Geoff the Djinn

by Steve Frazee

Mrs. Bartholomew Potts dawdled uncustomarily over her mid-morning coffee, weighing pros and weighing cons. In the end she made two decisions: to wash the percolator and to call in Geoff the Djinn.

Not that Arabella wanted to get tough with her husband. Not too tough, that is. Tolly was a good sort and Arabella was quite fond of him. He made a good living; he still had most of his chest and a good deal of his hair, at least right above his ears; he took pride in the yard and he could repair things around the house with a minimum of profanity; and everybody said Arabella and Tolly were still the most graceful couple on the floor-the one or two times a year Mr. and Mrs. Potts got there.

Yes, Tolly was a pretty good, plump, considerate sort of a man, but—Arabella decided to have another cup of coffee and let the housework slide for a while—Bartholomew Potts was getting a bit out of hand with his table talk of outrageous dishes he was forever reading about in adventure stories and historical novels. He could comfortably overlook a hundred unfamiliar words describing a ship, such things as tumble home and ratlins or ratlines or whatever they wanted to call them; he never bothered to frown over Chinese, Abenaki, Arabic or French expressions or most of the other items authors use to show their own knowledge; but just let any writer try to get past Bartholomew Potts with mention of a strange food. Then the encyclopedia took a beating and the librarian downtown got that harried look again.

Mr. Potts’ philosophy was that information, like happiness, was not much good unless shared.

“You know,” he’d say while cutting the best steak Arabella ever prepared, “I can understand how whale blubber properly seasoned would be quite tasty under certain circumstances.”

Or while helping himself to another substantial slab of rolled roast cooked just right, he’d say, “You know, there’s no reason to believe that one’s moccasins wouldn’t be nourishing if boiled soft. Of course you’d have to have a little salt. Now, in this story I’m reading....”

Lobscouse (Mrs. Potts hated the very sound), poi, snails, a fat white dog roasted by Arapaho squaws, baluks, select parts of caribou offal, Rocky Mountain oysters, shark flippers, haggis without the oatmeal, beaver-tail soup and glumper eyes were just a few of the wonderful tasty dishes Tolly knew all about—from his reading.

Yes, it was about time for Geoff the Djinn.

Geoff was strictly Arabella’s own creation. When she was seven, resting in the shade of a lilac bush on her stomach, she had brought Geoff from a nebulous outer world because all the children in the neighborhood had gone on vacations or were whiney from heat that afternoon, and she needed someone to talk to.

He was just the way she wanted him when he appeared and plumped down on the grass beside her.

“Warm today, isn’t it?” he said politely.

“Uh-huh,” Arabella said, and looked him over. Right then she decided it would be best not to tell the others about Geoff, because he might be startling if you hadn’t worked him out perfectly in your imagination beforehand.

Geoff was a happy green, except for his jug-like lavender ears, big blue eyes and clothes-brush crop of inch-high red hair. Of course, his teeth were pearly white. His hands and feet were just like anyone’s, but his body was composed of spheres, big ones and little ones. He wore a short blue ballet skirt, which wasn’t odd at all. In fact, Geoff was quite pleasing to Arabella, mainly because he was just exactly the way she’d thought him up.

“Why did you call me, Arabella?” he asked.

“To talk to.” He chewed on a blade of grass.

“What shall we talk about?”

“Things,” Arabella said.

They got on famously from the very start.

Geoff said he would do anything Arabella needed done, if she couldn’t do it herself and as long as it was not harmful to anyone.

As she grew older Arabella realized more and more what a fine working agreement they had made. At first she had tried two or three times to have Geoff give some of the larger, meaner boys in the neighborhood a good beating, but Geoff reminded her gently that lumps on the head were definitely harmful, even to large, mean boys. But several times Geoff did small jobs for her, tasks she couldn’t do herself and which were not harmful to anyone. Once he helped her out with a backyard magic show. Every now and then she met old acquaintances who remembered her best by that show.

Then there were years when she hadn’t called for Geoff at all, what with going to Brownie Scout camp, going with boys, school, college, getting married, and raising two sons and a daughter who came around now on holidays or when they had to add to or detract from the various trunks, boxes and bales they’d stored in the basement.

Come to think of it, just talking to Geoff the Djinn after all these years would be rather nice; of course she mustn’t forget the real reason for calling on him.

