"Ralph! I just found out the most wonderful thing about him!"
"Honest to God," he said to his hands, holding them out as witnesses to his disbelief. "This woman! Who in hell gives two cents for some ugly little--"
"Ralph!" She held out the magazines, her eyes shining. "He's a writer! Think of that!"
"It's a pretty hot day for thinking." He lay back and examined her, smiling faintly.
"I just happened to pass the Ganghes Arms, and saw Mr. Greeley, the manager. He says the typewriter runs all night in Mr. Big's room!"
"Is that his name?" Ralph began to roar with laughter.
"Writes just enough pulp detective stories to live. I found one of his stories in the secondhand magazine place, and, Ralph, guess what?"
"I'm tired, Aimee."
"This little guy's got a soul as big as all outdoors; he's got everything in his head!"
"Why ain't he writin' for the big magazines, then, I ask you?"
"Because maybe he's afraid-maybe he doesn't know he can do it. That happens. People don't believe in them-selves. But if he only tried, I bet he could sell stories any-where in the world."
"Why ain't he rich, I wonder?"
"Maybe because ideas come slow because he's down in the dumps. Who wouldn't be? So small that way? I bet it's hard to think of anything except being so small and living in a one-room cheap apartment."
"Hell!" snorted Ralph. "You talk like Florence Nightingale's grandma."
She held up the magazine. "I'll read you part of his crime story. It's got all the guns and tough people, but it's told by a dwarf. I bet the editors never guessed the author knew what he was writing about. Oh, please don't sit there like that, Ralph! Listen."
And she began to read aloud.
"I am a dwarf and I am a murderer. The two things can-not be separated. One is the cause of the other.
"The man I murdered used to stop me on the street when I was twenty-one, pick me up in his arms, kiss my brow, croon wildly to me, sing Rock-a-bye Baby, haul me into meat markets, toss me on the scales and cry, 'Watch it. Don't weigh your thumb, there, butcher!"
"Do you see how our lives moved toward murder? This fool, this persecutor of my flesh and soul!
"As for my childhood: my parents were small people, not quite dwarfs, not quite. My father's inheritance kept us in a doll's house, an amazing thing like a white-scrolled wedding cake-little rooms, little chairs, miniature paintings, cameos, ambers with insects caught inside, everything tiny, tiny, tiny! The world of Giants far away, an ugly rumor beyond the garden wall. Poor mama, papa! They meant only the best for me. They kept me, like a porcelain vase, small and treasured, to themselves, in our ant world, our beehive rooms, our microscopic library, our land of beetle-sized doors and moth windows. Only now do I see the magnificent size of my parents' psychosis! They must have dreamed they would live forever, keeping me like a butterfly under glass. But first father died, and then fire ate up the little house, the wasp's nest, and every postage-stamp mirror and saltcellar closet within. Mama, too, gone! And myself alone, watching the fallen embers, tossed out into a world of Monsters and Titans, caught in a landslide of reality, rushed, rolled, and smashed to the bottom of the cliff!
