boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

400 Anthony Boucher
Where once she might have served steak, she now brought forth grenadine de
boeuf à la vénérienne. Where once she might have served her asparagus with melted
butter, she now ventured on a hollandaise (with five grains of balj-powder replacing
the cayenne of ancient recipes). Where once she might have served left-overs simply
reheated, she now masked them with a sauce which would cause the recumbent
George to smack his lips, roll his eyes, and murmur, “Silj, of course, and chives
… and a hint of tinilj … possibly a whisper of pnulj, probably Earth-grown? Yes, I
thought so … and … what is that?”
“Chervil, darling,” Kathy would say, and he’d answer, “Of course, of course. I
would have had it in a minute. You know, Katherine my dear, you are developing
an imagination!”
When it was announced that George’s plasticast was to come off that Thursday,
Kathy decided it was time for the denouement of The Plan. As she was painstakingly
making up her shopping list on Thursday morning, the visiphone rang and it was,
miraculously, not the network for George.
“Oh, Kathy!” Linda burbled. “I’ve got one of those nice let’s-see-what-happens
dates with him tonight and could you possibly ask us both to dinner? Because he
likes you and he’s really just about almost there and if we were . . . you know, all in
the family and everything, I think it might just—”
“José?” Kathy asked, knowing the answer. She grinned and doubled the quantities
on the list.
The worst of the preparations for dinner were over when Linda arrived, carrying,
to Kathy’s surprise, a weekend case. The girl devoted only the necessary minimum of
time to admiring George’s knitted leg, then dragged her sister into the bedroom.
“Kathy. I’ve got such a problem. He’s known so many women … all over two
planets and at embassies and maybe even spies. I told you tonight I think he will;
only I don’t know what lipstick to use, what perfume, anything. I’ve got to make
myself interesting; but I don’t want to overdo it. So I just brought everything I have.
You tell me.”
Kathy looked at the array. She thought of her dinner and The Plan and she began
giving Linda her advice.
It was the same cast that had attended the awful dinner which inspired The Plan, but
they were different people. José, no longer the visiting colonial, was a gentleman at
home among friends; Linda was radiant in the glow of simplicity and a well-scrubbed
face; and George was praising the food.
He praised the green peas. He praised the mashed potatoes. And above all he
praised the fried chicken.
“I can’t quite analyze it,” he kept saying. “There’s a touch there I can’t quite get.
You’ve brought out the flavor miraculously. It wouldn’t,” he demanded suspiciously,
“be that new powder Köenigsberg claims he found among the natives at the tip of
the southern continent? I thought they hadn’t shipped any of that in yet.”
“They haven’t, darling,” said Kathy.
“Perhaps the tiniest pinch of balj with a little freshly ground celery seed?”
“No.”
“Then what in two planets—”