She was pleased with how easily she remembered the proper way to chant the magic words.

Geoff popped right in.

He didn’t look a day older. Of course, he’d grown to keep pace with Mrs. Potts. For a moment she thought he was going to say, “Hmm, put on a little weight, haven’t you?” But he didn’t.

“Warm today, isn’t it?” Geoff said politely.

“Uh-huh,” Arabella said.

Geoff sat down and chewed on a broomstraw. “What would you like to talk about today, Arabella?”

“My husband, Bartholomew Potts. He’s giving me a little trouble.” She told Geoff the Djinn all about it.

He thought carefully. “Well, I see you can’t make him stop talking about those things without help, and I guess we won’t do anything harmful.” He plucked at the front of his neck sphere, a habit of his when trying to remember something. “Bartholomew Potts.... Little Tolly.... Isn’t he the mean boy you especially wanted me to beat up once?”

Arabella blushed. “That was a long time ago, Geoff. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

“You know anything I eat in this world always shows right through my stomach, even if no one else but you can see the rest of me. You remember the time I ate all that striped candy, and your father said a new kind of beetle was invading his garden, and chased me all over with a spray gun?”

Arabella laughed. “I remember. He watched for three days for that swarm of beetles to come back.”

“He ruined my skirt with the first blast out of that spray gun, before I knew what it was all about.” Geoff cleared his throat. “It is a warm day. Do you happen to have a bit of gin about?”

“Gin!”

Geoff blushed a dark green. “Well, once I investigated a bottle that I thought had my name on it. You know how spelling always confuses me. Well, I sort of developed a liking for gin, even after I found out that wasn’t the way to spell my name. Just a little now and then, of course.” He sighed, and all his spheres heaved out and in. “It is a very warm day, you’ll have to admit.”

He blinked his big blue eyes so appealingly and looked so helpless and wistful that Arabella could not deny him.

“Tolly does have a bottle or so of that stuff around. Now let me think.”

“Don’t bother,” Geoff said hastily. “I know where it is.”

He did, too.

For awhile Mrs. Potts had some trouble getting used to seeing five large drinks of gin sloshing from side to side in Geoff’s stomach when he moved; but after a time she thought it natural enough, considering that some people might have thought Geoff the Djinn rather odd just by himself—even without the visible gin.

He was thoughtful for a long time, his face glowing just a bit greener than the rest of him. “I have a plan or two,” he said at last. “Nothing harmful, of course. Now if we could seal our pact with, say, just one more small one...?”

The small one was as large as the five previous ones.

“You realize that’s habit-forming, Geoff,” Arabella warned.

“Not if one knows how to control it. And who should know better how to control gin than a Djinn?” Geoff laughed and laughed, until suddenly he hiccupped.

“Pardon me,” he said quickly. For a moment he looked worried. “You know that I’ve always been invisible to anyone but you, and that any sounds I make are inaudible to anyone but you?”

Arabella nodded, looking thoughtfully at the almost empty gin bottle.

“Well—that is—I’ve discovered that any sounds I make as a result of gin drinking are quite audible to anyone. I nearly scared old Mrs. Pilsudski to death the other evening while strolling through her garden. Purely unintentional, too. I just thought I’d better warn you.”

“I don’t drink gin,” Mrs. Potts said. “When others are present you’ll simply have to restrain those sounds.”

“Sometimes I can’t.”

“Then you’ll simply have to skip the drinking.”

“Sometimes I can’t help—” Geoff looked ashamed of himself. “That is, sometimes I have pains in some of my spheres. They ache from dampness and—” He had trouble meeting Arabella’s steady look. “Well, we’ll work it out. I’ll be around when Tolly eats his dinner tonight.” He hiccupped more loudly than before and disappeared.

Arabella washed the percolator. Then she hid the gin. She knew it wouldn’t do any good, but she hid it anyway. “Maybe his spheres do ache at times,” she thought. “Or perhaps the severe strain of the war....”

She began to plan a stew for dinner. If anyone knew about stews, Mrs. Potts was the one.

Bartholomew was in fine fettle when he came home. He almost kissed Arabella before telling her about the big sale that walked right into the office. “It’s not every day that anyone sells twenty thousand feet of CMP’s!”

