Mary-Jean nodded.
"When you were thinking, some ten minutes ago," said the little old man, "that it would be so nice if something unexpected, something thrilling, came into your life—did you have anything specific in mind?"
Mary-Jean's eyes widened and she felt the same icy fear race up her spine. How had the peddler known that? A shrewd guess because Mary-Jean looked like the typical late-twenties housewife who would be thinking such thoughts almost constantly? Or—something else, something Mary-Jean couldn't possibly explain. Instead of answering, she stood there open-mouthed as the peddler went on:
"Usually, it isn't anything specific. Usually, it's vague and general. Although—" here he smiled, revealing yellowed, wide-spaced teeth which made it look as if the healthy pink old-man's skin had been superimposed on a rotting skull—"although sometimes the specific nature of the daydream would startle you. When they're specific, though, they're atypical. I have had specific requests—granted, of course, for that is my function—for some mighty peculiar items. Are you interested? Come, come, are you interested?"
"In any peculiar—peculiar items, you mean?"
"Naturally."
"I'm interested in what's in your suitcase."
The peddler stood aside after making a flourish with his plump hands. Haze hung over the enormous suitcase like dense smoke.
"But I can't see anything," Mary-Jean protested as her curiosity got the better of her fright.
"Naturally you can't. Until you make your selection. You want something unusual, something unexpected to happen. You want to be lifted out of your humdrum life and given adventure, romance, a fling at the exotic and the improbable, an—"