Esther M. Friesner

Blunderbore

Esther M. Friesner’s first sale was to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in 1982; she’s subsequently become a regular contributor there, as well as selling frequently to markets such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Pulphouse, and elsewhere. In the years since 1982, she’s also become one of the most prolific of modern fantasists, with thirteen novels in print, and has established herself as one of the funniest writers to enter the field in some while. Her many novels include Mustapha and His Wise Dog, Elf Defense, Druid’s Blood, Sphinxes Wild, Here Be Demons, Demon Blues, Hooray for Hellywood, Broadway Banshee, Ragnarok and Roll, and The Water King’s Daughter. She’s reported to be at work on her first hard science fiction novel. She lives with her family in Madison, Connecticut.

Although Friesner’s work can on occasion be somber and powerful, if not downright grim—as, for instance, in stories such as “All Vows” and “Death and the Librarian,” which won her a Nebula Award in 1995—there can be little doubt that most of her reputation rests on her comic stuff. In fact, after the immensely popular Terry Prachett, she’s probably one of the most successful comic writers in all of modern fantasy. Prachett rarely writes short fiction, nor do other comic fantasists such as Tom Holt or Christopher Stasheff—but fortunately for us, Friesner does. In fact, she’s pleasingly prolific at short lengths.

In the hilarious story that follows, she takes us along on a very modern woman’s very modern date in modern Manhattan with a very old style bachelor ...

* * * *

“Jack? That pipsqueak? What do you think I did with the spunkless little blowhard?” Another dart flew from the huge hand, landed with surprising accuracy dead-center on the distant target. A long gob of spittle, no less precisely aimed, whizzed from between massive teeth gappy and yellow enough to pass for a jaundiced Stonehenge.

The lady shuddered as the giant’s expectoration splatted perfecto right between her well-shined shoes. Not a driblet landed on their newly Vase-lined black patent leather, but sometimes the thought is more than enough.

“I can’t for the life of me imagine,” she managed to reply. As a feeble jest she suggested, “Ground his bones to make your bread?”

The giant roared, a sound that might have been laughter or a bout with sinusitis. His nose was humped and sickled, red with many draughts of Guinness and lousy with pockmarks. Black hairs bristled angrily from the nostrils, hinting at hibernating porcupines.

“Grind his bones to make my bread? There’s a good ‘un!” He reached for another dart. The barkeep made haste to assure his client of a constant supply. “How’d the weensy manling live to juggle all them cowpats about killing me if I’d done that, eh?” The giant’s lips pursed, the lower resembling a saddle of mutton, the upper two hams. “Oversight, that. I never thought he’d want it noised ‘round how I used him. Writing it all up, though, telling it twisty, making out as he’d done for me—Well, I learned much of men from that, I did. Grind his bones…” He grinned. “Not his bones. ‘Tis nut bread I fancy.”

The barkeep refilled the giant’s mug and leaned across the counter to inquire softly, deferentially of the lady whether she would like another Bombay gin? She shook her head. Her lips were dry, her throat drier. The proper business suit that was her chrysalis of choice remained pressed, immaculate, entire, unsplit, though this was Saturday night and by rights she should be swinging by nyloned knees from the ceiling fixtures along about this hour.

The giant drained his measure and launched his dart. It split the first, just like Robin Hood’s arrow always splintered those arrogant shafts of his unworthy rivals if they dared hog the bull’s-eye before he shot. The legendary arrows were wood; the actual darts were steel. The metal let out a high, terrified shriek as it was so cavalierly violated from feathered wazoo to razored tip.

“But enough about me,” said the giant. He shifted his weight on the bar. No stool would hold him, and he wasn’t about to stand after a hard day’s labor. The wood complained much, but only buckled a little. Bare feet with toes like hairy pattypan squashes swung back and forth, drumming me mahogany. “How’d a nice girl like you come to run a personal ad, then?”

The lady took a deep breath. Her left hand began to wrench at the rings on her right. “It was my roommate’s idea,” she began. The rush of red murder she sent bubbling over a vision of her roommate’s face left her giddy. How could she speak coherently when every second sentence to come to mind was the bitch dies?

Carthago delenda esse.

Two hours ago she had been afflicted merely with the usual crawful of first-meeting jitters, the nausea and palpitations often prequel to lucky at love. Then the giant walked in. He knew her at once (his telephone voice gave no warning, its quaint accent, seductive pitch and timbre conspiring only to make her silly with lust, inspiring her to heights of self-descriptive facility that left her thoroughly, instantly identifiable among thousands). She could not evade him by pretending to be someone else, or via the more practical shrieks of the bar’s other patrons as they fled wildly out of the place beneath the fuzzy arbors of his armpits.

She had tried, though. He caught her.

