Part 1

EXCITEMENT FOR SALE

By STEPHEN WILDER

_Suppose a salesman knocked at your door and said: "I'm selling happiness--any kind your heart desires. Every shape, size or description--and the price is right." Would you know instantly the thing you wanted above all else? Maybe you'd better think it over in advance. The salesman might turn up any day._

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Fantastic January 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

[Illustration: He was a mood-merchant, a happiness-huckster, peddling dreams from door to door.]

Mary-Jean closed the cover of the current _Woman's Home Journal_ with a little sigh and walked into the kitchen to put a light under the stew she was cooking for supper. One thing about Tom, she thought--Tom was her husband--there was no problem with leftovers because Tom liked stew.

But there ought to be a law, Mary-Jean thought, against such magazines as _Woman's Home Journal_. She sighed again, remembering the many stories she had read to pass the afternoon hours, as if, despite the careful pattern and routine of the household chores, killing time was still the most important function of the housewife.

There ought to be a law, all right. The heroine in the first story Mary-Jean had read went off to Caracas, Venezuela, in search of petroleum with her husband. The heroine of the second story was an Army nurse stationed in divided, exotic, intrigue-filled Berlin. The heroine of the third, Mary-Jean thought dreamily, had spent a memorable summer with the son of a fabulously wealthy Oriental potentate in Shalimar, Kashmir.

Mary-Jean went upstairs to take her daily shower, still thinking of Shalimar, Kashmir. The Vale of a Thousand Delights, it was called. Do I have one? thought Mary-Jean. Just one genuine delight like the girls in those stories? Oh, there's Tom: Tom's good natured, but an accountant. An accountant. She shuddered slightly as she got ready for her shower. And Tommy, Jr., aged seven. But Tommy, Jr., showed every sign of being a normal, everyday boy who would grow up into a normal, workaday man like his father.

* * * * *

Sighing again, Mary-Jean stripped before her mirror for the daily scrutiny preparatory to showering. I'm only twenty-eight, she thought. No sags in the wrong places. No excess fat and no gawky bones sticking out, either. But let's face it, Mary-Jean, you're no raving beauty. You're just a normal, plain, supposedly well-adjusted housewife who--

Who has been waiting every minute of every day of her life, Mary-Jean thought with unexpected bitterness, for something thrilling to happen to her. Only, it never did. There was the dulling, oddly frightening hand of routine, and nothing else. No Vale of a Thousand Delights, Mary-Jean thought, and laughed at her own unexpected, childish pipe-dreams.

She had already stepped into the glass-enclosed shower stall when the door chimes rang pleasantly through the house. Momentarily she debated answering or pretending she wasn't home. But even a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman would break the routine with his chatter, she decided, and slipped into a dressing gown on her way downstairs.

Tom, who had a do-it-yourself workshop in the basement, had installed an ingenious one-way looking slot in the front door sidelight, and Mary-Jean used this now to see who her visitor was. She frowned, almost regretting her impulse to answer the door.

A little old man stood outside, holding an enormous suitcase. He was obviously a peddler. He was a rotund little man with a cheerful-enough face, red-cheeked, eyes sparkling and an incongruous little rosebud pout of a mouth under a long--make that, Mary-Jean observed, an incredibly long nose. He wore nondescript clothing--except for the hat. The hat was one of those sporty Tyrolean things which went so well with the tweeds and the college set. Yet oddly, the natty headpiece did not seem out of place on the rotund little man's head.

Suddenly the little old man did a curious thing. He smiled at Mary-Jean. Smiled at her through the one-way glass. It could not be, she told herself, a coincidence. He was smiling right at her, smiling eye-to-eye, as it were, although he could not possibly see through the one-way glass. He removed the Tyrolean hat from a round bald dome of a head and executed a little bow. Mary-Jean fought down a crazy impulse to curtsey and instead opened the door with a quick, almost an angry motion. Her heart was pounding.

"You called, madam?" the little old man demanded in a chirp of a voice. Chirp was the only word Mary-Jean could think of. The little old man sounded just like a bird.

