He moved slowly past the window crammed with foxed lithographs, broken crockery, disabled bedsprings, a garbage can where a banana lolled from under the lid like a dog's tongue, to the window where a dentist, aided by an ingenious arrangement of mirrors, drilled his own teeth. At intervals he paused, drew a hypodermic needle from his pantspocket and squirted at a canvas on an easel. The artist who stood idly beating a mahl-stick against an open palm, leapt to the easel, working furiously until the paint discharged from the syringe was used up, then sank back into lethargy till the act was repeated and he had a fresh batch of color to use. He was painting a picture of Almon Lampley in track clothes, running for office.
Instead of a revolving door at the entrance there was a merry-go-round. The Governor stepped aboard and bestrode one of the horses, thrusting his feet into stirrups which were too short and brought his knees too high. The wooden steed, instead of moving gracefully up and down in time to the music of the calliope, bucked and reared. Lampley was glad to dismount and cling to a brass pole. A figure in motorman's uniform—the Governor knew it was his yellow streetcar he had driven—climbed aboard briskly and began collecting fares. He wore a monocle in his left eye on which was etched the island under the earth as seen from the farther shore.
"I'm only trying to get into the store," explained the Governor, unwilling to pay.
"The store. To be sure," said the motorman, as though he had just realized what was beyond the carrousel. "History, ethics, philology, chemistry, geography, heraldry, propaganda, celestial mechanics? A streamlined, up-to-date, late model, trouble-free, labor-saving philosophers' stone? How about the small, extravagant pocket-size for a willion gold moidores? I'm offered a willion; who'll say a stillion, a crillion—a fillion even? Come now, ladies and gentlemen, horses, giraffes (camelopards, if you prefer), ostriches and zebras, surely a fillion moidores is little enough for a love-magnet, a cap of invisibility, or a bottomless purse? Let me hear a fillion. Going once, going twice, going up?"
The calliope played, In the Good Old Summertime. "Going up," said Lampley firmly.
"Ah," muttered the motorman, hanging his head. "I was afraid of that." He removed the monocle and crushed it under his heel. The eye behind it was glass. The merry-go-round tilted, sliding Lampley off onto a floor of absorbent cotton sprinkled with tinsel flakes. The calliope switched to It Had to Be You. Two Santa Clauses arrived, lugging a barrel. They grasped Lampley under his arms and shoved him into the barrel, jamming his knees against his chest. They rolled the barrel along the floor and up an incline, then they righted it. The staves opened like a flower. Lampley stood erect on the bed of a horse-drawn wagon. The store was full of wax dummies engaged in copulation.
A tophatted, nightshirted man on stilts marched through, carrying a pickaxe over his shoulder. He attacked a section of the wall with the pick. After a few strokes water gushed forth, sweeping the dummies away. The man took a blowtorch from under his hat and froze the water on the floor. A motion-picture projector threw colored images of fleecy blue and pink clouds. An organ played O Promise Me (pianissimo) while handholding couples skated tirelessly over the ice.
The Governor jumped from the wagon, and avoiding the irregular edges of the ice, walked over to the stationery department. A mahout in turban and loincloth pecked at the keys of a typewriter with his goad. Each time the machine came to the end of a line a balloon emerged from the side, inflated slowly, floated up out of sight. Lampley cleared his throat. "Could you tell me the way to the elevators?"