THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF MYRON
BLUMBERG, DRAGON
by Mike Resnick
Sylvia's always after me.
#
"It's a skin condition," she says.
"It's a wart," I say.
"It's a skin condition and you're going to the doctor and
don't touch me until he gives you something for it."
So I go to the doctor, and he gives me something for it, and
she makes me sleep in the guest room anyway.
"Myron, you're green," she says.
"You mean like I don't know the ropes, or you mean like I got
ptomaine poisoning from your tuna salad?" I ask.
"I mean like you're the same color as the grass," she says.
"Maybe it's the lotion the doctor gave me," I say.
"It doesn't come off on your shirts," she says.
"So maybe it all dried up," I say.
"Maybe," she says, "but stay in your room when I have the
girls over for mah jong."
"I told you not to smoke in bed," she says.
"I know," I says.
"Well, then?" she says.
"Well then, _what_?" I say.
"Well then why are you smoking in bed?" she says.
"I'm not," I say.
"Then how did your pillow get scorched?" she says.
"Not from the passion of your love-making, that's for sure,"
I say.
"Don't be disgusting," she says.
Then I belch, and out comes all this smoke and fire, and she
says if I ever lie to her again she's going to give me a rolling
pin upside my head, and then she walks out of the house before I
can tell her I haven't lit up a cigarette in four days.
"It looks like a cancerous growth," she says.
"It's just a swelling," I say. "There must be a busted spring
in the chair."
"You should see a doctor," she says.
"Last time you sent me to a doctor I turned green," I say.
"This time you'll see a specialist," she says.
"A specialist in swellings?" I ask.
"A specialist in tails," she says.
"Well?" she asks.
"Well what?"
"What did he say?"
"He says it looks like a tail," I say.
"Hah!" she says. "I _knew_ it!"
"I wonder if our insurance covers tails," I say.
"Is he going to amputate it?" she asks.
"I don't think so," I say. "Why?"
"Because even if our insurance covers getting rid of tails,
it doesn't cover growing them," she says. "What am I going to do
with you, Myron? We've got a bar mitzvah to attend this Saturday,
and you're green and all covered with scales and you keep belching
smoke and fire and now you're growing a tail. What would people
say?"
"They'd say, 'There goes a well-matched couple'," I answer.
"That is _not_ funny," she says. "What am I going to do with
you? I mean, it was bad enough when you just sat around the house
watching football and reading _Playboy_."
"You might fix some dinner while you're thinking about it," I
say.
"What do you want?" she asks. "Saint George?"
I am about to lose my temper and tell her to stop teasing me
about my condition, when it occurs to me that Saint George would
go very well with pickles and relish between a couple of pieces of
rye bread.
It is when my arms turn into an extra set of legs that she
really hits the roof.
"This is just too much!" she says. "It's bad enough that I
can't let any of my friends see you and that we had to redecorate
the house with asbestos wallpaper" -- it's mauve, and she _hates_
mauve -- "but now you can't even button your own shirts or tie
your shoes."
"They don't fit anyway," I point out.
"See?" she says, and then repeats it: "See? Now we'll have to
get you a whole new wardrobe! Why are you doing this to me,
Myron?"
"To _you_?" I say.
"God hates me," she says. "I could have married Nate Sobel
the banker, or Harold Yingleman who's become a Wall Street big
shot, and instead I married you, and now God is punishing me, as
if watching you spill gravy onto your shirt for 43 years wasn't
punishment enough."
"You act like _you're_ the one who's turning into a dragon,"
I complain.
"Oh, shut up and stop feeling sorry for yourself," she says.
She holds out the roast. "It's a bit rare. Blow on it and make
yourself useful." She pauses. "And if you breathe on me, I'll give
you such a slap."
That's my Sylvia. One little cockroach can send her screaming
from the house. She sees a spider, she calls five different
exterminators. God forbid a mouse should come into the garage
looking for a snack.
But show her a dragon, and suddenly she's Joan of Arc and
Wonder Woman and Golda Meier, all rolled into one steel-eyed
_yenta_ with blue hair and a double chin.
"Where are you going?" she says.
"Out," I say.
"Out where?" she says.
"Just _out_," I say. "I have been cooped up in this house for
almost two months, and I have to get some fresh air."
"So you think you're just going to walk down the street like
any normal person?" she says. "That maybe you'll trade jokes with
Bernie Goldberg and flirt with Mrs. Noodleman like you always do?"
"Why not?" I say.
"Well, I won't hear of it," she says. "I'm not going to have
the whole neighborhood talking about how Sylvia Blumberg married a
_dragon_, for God's sakes!"
I figure it is time to make a stand, so I say, "I am going
out, and that's that!"
"Don't you speak to me in that tone of voice, Myron!" she
says, and I stop just before she reaches for the rolling pin. She
pauses for a moment, then looks up. "If you absolutely _must_ go
for a walk," she says, "I will put a leash on you and tell
everyone you are my new dog."
