“You’ll see,” she said.
And when I came back from the costumer’s, my diablo uniform in a box under my arm, there was Doris dressed all in black, form-fitting black from head to foot. She looked as though she’d been dipped nude into a vat of black paint. The outfit included a skull-tight head covering like that worn by the Phantom and other masked heroes of the comics, which completely shielded everything but the lower part of her face. That was covered by a small square mirror she had somehow attached to the nose of her costume.
I looked at her, and found her very difficult to see. All that black— The only thing my eyes could really focus on was my own reflection in that little mirror.
I blinked several times, and said, “All right, I give up. What are you supposed to be?”
“You,” she said from behind the mirror.
“Eh?”
“I’m going as you. Whomever I’m talking to, whoever is looking at me, that’s who I am.”
I looked at the mirror. I saw myself.
I said, “Oh, come on, Doris, that’s cheating. You have to be somebody.”
“I am somebody,” she insisted. “I’m you. Besides, this isn’t really a bad outfit for burgling in, is it?”
There’s no getting around it, Doris is much more imaginative than I am.
Well, it was too late to change. Besides, I still like the devil costume for other reasons. So when we arrived at my family’s mansion a little after nine that evening, beneath my coat I was all encased in bright red, just as Doris under her coat was all in black.
There were no names on the invitations, of course, as that would have spoiled the fun of guessing who everybody was. I handed mine to Kibber, a villainous old servant whose continued employment had never ceased to amaze me, and Doris and I joined the colorful throng on the inside, in the main banquet room.
Doris became the instant hit of the party. People kept coming up and asking her what she was supposed to be, and invariably she said, “You.” Then the questioner would look blank for a second, finally get it, and collapse with delight.
I finally took her out onto the dance floor, where I murmured in her ear, “Once upon a time, it seems to me, you told me the first rule of the good burglar, as it had been passed on to you by your Dad. Do you remember what it was?”
“Be inconspicuous,” she answered.
I said, “Uh huh.”
“Smarty,” she said, and stuck her thumb into my ribs.
A little later I danced with my sister Eugenie, who confessed, “I feel I must know who you are. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. You’re so familiar somehow.”
Dear Eugenie. I was pleased to see she was as impenetrably stupid as ever.
I saw my brothers Jocko and Hubert from time to time, but didn’t dance with them, and so could not be certain that they also had remained feeble-minded. Looking at them from a safe distance, however, I must say they seemed the same old bumblebrains. (I noticed them looking at me one time, but the perusal didn’t last. Afterward I saw that they were staring at each guest in turn. Memorizing the costumes, I supposed.)
At ten-thirty I returned to Doris, where she stood surrounded by lusting males, and whispered in her ear, “It’s time.”
She made excuses to her new-found circle of friends and joined me in the hall. Down by the door, Kibber was still at his post. I said to Doris, “This way,” and led her back to the servants’ stairs. We saw no one.
The well-remembered house. I prowled now through the scenes of my pampered but miserable childhood. In this house, dominated by a robber-baron father and a giddy nitwit mother, I had grown up in the company of brothers and sisters of such stultifying banality that it can be no wonder that I clung to Doris, once I found her, as a drowning man clings to a passing life preserver.
But Doris hadn’t preserved my life. She had created my life.
It was still there. Five thousand dollars in used hundreds. I stashed it inside my costume, put the false bottom back, closed the drawer so that its having been jimmied wouldn’t be readily apparent, and on we went to my mother’s bedroom.
In each instance I was the one who actually entered the room while Doris stood in the doorway to watch for intruders.
In Mama’s room I moved aside the painting of autumn woods — it looked like a jigsaw puzzle — and there was the safe hidden away behind it. In it were most of Mama’s jewels. She hadn’t worn much by way of jewelry tonight, because of her costume. Although she should most appropriately have attended in the guise of a Mack truck, she had chosen instead to be Diana the Huntress, complete with the quiver of arrows on her quivering back.
From the doorway, Doris whispered, “How are you going to break into that? We don’t dare blast it.”
“That’s incredible,” said Doris. “What’s it under? C for combination?”
“No. L for Locke. John Locke. Mother is literate.”
“You mean literal,” said Doris faintly.
I opened the address book, and there it was: John Locke, VAndyke 6-1233. The VA on the phone dial was 82, and the first number would be to the left. Therefore, the combination was L8, R26, L12, R33.
I went back to the safe and opened it. I put the jewels inside my costume, shut the safe, slid the painting back into place, and Doris whispered, “Somebody coming!”
I zipped under the bed. Doris stepped behind the door.
It was, unfortunately, Mama. She came into the room, switched on her small vanity lamp — Mama dislikes bright light in a bedroom — and went poking through her dresser drawers, the arrows rattling faintly in the quiver on her back.
Doris was in plain sight! Peeking from under the bed, I saw that the door was only half open, and that Doris was where Mama merely had to turn her head to see her.
But Mama didn’t see her. Doris had put her black-garbed hands up in front of her face, covering the mirror and her eyes, so that she was now totally black. She blended into the shadow behind the door, as invisible as glass. The only reason I knew she was there was because, uh... well, because I knew she was there.
Finally Mama left, and a very few minutes later so did we. We returned to the main banquet room and both made ourselves conspicuous for a little while, dancing with this one and that one, joining the largest chattering groups, all as preface to a nice obvious smooth withdrawal. Thirty or forty people would see us leave, departing casually, openly, with not an apparent care in the world. Who would suspect such leave-takers of burglary?
But just as I was about to begin my farewells, a heavy hand closed on my arm and a familiar voice said, “Hold on, there. Somebody wants to see you.”
I turned my head and saw my older brother, Jocko, the football player, as huge and as dense as ever, dressed in a Tarzan suit. I braced myself to pull out of his grip and try for the door, but then I saw he was smiling. He had not penetrated my disguise after all, but had approached me for some other reason.
I said, “What’s up?”
“Just come along,” he said, taking a childish delight in being mysterious. “You’ll see.”
I went with him warily, ready to run. We walked down the side of the room to the bandstand, where I saw, milling about in some confusion, seven more Satans, plus Doris, plus — standing in front of the microphone — my Mama.
As Jocko placed me among the other devils, Mama began to shout for attention, announcing, “It’s time for the prizes, everybody!”
Prizes?
When she had everyone’s attention, Mama went on to explain: “Instead of the usual prize for best costume,” she yelled, “we thought it would be fun to give prizes for the most original costume and for the least original costume!”