Arabella had long known that CMP meant circular metal pipe instead of Civilian Military Police. She had never entirely forgiven Tolly for telling and retelling about that perfectly natural mistake all these years. If she had been teetering just a little over the thoughts of what might happen to Tolly when Geoff went to work, mention of those CMP’s tipped the balance.

Tolly rubbed his hands briskly. “How now, what’s for dinner, wenchie?” he asked.

For once Arabella wasn’t irritated by the noun. She smiled. “A surprise.”

Tolly whooped and yelled in the shower when he turned it on cold just before getting out. A little cold water never hurt anyone, Tolly always said. Think of wading the St. Francis River with Major Roberts and his men. Did they complain about a little cold water?

He was dressing and singing what he thought was a marching song of the Foreign Legion, the tune at least, when Geoff came into the kitchen. Though there was no use in being quiet, Geoff pointed to where Arabella had hidden the gin in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator and held up one finger questioningly.

“Just one!” Arabella said.

“What’s that, dear?” Tolly called.

She didn’t answer. “Just one more chance ...” she began to sing.

“We’ll have to go to another dance sometime,” Tolly yelled.

Arabella was happy to see that Geoff took only one small drink. He sat down in the corner and folded his hands over his stomach, but the drink showed just the same.

Mr. Potts was on his third helping of stew when Arabella saw it coming. He always mentioned those terrible foods just about the time he was full.

“You know,” he said, pushing carrots aside with the spoon and selecting potatoes and meat, “pemmican is most sustaining and tasty. You could call it the K ration of the Indian, I think I would have been quite fond of pem—pem—”

His stew was gone and there on his plate was a dark buckskin pouch that appeared to have been carried under the armpit of a Cree Indian during a thousand-mile trip in hot summer.

“Wh—wh—what’s—?” Mr. Potts said.

“Pem-Pem,” Arabella explained. “Most sustaining and tasty. You could call it the K ration—”

“I know,” Tolly said absently. Gingerly he explored the contents of the sack. They bore a remarkable resemblance to dark-brown, dried paste. “How do you know this is pemmican?”

“You can tell by the rancid smell of the fat, the dried leaves from the berries, the squaw hair mixed in—” Arabella leaned closer. “Hmm! It looks like a mouse—”

Tolly closed the bag hastily. He laughed loudly, so heartily that Geoff, who had been dozing a little with an angelic smile on his plump face, jumped and caused his gin to sluice around wildly for a moment.

“I hear a slight swishing sound,” Mr. Potts said. He grinned at Arabella. “You always were quite good with those sleight-of-hand tricks, dear. But don’t you think—” He blinked as the pemmican disappeared. “You’ve been practicing again with that magic set the kids left in the basement!”

Mrs. Potts smiled. She seemed concerned when Tolly decided he’d eat his dessert later.

Bartholomew Potts went into the yard and studied his petunias thoughtfully.

That evening Mr. Potts was in charge of a battery of forty-pounders on a man-o’-war of the East India Trading Company, busily bombarding the Walled City of Manila. When darkness came he led a small party ashore in the long boat to determine exactly what damage had been done. He determined, had many adventures and also had his life saved by an exotic Filipino girl who introduced him to wonderful native foods in an airy bamboo shack on the Pasig River. He left regretfully to join his men, and led them back to the ship just before dawn.

He was fully restored when he put the book aside. So restored that he went to the kitchen and ate the dessert he hadn’t wanted at dinner. Then he had a sandwich or two and wondered a little about that girl on the Pasig.

Geoff was in the kitchen when Arabella came in to start breakfast. He charmed her by telling her how nice she looked and what a fine thing it was for women to take a little trouble to make themselves look presentable during breakfast.

She wasn’t nearly so charmed to see the mixture he was making in a skillet on the stove. He had gin, mustard, tomato juice and peanut butter bubbling, and was just dropping in some sweet chocolate. He explained it as a little drink that Yusef the Yerk, a Swedish Djinn, had told him about during a convention in Minsk, not far from Pinsk.

“One of my spheres, the second one above the left knee, has been giving me trouble,” Geoff said. “Yusef said this little mixture—”

“Just one!” Arabella said.

“Yes, that’s right, the second one above my right-left knee. You can see where it is sort of dimpled in—”

“You used to make any of your spheres dimple just to make me laugh,” Arabella said.

“Well, it isn’t a laughing matter any more. One or two of them took a set from that kind of exercise.”