"I don't look very much like a dog," I say.
"You look even less like Myron Blumberg," she answers. "Just
don't talk to anyone while we're out. I couldn't bear the
humiliation."
So we go out, and when Mrs. Noodleman passes by Sylvia tells
me to hold my breath and not exhale any fire, and then we come to
Bernie Goldberg, who is just coming home from shopping at the
delicatessan, and Sylvia tells him I am her new dog, and he asks
what breed I am, and she says she's not sure, and he says he
thinks maybe I am imported from Ireland, and then Sylvia yanks on
the leash and we walk to the corner.
"He's still looking at you," she whispers.
"So?" I say.
"I don't think he believes you're a dog."
"There's nothing we can do about that," I say.
"Yes there is," she says, leading me over to a fire hydrant.
"Lift your leg on this. That will convince him."
"I don't think dragons lift their legs, Sylvia," I say.
"Why do you persist in embarrassing me?" she says. "Lift your
leg!"
"I can't," I say.
"Whoever heard of a dragon that couldn't lift its leg?" she
insists. "You don't have to do anything disgusting. It's just to
show that know-it-all Bernie Goldberg."
I try, and I fall over on my side.
"What good are you?" demands Sylvia, as Bernie stares at me,
blinking his eyes furiously behind his thick bifocals.
"Help me up," I says. "I'm not used to having all these
legs."
"Myron," she says as she drags me to my feet, "the situation
is becoming intolerable. Something's got to be done before you
make me the laughing-stock of the entire neighborhood."
"This is the last straw!" she says, ripping open the
envelope.
"What is?" I ask.
"The state has refused to extend your unemployment benefits.
They don't care that you're a dragon, as long as you're an able-
bodied one." She glares at me. "And you're going through twenty
pounds of meat a day. Do you know how much that costs?"
I shrug. "What can I say? Dragons get hungry."
"Why are you always so selfish, Myron?" she says. "Why can't
you graze in the back yard like a horse or something?"
"I don't think dragons like grass," I say.
"And that's it?" she demands. "You won't even try?"
"I'll try, I'll try," I say with a sigh, and go out to the
back yard. It doesn't look like Caesar salad, but I close my eyes,
lean down, and open my mouth.
Sylvia hides me in the basement just before the fire
department comes to save what's left of the garage.
"You did that on purpose!" she says accusingly after the
firemen have left.
"I didn't," I say. "It's just that my flame seems to be
getting bigger every day."
"While our bank account is getting smaller," she says.
"Either you get a job, or you'll have ask your brother Sidney for
a loan."
It is an easy choice, because when Sidney dies they will need
a crowbar to pry his fingers off the first dollar he ever made,
and every subsequent one as well, so I go out to look for work.
You would be surprised at how difficult it is for an honest,
industrious dragon to find work in our neighborhood. Stuart
Kominsky puts me on as a sand-blaster, but when I melt the stone
he fires me after only half a day on the job. Herbert Baumann says
maybe I could give kids rides on my back when he reopens the
carnival, but it is closed until next spring. Phil Rosenheim,
who has never struck me as a bigot before, says he won't hire
anyone with green skin. Muriel Weinstein tells me she'd be happy
to take me on just in case some out-of-town dragons come by to
look at some of her real estate listings, and she'll call me the
moment that happens, but somehow I know that she won't.
Finally I latch on with Milt Fein's heating company. Winter's
coming on and he's short-handed, and when a furnace goes out he
pays me seventeen dollars an hour to go to the scene and breathe
into the vents and keep the building warm until he can get there
and solve the problem. The first week I make $562.35, which is
more than I have ever made in my life, and the second week we are
so busy I get time-and-a-half on the weekend and take home almost
seven hundred dollars, and Sylvia is so happy that she buys a new
dress and dyes her hair bright red.
And just when I am thinking that things are too good to last,
it turns out that things _are_ too good to last.
One day I start breathing into the ventillation shaft in an
office building, and nothing happens, except that Milt Fein lays
me off.
Two days later I wake up and I have hands again, and the next
morning most of my scales are gone.
"I knew it!" screams Sylvia. "You finally find something
you're good at, and then you decide not to be a dragon any
longer!"
"I didn't exactly _decide_," I say. "It just kind of
happened."
"Why are you doing this to me, Myron?" she demands.
"I'm not doing anything," I say. "I seem to be _un_doing."
"This is terrible," she says. "Look at you: you're hardly
green at all. Why does God hate me so?"
Four days later I am the old Myron Blumberg again, which as
you can imagine is quite a relief to me. Two weeks after that,
Sylvia packs up her clothes and the portable TV and the Cuisinart
and leaves without so much as a good-bye note. The divorce papers
arrive six weeks later.
I still get cards from her every Yom Kippur and Chanukah. The
last time I hear from her she has married a gryphon. Sylvia, who
hates snakes and can't stand to be stared at.
Boy, do I not envy _him_.
-The End-
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