"Called?" Mary-Jean said in some confusion as the rotund peddler brought his enormous suitcase into the living room and unsnapped it on the sofa before Mary-Jean could stop him. There was an iron-clad, if unwritten rule, in Mary-Jean's household: nothing unclean ever visited that sofa. And the little peddler's bag looked as if it had spent time in every sooty waiting room from here to--Shalimar, Kashmir.

"Not five minutes ago, you called," the peddler chirped. "Here I am. Now then, what will it be?" As he spoke, the peddler had arranged the enormous suitcase, now open, like a showcase. For some reason she could not fathom, Mary-Jean felt an unexpected thrill of fear clutch icily at her spine.

"You can show me whatever it is you're selling," Mary-Jean heard herself saying. "But please let's get one thing straight. I didn't call. I didn't send for you. You must be a cold-canvasser. Aren't you?"

* * * * *

The peddler rubbed plump hands together, shaking his head. "We Happiness Salesmen never canvass without being called."

"Hap-happiness salesmen?"

"I--" here the peddler returned the Tyrolean hat rakishly to his bald head--"am a Happiness Salesman."

"But what--exactly what--do you sell? Can I see?" Mary-Jean asked, edging toward the enormous suitcase.

"Specifically?" chirped the peddler.

"I--I can't seem to see anything in your bag. That's strange."

It certainly was strange, Mary-Jean thought. The suitcase was crowded with various items, she could sense that. Yet try as she might to see them, an eerie kind of haze seemed to be hanging over the suitcase. She could see nothing through it. Absolutely nothing.

"Naturally," said the peddler. "But to answer your question. I sell people."

"No. I don't want to know whom you sell. I want to know _what_ you sell to them."

"I told you, madam. I made it quite clear. I sell people."

"People?"

"People."

"Really, if this is some kind of an elaborate sales pitch--"

"May I ask you a question, madam?"

* * * * *

Almost, Mary-Jean was disappointed. It was coming now. After the snappy beginning to hook her interest, the sales routine was sinking into its familiar pattern. Are you satisfied with your present vacuum cleaner, madam? Did you know that I am the new Fill-strip Brushman in your community? Have you ever thought of owning your own encyclopedia, for when the children grow up? I have here in this suitcase, madam....

Mary-Jean nodded.

"When you were thinking, some ten minutes ago," said the little old man, "that it would be so nice if something unexpected, something thrilling, came into your life--did you have anything specific in mind?"

Mary-Jean's eyes widened and she felt the same icy fear race up her spine. How had the peddler known that? A shrewd guess because Mary-Jean looked like the typical late-twenties housewife who would be thinking such thoughts almost constantly? Or--something else, something Mary-Jean couldn't possibly explain. Instead of answering, she stood there open-mouthed as the peddler went on:

"Usually, it isn't anything specific. Usually, it's vague and general. Although--" here he smiled, revealing yellowed, wide-spaced teeth which made it look as if the healthy pink old-man's skin had been superimposed on a rotting skull--"although sometimes the specific nature of the daydream would startle you. When they're specific, though, they're atypical. I have had specific requests--granted, of course, for that is my function--for some mighty peculiar items. Are you interested? Come, come, are you interested?"

"In any peculiar--peculiar items, you mean?"

"Naturally."

"I'm interested in what's in your suitcase."

The peddler stood aside after making a flourish with his plump hands. Haze hung over the enormous suitcase like dense smoke.

"But I can't see anything," Mary-Jean protested as her curiosity got the better of her fright.

"Naturally you can't. Until you make your selection. You want something unusual, something unexpected to happen. You want to be lifted out of your humdrum life and given adventure, romance, a fling at the exotic and the improbable, an--"

"These are the things you sell?" Mary-Jean asked in disbelief.

"To women. Only to women such as yourself."

It was still a sales pitch, Mary-Jean told herself. An elaborate one, to be sure, but presently the peddler would come down to earth with the offer of some specific product, perhaps a beauty cream or perfume. Still, she had to admit that the strange haze over the open suitcase certainly was effective.

