“What did you do that for?” Magician asked.
“They dropped me,” Stinker squeaked. “Twice! One time was on the stairs. I could have fallen to my death.”
Elephant just shuddered, sucking his thumb.
“I wanted to let them out,” Grasshopper explained. “So they could fly.”
The hands of the Poxy Sissies, dirty from the asphalt and the rusty grates, reached out to feel him.
“Hey. Are you all right?”
“It all comes from the fuzzy looking,” Humpback said. “I knew it.”
“Someone had to let them out,” Grasshopper said. “Set them free. That’s what the song was about.”
He fell silent, straining to hear the song again across the two floors dividing them. But it felt different now, like someone just listening to music in the distance. No one was calling him to action.
“I’d give anything,” one of the Siamese moaned, “to be grown up now. And to be there. Like them. Why do we have to grow so slowly?”
“I saw him. Skull,” Magician bragged.
“No you didn’t,” Wolf said. “You’re just making it up.”
Beauty was hugging the juice maker.
“It was . . . It was like juice,” he said dreamily. “Like it was all covered in juice. Orange. And then strawberry. And then I don’t know what kind.”
“As soon as my letters get there, we’ll have all of that too,” Stinker said. “Dancing at night. Big deal. They just guzzle beer and scream. Some entertainment. We’ll do loads better.”
“You can still hear them,” Wolf said. “Down there. Maybe they didn’t even notice that busted glass. Or maybe they don’t care when they’re having fun like that.”
“Let’s have fun too,” Humpback suggested.
“We haven’t got girls,” Grasshopper said. “Or the basement. Or the record player with the stereo system. But once we get all that, we’re not going to just shuffle in place. We’ll fly away.”
“Right.” Stinker nodded. “You’re going to kick out the glass for us, and we’ll just soar into the sky. In white nightgowns. Like ghosts! You gave your word, so remember that.”
“No one is going to make me wear a nightgown, ever,” Humpback grumbled. “Not when I’m grown up. Just let them try . . .”
Grasshopper edged along the wall, constantly stepping in the piles of sawdust. Pearlescent smoke permeated the café; clouds of it drifted from table to table. Music oozed from the speakers. The seniors were in conversation mode, elbows spread on the table mats, heads close together, smoke curling out of nostrils. He stole by them silently and found a corner between the switched-off television and the fake palm tree. There he crouched down and froze, letting his gaze wander among the tables.
Those actually were classroom desks with tablecloths on top. The ashtrays took over for the pencil holders. The seniors had thought up this café themselves, and designed all the furniture. The counter they made out of crates covered in fabric. Behind the counter, Gibbon, a long-limbed senior, tended to the sizzling, spitting coffeepots, juggled sugar bowls, cups, and spoons, poured, mixed, whipped, and arranged his creations on the waiting trays.
The audience on the slender-legged stools placed all along the counter observed him rapturously. They leaned on it, wiggled corduroy-clad bottoms on the mushroom seats, teased the half-moon coffee stains with their fingers, raided the sugar bowls. Those were the delights available to the walkers. Wheelers had to make do with the tables.
A cardboard monkey on a string hung from the palm branch over Grasshopper’s head. He looked at it. Then looked back at the seniors. The speakers on the walls hissed idly. There, in the distance, among the clouds of smoke behind the counter, Gibbon wiped his hands on the bar towel and changed the record. Grasshopper buried his chin in his knees and closed his eyes. This was not the song. But he believed. Believed that if he sat here quietly, not going anywhere, they’d put the song back on.
The windows darkened gradually. Most of the tables were already occupied. The seniors’ voices droned in the background, dissolving into one rustling stream. This song danced, clanking the tin cans and squeaking from time to time. It was like a conga line of cheerful people, wiggling their hips, stomping in the sand, and shaking tambourines.
Grasshopper took in the smells of coffee and smoke. Could it be that coffee was the potion that made you a grown-up? That if you drank it you became an adult? That’s what Grasshopper thought. Life had its own laws, they were innate, not invented, and one of them was about coffee and those who drank it. First they let you have coffee. Then, as a result, they stop insisting that you go to bed at a certain hour. No one actually lets you smoke, but there’s not letting and then there’s not letting. Which is why there aren’t any seniors who don’t smoke, and only one junior who does. Seniors who smoke and drink coffee become very excitable, and next thing you know they’re allowed to turn a lecture hall into a bar and not sleep at night. And to skip breakfast. And it all started with coffee.
Grasshopper, still with chin between knees, closed his eyes drowsily. The cardboard monkey swung on its cord. Someone tossed a beer can in the air and caught it again. A web of cracks ran down the windowpane. Rain. The rumble of thunder crowded out the music. Those at the tables laughed and looked at the windows. Gibbon wiped down the counter.
Grasshopper waited patiently.
