Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

We then began discussing my penchant for midgets, and he said I should have been down there in June when the circus had pitched its tents on the fairgrounds. He said there must’ve been six or seven good-looking midgets in town, wouldn’t have minded getting hold of one of them himself, he said, though his tastes usually ran to larger women.

I asked him if he had happened to notice a redheaded midget, a girl of about twenty-two, and he said there might have been a redheaded midget but he couldn’t say for sure because in addition to his one arm being missing, he was also color blind. (Though he had read in a magazine that many women found it sexually stimulating to go to bed with men who were color blind.) I told him that this particular midget would have had the initials L.E., and he asked me if I mightn’t be thinking about Ellie Carpenter, who was a midget who’d been there with the circus in June, and who used to come over to the hotel every now and then to turn tricks, since what she doubled as in her spare time away from the sideshow was a hooker. She’d been around for two weeks, while the circus was there, and then she’d left when the circus had.

On the plane back to New York, I pondered what he had told me. Was it possible that Ellie Carpenter, a redheaded midget passing through Oaken Bow with the circus in June, had read my letter in your June issue, and had answered it while in Oaken Bow (hence the address) and had asked that it be signed with the homophonic initials L.E. — for Ellie? In November, telling my wife that a furniture store in Sarasota had gone up in smoke, I flew down to the winter quarters of the circus in a further attempt to locate Ellie Carpenter. The man I spoke to had been with the circus for the better part of his life, and he told me that the only redheaded midget they’d employed in recent years was a woman named Else Kopchek, who was twenty-two years old, and Polish, and from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. But she had left the circus immediately after the season, mentioning in parting that there was bigger money to be made elsewhere. She had not even remotely hinted where “elsewhere” might be.

It now seemed entirely possible to me that Else Kopchek might indeed have called herself Ellie Carpenter while turning tricks at the Oaken Bow Hotel, and it seemed further likely that she had not gone back to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it being common knowledge that nobody goes back to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (I certainly hope this casual remark does not unleash another cageful of beastly letters, if you’ll pardon the metaphor. My first letter has caused me problems enough.) The very thought of reliving that thrilling youthful experience with a new and different partner — but oh so similar in size and coloration — was enough to send me to Philadelphia the very next weekend, hoping against hope that soon I might disrobe an elfin Ellie, discard her dainty delicate underthings, pat her seemingly pubescent peaks, probe her pithy pussy, manipulate her miniature mons veneris and Lilliputian labiae, caress her compact clitoris and crisp pauciloquent pubic — please, an elderly man should not carry on so in a public forum.

Suffice it to say, I went to Philadelphia.

I found a man there named Karl Kopchek who told me his daughter was indeed a redheaded, twenty-two year old midget named Else Kopchek. Karl was six-feet three-inches tall and had black hair. He told me he had last seen his daughter when she’d come home for Christmas. At the time, she said she was doing social work in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but he had not heard from her since, and did not know where she was or what she was doing now.

And neither do I.

And that’s why I’m writing to you once again.

Is Ellie Carpenter (nee Else Kopchek) indeed the L.E. who extended her kind invitation to me in the pages of your magazine? If she is, I will of course continue the search for her as long as I have breath, and I will find her one day, I know I will, and then, beware you lovers of yore! We shall scale Parnassian heights, we two, and shatter legends and myths! But, sirs, is she my L.E.? Only you can say, for only you have her original letter, written from Oaken Bow last June but presumably carrying a name and address (in capitals, please) as asked for at the very top of your “Letters” column. I implore you now for your educated advice. Should I now curtail my quest for this carmine-curled, concise, and curvaceous munchkin whom I believe to be the L.E. who first wrote to you? In short, is my minor marvel a myth, or a midget worth pursuing? Tell me, sirs. Is Else Kopchek the L.E. who wrote to you last June? Consult your files, I beg of you, and send me your response in the enclosed stamped, self-addressed envelope. I shall be eternally grateful for your speedy reply.

Name and address withheld.

The paid previews had begun on the day before Easter.

I spent Easter Sunday with my family in the country, and then packed a bag on Monday afternoon and left for an apartment on West Tenth Street in the Village, graciously loaned to me by two friends who were spending Easter week in Chicago. The apartment was small and comfortable, with one bedroom, a tiny kitchen overlooking an enclosed back yard, and a living room with a real wood-burning fireplace. In the bedroom fronting on Tenth, there was a large double bed with brass headboard and footboard, covered with an opulent red brocade bedspread. A reading lamp hung over the bed on the wall, a radio-alarm clock was on the bedstand beside it, and a note from Dotty was pinned to one of the pillows:

Dear Gene:

The sheets were changed yesterday, there is fresh linen if you need it in the closet near the kitchen. Help yourself to anything in the fridge or the bar, use Mike’s spare razor if you want to, and also my typewriter which is on the desk in the bedroom near the windows. Paper is in second drawer left, erasers, etc. The cleaning woman name of Eudice out of South Carolina comes on Thursday, I’ve already explained you’ll be using the apartment. Have yourself lots and lots of lovely previews, we will be back in time for the opening.

Love,

I read the note and settled in. Actually, there wasn’t very much settling to do since I’d packed only one bag with a half-dozen clean shirts, a sweater, socks, a pair of pajamas, a toothbrush and my own electric razor. I felt strange in an apartment in New York City. Natalie and I had moved to the country shortly before our first child was born. Peter was ten when the play went into rehearsal, which meant that we had been living in the old gray-shingled Cape Cod for close to eleven years. The house had a widow’s walk, and once — while we were still negotiating for rights to the play, and I stayed late in the city over too many martinis — Natalie stood waiting for me on the narrow platform running around the second story of the house, her hands clasped in the classic pose of the seafarer’s wife, back straight, head erect, silhouetted against the dying sun.

I missed her that first night alone in the city. The automobile sounds below seemed incessant. At three a.m., I heard a girl laughing and thought for an insane moment that Natalie was with me in the bedroom. I got out of bed and walked to the window. The girl was wearing a green dress. She was blond, and she was leaning against her escort, helpless with laughter, one hand draped languidly on his shoulder. I went back to bed, and at last I fell asleep. The radio-alarm went off at nine the next morning. Rehearsal was scheduled to start at ten.

By noon, I knew what had to be done.

I suppose I should explain that a strange sort of self-hypnosis gradually overcomes the people working on a play. The writing of a play is a solitary task, but once it has been optioned for production it becomes of necessity a group effort. I used to think that the only pure production of a play was the one the author saw on the stage of his mind while he was writing it. There was no human error then, no actor who might nullify a character through inadequacy or misinterpretation, no director who might call for an emotion never intended, no designer who might visualize a setting contrary to the one the author imagined. There was, instead, a marvelously unique creation, a newborn child who miraculously was not the result of any collaboration, who (as ugly as he may have been) seemed radiantly beautiful to his only parent. I used to think that a play was not only being written while it was in the typewriter, it was being staged and performed and cheered by capacity audiences as well.