This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

It was quite an ordinary day on Shadow Street. The streets themselves are of cool cobblestone and dampness. Mr. Curtis and I were settling in for a long evening before the warming stove of number 356. The warmth was there, but there wasn’t much coal left. The room was dark and long and overlooked the street. Mr. Curtis and I have our rooms above, and below is a kitchen and dining room we never use, and a parlor where our assistant Mrs. Constellation kept her desk. She keeps us organized and has free rein to terrorize us whenever we are being too lazy for our own goods.

It didn’t help sometimes being what we are.

Outside, a cart rolled by, driven by a dog in a waistcoat and bowler hat. I watched as he steered it around the corner onto Main Street.

Mr. Curtis sat in the back window, smelling incensed with his spindly yet strong legs curled up under him. The waves of incense circled his bulbous frog’s face. Next to him, on his desk, was his monocle, and several fountain pens with no ink in sight.

He was in deep concentration, and I hated to disturb him, but Mrs. Constellation had no such inhibitions. She called up the stairs, “Mr. James? Mr. Curtis? It’s time for your lunch.”

Mr. Curtis snorted. Almost catatonic, smelling the sweet smoke of his vanilla-burning cone. He licked his eye, smacked his lips closed and shifted from one foot to another.

“Mr. Curtis?” I said. “Mrs. Constellation just…”

A finger pop pumped up, long and green. It was so flexible I always wondered how many knuckles he must have in there. My rat’s fingers weren’t nearly so flexible, and I wasn’t sure that I’d even gotten through to him.

“Peter?”

“Silence Dr. James,” said the frog. His face was bulbous, dark green, and covered in handsome round nodules.

I hesitated, and recoiled, checking my waistcoat for my pocket watch, and returning it to its home a moment later. Still, without the knowledge of what time it was, I laughed a little. “Quite right.”

“Just a moment.”

It was at that moment, after I took a step back, that Mrs. Constellation came bursting through the door. She was dressed in a sleek single-bodied suit with three large loops on which she was wearing a hammer, screwdriver, and a T-Square. She pushed me out of the way, a look of disgust upon her face, and kicked the old bullfrog’s chair out from under him. It was the first moment at which I realized he wasn’t wearing anything in his chair. The way he curls himself up, sometimes I miss this.

The chair went skittering out, but the frog’s head didn’t move at all. His feet just fell to the floor under him as if he’d already been standing there.

“You old bullfrog, get something on. You’re already late. And I don’t care if you are naked as a jerk or not. You will be ready for your next client!”

“My dear, I’m always ready for my next client. I don’t know what you mean,” said the old frog.

“Oh!” She slammed down a tray, that I swear she hadn’t been carrying just a moment before, of little sandwiches. They bounced, but none tumbled to the floor. She stormed from the room, yelling “five minutes!” as she stomped out.

“Peter, you really should…”

“John, it keeps her on her toes. You know I do it to keep her occupied.”

“Certainly. “

The frog whipped out a tongue and took a sandwich from the tray directly into his mouth. “Lies and mint jam. My favorite.”

“Mrs. Constellation knows you well.”

“She is adequate.”

“Come now, Mr. Curtis. Be nice.”

The frog gathered a robe to draw over his shoulders, which he tied at his front, and then slipped his feet into a pair of open-heeled woolly slippers.

“Better?”

I pointed to my eye, where my pair of spectacles lived above my twitchy nose, and closed my right eye.

“Ah yes.”

His tongue whipped out and connected with his monocle on the table. After wiping it off with a handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing gown and quickly returning it, he fitted it in front of his left eye, using the considerable brow he had to hold it in place. We could hear our assistant downstairs calmly inviting someone in the front door down on the street level below.

He turned then to face me as Mrs. Constellation knocked on the door. I hate that smile. It’s false. I’ve never found it to be genuine, but people use it anyway, so I suppose I just put up with it.

Mr. Curtis whiffled the smoke of his incense cone away and said, “Enter!”

Mrs. Constellation opened the door for a young mouse who looked younger than her years. “Your eleven-thirty, sirs.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Constellation. Please show her in,” said Mr. Curtis. He shared a scowl, light-hearted on his end and not on hers, with Mrs. Constellation, who held the door as the young mouse came into the apartment.

“Anything else, sir?” Mrs. Constellation asked of me, but Mr. Curtis answered her too quickly with a “Yes, thank you!” and a silly wave, which she also hated.

“Very well, Mrs. Smith then, gents.” She shut the door and left her in our company, but I knew better than to believe we were alone. It was always her job to keep tabs on us, keep us honest, I suppose. It wouldn’t surprise me to awaken with her sneaking through my room with her samurai sword, trying to catch me off guard.

The young mouse padded into our room, and even though I was easily twice her height, I felt inferior to her minute, yet effortless beauty.

“May I take your coat, Mrs. Smith?”

“Yes, of course, she turned her back to me and allowed her red cloak to slide from her shoulders. I placed it on the third hook by the door.

She turned in her white dress and licked her paw and cleaned the fur that had been matted beneath the cloak absently as we talked further.

On the first hook was Mr. Curtis’s green and yellow scarf and black top hat, and on the second hook was my modest coat and brown hat I kept around for excursions.

