“Is this true?” The Sheikh frowned. “Well.” He turned his wrath toward the Russians.
“Well, not exactly, Your Highness,” Krapinadytch hemmed and hawed. “You see, there were these cannibals and we didn’t have time to explain all of the details to the young lady in question. But--”
“Disqualified!” The Sheikh thundered. “Take your girls and leave. And return this princess to her people with my personal apologies.”
The Russians slunk out, defeated. The field was narrowing down. There were only four of us left in the running now. And with her sister out of the contest, I figured maybe I had an edge with Aleka.
But my edge was cut down almost immediately. The Sheikh lined up the blonde American hippie chicks, and the very first one he waved away was Norma Wilson, our candidate. There’s no accounting for taste. I would have picked Norma over at least two of the three remaining blondes.
Finally he did rule out two of the other three, and only the Japanese contestant was left on the platform. She was a high school girl they’d found in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury section. She looked younger than any of the other contestants, and maybe that’s what influenced the Sheikh.
Ali Khat jotted down some numbers on the score card he was keeping, and then motioned to the hippie Lolita to step down. Before she could comply, however, Archibald Snoopleigh was on his feet. “Excuse me, Your Highness,” he called out, “but I wonder if you would ask the young lady to remove her shoes?”
“Her shoes? But why?” Ali Khat looked puzzled.
“I happened to observe her sunbathing earlier today, and there’s something I’d like to show you,” Snoopleigh told him.
“Very well.” The Sheikh shrugged. “Please.” He nodded to the girl.
She took off her shoes, and Snoopleigh strode up to the dais. “Will you please sit down,” he told the girl. When she complied, he lifted one of her feet, held it up, and indicated that the Sheikh should come over and look at the evidence. “These are not the feet of a young girl!” Snoopleigh announced triumphantly.
The Sheikh peered at them. Then he took the girl’s hands in his and studied them. “But I don’t understand,” he said. “Her hands are the hands of a teenager!”
“But her feet!” Snoopleigh insisted.
“You’re right.” The Sheikh agreed. “You’re disqualified,” he told her.
“Good. Then I can go back to my husband and four children.” .
“But you aren’t supposed to be married,” Hauksho wailed.
“I fooled you! I’m a thirty-eight-year-old housewife. But I passed as a teenager. And even my hands didn’t give me away. And you know why?”
“No. Why?” Venugotago Ugotago asked philosophically.
“Because I use Ivory Liquid!”
“American culture wins again,” Hauksho sighed. “You just can’t beat Madison Avenue.”
“That’s all right. Even the kids’ pusher was fooled,” the girl consoled him. “That Ivory Liquid . . .” The rest of what she way saying was lost as she followed the disqualified Japanese from the room.
Ugotago, however, paused in the doorway. “Why could she not have used it on her feet as well?” he wondered aloud. He exited.
So we were still in there pitching when Ali Khat lined up the three redheaded Danish virgins for his perusal. But things didn’t look quite so good when he waved away two of them almost immediately. Karen was one of the two.
This time I couldn’t fault his judgment. The Rustwater candidate delivered by Cass Nova really did have it over the other two. Karen and the Aussie’s offering looked puny by comparison. This girl was a large, magnificently sculpted hunk of pulchritude. Well, I consoled myself, I really hadn’t had time to be choosy.
On the basis of her beauty alone, I was almost ready to throw in the towel. But not so Randolph P. Austin. My Texas buddy had an ace up his sleeve. Now he played it.
“Excuse me, Your Highness,” he said calmly, “but I must ask that the Rustwater candidate also be disqualified.”
“On what grounds?” Rustwater was on his feet with fire in his eye. However, beside him, Cass Nova had the look of a kid caught with jam on his face.
“Because she is not a she,” Austin announced. “She’s a he.”
“What the hell do you mean?” Rustwater demanded.
“Ask your boy there.” Austin pointed at Cass. “Ask him where he found her . . . him . . . it.”
“He found her in Stockholm. But she’s Danish. She was just there on holiday,” Rustwater insisted. “Isn’t that so?” he demanded of Cass.
“Oh yes. That’s so. That’s so.”
“I’m not questioning that,” Austin said smoothly. “But ask him where in Stockholm.”
“Well? Where?” Rustwater snarled at Cass.
“At the Institute for Gender Alterations,” Cass said in a whisper.
“What’s that? I can’t hear you!” Rustwater cupped his hand to his ear.
“At the Institute for Gender Alterations,” Nova said in a louder voice that quavered.
“I rest my case.” Austin sat down.
“Are you some kind of Commie degenerate or something?” Rustwater demanded of Cass. “That’s it!” He answered his own question. “You’re an infiltrator working for the Reds, and you did this deliberately just to screw me!”
“No. No!” Cass pleaded. “It’s just that time was running short and I wanted you to win, and besides, there’s nothing in the rules that says the virgin couldn’t have once been a man. Virgins are very hard to find in Scandinavia, Mr. Rustwater. I did the best I could.”
He’s right.” Rustwater shot Cass a withering look, then reversed himself and decided to keep on trying, “There is nothing in the rules about the virgin being a former man, Your Highness,” he pointed out to Ali Khat.
“There is now,” the Sheikh told him firmly. “I don’t-—as you Americans say—swing that way. You’re disqualified.”
“I’ll have you barred from every lot in Hollywood, you Bolshevik ninny!” Rustwater hissed at Cass Nova as they withdrew.
Now the Noah’s Ark of luscious ladies had been reduced to two of a kind. Only John Rank Privy was left as competition for Austin. He and Austin, Snoopleigh and myself, sat silently, with baited breath as Ali Khat went over all of the girls a second time. He revised his score card, consulted with the recommendations of his preliminary judges, then held a whispered conversation with the Judges themselves.
“Damn it! Privy’s got the edge,” Austin whispered to me.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because if it’s as close as it looks, he’ll win.”
“Why should he?”
“I found out before that he’s been so busy brownnosing that if Ali Khat stopped short, Privy’d have a busted snout. You know what he did? That Aussie bastard! He made the Sheikh a gift of an all-new bathroom. Completely modernized! Installed it right here in this house at his own expense! Why the hell didn’t I think of that? It could make all the difference.”
“Gentlemen.” As Sheikh Ali Khat spoke, Austin shut up and leaned forward on his seat. “I must tell you that it’s so close as to almost constitute a draw,” the Arab announced. “Only by the most careful scrutiny have I finally arrived at my decision. The winner is—” Ali Khat took a deep breath and left it hanging dramatically for a moment. — “John Rank Privy of Australia!” He finally dropped the axe.
“Damn! I knew it,” Austin groaned.
“However,” the Sheikh continued, “I do wish to congratulate you, Mr. Austin, and your representative, Mr. Victor, on the excellent quality of the young ladies you have provided. If there is no objection on your part I intend to ask them to join my harem even though they were not the winning team.”
“There’s no objection.” Austin tried gamely to conceal his disappointment. “It’s my pleasure that they please you.”