“To whom are you talking—or are you singing that song again?” Tolly called.

“I was reading a recipe for fried eggs out loud,” Arabella called in return.

Silence indicated that Tolly was thinking, but she wasn’t worried. He didn’t think too well before breakfast.

Geoff drank his mixture from the skillet. The mustard and tomato sauce made beautiful streaks through the peanut butter and chocolate. Arabella could scarcely see the gin at all.

“What’s that rainbow thing splashed in the corner?” Tolly asked when he came in for breakfast.

Geoff the Djinn doubled the large sphere that formed his chest clear over the smaller one that formed his stomach, but the streaks showed just the same.

“Just some bright strips of cloth I’m going to use to make a rag rug one of these days,” Arabella said. Something had to be done about Geoff’s drinking, dimpled spheres and Yusef the Yerk to the contrary.

Mr. Potts polished his glasses carefully on a clean handkerchief before sitting down. From his chair he couldn’t see the corner, and soon his momentary twinge was washed away by the immediate sight of food and bright thoughts of the tasty dishes he had eaten on the Pasig the night before.

He ate two fried eggs, several strips of bacon, four muffins with jam and drank a cup of coffee. He was getting ready to tackle another egg and have some more toast when he got that absent look.

“You knew,” he said, “one of the most tasty dishes they have in the Philippines is baluks. Now, an egg—a fried egg for example—is nothing but a chicken before it’s formed completely. We enjoy that. Why should we balk at—”

He stared at his plate. “Arabella, you’re getting very clever with those tricks!” In the middle of his plate was a poached egg cup complete with egg. “Very clever indeed,” Mr. Potts muttered. “You were speaking of baluks, Tolly.”

“Ah, yes ... yes....” Somewhat fearfully Mr. Potts broke the top of the shell. Inside was a thick brownish mixture and an infant chicken.

He watched it in terrible fascination.

“That’s a baluk, dear,” Arabella said, putting her knife and fork down carefully.

Suddenly Mr. Potts started for the bathroom, making a sound that was distinctly baluk! baluk! The effort wracked his whole body.

In the corner Geoff hiccupped loudly. He got up and felt one lavender ear. “I believe it’s a little numb,” he said. He hiccupped again. “Yusef knew what he was talking about, but I believe he was a little heavy on the peanut butter.” He started for the door. “My sphere feels better, however.”

“Which one?” Arabella asked suspiciously.

“The third one down from my right elbow,” Geoff said with dignity. “I will be here again at dinner time.”

Mr. Potts had a strained look on his face when he began to get ready to go to work. “I don’t believe I’ll have time for breakfast this morning,” he said.

“You already had it.”

Mr. Potts looked pained. “I’m a little late,” he said.

“You’re early.”

“Don’t argue. This will be a very busy day at the office.” Mr. Potts started to get through the screen door without unhooking it. He backed up quickly and dabbed at the marks the mesh had left on his nose. “A very busy day at the office,” he murmured.

He left to catch the bus.

Mrs. Potts was not surprised when Tolly called early that afternoon and asked if she could meet him for dinner in town.

“The Purple Pheasant?” she asked. They always ate there.

“Let’s try another place this time.”

Arabella smiled at the scratch pad. Tolly was not giving her a chance to arrange props in advance. The breakfast incident had been a bit severe. But just as soon as he quit talking about impossible things to eat....

She chanted the magic words and informed Geoff of the change of plans.

After they were seated that evening Tolly beamed around him. His spirits seemed entirely restored. That was one good thing about Bartholomew: he always bounced.

He ordered expertly, a lobster for himself, the vegetable dinner Arabella had said she wanted.

“We should eat out more often,” Tolly said. “If things go right, perhaps next summer we can travel a bit. There’s a restaurant in Cairo where they serve—” He got a crafty look. “By the way, dear, do you have any matches?”

Arabella smiled to herself as she made her purse quite open to inspection while fumbling for a folder of matches. There were many things in her purse, but not whatever it was they served at the restaurant in Cairo.

Tolly stowed the matches in his pocket. “Perhaps I’d better not smoke right now. Might deaden my taste buds.”

Geoff was just entering, his little blue ballet skirt aflutter from the fan-like action of the revolving door. Of course he’d come through on someone else’s push. He smiled at Arabella, nodded toward the bar in the next room.

