The Devil Met a Lady Read Online Free Page A

and painful experience that the only way to deal with Mrs. Plaut was to hear her out and, if at all possible, obey. Any other path led to a labyrinth of confusion, apology, and failure. Occasionally, and to my deep regret, I sometimes forgot this simple truth.
    “It’s me, Mrs. Plaut.”
    “It is you,” she shouted.
    “It is.”
    “Good. It is necessary for you to stop at Ralph’s Market,” she said. “Please get your pencil.”
    I put Dash back down on the desk, pulled the notebook out of my rear pocket, and found a pencil on the desk.
    “Ready,” I said.
    “Are you prepared?”
    “I am prepared.”
    Though she was nearly deaf, Mrs. Plaut heard reasonably well on the telephone. The problem was that she assumed others couldn’t hear unless she helped the sound along the wires by shouting. I wrote dutifully as she made her way carefully through the list.
    “A big box of Climalene. Two Waldorf toilet tissues. Pay no more than a nickel for each. A jar of Musterole. A box of French’s Birdseed, for Dexter. The kind Virginia Bruce gives her canary. A box of Aunt Jemima Ready-Mix Pancakes. An Arrid Cream Deodorant. The thirty-nine-cent jar, not the ten-cent or the fifty-nine-cent one. One pound of Durkee’s Vegetable Oleomargarine. A jar of Spry. Four cans of Prem. That’s Prem, not Spam. Last time you brought Spam. Spam is not sugar-cured.”
    “I understand.”
    “And a Silvercup bread. And a milk. And, Mr. Peelers, I must remind you that U.S. Government wartime milk regulations go into effect today,” she said.
    “Yes,” I said neutrally.
    “There will be a three-cent deposit on the store bottle. The radio says that half a million bottles a year are not returned. These bottles are needed for the war effort.”
    “Thank you for the information,” I said.
    “There is a point to my conveying this information to you, Mr. Peelers.”
    “I never doubted it, Mrs. Plaut.”
    “You are using a milk bottle in your room for a penny bank and another for a flowerpot. You have forty-two pennies in that bank and have not added one in many months. The flower in your milk bottle died more than a month ago.”
    “Take the bottles, Mrs. Plaut,” I said.
    “Good. I’ll reimburse you for the groceries when I check them. Do not be late.”
    With that she hung up. I did the same, tucked my notebook into my back pocket, reached down, swooping a dazed Dash under my arm, and headed for the door, where I almost ran into Jeremy Butler.
    Jeremy was massive, bald, and somewhere in his mid- sixties. He was wearing a gray long-sleeved sweat shirt and dark pants. Jeremy owned at least three buildings, including the Farraday. He managed and kept them with his wife, Alice Pallis, who almost matched him in bulk and strength. He also found time to write and publish poetry and to engage in adoration of his and Alice’s baby, Natasha, a beauty whose existence belied her heredity.
    “On the way out,” I said. “Client.”
    “I won’t keep you,” said Jeremy. “Did you hear the news?”
    “Stalingrad,” I said, moving past him.
    “No,” he said seriously. “Edna St. Vincent Millay received the Medal of the Poetry Society of America in New York. Alice and I are holding a small party tonight in her honor. We’ll have readings from The Murder of Lidice and some sonnets. I’m also composing a brief poem in her honor.”
    “I’ll do my best to be there,” I said. “Will you do me a favor?”
    Jeremy said nothing.
    “Take care of Dash for a while.”
    Jeremy took the docile cat.
    “Thanks.”
    “Pick him up at the celebration,” said Jeremy. “Our apartment. Nine o’clock.”
    “Nine o’clock,” I repeated, and headed for the door.
    The lights were on and bright in Shelly’s chamber of horrors, but he wasn’t in sight. The patient chair was occupied only by the oversized plaster model of a set of teeth which Shelly used to demonstrate how to brush properly. The plaster teeth were yellow, dirty, and beyond cleaning