"What do you charge for selling--for selling a fling at the exotic, as you say?"

The peddler laughed. It was a birdlike sound, a chirping, twittering laugh. "Oh, no, my dear," he said, rocking with his laughter, "you don't understand. You've already paid."

"I already paid?"

"All your life, for every day of your life, you have paid. Every day you accepted the mundane and the humdrum, you have paid. You have paid a thousand times over."

"You mean I get this--this whatever it is you're selling--free of charge?"

"Very well. Call it that if you want. But shall we get down to business? I sell happiness. I sell happiness in the form of personal adornment."

* * * * *

Here it comes, Mary-Jean told herself. Personal adornment. Cosmetics? Jewelry? The pitch was coming down to earth.

"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, "to change your life, to remove it from the sphere of the humdrum, to--"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, come to the point," Mary-Jean snapped irritably. She did not want to admit that she was disappointed because the peddler seemed to be coming out of the clouds of her pipe-dreams and down to earth.

"Personal adornments," the peddler went on, unconcerned, "which each and every still-young housewife, every victim of the mundane and prosaic, craves. For example, if I were to ask you what personal adornment, either general or specific, you craved the most, what would be your answer?"

Mary-Jean perked up. There still was no beauty cream or hand-balm or one ounce of imported Parisian perfume. And there was, she had to admit, an intriguing question. Ordinarily, she found herself thinking, a girl would need days and days to decide on an answer to a question like that. But this wasn't ordinarily. This question had come on the heels of Mary-Jean's monthly reading of _Woman's Home Journal_. And what, Mary-Jean thought, did the young woman who had gone to Caracas, Venezuela, and the one who had been an Army nurse in divided Berlin, and the one who had spent a summer with the potentate's son in Shalimar, Kashmir--what did they all have in common? What was it they had which Mary-Jean so craved?

They attracted.

* * * * *

Attracted, she thought. And she did not merely mean attracted men, although that was part of it. To be sure, she told herself dreamily, all but forgetting the little peddler for the moment, sex-appeal was a part of it, perhaps a considerable part. But it was by no means all. For Mary-Jean did not want to attract men for their sake alone. She was happily, if mundanely, married. Universal sex-appeal was, thus, an adjunct to what she wanted, but not the sum-total of it. Mary-Jean wanted to attract, all right. She wanted to attract like the Caracas girl or the Army nurse or the Shalimar girl, the girl of the Vale of a Thousand Delights.

She said, "You--you won't think I'm silly?"

"My dear lady! I consider no requests silly, I assure you."

"Well, I--I find it difficult to put into words."

"Try, dear lady. I have sold happiness to a thousand women like you over a thousand years."

"You _what_? What did you say?"

The peddler looked as if she had insulted him. He said, his chirp of a voice getting shriller still: "Did you actually think that I restricted my sale of happiness to one block--or perhaps one postal zone number--here in your city, here on this particular day on this particular yearly calendar? My dear lady! My very dear foolish lady, please tell me what it is you wish."

Mary-Jean blushed now that she had decided to go through with it, to bare her soul to this strange little peddler in a way that she had never bared it even to her own Tom, her husband, the sharer of and provider for her mundane existence. Still blushing, she said,

"I want to--to attract adventure. I--I want to be like a magnet for--a magnet for the iron filings of adventure! I want romance and exciting things to--to embrace me."

She clutched her throat wildly. The words had expressed her thoughts precisely, but they were not her own words. Or, more probably, they had come from her throat almost of their own volition.

And the little peddler laughed and laughed.

Mary-Jean felt suddenly crestfallen and strangely cheapened. She deserved this. She deserved his laughter. It was a new sales pitch, she had to admit that. The prospective buyer is made to practice self-mortification and then, to rid herself of the only witness of her shame, she buys almost anything.

"All right, I fell for it," Mary-Jean said. "What do I have to buy? I'll buy whatever you want. Just get out of here quickly."

"But isn't it clear? I sell happiness. And you told me what kind of happiness you want. Since, as I have indicated, you have already made payment, it only remains for me to grant your wish and--"

"Then why were you laughing at me?"