She compressed her lips and shook her head quickly. Tolly jerked his head around. “What did that elderly couple do?”

“Nothing, nothing. It’s just that my neck sometimes gets a little crick in it.” Arabella raised her brows in polite attention. “The restaurant in Cairo, dear?”

Tolly gave the elderly couple another suspicious look. “I forgot,” he said. He stared in abstraction at the table. He was feeling better when the lobster arrived. He lectured on common mistakes ordinary diners make in taking a lobster apart, using his fork as a pointer. He really knew his lobster.

“That’s wonderful,” Arabella said. “I’m afraid I’m just a small-town girl. Vegetables, salads, unromantic things like beef and lamb—”

“Nonsense! It’s the way you look at things. A lobster is a most natural food. So are many things that inexperienced people might think strange. For example, there’s nothing so tasty as a boiled moose’s nose—”

Before his eyes the unconsumed lobster resumed its position in the shell and crawled off his plate. It was replaced by a large mass of dark meat that needed a shave around the edges. Two great nostrils stared up at Bartholomew Potts on either side of a dark triangle. The tasty dish was as large as a portable typewriter and the color of a steamed rubber boot. “Holy!—holy!—” Tolly went speechless for a moment. Then he found his voice and it was a loud one. “The mess is quivering one nostril at me!” he yelled.

Arabella tried to speak calmly. “So it is.”

She scowled at Geoff, who shrugged innocently and motioned with his thumb toward the bar.

“No! Not even one!” Mrs. Potts cried.

“Yes, they are!” Tolly yelled. “Both of them are quivering at me!”

People were showing interest. Geoff just smiled and worked his thumb. “Just one, you—you—blackmailer!” Arabella said.

Tolly was still held by the great lump of flesh. “I said both of them! And don’t call me a blackmailer!”

A waiter was coming briskly. “What’s the trouble there?” he called out.

“This moose’s nose!” Tolly cried, “It’s—it’s—”

The nose went back to New Brunswick; the lobster crawled back on the plate and unshelled itself neatly. One claw clacked when it caught on the rim of the plate, but the lobster shook loose and had settled down to be eaten without protest just before the waiter arrived.

“What’s this moose nose stuff?” The waiter was the large, harried, unfriendly type. He looked with sharp suspicion at Mr. Potts and frowned at diners who were examining their food critically.

“Why—ah—” Mr. Potts couldn’t take his gaze off the lobster. “It moved,” he said weakly.

Arabella was looking with fierce intensity at the back of Geoff. His little blue skirt bounced daintily as he ducked into the bar.

The waiter followed her frown and opened his mouth wide to say, “Ah-ha!” He observed that Arabella was rather pretty, and he liked the plump type better than any. He bent his blackest scowl on Tolly. “For shame!” he hissed. “Getting that drunk before dinner!”

Just before they left, which was soon, Arabella saw Geoff follow a man through the revolving doors. Geoff patted his lips and smiled. Then he looked alarmed as his second largest sphere jumped a little. His gin was bouncing up and down like a puddle pelted by rain.

The next day was Sunday. Mr. Potts was preoccupied at breakfast, though he ate well. He seemed to go about his business in the yard competently, Arabella thought as she did the dishes. But once Tolly held the nozzle of a hose attached to one hydrant and turned a valve on a hydrant that had nothing attached to it. Water ran all over his feet while he looked for kinks in the hose.

Luke Ascutney came over for a snack in the afternoon. Unmarried and selfishly happy, Luke was in charge of bell and spigot pipe sales at Barstow, Bristle & Belcher’s. When he wasn’t telling Tolly how much more durable bell and spigot water pipe was than CMP’s, he was talking about foods he’d eaten on camping trips before he grew too old and busy to go camping. Tolly didn’t mind the pipe slander, because anybody knew that CMP’s were the best things ever devised to carry water under highways and railroads; but he did resent Luke’s complacent harping on hunter’s stew and such-like.

Luke never let Tolly really get started. He was as impolite as any old friend can be. “Did you ever eat haggis without the oatmeal—or even with the oatmeal, Tolly?” Luke would say, or slum or rattlesnake meat or elephant feet or whatever Tolly was talking about at the time.

Of course Tolly had to say, “No-o-o, but I read—”

“Well, I ate what I’m talking about. That makes a difference, you know.”

