Fantasy fiction; Science fiction; Spouses -- Fiction; Subconsciousness -- Fiction
"Oh, I don't know, lady," said a rather dapper but vague-looking
gentleman. "You know how statues are. They're always standing around
without any clothes on and leering at each other. In that statue's
crowd this sort of thing is just child's play."
"What kind of children play like that?" the woman snapped.
"What kind of children? Do I look like the kind of a man who goes
around prying into the affairs of children?" He drew himself up. "Lady,
are you trying to trap me into an argument about children?"
In the meantime the manager had turned his efforts from the outraged
crowd to the entangled couple clinging to the statue.
"Come down from there!" he bawled, "Come down this instant!"
Almost as though at his command, the struggle on the statue came to an
abrupt end. Marc, with a cry of warning, suddenly lost his grip and
lurched to one side. Toffee tightened her hold on his neck and clung
fast. In the next instant, entirely under the pull of Toffee's weight,
they plunged together downward and into the pool below. There was a
murmur from the crowd. Then there was a brief scream from the manager
as, in jumping to avoid the splash, he lost his footing and joined the
pair in the water.
The crowd watched tensely as the three heads disappeared beneath the
surface of the pool, then soggily reappeared. A murmur of comment rose
throughout the room, then suddenly silenced with a gasp.
One of the heads was not behaving at all as it should; it not only
reappeared, but continued to move higher and higher into the air,
dragging its lank and dripping body after it.
Slowly, Marc rose entirely out of the pool, hovered for a moment, and
then came to rest, his feet resting lightly and exactly on the surface
of the water. The soaking he had just received had provided him with
enough extra poundage that his buoyancy had been somewhat tempered but
not entirely destroyed. A smothered cry of dismay echoed around him
as he stood blandly on the surface of the pool, then leaned forward to
knock the water out of his ears.
The other two heads swiveled about to regard him with contrasting
degrees of interest. For a moment the manager stared at Marc, then
slowly sank out of sight again beneath the green obscurity of a lily
pad.
Toffee turned graciously to the sea of gaping faces around her.
"Give me a hand someone," she said.
"Not me, lady," a man near the edge said. "With the company you keep, I
wouldn't give you so much as a clipping off my fingernail."
Toffee glanced around for a volunteer, then suddenly dived down to join
the manager beneath the lily pad.
Help was on its way at last and it wore a dark blue uniform. For the
first time since its erection the lofty ceiling of the Wynant echoed
back the firm and hurried tread of flat feet.
Across the room Mrs. Arbuthner-Wright wheeled her chair back into the
elevator and smilingly plucked at the operator's sleeve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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