Waltzing King and Frog
ONCE THEY WERE all seated around the coffee table in the living room—Doctor Proctor, Lisa, Nilly, and Gregory Galvanius—Doctor Proctor explained how he had found them.
He was working on his balancing shoes and listening to the local news on the radio when Eva, Nilly’s sister, called and asked if Nilly was there. Because they hadn’t seen him since he left for school that morning, and his mother was waiting for him to bring her dinner in bed the way he usually did. Doctor Proctor asked her to check with Lisa and hadn’t given it another thought until he heard the loud voice of Lisa’s commandant father calling from the front porch of her house.
He understood, from what the angry commandant was saying, that Lisa’s bed was empty, that she had disappeared. Just then the newscaster on the radio said that the residents of a home located at number 24 Andedam Road had reported hearing a violent explosion that had rattled windows throughout the neighborhood, and had also seen a girl and something that must have been a dwarf breaking the speed limit on a pair of mini-skis. And since Doctor Proctor knew that his old college roommate from Paris lived at number 25 Andedam Road, and that Lisa and Nilly had been talking about Gregory recently, he put two and two together and came up with fartonaut powder. And decided to head down there and see what was going on.
“We have to go home and let our families know we’re okay,” Lisa said. “They must be worried.”
“Oh, they can surely wait a little longer,” Doctor Proctor said. “We have more important things to think about than worried parents.”
“Yup,” Nilly said. “But first we have to find out how someone turns into a frog.”
“A kind of frog,” Doctor Proctor said. “Why don’t you explain, Gregory?”
“Alas!” Gregory alassed. “Do you want the long version or the short version?”
“The long version,” Nilly and Lisa said in unison.
IT TOOK ALMOST ten minutes for Gregory to finish telling them about his childhood at the very southern tip of Norway, about his temperamental father who wanted him to be a professional volleyball player, and how he had defied his family’s wishes and gone to Paris to study biology.
“That’s where I met Agnes,” Gregory said. “The most beautiful creature on two legs.”
“Kooky?” Nilly asked. Not because he was asking if Agnes was a little nutty, but because it’s hard to say “cookie” with a mouth full of cookie crumbs. Nilly held out a package of cookies, the only food in the whole house, unless you ate insects.
“No thanks,” Gregory said. “Where was I?”
“In Paris.”
“Right. Yeah, so I was head-over-knees in love, as they say. And then I somehow worked up the courage to invite Agnes to a concert by De Beetels. And can you believe it? She said yes! And as they were playing a song called ‘She Luvs Ya,’ she turned to me and said in an Austrian accent: ‘It eez true, vat day are zinging, Gregory.’ And then she kissed me right on the mouth, as De Beetels sang ‘She luvs ya, nah, nah, nah.’ That was the happiest moment of my life. The minute after that was nice, too. And the one after that. Actually, life was pretty much a long progression of wonderful moments, up until I was so careless as to drink out of that pitcher.”
“A tragic misunderstanding,” Doctor Proctor said.
“Misunderstanding?!” scoffed Gregory, his face turning red with rage. “Victor, you were keeping a pitcher filled with a potentially lethal beverage in our communal fridge! Hiccup!”
“And I’m sorry about that,” Doctor Proctor said. “But you stole it from my shelf, Gregory!”
Gregory and Doctor Proctor looked at each other. Then Gregory bent his head again and admitted, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Well, at any rate, you’ve learned,” Nilly said. “You didn’t eat Perry.”
“Oh, I don’t eat people’s pets,” Gregory said. “That’s over the line.”
“But what happened when you drank from that pitcher?” Lisa asked.
“Yes, what did happen?” Gregory said. “I woke up that same night, covered in slime. Oozing from my own skin. I felt the Adam’s apple in my throat moving up and down and felt strangely compelled to search for moths and mosquitoes and ants. The changes weren’t that big in the beginning. But then I got stronger. I could jump thirty feet. Without even getting a running start. I could clean the outsides of my windows on the third floor by standing out in the yard and jumping up and down. I’d turned into a superman! I was sure Agnes would just love me even more. But then one night—oh, that fateful night . . .”
Gregory paused.
“What? What happened that night?” Lisa urged.
Gregory hid his face in his hands. “I was walking her home from the movies and was planning to kiss her. And it was going to be a good one . . .”
Gregory took a deep breath and continued. “She shrieked when I opened my mouth and rolled out my tongue. I actually hadn’t really realized how long it had gotten. Plus it was awfully sticky. She squealed like a stuck pig. Then she ran into her apartment and locked her door behind her. I thought she probably needed a little time to get used to the idea of kissing a guy with a tongue that was so much longer than average. But the next day her landlord said she’d packed her bags and gone back home to Salzburg in Austria.”
Gregory was quiet. He stared straight ahead and swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving up and down, as if he were trying to swallow his sad reality one more time.
“Then what happened?” Lisa practically whispered.
“Then a few months passed with me hoping she would come back. Until the day I happened to turn on the TV. And there she was. With Bruno. They were singing together. And they looked so in love. Their band was called BABA, and the song was ‘Waltzing King.’”
“Oh, that one is great,” Lisa said, and started singing, “You are the waltzing king . . .”
“Stop!” Gregory howled, his hands over his ears.
“Humph.” Lisa pouted, offended. “My singing isn’t thaaaat bad . . .”
“Well . . . ,” Nilly said.
