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your lounge.’
    ‘Yes, of course,’ she agreed, suddenly smiling back at me. ‘I was stupid.’ She gave the orchid a last backward glance and strolled away across the floor to the long Tchaikovsky section popular with the tourists.
    ‘Pathétique,
’ she read off a label at random. ‘I’ll take this.’
    I wrapped up the scabia and slipped the instructional booklet into the crate, keeping my eye on her all the time.
    ‘Don’t look so alarmed,’ she said with amusement. ‘I’ve never heard anything like that before.’
    I wasn’t alarmed. It was that thirty years at Vermilion Sands had narrowed my horizons.
    ‘How long are you staying at Vermilion Sands?’ I asked her.
    ‘I open at the Casino tonight,’ she said. She told me her name was Jane Ciracylides and that she was a speciality singer.
    ‘Why don’t you look in?’ she asked, her eyes fluttering mischievously. ‘I come on at eleven. You may find it interesting.’
     
    I did. The next morning Vermilion Sands hummed. Jane created a sensation. After her performance three hundred people swore they’d seen everything from a choir of angels taking the vocal in the music of the spheres to Alexander’s Ragtime Band. As for myself, perhaps I’d listened to too many flowers, but at least I knew where the scorpion on the balcony had come from.
    Tony Miles had heard Sophie Tucker singing the ‘St Louis Blues’, and Harry, the elder Bach conducting the B Minor Mass.
    They came round to the shop and argued over their respective performances while I wrestled with the flowers.
    ‘Amazing,’ Tony exclaimed. ‘How does she do it? Tell me.’
    ‘The Heidelberg score,’ Harry ecstased. ‘Sublime, absolute.’ He looked irritably at the flowers. ‘Can’t you keep these things quiet? They’re making one hell of a row.’
    They were, and I had a shrewd idea why. The Arachnid was completely out of control, and by the time I’d clamped it down in a weak saline it had blown out over three hundred dollars’ worth of shrubs.
    The performance at the Casino last night was nothing on the one she gave here yesterday,’ I told them. ‘
The Ring of the Niebelungs
played by Stan Kenton. That Arachnid went insane. I’m sure it wanted to kill her.’
    Harry watched the plant convulsing its leaves in rigid spasmic movements.
    ‘If you ask me it’s in an advanced state of rut. Why should it want to kill her?’
    ‘Her voice must have overtones that irritate its calyx. None of the other plants minded. They cooed like turtle doves when she touched them.’
    Tony shivered happily.
    Light dazzled in the street outside.
    I handed Tony the broom. ‘Here, lover, brace yourself on that. Miss Ciracylides is dying to meet you.’
    Jane came into the shop, wearing a flame yellow cocktail skirt and another of her hats.
    I introduced her to Harry and Tony.
    ‘The flowers seem very quiet this morning,’ she said. ‘What’s the matter with them?’
    ‘I’m cleaning out the tanks,’ I told her. ‘By the way, we all want to congratulate you on last night. How does it feel to be able to name your fiftieth city?’
    She smiled shyly and sauntered away round the shop. As I knew she would, she stopped by the Arachnid and levelled her eyes at it.
    I wanted to see what she’d say, but Harry and Tony were all around her, and soon got her up to my apartment, where they had a hilarious morning playing the fool and raiding my Scotch.
    ‘What about coming out with us after the show tonight?’ Tony asked her. ‘We can go dancing at the Flamingo.’
    ‘But you’re both married,’ Jane protested. ‘Aren’t you worried about your reputations?’
    ‘Oh, we’ll bring the girls,’ Harry said airily. ‘And Steve here can come along and hold your coat.’
    We played i-Go together. Jane said she’d never played the game before, but she had no difficulty picking up the rules, and when she started sweeping the board with us I knew she was cheating. Admittedly it isn’t every day