Sometimes There Aren't Bananas

           "Home, James,” Smaygles said, as she got into a Rolls at the apex of the circular drive.

           “Yes, ma’am,” James said. “And, my name’s Bartholomew.”

            Smaygles and Bartholomew had a good laugh. As he carred, chuckling also, Bagwell mentioned that Smaygles hadn’t told him about her entrancing necklace.

            “My father’s a metallurgist.” She placed a mother-of-pearl shiny pinkynail on some, going across. “Of course, there’s copper… Aluminum, tungstein…” she pointed to each sample… zinc, nickel and chromium.” Then, she gasped. “Why, Bagwell. Were you looking at my décolleté?”

            “I was never! My eyes were up at all times.”

            Kimberly pointed back to her chest.  

            “My upper chest.”

            “Oh! Yeah! I was looking at your…daycollartay. But only because you requested such.”

            Kimberly smiled.

            “I especially like the antimony. And, I have to ask. What’s that scent you’re wearing?”

            “Oh! You smell bananas. I thought that had gone away.”

            “I was looking for bananas all evening.”

            “You’re a hopeless romantic, Bagwell. But sometimes there aren’t bananas. It’s the acetate that smells like bananas. I use it to clean the necklace. You see, they’re part of an experiment.”

            “Oh.”

            “Who else can go to an event wearing fishing weights around her neck and smelling like a circus peanut?”

            “You?”

            She raised a finger.

            “Kimberly Covington. I can’t get arrested in this town. We’re here!”

            Bagwell realized again that he would probably be arresting Kimberly, and even other Covingtons soon. They drew up to the Covington mansion, which was quite illuminated and large. It was neo-gothic and had parapets and assorted carved effigies that one might feel sorry for, but except that they all seemed happy and seemed to possess a great power. The Covington mansion was impressive from the outside.

            Bagwell knew that now he was even more out of his element. Kimberly walked him through the entry hall to the library nearby, which was filled with old, shiny furniture. He noticed that there were armoires galore, and also a carved card table, a few cocktail tables, a Victorian walnut and posh table. There was also a Lord Raffles table at which the butler sat, working what looked like a stock ticker. Of course, there were shiny old cushioned chairs all about, mostly in the vicinity of all those tables with their devices on top. It looked like a place where a bridge tournament had just been held, with two winners left.

            Kimberly left Bagwell, went up to the man in a wheelchair in the center of the room, and gave him smooch on the cheek, referring to him as ‘Bearlee’. Bagwell assumed he was her father. The father rolled up to Bagwell and shook his hand, introducing himself with that moniker, as the butler at the stock ticker looked up, and gave him a ‘Sir’.

            Bagwell determined that now was the time. He got out his badge and said-

           "Thesaurus Man. I seem to be the only participant superfluous in this library. I’m not privy to what is transpiring, but your venture is now terminated.”

            Now the bullets had been neutralized, and it was time for the fast fists. But, for who? ‘Kimberly’, or ‘Smaygles’? The old guy in the wheelchair? The butler. They always seem to be on the top of lists of suspects, but this butler seemed so accommodating.

            Bearlee looked to the butler, who had been checking a smaller machine on a teeny-tiny tasteful table near where he originally sat.

            “There certainly was a blast of something, sir,” the butler said. Then he went back to the other table, with its stock ticker.

            Smaygles and Bearlee grinned at each other. Smaygles took her necklace off and handed it to him. He, in turn, handed it to the butler, who examined it through that small, glowing stock ticker and declared,

            “There’s a change. Far past baseline on some”.

            The butler was suddenly next to Bagwell, asking for his coat. Bagwell found his voice.

            “I said- This venture is over!”

            “I certainly hope so!” Bearlee chuckled to Bagwell. “It looks that way to us.”

            Bagwell was very confused and coatless. The butler was back at his box.

            “Waiting for the bullets to go off? There are none here,” Bearlee said.

            Bagwell understood. The man was right. There was no call for force. But, whether that meant that he was thwarted or not remained to be seen. The butler offered him a canapé. Bagwell took the canapé, then looked to a cocktail table. The butler had gone there in a flash. He was back to analyzing one of Smaygles’ rings with a scratch-test.        

            “We’ve been so shorthanded,” Bearlee explained. “He’s conducting labs. The only weapons we have are in other parts of the house. We knew you’d just ruin the ammunition.”

            Then the butler appeared beside Bagwell, offering him amber liquor in a small, dimpled tumbler.

            “I hope they pay you plenty.”

            “They do.”

            “Smaygles,” her father called, “do the preliminaries, and I’ll call Kumquat.”

            As Smaygles slid her necklace slowly through a small microscope on a Victorian card table, her father, Bearlee, made a quick call to this ‘Kumquat’ guy. Sweet names, but all the more sinister-seeming to Bagwell. He found the phone thrust toward him.

            “Your boss wants to talk to you.”

            A tinny voice was coming through the receiver.

            “Bags. This is Walters.”         

            Bagwell grabbed the phone.

            “I thought he was calling a man named ‘Kumquat’.”  He accepted a ‘Pavlova’ that the butler offered.

            “I’m Kumquat, too. Have been since I was in short pants. No time to explain. These people are on our side. Stand down. No more big speeches or sucker punches. Enjoy yourself there, and debriefing Monday.”

            “Yeah, but how do I know you’re really Walters?”