“Mrs. Smith, would you care to sit down?”

“Oh, thank you.”

I took her by the hand. I could hardly tell she was a baker as dainty as they felt to me. “You’re a baker?”

“Oh yes, the shop just down the main street is mine. It’s in the…”

“Back of the stables, I know,” said Mr. Curtis. He was behind his wing chair, more hanging off the back of it than sitting in it.

“Mr. Curtis?” I said.

He crawled over the back of the chair and slipped down into it after rolling over the top.

“Well there,” said Mrs. Smith. “That’s the way.”

“The only way,” said the frog, who also was concealing our plate of sandwiches behind him, and placed them on the little coffee table between the chairs.

I brought tea Mrs. Constellation had already sent up and waited. There was always a heedless cat-and-mouse game at this point where the client won’t clearly say what they want, and the old bullfrog already knows what she wants, anyway.

“What brings you, Mrs. Smith? I am so sorry about your husband,” said Mr. Curtis. “To what can I offer the best bread mistress this side of second street?”

“I wasn’t sure if I was in the rights coming to see you and all.”

“Too juicy a casserole, did you guess?” said the frog. “Please have a sandwich. The ones on the tray towards the top are likely more to your liking. The ones on the top were…”

“Special ordered for you,” I said. “Please tell us what you’ve seen.”

“I’ve been running the bakery now for three years, and in all that time I’ve been honing my craft.”

“Getting better, yes,” said Mr. Curtis, as he ate another fly and mint jelly with the crusts cut off.

“I worked my way through the bread, sweet doughs, raisin filled, mostly buns. I want to be the place for stopping in the afternoon for a coffee and a plum roll in the afternoon.”

I coughed and pulled my notepad out, and the pen I never gave to Mr. Curtis, because he always squirts himself in the face and then closes the note anyway when Mr. Curtis said “Yes, I frequently send Mrs. Constellation down there to get a box of rolls toward the end of the day. I like your assortments.”

He put his slippered foot up on the table for a moment, the other one under him in his wing hair. “Excuse me.” He pulled his foot from the table and back onto the floor.

“It’s the assortments I was talking about,” she said.

One of Mr. Curtis’s eyes bulged, and his left cheek bulged with air.

“I was cleaning up after closing three weeks ago about the time the carriage comes to take away the rest of the day’s buns.”

“What you don’t sell by the end of the day.” It wasn’t a question. I watched as Mr. Curtis swapped his monocle from one eye to the other. One eye bulged while the other shrank as he listened to her.

“Yes, I always have extra, and I always start with a fresh, empty kitchen at the start of each new day. I give away what I can’t sell to a boy’s school.”

“Franklin Academy, yes.”

“You know it?”

“My alma mater.”

“It is?”

“I know your bakery well, at least what comes from it.”

“So the carriage was there, and I was loading them in. I usually have five to fifteen boxes, and it hadn’t been a very busy day that day I had twelve.”

“This alone wasn’t enough to alarm you, though.”

“True.”

“The next day?”

“Seven.”

“The following week?”

“Nine.”

“Still insignificant.”

“Then it became drastic.”

“Five?”

“Four.”

“Three?”

“Two.”

“None?”

“It was three nights ago. I had, I know, twelve boxes when the carriage arrived, and when I turned to pick the first one up…”

“You saw the drain?”

“How did you know I was going to say…”

“I didn’t. Please go on,” he croaked.

“I turned and not only did I have nothing to give the carriage driver again, but I was also watching the last box go down the drain.”

“Which isn’t possible, correct?”

“It isn’t. The drain is in the floor of my back warehouse, more of a loading dock, and we never use it except to stage deliveries.”

“Yes.”

“And the drain, though a large storm drain, has a mesh closing on it that any of us could stand on and not fall through.”

“Interesting.”

“It was there, the last box, moving for the drain it couldn’t fit through, and…”

“It was gone.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith,” said Mr. Curtis as he stood up. “I’m happy to take your case.”

“You are?”

“Of course I am,” said the frog. “All the standard fees apply. I’m looking forward to every moment, and you my dear, have plenty to do as well.”

“I do?”

“Of course you do. John?”

I stood up out of habit, not used to the old bullfrog using my Christian name, and she followed suit, without realizing it.

He bounded to the door in two hops, one foot stuck to the doorknob, and he pulled it to call down the stairs. “Mrs. Constellation, we’ll take the case!”

“We will?” she said, crawling up the stairs.

“Of course, we will.” He popped on his hat and flipped his scarf behind his head.

“But what are your rates?”

“Oh, the usual, the usual. Not to worry. Mrs. Constellation?”

“Come with me dear,” said Mrs. Constellation.

“Tomorrow, have an additional couple of boxes handy at the end of the shift. I’ll tell you more tomorrow. Okay, Mrs. Smith?”

“Of course.”

“Come with me,” said Mrs. Constellation, who led her toward the stairs.

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Smith. Goodbye!”

Mrs. Constellation shut the door. Curtis and I could hear them mumbling down the stairs.

“The case of the sneaky donuts! Tally-ho!”

I just put away my pen, rolled my eyes, and went along with it.