"Dear lady! Because you thought your request would be so peculiar. Don't you realize, it isn't peculiar at all. It is the request of most young housewives. They are bored, they are fairly shriveling up with the hot desert blast of routine. They want change, adventure, intrigue, romance. They want to attract these things. Precisely as you want."

"Then--"

"Then, you may consider it a sale. Here...."

And as the peddler reached into his enormous suitcase, the obscuring haze vanished abruptly. With an eager little cry, Mary-Jean glanced over his shoulder--and saw nothing but row and row of small white bottles, like bottles of hand cream.

* * * * *

"But--" she began.

"Eh, dear lady? Oh, I see. Naturally, naturally you expected something far more exotic than a kind of lotion. Well, didn't you?"

"I--I guess I did."

"Which explains the haze. If you saw the bottles of lotion, you'd never bare your heart to me. If, on the other hand, you saw merely a closed suitcase, it would not intrigue you so much as an opened suitcase, its contents obscured by haze. Correct?"

Mary-Jean nodded as the peddler selected with his plump hand a small white jar from the second row. He placed it in Mary-Jean's hand and she felt a strange tingling as contact was made. Her fingers instinctively clutched the jar.

"One application," the peddler said, closing his suitcase. "One only: the entire contents of the jar, please."

"But where--how--?"

"Just apply the balm anyplace on your person. Then you may shower. Then--but then you will see."

"Yes, but--but isn't there going to be anything else. I mean, surely you _must_ be selling something."

The peddler smiled, showing the broken yellow teeth again. "Dear lady, I have already sold it. May I wish you all the best of luck." He walked with the enormous suitcase to the front door. He opened the door and paused on the threshold. "There is one thing," he said.

So here it comes at last, Mary-Jean thought.

"I shall return in twenty-four hours to see what your decision is."

"My decision?"

"We allow our customers the right to accept our product on a twenty-four-hour trial basis. I shall return here in precisely twenty-four hours. I mean _precisely_; you see, my schedule is a busy one. If at that time you wish to become your old self again, you have merely to tell me. On the other hand, if you are satisfied with the change, with your new personality, all you have to do is not keep the appointment with me and the change will then be a permanent one. You understand?"

And, before Mary-Jean could answer, the old peddler had disappeared. Not walked up the flagstone walk and to the sidewalk. Disappeared. In the blinking of an eye. Simply vanished.

* * * * *

Mary-Jean shuddered with a sudden chill although it was early summer.

Then she ran upstairs clutching her jar of happiness balm.

She removed her robe and went to the mirror again, looking at herself critically. A nice little figure, she thought, thinking the word nice so it meant average and decent and ordinary, but nothing special. A moderately pleasing face, if she spent sufficient time making up. But she just wasn't the sort of person who would attract adventure. She never had been and never would be and her life would go right on, mundanely and prosaically, unless....

Wildly before she could stop the sudden impulse, she unscrewed the cover of the jar of happiness balm, took a big gob of the sticky white stuff with the vaguely exotic perfumy smell on each hand and began to rub it all over herself.

* * * * *

When she finished the brief operation, when the jar was completely empty, she felt a moment of shame. You're a fool, Mary-Jean, she thought. There's not a thing going to happen, not one solitary thing because of your happiness balm. Attract adventure, my foot! But strangely, the balm stiffened on her bare skin, began to tingle. She had never felt anything quite like it and soon the tingling became so strong that it began to alarm her. She ran into the shower and turned the needle-spray on full power. And, she told herself, showering was part of the happiness balm treatment. Oh, great. Just great, Mary-Jean. You're a baby. A big, twenty-eight-year-old pipe-dreaming baby. Because you really did fall for it, all right. If that practical joker of a peddler could see you now, he'd laugh his bald little head off. And this, she continued the silent monologue as she scrubbed herself with a cloth and soap, this is one harmless little escapade you'll never mention to Tom. Tom has no mercy that way. He'd laugh so hard he'd hardly be able to eat his supper.