The dancing people were still drumming and singing, relentlessly vivacious, alien—to the rain, the dusk, the faces at the tables. Only the smell of coffee was in tune with them, and the fake palm. Why is it that no one hears how out of place it is here? Them and their sunny songs? Finally, with the last shake of the hips and the last rattle of the tambourines, the dancers departed, to Grasshopper’s relief, leaving behind only an empty rustle, like the crackling of a dying fire. That soft sound was soon drowned out, as the rain took over.
Gibbon changed the record again. A guitar lick, overlaid on the rain. Grasshopper perked up and raised his head. The voice he recognized immediately, as soon as it came in. It was a different song, but the voice was the same voice that had screamed at him from the basement. Grasshopper sat up straight. The voice whispered and moaned over the tables and the heads of the seniors. The setting sun pushed aside the streaming water and the low clouds, and the room turned to purple and gold. It didn’t matter that this wasn’t the song. Grasshopper was sure that he knew this one too, had always known it. Knew it like he knew himself, like something that always had been, that he and everyone else needed in order to simply go on existing. This was the café, not the basement, but the voice kept on calling. Inviting to come with it, out into the wall of the rain. Where? No one could know. And there was no need to break the glass this time. Just step out through it, parting it like water, then through the rain, and up from there. The tables dissolved in the music, leaving only the checkered puzzle of the tablecloths. Time stopped. Rain beat out the drum solo on the faces and hands. Then the purple faded, the gold melted. Only Grasshopper’s hair still flamed in the dark corner.
That song came to an end, but the voice on the record had others. More magic for those who knew how to listen. Grasshopper listened until Gibbon changed the record, and it had a different voice, one that couldn’t make him recognize it. The heads of the seniors resumed their swaying, the fingers busied themselves with glasses and ashtrays. A cat with a glossy back slinked under the tables, mewling pitifully, and got a cigarette and a mint thrown down for its troubles. Grasshopper sighed. This new song didn’t even have coffee people in it. It didn’t have anything. Only a shrill woman.
Two girls wearing bright-red lipstick wheeled away from their table. One of them picked up the cat and cradled it. Someone turned the light on, and there was a short burst of switches clicking. Lights under green umbrella shades were coming on everywhere. The woman was singing about being dumped. Two songs in a row now.
Grasshopper got up, separating himself from the wall and the warm nook behind the television. The palm tree s
wayed. The monkey turned its empty, unpainted side to him. He threaded his way between the tables, a white streak in the cloud of smoke. An underwater kingdom of green shades and green faces. He went to the counter and asked a question.
The seniors leaned down from the mushroom stools and said, “What was that?” Gibbon, in his white apron, regarded him from above like he was something not worthy of attention.
Grasshopper repeated the question. The faces of the seniors scowled sarcastically. Gibbon took out a marker, scribbled something on a napkin, and placed it on the edge of the counter.
“Read this,” he said.
Grasshopper looked at the words.
“Led Zeppelin,” he said timidly. “Where is it led?”
The seniors sneered.
“Everywhere! It’s made of lead, dummy!”
Grasshopper blushed.
“Why?”
“To better smash the windows with,” Gibbon said indifferently, and they broke out laughing again.
The laughter chased Grasshopper out, burning with shame, but not before he stashed the wad of the napkin in the grip of the prosthetic.
How did they know? Who told them?
Across the walls of the Poxy room, animals were flying. Goblin lurked in wait, ready to ambush an unwary stranger. Grasshopper sat down in front of the nightstand with the typewriter and relaxed his grip. The napkin wasn’t there. The not-quite-hand could not make a proper fist. Grasshopper shut his eyes tightly, then opened them and rattled out the words that he remembered even without the aid of the napkin. Then pulled out the sheet of paper and stuffed it in his pocket. He was upset. By the zeppelin. Because he didn’t understand what a zeppelin could possibly have to do with it. They were bulky and unwieldy, and they’d been extinct for a long time. And also because the seniors knew about the glass. About him breaking it.
“The most hurtful thing,” he said, “is that it was one of you who told them.”
“What?” Humpback said, leaning down from his bunk.
“Nothing,” Grasshopper said. “Whoever did it heard me.”
Beauty was wearing a paper crown with rounded edges. His smile was missing a tooth. Stinker, in a crown exactly like Beauty’s, also grinned, but with inquisitive anticipation. His smile was abundantly toothy. One of the Siamese was cutting pictures out of a magazine. He raised his icy stare at Grasshopper and turned back to clicking the scissors.
“Who said what to who?” Stinker blurted out. “And who was supposed to hear?”
Humpback leaned over again.
“About the glass,” Grasshopper said. “That it was me who broke it. The seniors know.”
“It wasn’t me,” Stinker protested. “I’m blameless. Never, not to a single soul!”
Siamese yawned. Humpback shifted angrily under the covers.
Elephant was fiddling bashfully with the pocket of his overalls.
“I told them. That Grasshopper . . . wanted to let them out. Very much. Was very upset. So I told them.”
