dance, hey?"
"Anything you want, Frankie."
So they dance. But Vera's perfume, the way she holds Frankie so close to her, the way she looks into his eyes—
"Oh, brother," Frankie whispers to himself.
"I," Vera whispers in his ear, "think we've danced enough, don't you?"
"Yeah," Frankie says and runs a finger between his collar and neck. What it's safest to do next he don't know.
But Vera tucks her hand under his arm like she owns him now. "Take me home, Frankie."
"Yeah." Ain't a guy supposed to take a dame home after having her out? "Sure," Frankie says and finds his way out of the place and into a hack that's waiting.
Vera's hand finds his and don't let go. "What are you thinking, Frankie?"
Thoughts are flapping through Frankie's mind like the colored lights zipping past the hack windows. What's he thinking?
"This is it, Mac," the hack driver's voice says like gravel rolling.
And Frankie don't have to tell what he's thinking—yet. But he ain't out of this deal by a long shot.
With a wink, the hackie swooshes away in the night and Frankie's left alone with Vera's fingers feeling like live electric wires on his arm and her saying soft at him, "A night to remember, Frankie."
"Yeah." Frankie's feet take him up to Vera's door. It's kind of shadowy there and perfumy.
Vera stands looking at him with a little smile. "Hello, Frankie."
"Hello?" Then somebody seems to give Frankie a darn good push.
Well, Vera's kissing him like at the Rivoli. Only it ain't like at the Rivoli. It's like a hot-foot starting at Frankie's toes and gaining speed as it goes up. Arriving at his poor brain, it just knocks the top of his head out.
"Well, Frankie," the old man's voice says, "how was that?"
Frankie opens his eyes. Yeah, he's back on the moon, no fancy dress suit, just old slacks and jacket again.
Frankie considers the old man's question. "Oh, I guess Vera's okay—for some guys."
"She's supposed to represent every American girl, Frankie."
"American dames." Frankie thinks of a certain one employed by him. "Huh."
"Hmmmm." The old man rocks a bit and squints over the earth. Part of Europe's coming around now. The old man nods in the direction of the Mediterranean. "There on the Riviera."
"So what?"
"So on the beach near Cannes. Mimi in the polka-dot suit."
"Well, now—" Just like that, he's parked there on the sand with the sun warm on his pale back.
Well Mimi has dark hair fluffing about tan shoulders on one end and little red-nailed toes on the other end, and all the scenery in between's the kind that's been in favor since Eve fixed Adam. Yeah, Vera Verina made Frankie's bashful heart turn somersaults, but Mimi is making it stand on its head and spin around on one ear.
Then Mimi jumps up and in a tickling voice says something which, with a roll of big blue eyes, ends in, "Frankee!"
It sure sounds interesting. So Frankie jumps up too. But with a laughing squeal that ends in that, "Frankee!" again, Mimi runs and dives head on into a big breaker.
"Oh, I can't eh?" Frankie says and splashes himself in the sea after her.
Mimi comes up. Frankie comes up for air. Mimi dives. Frankie hauls in air and dives. Mimi turns this way and that like a fish. But not for nothing was Frankie on the third-string swim team at Centervale High. Down through the cold green deep he goes and finally grabs one of them kicking ankles.
But he ain't particularly planned on what happens right after that. Mimi twists over, to try to escape—maybe. So Frankie grabs for a better hold. Maybe he don't get one but Mimi does. Her arms clamp around his neck, and when her lips also latch hold of his there in the deep—
Well, the guy just feels like a boiler with its safety valve jammed so that the pressure shoots up to where only one thing can happen. Bam! And Frankie's spinning away through blue-green steam and a shower of colored lights.
"Well?" the old man's asking.
Yeah, just like that, Frankie's back on the moon, in his old slacks and jacket, dry as you please beside the old man's chair.
"Oh, Mimi's some dame," Frankie admits. "Only...."
"Only what now?"
"Only who knows what she's really saying with that, 'Frankee!' business?"
"Hmmmm." The old man rocks to and fro and takes a squint down South America way. "Brazil, Frankie. Rio."
Always having had an eye for Carmen Miranda, Frankie looks too. "Yeah, pop?"
"The Copa Club. Señorita in the white dress."
Frankie whistles.
"Chi-Chi is her name." The old man smiles slightly. "And she knows English—among other things."
Frankie takes it from there.
Or rather Chi-Chi takes Frankie from there. "Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Let's samba!"