Luke and Tolly were sitting in lawn chairs, having several large, cool drinks in the space where Tolly was going to put in flagstones, an arbor and a barbecue pit one of these days. The madder Tolly got because Luke was such a boor about foods simply because he’d happened to eat them, the more Tolly drank. Luke drank so he could remember more camping trips, Arabella supposed.

Tolly’s fermented taro root paste had just lost a decision to huckleberry jam on biscuits made in a Dutch oven when Geoff showed up.

He came rather sheepishly into the kitchen, where Arabella was getting ready to carry plates of pickles, cold meats, salads and other items to the table outside. Geoff chewed thoughtfully on a potato chip.

“What do you want to talk to me about, Arabella?”

“You!” Arabella whispered fiercely. “You did fine last night—between your blackmail and that nose quivering business!”

Geoff shifted uneasily and glanced toward the oven where Arabella had hidden the last bottle of gin.

“If you think his nostrils quivered on that plate, you should have heard him snort when I checked up to see if he’d got his nose back all right.” Geoff sighed with his larger spheres. “It was most unnerving.” He glanced significantly at the oven.

“Not even one!” Arabella said.

Geoff the Djinn blinked his big blue eyes and looked sad. He sighed so heavily that every one of his spheres went in and out, even the small ones right above his feet and hands. “I don’t work well when I’ve been unnerved. It was damp in that swamp where I had to go see the moose, and now my left shoulder sphere is paining.”

He was silent, listening to the talk outside. Luke Ascutney was inexorably pinning Tolly down to the admission that, though Tolly had seen the bird’s nest soup on the table next to his in a Chinese restaurant, he hadn’t actually eaten any himself.

“Well, I ate this mud-baked bass,” Luke said. “That makes a difference, you know.”

“I might be able to work the visitor into my plans,” Geoff suggested, glancing again at the oven.

“Just one!” Arabella said, observing that Geoff had read her mind and was striding toward the oven.

“Just one,” Geoff promised. “Have you a few teaspoonfuls of garlic salt, a small jar of horseradish and some bitter chocolate? I am going to make a little pain killer of my own that will confound Yusef the Yerk when I see him at the convention in Durban this year.”

Arabella was a little disgusted with Luke Ascutney and Tolly. They regarded the lunch as something to nibble at between drinks. She ate a little herself and went back to check on Geoff.

Geoff was using a sauce pan to heat his pain killer. All the gin was gone. The odor from the pan, where chocolate-covered shards of horseradish bubbled under a coat of garlic salt, was enough to stagger a dog raised near a salmon cannery.

“I found some red peppers in a jar and a little chili powder,” Geoff said. “To play safe I added some peanut butter from Yusef’s recipe, but not as much as he always insisted on.” He sniffed ecstatically. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Arabella didn’t have to sniff. “No,” she said, “But I do believe it’s helping my sinus.”

“For sinus trouble Yusef has an entirely different recipe. You mix turnip juice—”

“One thing at a time,” Arabella said.

From the yard Tolly’s voice came loudly. “Luke, I wish you’d take that Dutch oven and beans boiled in a covered pit and—and—” He paused to have a large swallow. “Now if you really want something good, the hump of a bull buffalo roasted over a slow fire made of chips from the same animal—”

There came an awful silence from the yard. Geoff stirred his mixture and smiled. “Do you happen to have a slightly old avocado—you know, something to give my mixture a little more body?”

Arabella groped for the refrigerator door handle, still listening to that awful silence outside.

Luke recovered first. “Is that cross-grained, black-looking hunk of stuff really a bull buffalo hump?”

Arabella gave Geoff an avocado and went to the door.

Luke and Tolly were staring like owls at a charred object in the middle of the table. Luke hiccupped. “I think you got the chips by mistake. Wheresh ... where’d it come from, Tolly?”

“My wife is a remarkable woman,” Tolly said proudly. “I will eat some of this and save the rest to beat you over the head if you ever, ever make cracks about me not eating haggis without the bull buffalo chips—or buffalo hump wishout—without the oatmeal—or anything at all!”

“It looks tough,” Luke cautioned.

“Tough, huh! You should see the meat we made lobscouse with aboard the brigantine—”

“Whash ... whash ... what’s!” Luke stared.

The buffalo hump was gone. In its place was a tin bowl containing something that Luke and Tolly both blinked at.