“Who?” Stinker said, shifting the crown askew and picking at his ear. “Who did you tell?”
“Them,” Elephant said waving his hand vaguely. “That tall one. He asked. And also the other one, he was standing there too. Was that wrong? They weren’t angry.”
Elephant’s guileless blue gaze sought out Siamese, and his thumb moved in the direction of his mouth.
“Was that wrong?”
Siamese sighed.
“How hard did you get it?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” Grasshopper said, approaching Stinker and nodding at a pocket. “Take this out, please. I wrote something, for your letters. For you to mention.”
Stinker tugged at the pocket, snatched out the sheet, and peered into the words, then brought them right under his nose and sniffed greedily.
“Wow,” he said. “I’d say . . . You think that would be useful to have around?”
Humpback climbed down, took the paper from Stinker, and read it too.
“Zeppelin? What’s that mean?”
“I could, of course, write that a poor paralyzed baby is desperately into the lighter-than-air craft,” Stinker drawled dreamily. “No problem at all. But how can we be sure they’ll understand it correctly?”
“That’s the name of the song,” Grasshopper said. “Or the band. I’m not sure. That’s if Gibbon wasn’t trying to pull a joke on me.”
“We’ll find out,” Stinker said, putting away the paper. “And then it’s going on the list.”
Elephant trampled heavily to Grasshopper’s side, right over the magazine cuttings.
“I want a crown too,” he whined, pointing at Beauty. “With pointy bits, like this one.”
Stinker handed over his crown.
Elephant quickly put his hands behind his back.
“No! Like this one. Beautiful!”
Humpback took the crown off Beauty’s head and slapped it over Elephant’s. He had to push it down a bit to make sure it didn’t fall off. Elephant went back, beaming and holding very straight.
“No bawling this time,” Humpback said happily. “We’re in luck.”
Elephant sat on the bed and felt around his head gingerly.
TABAQUI
DAY THE FIFTH
“’Tis the voice of the Jubjub!” he suddenly cried.
(This man, that they used to call “Dunce.”)
—Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark
Tuesdays are Swap days. I haven’t been down to the first since Pompey. That floor somehow ceased to attract me. You can call it cowardly, I guess, but it’s more to do with waiting it out. There are bad places and there are temporarily bad places. That temporary badness can be waited out. That’s what I ponder all morning. How I miss the Swap days and how enough time has passed since Pompey for the first floor to stop being a bad place.
So after classes I take stock of my belongings. Of everything stuffed into the bags and boxes. Can’t find anything worthwhile. That’s what comes from not swapping for so long. When you’re away from that business for a while you lose the nose for it. I am scraping the bottom, turning over the deepest piles, and come across the long-forgotten flashlight with the naked lady. That is, the handle has this form, so you’re supposedly holding her at the waist. Ghastly thing. Very slightly dented. I’ll take it. But this abomination immediately makes me feel ashamed, so I pick out three strings of bead necklaces. Walnut shells, date pits, and coffee beans. It’s a bit painful to part with those, but I can always make more. I have the technology. All of this fits into one bundle, a very small one.
I dive into the record stacks, the back rows. Yngwie Malmsteen. Exactly the kind of thing that’s just begging to be swapped. Lary’s going to go bananas, but I’m certainly a better judge of what is or isn’t useful to have around. Besides, it is quite likely that I won’t find anything to swap it for, and then I’ll just put it back. In fact, I’m almost certain that this is how it’ll be. I put the record into a plastic bag, so it’s less conspicuous. Time to drive.
The din hits me on the landing, and all I can see when I look down are figures rushing to and fro. More people than usual. Many more, come to think of it. I can’t quite grasp why, but once I’m down there I notice that half of the swappers are girls, and then I’m surprised at my own surprise. It’s not as if they wouldn’t have anything worth swapping. I keep forgetting about the new Law. This makes me slightly uneasy. I’m really introverted by nature, and I don’t like being ambushed. Yes, the Law, that’s all nice and good, but not when you haven’t been expecting it to jump out at you. Which I wasn’t. But I’ve already wheeled down here in front of everyone, it wouldn’t do to just turn back.
I drive slowly past them—sitting and standing, hawking this and that. I try to look the way I always look. Like they have always been loitering here, nothing special about it. It’s not too hard to look unruffled in the throng of primped-up Rats and Hounds. You’re almost invisible in it. Takes an effort to muscle through, even.
“Whaddya have?” Gnome asks.
His spots make him look like a fly agaric. He’s looking over my head and doesn’t give a crap about what I have. He’s asking just because. Next to him, sullen Gaby is holding a huge poster of Marilyn and yawning like a crocodile.
I drive by quickly. There’s a short line in the records corner, four Hounds and two bespectacled girls. Before them an empty space, and before that a single girl, all alone. Suddenly I’m stuck near her. Had to stop to catch the record that chose this moment to try to slide off Mustang and slither out of the sleeve at the same time. And then . . .
The Gray House Page 45