"Sure, why not?"
Now, the orchestra's hammering its drums and rattling its dried punkins. Its guitars and marimbas are hi-tailing along too. This South American music always did make Frankie's blood get up and go. Also, he's swinging out with this Chi-Chi. And this Chi-Chi dame's got everything Carmen Miranda has on top of everything good Vera Verina and Mimi has.
Now the samba as she is did down in Rio is, as Frankie's finding out, a combination of a speedboat ride through a tunnel of love, wrestling on a roller coaster and riding a runaway merry-go-round. Frankie's breathing hard but determined to stay the limit, though. He lopes around and spins Chi-Chi and she lopes around and whirls him. She kisses him as she flies in and she smooches him again as she yanks him back.
"Aye-yi-yi!" she says. "Frankie-Frankie! Forever with you I can samba like this!"
Forever, she says. Frankie-Frankie's feet are smoking. His ears are bonging like bells to the tune the whole place has picked up from Chi-Chi. "Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Aye-yi-yi!"
And still this samba of the sambas goes faster and faster and on and on and everybody else seems to become fresher and fresher as Frankie's legs become rubberier and rubberier and his breathing turns to something that sounds like air sizzing out of a tire going flat.
"Aye-yi-yi! Frankie-Frankie! Aye-yi-yi!"
Aye-yi-yi. Frankie just quietly finds the floor and lets the fog roll over him.
"Well, Frankie?"
Spread like a rug on the rock beside the old chair, Frankie just fans himself with the tail of the old man's robe. The old man sighs.
Frankie feels mighty low too. "Guess there just ain't no dame on earth for me, pop."
The old man rocks slowly to and fro. He sighs again and peers off in another direction, way off at a bright red star. "That garden over there, Frankie. Just a bit below Mars' north pole."
Frankie finds that looking to Mars ain't no harder than looking to earth. "Yeah, pop?"
"Sitting under that tree. Name's Nita."
Well, Nita's got sort of golden hair that she wears in a strange way. She's got a face like a princess and eyes like mysterious green pools. From the ears down she's wearing soft, blonde, feathery fur that she grows herself, looks like. Oh, she's also wearing a few pieces of fancy gear here and there.
And as Frankie parks beside her on the mossy slope her voice reminds him of a slowly strummed harp. "Have a loo-loo, Frankie," she urged.
She reaches up to a tree that makes Frankie think of an overgrowed yellow skeleton of an old umbrella strung with red and green Christmas-tree balls.
.jpg "The Dreamers by Lu Kella")
The thing smells something like a cross between a cantaloupe and a peach. So Frankie takes a bite. What it really tastes like, Frankie don't know; he's never eat such a thing before. So naturally one bite don't give no score.
Meanwhile, Nita's breath is like perfume on his cheek as she pokes her fingers through his hair to see has he more than just the two eyes in the front of his face—she herself having a spare parked in the back of her fancy dome. As usual, though, Frankie's rigged out according to the style of the company he's with. Maybe Nita feels comfortable in that get-up of hers. But Frankie wishes he was wearing more than just a fancy skirt-like rig around the axles. After all, it's a bit chilly here on Mars and he ain't growed no fur suit on himself to keep the goosebumps from running around.
Nita rubs her cheek against his. "Frankie with only two eyes like Nita with three eyes?"
"Yeah." Frankie smothers a small burp. "Sure."
"Nita with three eyes like Frankie with only two eyes." She snuggles closer to him. "Very much, Nita with three eyes like Frankie with only two eyes."
"Yeah." Frankie with only two eyes feels sort of queer. "Yeah, that's all right." He also decides he better not eat the rest of this loo-loo thing.
"Frankie with only two eyes want to kiss Nita with three eyes? Hmmmmm?"
"Uh—urp." The guy's took a boat ride once and wasn't a very good sailor then. So he sort of knows now.
"Frankie with only two eyes—you are turning green as a loo-loo." Nita stares at his puss with all her eyes. "What on Mars is the matter with you?"
"I—urp." He stands up fast.
"Frankie with only two eyes! Come back to Nita with three eyes!"
Frankie with he don't care how many eyes nobody has only gallops on up the slope and over the hill.
In time Frankie finds himself back on the moon and laid out beside the old man's chair.
"Well, Frankie?"
"Nita ain't so bad, spare peeper and all—I guess." Frankie rests a hand gently where his stomach is. "But them loo-loos." Frankie closes his two eyes. "Pop—ain't nobody on earth built to handle them things."