“Lobscouse,” Tolly said.

He spoke with remarkable control, Arabella thought, considering that he had gone a little green.

Tolly explored with a spoon. “I don’t quite unner—understand what this stuff floating on top might be.”

“They use ship’s biscuits in louse—lobscouse,” Luke said. He poured two more drinks.

“Ships’ bish—bish—cuits are always weevily.” Tolly skimmed the stew and fertilized the grass with the skimmings. “Theresh second layer.”

“Weevils,” Luke said sagely.

“Third layer,” Tolly announced a little later.

“Weevils.”

Tolly explored some more. “Weasels—weevils all the way to solid stuff. Whash few weasels?”

Behind her Arabella heard a gurgling sound. Geoff had tipped the pan and was drinking. He kept drinking until all the contents were gone. Then he opened his eyes and grinned.

“Much better than Yusef the Yerk’s recipe,” he said. “Invigorates every sphere.” He wiped a bit of horseradish from his lips and suddenly got a strange and startled look.

His ears and body swapped colors and his clothes-brush crop of red hair formed into tight whorls like cattle bunching up to repel wolves.

“Too much peanut butter again,” he muttered, and lurched toward the door.

“Weasely lousescouse—loblouse is all right for sailors,” Tolly said. “Frankly, I prefer nice wedge of locust pie. You take Walad Sidi Abdalla tribe—’Course they don’t know beans ’bout making pie crust, but—”

“You take ’em,” Luke Ascutney said.

He was gazing in horror at a nice piece of pie. From one corner the segments of a luscious locust protruded deliciously.

Luke got to his feet. His face was nearly the color of Geoff’s ears at the moment. Luke made a baluk! baluk! sound, knocked over his lawn chair and made for the house. He didn’t even see the beautiful streaks in Geoff’s stomach as he reached the porch.

Geoff was gasping for air and wiping his eyes.

Arabella held the screen door open for Luke. “Put the seat up!” she warned as Luke went by.

“Sidiwalla Ladbulla tribe....” Tolly mused, unable to take his eyes from the luscious locust.

Suddenly he rose, face piteous. He took two steps in the wrong direction before following Luke’s route. He blinked a little as he went past Geoff, who was breathing visible vapors from his nose and mouth.

“Got chocolate on nice trips—strips for rag rug, A’bella,” Tolly muttered. “Never let Luke mention bull buffalo louse—lobscouse pie to me. In thish house henchforth food will be sumshing—something to eat, not dish—discourse about!” He waved one hand. “Furthermore—”

A succession of terrible baluk! sounds trailed back as he fled to join Luke Ascutney in the bathroom.

“Just a dash too much peanut butter, I think,” Geoff muttered. He staggered off the porch and went toward the back fence.

Early that evening, with Luke and Tolly resting crosswise on the bed in the boys’ old room, Arabella had time to go see what had happened to Geoff the Djinn.

He had gone where the woodbine twineth and lay in damp grass at the foot of the trellis. His ears were lavender again and his body had almost resumed its happy green color. Nothing showed in his stomach sphere except a few steamy vapors.

Arabella nudged him with one foot against his left elbow sphere.

Geoff sat up briskly. He chewed thoughtfully on a leaf from the woodbine.

“What do you want to talk about, Arabella?”

He fell back with a groan before she could answer. For a moment she thought his ears and body were going to swap colors again. “Peanut butter,” he muttered.

Arabella prodded him with one foot again. “Get up. If you get pains in your spheres from being just a second in a swamp to give the moose his nose, or check on it, think what lying an hour or so in damp grass will do to you. You’ll have to follow Yusef’s recipe—”

Geoff groaned. “Don’t ever mention that Yerk to me!”

His spheres seemed awfully loose on their couplings but he made it to his feet.

“I believe you have done the job all right,” Arabella said.

“Any time, as long as you can’t do it yourself and it isn’t harmful to anyone—not very harmful, that is—”

As he went unsteadily past the place where the flagstones, arbor and barbecue pit were going to be one of these days, Geoff stopped to look at an unusual object on a white plate in the grass.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Locust pie. I couldn’t do a thing with it. Make it disappear, will you please?”

“Gladly!”

After plate and pie disappeared Geoff the Djinn stood a few moments looking at the place where they had been.

Then he made an unusually loud baluk! sound and disappeared himself.