“It’s not your singing. It’s the song,” said Gregory, whose face had suddenly gone ashen. “She broke my heart. I stayed in bed for three weeks after that TV show. Like a feeble, spineless dishrag, barely able to croak. And every time I started to feel better, they would play that BABA song on the radio, and I would have to lie down again. I just stayed like that until one day Victor came to my room.”
Doctor Proctor shrugged. “All I did was put on a record to cheer him up.”
“But it was the right song, Victor.”
“Apparently,” Doctor Proctor said. “Because he hopped out of bed. And when I say hop, I mean he was bouncing like a rubber ball around the floor, walls, and ceiling.”
“It was ‘She Luvs Ya’ by De Beetels,” Gregory said.
“I get it,” Lisa said.
“You do?” Nilly asked, looking at her in surprise.
“Yeah,” Lisa said. “‘She Luvs Ya’ reminded you of the happiest moment in your life. When Agnes kissed you. And you got your superpowers back.”
Gregory nodded despondently. “And it’s still like that.”
“Aha!” Nilly exclaimed. “That’s why you jumped one hundred and fifty feet up there on the ski slope! Because you were listening to ‘She Luvs Ya.’”
“Yup. And sadly, whenever I hear BABA, I still go limp like gelatin and can’t manage to do anything.”
“BUT THERE’S STILL one thing I’m wondering,” Nilly said. “What in the world were you doing in the sewer?”
Gregory shrugged. “Sometimes it gets a little lonely up here being a frog. Especially now, in the winter, when most of the frogs in Norway are hibernating under the ice somewhere. So sometimes I like to go hang out with the sewer frogs for a little while.”
“The sewer frogs?”
“It’s warm down there.”
“What do you guys do?”
“Shoot the breeze. Eat a cockroach or a spider. Have a good time.”
“Double eeew!” Nilly said.
“Frogs can talk?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, of course,” Galvanius said.
“What language do they speak, huh?”
“Froglish, of course.”
“And what does it sound like?”
“Hiccup!” Gregory said. “Hiccup, hiccup, hiccup.”
“And what does that mean?”
“‘Could I have a beer, please?’”
“That’s awesome!” Nilly cried, howling with laughter.
“What do frogs like to talk about?” Doctor Proctor asked.
“All kinds of stuff,” Gregory said. “Tonight most of them were talking about some strange waffle-eating monkeys that have moved down into the sewers.”
“Say something else in Froglish!” Nilly urged, tears of laughter still pouring from his eyes.
“Hiccup,” Gregory said, and he was laughing now, too. “Hiccup, hiccup, hiccup, hiccup, hiiiiiiiccup.”
“Which means?” Nilly asked.
“‘I only speak a little Froglish, so please speak sloooooowly.’”
And with that, both Nilly and Gregory toppled over backward on the floor in a fit of laughter. And Doctor Proctor started chuckling as well.
“What I’m wondering,” said Lisa, who was the only one who wasn’t laughing, “is why you were sitting on the sled on the ski slope saying ‘I am invisible.’ That’s what convinced us you were a moon chameleon.”
“Oh, you heard that?” Gregory said. “I . . . uh, was talking to myself about a particular person who . . . well, I seem to be a little invisible to.”
“Gregory, you’re blushing!” Doctor Proctor teased. “You don’t mean you’ve fallen in love again, do you? If you have, well, really it was about time.”
“In love?” Gregory laughed an unusually giddy laugh. “No, no. Hiccup! I . . . uh . . . yeah, I might like someone, but—hiccup!—in love? Ha, ha, ha, well I never!”
The other three looked at Gregory. And if there was one thing that there was no longer any doubt about, it was that Gregory Galvanius was in love. But after reading the letter, Lisa was the only one who knew who he was in love with. And who Rosemarie was. But of course she didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Doctor Proctor said. “Now that we’ve established that Gregory isn’t a moon chameleon and also hasn’t been hypnotized, I think we should ask him to help us save the world.”
“Yes!” Lisa and Nilly agreed.
“What’s all this business about moon chameleons?” Gregory asked.
They explained all the business about moon chameleons to him. Afterward, Gregory summarized: “So, a moon chameleon can disguise itself to look like a person, like any kind of background, basically like anything at all. They eat human flesh more or less the way we Scandinavians eat meatballs. They struggle with double letters, steal socks, and hypnotize people to say stuff like ‘sheep sheese’ instead of ‘cheap cheese.’ And in this book you mention, it also says that if you see a moon chameleon in broad daylight, it means that something horrendously bad will happen.”
“Unspeakably, appallingly bad,” Nilly corrected.
“And you’re telling me that you saw moon chameleon tracks in broad daylight, and that this means the end of the world is coming?”
Nilly and Lisa nodded.
Gregory laughed. “It all sounds ridiculous. Don’t you think?”
Lisa thought about it. And realized that Gregory was right. She wasn’t so convinced anymore. Actually, when you got right down to it, nothing very doomlike had occurred. No earthquakes, no volcanic eruptions, not even so much as a meteor shower.
But Doctor Proctor was the one who responded. “I think it’s time you guys knew about the rest.”
Everyone turned to look at him.
“The part that’s not in the book,” Doctor Proctor said with a gloomy expression, “but was included in the rumors I heard in Paris.”
“Is it sc-sc-scary?” Lisa whispered.
“Actually, you’re supposed to be eighteen to hear this,” Doctor Proctor said. “So maybe we ought to turn on a few more lights before I proceed.”