The old man sighs.
Frankie tries to keep his voice from shaking. "Pop—there just ain't no other dame like Mary no place in Creation."
The chair squeaks softly as the old guy just rocks away.
Frankie puts his hands over his own puss. "She's gone and I just don't know what to do or nothing."
The old man says quiet like, "Got a pretty good thing in Link One. Can dig in and work it up into a string, Frankie."
Frankie, though, feels like a starved pup lost a million miles from home. "But the house with all the rooms and flowers and kids and ... aw, nuts." He ain't bawled since a kid. But he makes up for it now. His tears come squirting up through his fingers over his map like small spouters from a leaky garden hose and fall back down on him.
The old man pats him on the shoulder. "Oh, Frankie, Frankie."
But Frankie's tears are sopping himself from head to foot now.
And the old man's voice changes. "Frankie, can't you hear me?" Also Frankie's being shook fit to rattle his brain loose.
Frankie blinks, not only because that ain't the old man's voice and somebody's shining a light in his pan, but also because water's banging down on him by the wash-tub full. And when he does see who's yammering, "Frankie what's the matter with you!" at him, he mumbles dizzily, "It's you?"
"Yes it's me—you brainless infant!" Her raincape's streaming with water in the reflection of the flashlight she's waving around. "And what's the idea sleeping out here in your jalopy in the rain!"
"I was not sleeping in no rain."
"Oh shut up and come on!" And she yanks him out of the soggy seat.
Frankie feels like a bad kid being led home by his mamma. "Well, gee whiz—"
"Give me the keys!"
"Keys?"
"Never mind you went off and left them in the lock again!" So she opens the door, snaps on the light and hauls him into the dry inside of Link One. Tossing off her cape and coat, she turns on him with blue eyes snapping. "Now start taking those clothes off!"
"Yes, ma'am." Frankie peels off his jacket and stands watching her light the grill to warm the place up.
She looks up. "I said take off your clothes!"
"But—"
"Oh, sit down!"
Frankie sits and says with what dignity he has left, "Miss Mulvaney, this ain't no way for no employer and employee to act—"
She yanks off his squishy shoes and soggy sox and says, "Stand up!"
Frankie stands. "Especially when the employee of us is going to marry a pop peddler with a—"
"Take off those pants!"
"Miss Mulvan—"
"And put on my coat!" She hands it to him and turns her lovely back.
"But, Miss Mul—"
She whirls with blue eyes flashing sparks and wonderful mouth still going ninety miles a second. "I am not marrying any two-timing, double-crossing, three-faced jackass—and if you don't get those old wet pants off I'll take them off myself, and do you want to die of pneumonia or something?" She whirls and stands with her back to him again.
Frankie just blinks like he's been slapped in the map with a fresh fish. "Hey—you ain't marrying Jake?"
"Are you getting out of those wet clothes and into my coat or not!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"All right, then." Her voice is kind of trembly for just a second. "I had a dream last night or this night or something."
"Hah. You had a dream."
"Shut up and listen. I dreamed you fell asleep in your car out here and went to see an old man on the moon and the old man showed you Vera Verina and a French Mimi and a South American Chi-Chi and even a Nita on Mars and you went to see them and got kissed and fed up and couldn't stand any of them near as much as me and so you began crying all over the moon and you'd never try to be anything without me and that's when I jumped out of bed and took my sister Cissie's car and ran out here and dragged you in out of the rain and have you got my coat on yet?"
Her coat buttoned like a long skirt around himself, Frankie gapes at her back. "You mean you seen all that?"
"Oh, it was only a dream and dreams aren't real are they and you'd never in a million years have gumption enough to do anything like all that but—" and she turns, sees the look on him, and she's like she's going to explode into crying.
Well, that's when Frankie finally gets gumption enough to do what he's always wanted to do—wrap her in his arms and show her what he means.
But that mouth of her's going lickety-split again. "Oh Frankie you're not a hopeless dope after all and we'll build the FRANKIEs into a chain with Links everyplace and have a house with flowers and kids and every—uhp-mmmmm? Mmmmmmmm."
Now you explain it. The guy's had some kind of experience kissing and being necked by the most high-charged dames on earth and Mars. But this—no, this don't blow nobody's head out or scatter nobody all over the place. This is comfortable. Like resting in a garden with the sun warm and the air cool and the flowers sweet—and good dogs sizzling on the grill.
Lu Kella @ Amazon
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