            “Oh. Um…You flunked runcible spoon, but we sent you anyway.”

            “Runcible spoon was a trick question! How was I expected to learn that in a day? It’s a fork, but it’s a spoon! It’s unfair, is what it is!”

            Bagwell heard a chuckle from a new location as he finished his plaint. A woman was crouching at the floorboards near the library entrance, with a tall, skinny man standing next to her. He swung his head to Smaygles, who was still checking her necklace closely in that contraption. She said something to her father that included the word (plaintive) ‘love’. Bagwell understood that she had said: “Daddy! I love him!”, and he resented that.

            “‘Success’, as pertains to missions, is relative,” Kumquat told him, over the phone. “You did a good job, Bags. Despite not knowing from runcible spoons.”

            But, Bagwell thought, along with other things, resentment is fine, but who in Kimberly’s position wouldn’t joke like that? In a situation like this. He put the phone back down on its hook. Bearlee waved him over to a machine sitting on the carved card table.

            “He tell ya I’m with the War Department?”

            “He did.”

            “I work with the metal manufacturers, testing new metals and their uses. Biff! Egg roll for Bagwell, please!”

            Biff appeared beside Bagwell with a plate of egg roll and mustard. “Smayglekins!” Bearlee cried, “Show him the sheath.”

            Bagwell stiffened. Bearlee put a hand on his arm.

            “Relax!”

            Smaygles showed Bagwell a metal strip. Bearlee explained that it had been part of her necklace, and part of their experiment.

            “All three strands were exposed while she was near you at the soiree. Then she wrapped one strand in a sheath while you two were in the car to preserve its state before you really started blasting us with rays. Our main purpose was to see if you can actually destroy metal. And- you can’t- short answer.”

            The newly arrived couple continued to measure the archway to the parlor behind Bagwell. He looked over quickly. The tall man slid a measuring stick down to the woman, who slid it down to the floor. He recognized them. Could they be the Curies? Meanwhile Kimberly made a moue to her father. Could she replace one of those stone creatures on the parapet? And, what was a ‘parapet’, anyway? Either way, you bet. But, she could also be the gold-leaved angel on the spire. If there was a spire on that parapet. And, imagined and real, there certainly was distance. Perhaps, he thought, that was the reason they got along so well.

            His experience was of reading “The Great Gatsby” by birthday candle in close proximity to a roiling potential superfund site while gnawing on a crust of cheese. Her experience was “The Great Gatsby”. She had that level of unattainability that smelling like circus peanuts only tempered a bit. Smaygles explained more.

            “The necklace was out in the open as we danced, you see, and I wrapped a strand in a lead sheath before you turned on the magic back here. It was all part of the experiment I told you about. The strand that was only exposed at the soiree shows that it was hit with more radio waves than are usual, and they probably came from you. But it’s not enough to worry about.” She turned to the butler at the big machine.

            “When you became the phenomenon which is ‘Thesaurus Man’,” Biff continued, “there were more waves, which have the potential to damage. We were all irradiated. You really shouldn’t do that often.”

            “But, I know that radios don’t set bullets off,” Bagwell told them all, accepting a small Danish from Biff. The butler seemed so still, while offering the pastry. He seemed still while he was at the lab machines. When moving, though, Bagwell thought, the man must break the speed of light. That’s why he couldn’t see him in transition. Meanwhile his mother and her boyfriend moved on to measuring the bay window.

            “One of our hypotheses was that, unconsciously, your mind focuses it against a threat,” Bearlee told him. “The waves get into the bullet cartridge and ruin them or set them off. That seems to be the case, but we can’t test further here.”  

            “You would have to test my brain if you wanted to go further.”

            Bearlee nodded.

            “For the purpose of observing this strange phenomenon, yes. For you alone, probably not. You’re just a normal guy who can also be a very powerful transmitter.”

            Bagwell didn’t feel normal, realizing that he had such powers, and, looking over to the bay window, realizing that his mother and her boyfriend had been in the parlor, measuring, during all this. Bearlee continued.  

            “But, you’ve put your finger on a potential problem. Everyone’s been in a situation where they said, later, that they’re glad that they didn’t have a gun. From the moment this first happened to you, you no longer had the privilege of relying on that. Remember that whenever you get sore.”

            Bagwell nodded to Bearlee solemnly, then,

            “Mother! Can’t you see me!”

            “I have been seeing you, dear. I told you that I was remodeling for the Covingtons. Now, tell your mother what it is that you’ve been keeping from me.”

            Smaygles was at Bagwell’s side at Biff-speed, and told his mother,

            “He’s in radio, now.”

            Mother said:

            “Just like Bob Hope! Didn’t I tell you?”

            And, Mother wasn’t just talking out of her measuring stick. The Covington contingent abandoned their metallurgy project, and everyone went ‘round and ‘round the parlor, considering changes that could be made to the wallpaper. It could be taken down, was the scuttlebutt, or it could be ‘reflocked’ with Mother’s patent-pending reflocking method. With fleur-de-lis, perhaps.

            Bagwell watched quietly and realized that he was ‘going places’. If there just weren’t the uncertainty. But, he would be a force for good. Perhaps Walters would allow the expense of a correspondence course in radio, so he could focus his powers better. “Work in radio!” the magazine advertisements said. “The Wave Of The Future!” Well, now that he knew what kind of wave it was, Bagwell would catch it.