Outside, the wind refused to cooperate. It had vanished with the daylight, leaving a clear cold night in which the air seemed to stand upon shelves of glass, like crystal goblets in Fine China. He hurried along admiring the ghostly plume of his own breath, his body warm, his cheeks nipped by frost.
Mama Capini was still there, and she remembered him, though he scarcely remembered her. She welcomed him back and presented him with a straw-cushioned bottle of Chianti on the house. He ordered lasagna, drank several glasses of the wine, and collided full-tilt with another patron as he was leaving.
The accident was only an embarrassment; he apologized, the stolid middle-aged man he had bumped told him to think nothing of it, and it was over. Yet it made him aware that there was something in the breast pocket of his overcoat, something long and hard and irregularly shaped. His first guess was that it was another bottle, his second that it was a gun; but it seemed oddly made for either. When he took off one glove and explored the object with his fingers, he felt fur, as though some small, unbending animal were standing on its hind legs in his breast pocket. In the glow of good food and wine it did not seem to matter.
The glow was largely gone by the time he had returned to his building, and he found he was as childishly anxious about the contents of the pocket as he had been about the contents of the carton. He laid the coat carefully on the sofa and stood what remained of the Chianti on the lowest shelf in the door of his refrigerator before he took out the oddly shaped object of which he had been so conscious on the walk home.
It was a doll. He carried it to the light to examine more closely; what he had thought fur was soft brown hair—real human hair, it seemed. Beneath the hair was a piquant face, at once beautiful and impertinent: a woman—a girl—with long legs and a slender waist, jutting breasts, rounded hips, and staring hazel eyes. She wore a belted, sleeveless smock of metallic green; it was her only garment, as he determined by an embarrassed glance.
Why had he owned such a thing? Or had he owned it at all? Although the coat and gloves had fit him, it seemed more than possible that they had not been his; he was of about average size, after all. He had never had a daughter, he felt certain. He had never even been married. Surely he would remember that.
No, how simple it was! He must have dated a divorcee. He had gotten the doll, probably in Toys at the employee discount, to give to her little girl; no doubt Christmas had been coming then, as it was coming now. Then he and this woman had broken off, and he had put away the coat without emptying its pockets.
He took the doll into his bedroom and laid it on the map—something else to think about later.
Much to his surprise, he did think about it later. Finding himself unable to follow the Midnight Movie, he brought the doll into the living room again and cradled it in his hands as though it were a child, haunted by the feeling that he too was on TV, that he owed his whole existence to some set playing to an empty room, that he and the doll were lost, were the lost children in the woods in the story his mother had let him watch when he was very small so long ago.
He snuffled and was ashamed, amused, and heartbroken all at once; without his knowledge or consent, his eyes had filled with tears. He pulled out his handkerchief, blew his nose, and wiped his eyes. But a tear dotted the green smock, another fell upon the graceful little legs, and a third plashed full in the doll’s piquant face.
And the doll moved like a living girl in his hand.
The Mad Tea Party
He nearly dropped it.
“Hello.” The doll sat up, or at least, sat up as well as it could, its hips resting in the palm of his left hand. “Hi, I’m Tina.” The wide hazel eyes blinked slowly, then focused on his face.
One final tear fell, wetting Tina’s hair.
“I belong to you,” Tina said. “I’m your doll, and I can talk.” Her voice was almost too high for him to hear, as high as the chirp of a cricket, he thought, or the twitter of bats. “If you want to have a tea party, I can help you set the table.”
He nodded, more to himself than to her, and said, “Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please,” the doll answered formally. “I would like some tea very much.”
He nodded again. “Can you walk?”
“I can walk, but it might be better if you carried me. You can carry me like a baby if you like.” She seemed to sympathize with his expression of dismay. “Or I can ride on your shoulder. That’s the best way of all. You see, if I walk we’ll go pretty slowly, because my legs are so small. And if you stepped on me, I might break.”
He nodded solemnly and put the doll on his right shoulder, where she held the top of his collar with one tiny hand. “Don’t go too fast, and I’ll be fine.”
He said, “I’ll try not to.” He blew his nose again, being careful not to move his head, and wiped his cheeks.
“Why were you crying?”
“Seeing you reminded me of somebody else, of somebody I’d forgotten.” He hesitated, not sure what he had said was fair to Lara. “Or at least that I’d put out of my mind.” As he stood up, moving as slowly and smoothly as he could, he added, “Dolls don’t talk here, or anyway, not as well as you.”
There was no reply.
He went into the kitchen. Most of the water he had heated for coffee remained in the pan, but it was cold now and scummed with lime. He threw it out, put in fresh water, and turned on the burner again. There were tea bags in the canister, the remnants of a box of exotic teas he had bought (in Gourmet Foods, at the discount) for an assistant manager in Lingerie but never given her.
“I don’t know if I’ve got a cup small enough for you,” he said.
He settled on a demitasse cup, pushed the tea bag into it, and doused it with boiling water.
Tina said, “May I talk?”
“Sure, why not?”
“You said I wasn’t supposed to. But I like just a teeny-weeny pinch of salt in my tea.”
He passed the saltcellar over it. “That enough? You take sugar?”
“No, thanks,” Tina chirped. “No milk either.” She bounced from his shoulder like a tennis ball and stood, legs wide, on the dinette table to drink from the cup. It was as big for her as a wastebasket would have been for him.
When she put it down, it seemed to him that it was as full as it had ever been, but she patted her midriff and wiped her mouth on the back of one bare arm. “Now if you’ll just leave it there, I could come and get some whenever I wanted to.”
That seemed no crazier than talking to a doll. “All right,” he said.
“And I won’t have to bother you. I’m really not very good at doing things for myself. I couldn’t have turned on the water like you did.”
He nodded.
“Well, I can do things a little.”
He asked, “Can you tell me how a doll can talk?”
“Because I’m built that way. It’s my insides.” She patted her middle again. “But I can’t add or subtract or spell or any of that other stuff. I haven’t been to school.”
He nodded again.
“I’d like some nice clothes. Have you got any?”
“Not that would fit you,” he told her.
“I’d like a ball gown, just to start. And a vanity set, so I can do my hair.”
“It’s too late tonight,” he told her. “I’ll get you some things tomorrow.” He was confident that tomorrow she would be gone, or at least inanimate and silent.
“And I’d like a bra and panties. I’d like two of each, so I can wear one and wash one.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”