His supper! Mary-Jean jolted herself with the sudden thought. She had forgotten all about the cooking stew. Probably, it needed more water. Probably, it was already burning, already ruined....

She rushed from the shower, clutched her robe, flung it over her shoulders like a cape and fairly flew downstairs. She ran into the kitchen and could just make out the first faint suggestion of a scorching smell. She removed the pot from the burner, assayed the damage, stirred the contents, added water, and replaced the pot with a little sigh of relief.

She went upstairs slowly, still wearing her robe like a cloak over her nakedness. And strangely, she realized all at once, although she had washed the so-called happiness balm off herself thoroughly, her skin still tingled.

And, now that she was growing accustomed to it, the tingling was a decidedly pleasant sensation. Decidedly. It was like a thousand thousand tiny fingers racing across her skin, racing, racing....

With a sudden wild impulse Mary-Jean flung the robe off and looked at herself in the mirror. Her knees went weak on her, so weak that she had to clutch the edge of her vanity table for support.

She was beautiful.

She looked again. The beauty, the delirious thought of that beauty, could wait. She was changed. Different. Changed utterly.

She wasn't Mary-Jean Wilson any longer.

The transformation left her breathless. There was no doubt about her new looks. She was beautiful. Her hair was not the washed-out dirty blonde it had been, but a gossamer veil of finest platinum blonde framing a lovely face, a face right out of the women's slick magazines she always dreamed over. And her body--she shivered with delight. She had always been a little shy about her body, even with Tom. There had never been any reason, not really: she had a perfectly adequate little figure and Tom always said, particularly at night, that he liked the way she was built.

But now she was statuesque. She turned slowly, nude, before the mirror. She had a long curving length of calf and bold firm swelling thighs and a sweeping arc of hip below a narrow, flat waist and proudly high breasts....

* * * * *

It was some kind of hallucination, she told herself. It had to be. You're Mary-Jean Wilson. You haven't changed. She moved away from the mirror uncertainly. The glorious apparition moved away, inside the mirror. She moved back. It moved back. She touched a hand to her bare throat. It touched a hand to its bare throat.

Mary-Jean Wilson, she thought. Cross out Mary-Jean Wilson. I'm a new edition. I'm ... I'm ... tears welled in her eyes. There wasn't any doubt about it: she was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, in real life, in the movies, in the slick magazines, anywhere. She had been changed utterly. Transformed. Metamorphosed. Into a stunning, radiant creature.

The happiness balm?

But of course. It had to be the happiness balm.

Wait until Tom saw her ... held her....

Tom?

She shuddered. How did you tell your husband? How did you reveal yourself? Here's the new me, Tom? How do you like it? How--how do you like the merchandise I bought from a peddler who came around in the afternoon.

She couldn't tell Tom. Not now, not yet. She wouldn't know how to approach him. Probably, he wouldn't even believe her. He'd never accept this beautiful creature as his mundane little wife. Never--

Then what did you do? Run away?

But she had nothing against Tom. Plain, steady Tom with his normal likes and dislikes, his pillar-of-the-community attitude, his pipe-smoking solidness, his liking for carpet-slippers and the newspaper after supper. She couldn't desert Tom.

But neither could she reveal herself--her new self--to him.

All at once she remembered. Twenty-four hours. Then the peddler would return. She looked at her watch. He would be back at exactly four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon. _Exactly_ four-fifteen, she reminded herself. To be precise was crucial.

Very well, that decided it for her. She would have twenty-four hours before she had to tell Tom. Until four-fifteen tomorrow afternoon. Twenty-four hours. It wasn't a long time, but oddly it frightened her. Because there wasn't any doubt about the new body, the new face. They would attract--and she wasn't only thinking of sex-appeal. Naturally, they had sex-appeal. For a woman, that was part of--perhaps a large part of--attracting adventure.

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours, Mary-Jean told herself. Mary-Jean? It didn't sound right. It no longer fit her new personality. Then what? What name? Even a new name for the twenty-four hours. I know, she thought happily, her skin still glowing, still tingling strangely. I'll be Jeanne--Jeanne-Marie! It sounds so French and--and exciting.