Trapped, she had spent the time since in imagining all the most agonizing, crippling, humiliating ways one might dispose of a roommate who gave bad advice and did not clean the kitchen sufficiently well to make up for it. She supposed she might turn her over to the giant. There was that. First, however, present survival.

“You see,” she went on, “I’ve been involved with someone for a very long time. His name’s Ian. We had a—an understanding. A completely open twoness based on mutual respect and noninterference. But he needed personal space, room for growth, emotional evolution.”

“Oh, ar?” the giant commented politely.

She sighed. “Well, he’s gone now, you see. To find himself. And I have to get on with maximizing my own life experience. That’s why the ad. It’s rather hard to go back to ordinary dating when a long-term relationship ends, don’t you agree?”

The giant’s brows slipped down into the trenches of his forehead. “Bashed his skull in, did they?” he asked.

“?” she answered. It was really the best she could do, and not too paltry, under the circumstances.

“Trolls. Else renegado knights. One tump of the mace upside your goodman’s temple-bone, and you’re left to dance the widow’s bransle. Too bad, too bad. Likely they raped you after, it’s only their way, but still—” His eyebrows now slumped back like eels amorously exhausted. “Did hope as you’d be a virgin. I likes virgins.”

“Will you excuse me?” she said, slipping gracefully from the barstool. “I have to go powder my nose.” As an out it was retro, and sexist, and shameful in the extreme, but all she asked was that it save her skin long enough for her to get some use out of her thirty-five session contract at the Tropitan Salon.

In the ladies’ room was a stall, and in the stall was a toilet, and over the toilet was a window, and out the window she did go, as fast as ever she could slink. There were runs in her Dior pantyhose and wrinkles in her Anne Klein linen suit, raw scrapes striping the sides of her Maud Frizon patent heels (one of which landed in the toilet) and four scales gouged out of her genuine alligator belt, but she emerged alive enough to pitch headfirst into the alley outside. In the alley was a dumpster, and in the dumpster were a lot of empty liquor cartons and dud lottery tickets and some really ripe muddled fruit-leavings. This she added to her roommate’s account of payments due as she huddled in the taxi, plucked lemon rinds from her hair, and cursed all the way home.

And cursed louder, with renewed gusto, when her roommate told her that she didn’t have to sit there and listen to this crap. She hadn’t told her to stick the fateful ad in the New York Review. She thought the Village Voice was quite good enough, thank you, and just see where pretensions can leave you, stuck in some downtown bar with a creature out of myth and Jungian archetype whose toenails want cleaning.

The roommate quit. She packed. She left and moved in with her boyfriend who played the saxophone and really understood the ansgleibnicht Kunstfertseichnet of Michael J. Fox movies.

The lady was left with vengeance placed on Hold eternal, and a full month’s New York rent to pay in heart’s blood.

There was also a message on her answering machine. It was from him. Why not?

She changed her telephone number. She changed the locks on her doors. She acquired a new roommate by means of utmost discretion. She made a serious commitment to oat bran and never, never more used the weather or the time of the month as excuses for neglecting her morning jog. She became a whole person, relentless mistress of a whole mind in a whole body. Giants never happened to holistic people. Could be it was attributable to all that fiber. Her wholeness was astonishingly complete, given the strain a middle-management position could put on one’s full immersion in the universe. Nothing daunted, she immersed.

He was waiting for her one Friday evening as she came out of her office building on Third Avenue. The air smelled of April and perambulating hot dog wagons. He brought flowers and a dead sheep.

“Sorry I was I got too personal with asking you things,” he said, tendering her the bouquet. She took it gingerly, only because if you counted the attaché case clutched tightly in her other hand, it left her no possibility of accepting the sheep.

Apparently he saw it that way, too, for he disposed of the beastie casually, in three bites, head first, fleece and all, just as if it were an afterthought instead of over a hundred pounds of mutton. Wiping lanolin from his chin, he said, “Find it in your heart, could you, to let me buy you a drink, and no hard feelings?”

What could she do? See if he’d take ‘Just Say No’ for an answer? A poor gamble. Run away? Not with the lights and rush hour traffic against her. Scream for help? Her supervisor might be watching. He was everywhere, paranoia justified, like a February flu. He was always looking for excuses to shunt her career into corporate sandpits.

She smiled at the giant. “Why not?” she said. If only to discover how he’d found her. Magic? Sorcery? God’s vengeance on her (so Mama would maintain) for the Pill?

No magic was at work, beyond the ordinary levels present in the city, nor any intervention even marginally divine. He reminded her that she herself had told him where she worked when first they’d spoken over the phone. It was a beginner’s mistake. Give nothing away. She sipped her drink (this bar, too, had turned into a wasteland when they entered) and asked him to pass the bran-nuts.

