Small World by Tabitha King Page B

loved it. He loved the bundle of faggots on the hearth, within reach of little Gretel, and the cauldron hanging on the spit, and the table set for one, with the wicked-looking knife plunged into the carving board.
    ‘Wow,’ he said simply. Dorothy Hardesty Douglas accepted the compliment gravely.
    The Glass Dollhouse was more like a sculpture than any house Roger had ever known or imagined. It was like origami, all angles, facets, and sides and shadows of itself, only transparent. Roger was bemused to see that it was empty, unfurnished, undecorated. Just itself, playing abstract games with light.
    The woman laughed at his transparent puzzlement.
    ‘Who could live here?’ he blurted.
    She nodded. This man had a knack for the central questions, the bottom line, in the current cliche. No doubt it was one of the characteristics that made him such an extraordinary scientist or inventor or whatever he was. She shook her head as if to clear away a sudden puff of smoke. It was all unbelievable. But she had seen the painting. She had no doubt of what it was.
    ‘Well,’ she said in a teasing drawl, ‘I can think of two sorts of individuals who might live in this house.’
    Roger studied the house. He couldn’t imagine living in it himself. No Fortress of Solitude, no solid-walled bathroom.
    ‘Ghosts or flashers.’ Mrs. Douglas grinned. They laughed, united in a larger joke.
    The Glass Dollhouse was like modern art to Roger, mostly incomprehensible. He preferred the Gingerbread House, the sticky seductive trap for children, a house where devilment dwelled. It whetted his desire to examine this other dollhouse, the miniature White House.
    She led him away again, this time to dinner. It was a scanty feast by Roger’s standards: too many raw vegetables, thin little pancakes of no substance filled with seafood in a sauce, and not a plate of bread or rolls to be seen. There was at least beer for Roger, and a bottle of French wine for the lady.
    Roger did most of the eating, and Mrs. Douglas, beginning with ‘Call me Dolly, darling,’ did most of the talking, and a lot of wine-drinking. Roger himself had no taste for wine at all. He associated it with the sourest of vomit and the foulest of hangovers in his college days, and, at the other end of the spectrum, with food snobs.
    He was happy to listen, while sponging up the available food and knocking down beer from a glass that seemed to have no bottom. She talked well, this fine-boned, porcelain-skinned lady he was now free to call Dolly. It wasn’t at all like listening to his mother. She knew a lot about dollhouses and miniatures and she was making that information available to him. He recognized a seminar when he heard one, even if this one had fancy restaurant-style grub, Dutch beer, and French wine laid on. When the meal was over, he knew what Dorothy Hardesty Douglas wanted for her Doll’s White House.
    They left the table, when he allowed he didn’t want any coffee, tea, or dessert, and he would be very happy if he had just a few more beers within reach. He felt comfortable asking for them, buoyed on what he had already consumed, and since she took the remnants of the wine with her. He heard her tell the maid to clear up and out as he shambled back to the living room. There was a pleasant buzz in his ears. He felt so good, he just glowed.
    i’ve got to see this Doll’s White House,’ he told her, when she joined him.
    'You will,'she promised.
    Roger liked that cozy future tense. It would be nice to see something more of this warm, elegant woman. A pleasure for his eyes and nose. It was incredible to think she was old enough to have had a son who if he’d lived would have been less than five years younger than himself; that she had grandchildren. Bluntly, she was old enough to be his mom, had she gotten a precocious start. He wondered foggily if he should bring up money again, and then it went right out of his mind.
    Dolly was suddenly sitting a lot closer to him than