When guided off the subject of giant-killers, he turned out to be a pleasant enough companion, or at any rate no worse than her mother’s idea of a good catch. She wasn’t getting any younger, ipse dixit Mama. Well, neither was he. Three hundred years old, and then some sum he chose not to mention. He had never felt better in his life. He ate right. He took responsibility for his place in the ecoverse. The American climate agreed with him. He loved New York.

She had had worse Friday evenings.

There was CATS on Saturday and a gallery opening Sunday morning after brunch at the Plaza. A hansom cab was waiting to convey her all the way home from the office on Monday afternoon. Her bedroom blazed lunatic with flowers. There were no more ovine incidents.

He supported Public Television. He preferred Ebert to Siskel, and had no use under God’s great sky for Pauline Kael, unless his sourdough recipe needed an extra shot of calcium some time. He had season tickets to the opera, though he only went for Verdi and Peter Grimes. Wagner upset him. Fafnir and the frost giants, you know.

She sympathized. Prejudice was so fifties.

He didn’t like zydeco, but for her sake he tried to understand it. While Springsteen left him cold, Steeleye Span was all right, and Clam Chower, and any old Joni Mitchell. He couldn’t dance at all. He subscribed to The New Yorker, though only for the cartoons. Desconstructionist criticism gave him the quinsy. He couldn’t find shoes that both fit him and made a fashion statement. He wore the poorly tanned skins of those few Central Park carriage horses in their declining years that he had been able to purchase. He had absolutely no taste in neckties.

He insisted that she pick all the restaurants they patronized, and relied on her judgment when it came to ordering the wine.

He was past filthy with money, all liquid assets, mostly gold and priceless gems that he had come by in the course of his European career. He didn’t really get her joke about how he’d staged unfriendly takeovers of dragon-guarded hoards, but he laughed anyway. He offered to show her the skull of the last dragon he’d killed. That had been on Orkney, and the puny size of the Worm had been what decided him to move across the sea to a fresher, more vital world. A man likes a challenge. Things were better in the Catskills.

His voice in person slowly acquired the beguilement of that same voice over the phone. At her gentle prodding, Hoffritz provided the proper tools for him to trim toenails and nose bristles. He was never late for a date. He let her pay the tab on occasion, without turning it into a favor or patronage. Three hundred years and then some could give a man a certain high octane pickup rate in mastering the social graces, if he so wished. For her sake, he so wished, and he wasn’t shy about letting her know as much. Vulnerability did not terrify him.

And she knew that he needed her.

The first time they made love, she had her qualms. She was haunted by the old chestnut about how the size of a man’s nose may give the inquisitive some hint as to the relative proportion of an analogously shaped nether organ. The giant’s nose was—well—gigantic, voyons! A sight too much so to leave the lady entirely comfortable in her mind.

Still, needs must. She wanted to. She felt a certain obligation, though through no deed or word of his. His few good-night kisses were not taken from her as if by right of conquest, or even secured as reparation for his having bought her dinner. He never treated her like a feedbag whore. All the marks of tenderness that passed between them were granted on her initiative alone. One kiss from him dewed fully half her face, left her skin atingle with moisture and mint residue from his hastily munched rolls of Breath-Savers. It was an unusual and exhilarating experience. Perverse curiosity needled her on to further experimental delvings.

Were she honest with herself, she would have admitted too that, since Ian, she was hornier than hell.

He was not so eager to accept her offer as she had imagined. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. Angry gooseflesh rose beneath the peach satin of her lace-trimmed teddy. The dressing room at Victoria’s Secret had been much warmer. Chills and rejection coupled together to nettle her deeply.

The giant’s jowls drooped, laden with rue. “Ar, it’s not you, dearie. Sweet as fresh plums you be, and welcome as spring. All as you’ve done for me up to this—” he fingered the charming regimental-stripe tie she’d had custom-made for him at Brooks Brothers “—that’s been more’n I ever hoped for. I be content wi’ that.”

She crossed her arms, being unable to cross her legs. There was nothing in the room for her to sit on. Furniture had been displaced by futons, in deference to accommodating his needs. “You don’t find me attractive!” she accused.

He tried to convince her otherwise, but she knew lies when she heard them. She’d lunched with enough salesfolk for that. By bullying and pouting and sniveling dangerously near the precipice of tears, she cudgeled out the truth.

“I ain’t—I ain’t so much—I don’t got too big a—I has me lackings.” He showed her proof.

Well, yes, he was right. What he said was true. If you were comparing him to other giants, that is.

She forced herself to look very solemn. She told him that size was not everything, but love conquers all. If he could lie, so could she.

They were very happy together.

Three weeks later, while she was at work, Ian called. “I’ve found myself,” he told her. “I was right there, all along. I’m a better person now. I’m sensitive to a woman’s needs. I can give you the support you want and the space you require. I’m ready to nurture. We can complete each other. I’m not afraid of commitment. Isn’t that swell?”

“Drop dead,” she said.

“But I need you.”

Well, and what harm was there in meeting him for a drink after work, after all was said and done, after what they’d once meant to each other? She couldn’t show herself to be afraid of seeing him again. They could talk about old times, catharsis over cocktails and a mouthwatering assortment of high-fiber, low-cholesterol veggies. She could handle that. She was strong. She was capable.

She was a fool for blonds with black eyebrows.

The giant’s brows were black enough to satisfy, but as for hair, blond or otherwise, his pate gleamed smooth as a crystal goblet. Some things a woman doesn’t miss until someone else points out that she does not have them. This holds as true for textured pantyhose as for men. In the bar with Ian, she found herself recalling how she used to run her fingers through his golden curls. Said fingers began to drum an antsy anthem on the sides of her lowball glass. Odd pulsings disturbed her body’s chosen serenity. She really should be getting home.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Ian said, kicking off his shoes, tossing his tie onto the futon. “So tell me about your new roommate.”

“She minds her own business,” she said. “She doesn’t ask questions, she doesn’t get ideas.” She brought the drinks from the living room, even though he knew where everything was kept and had offered to do it. The giant’s mug was in the liquor cabinet now. Ian might not mistake it for an oversized, spoutless martini pitcher. Few of those had BLUNDERBORE handpainted around their circumference, or an etched pattern of grinning skulls. Damn few.

Ian was essentially naked when she returned. A sheet counts for little in the strategies of such impromptu dalliances. He took his drink and raised it in her honor. “To your health,” he said. He sipped while she stripped and slipped between the sheets beside him. He paused. A thought had touched him.

“Speaking of which....” He made a pointed inquiry into her social life since last they’d shared bed linens.

Her eyes narrowed, her mouth screwed itself into a tight little macadamia nut of pique. “I’ve only seen one other man since you ran out. I’m still seeing him.” She laced barbs to this last sentence but he remained unstung.

“And, uh, how well do you know him? I mean, what was he doing before he met you? Personal habits? Companions? Lifestyle of choice? You know.”

“He killed dragons. He ground men’s bones to make his bread. He never read any Garrison Keillor.”

“Men’s bones?” Ian’s lovesome brows rose a moiety. “Urn, did he ever give you any particular reason for, that is, in a manner of speaking, such exclusive tastes?”

“Put up,” she told him, “or shut up. In fact, shut up whether you put up or no.”

Ian steepled his fingers. “We are very hostile,” he said, and tsk‘d audibly.

“Blunderbore doesn’t think so,” she shot back. “Blunderbore isn’t intimidated by a strong woman.”

“Blunderbore?” Ian echoed. The steeple toppled. “Blunderbore?”

“It’s a perfectly good name for a giant,” she said, folding her arms.

Somewhere beyond the bedroom door—the apartment door, to be exact—a key jiggled in a lock.

“Your roommate?” Ian whispered.

“SURPRISE, ME DARLING!”

Oh, it was very sad, very sad indeed. A giant is like other men, only with a bigger heart to break. No vows had been uttered, and Blunderbore agreed in principle about mature adult persons in a modern relationship needing their own space, but still—

Temper, temper.

The bread was warm from the oven. “Have a piece, love. I’ll butter it for you.”

“I’m not that peckish now,” said Blunderbore. He leaned his face on one hand and gazed morosely at the steaming slab, very white where it was not yellow with melting butter. “Like to clog me arteries sommat fierce, that be. Take it away.”

“Tsk. You’re just being difficult. You’ve eaten butter by the hogshead before this. And after all my trouble, following that silly old family recipe of yours. No appreciation. None whatsoever.”

“Ar, all right, all right, cease yer cackling.” The giant raised the slice to his lips and bit. He chewed. “Gritty,” he said.

“You don’t like my cooking.” Ian pouted.

“Na, then, I never did say—It’s my fault, ‘tis, for not having a more careful eye at the handmill. I’ll see to it as I grind ‘em finer next time. Oh, it’s as grand a baking as ever I’ve tasted, lad, and that’s taking in some three hundred years. Don’t take on so, there’s me dearie. Come, sit you down on old Blunderbore’s knee and tell us how them wicked, wicked futures traders has treated our Ian today.”

Ian dimpled and dropped the sulks. Obediently he climbed the giant’s knee.

Blunderbore smiled indulgently at his manling. Maybe this one would last. In a certain light, the lad looked just like Jack.

Maybe this one wouldn’t kiss and tell.

* * * *