He blinks. Meaning: what do you mean, who am I?
“You are the Horror Creeping in the Night! The Predator Gnawing at the Enemy’s Entrails! The Sharpshooter! The Pox and Perdition!”
It doesn’t work. The double dutifully scowls and strikes an even scarier pose, but still it’s obvious how insignificant, hollow, and rotted he is.
“I wish I had a good dumbbell with me. Yeah, you heard that right. And stop ogling me.”
I take the marker from behind my ear and draw a toothy smile right on the mirror. And roll back quickly so I don’t see the double jumping out of it. And he doesn’t. He’s too late.
As I drive along I get to thinking how many things are too late for me now.
I still can’t play the flute or do card tricks. Or make the chili infusion properly. I’ve never been up on the roof, never sat on a chimney, and never dropped anything in it so it rattled all the way down. I’ve never climbed the oak. I’ve never picked up a swallow’s nest and eaten it. Never flew the biggest, scariest kite at dawn under the Pheasants’ windows. I couldn’t even read the message from the olden times by collecting all the no one’s things that exist in the House.
Burdened with these thoughts, I roll into the Coffeepot. With my shades on, of course.
A couple of Rats, a triple of Hounds, and Mermaid with Ginger in the far corner. They’ve got three cups on the table, which means they’re waiting for someone but the someone isn’t here yet. So it would not be unreasonable to assume that it’s me who they’re waiting for. I head directly for them, say, “Why, thank you,” and grab the cup.
Coffee with milk. So, not Sphinx but Noble. I push the shades up my forehead and drink. One more thing I still can’t do: avoid gulping, even when the ladies are present.
“Tabaqui, did you just have a fight with somebody?” Ginger asks, looking at me intently.
“A vicious one. Scary even to talk about. I can say only that I’ve ripped him another smile, but that’s all I can reveal without devolving into the grisly details.”
They exchange glances. Ginger has on the paisley shirt, my own find at the last week’s Change Tuesday. Mermaid’s wearing the gray vest, still exposing the question marks in its gaps. Two dozen Whys, eerily in sync with the general mood and atmosphere.
“Poor guy,” Mermaid says, probably meaning the victim.
Very warm and caring.
“Exactly,” I say, touched. “Poor, unfortunate, unenlightened, and dusty.”
“Is it the ficus tree at the Crossroads he’s talking about?” Ginger muses.
“I know! It’s your bear!” Mermaid gasps.
Ginger feels in the backpack that’s hanging off the back of her chair.
“The bear is right here with me. And since you mentioned it, it’s not dusty at all. Just old.”
I look at the window. Is it me, or did the sun really go away? The windows are always draped in the Coffeepot, and it’s already twilight outside, but I still imagine that the weather’s changing.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper. “Bring in the clouds, drop down the rain, water the trees, bathe the crows . . .”
“Magic,” Mermaid sighs respectfully. “I wish I could do that. Bring the storm.”
“The entire House has been trying for the past month,” Ginger scoffs. “If even one of them could really do it we’d already be flooded up to the roof.”
“Speaking of, where’ve you been lately? It’s doom and gloom in the dorm. As soon as you take your eyes off someone, bang, he’s asleep. No one to talk to. Humpback is up in the oak, Lary is down on the first, and now you have disappeared too.” I wipe off my nose and chin and tease the coffee puddle over the placemat. “Boring.”
“Needle’s been sewing the wedding dress,” Mermaid says, springing a surprise on me. “In our room, so that no one could see her. She and Lary are getting married as soon as . . . well, you know. As soon as they can. And I’m in charge of decorations. White beads all over, imagine that.”
“All over Lary?” I say, horrified.
Ginger snorts, spraying coffee, and bangs her feet against the floor.
“Of course not. All over the dress. She wants everything to be proper.”
I picture Lary at the altar, in his customary black leather, spearing the wedding band with his long pinkie fingernail, and almost faint.
“Yuck! Disgusting petty properism, that’s all I can say about this. Still, I’m going to give them my blessing. And a present. I think I’ll get them a richly illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra.”
Suddenly I feel desperately sad. As if Alexander and his realization of the inner self weren’t enough, now it’s Lary and his wedding. I come to the conclusion that I should be drinking something stronger than coffee, drinking and drowning my sorrows in that something. But the Coffeepot is the Coffeepot, it never stocks anything nerve-calming. However, I remember that Ginger used to carry a flask.
“This calls for a drink,” I say. “It’s not every day Lary makes a decision this momentous.”
“Today is not the day he’s made it,” Ginger demurs.
I give her a reproachful look and say, “Don’t tell me you’d begrudge me!”
The flask is passed over, accompanied by a look of deep offense. I pour out a little into the coffee cup. It’s Doom, just as I expected. I invented this pick-me-up myself. It’s unlikely that a dose as small as what I’ve managed to beg is going to have any effect, but better a little something than a big nothing. I raise the cup and, to my own surprise, my voice is trembling from all the tribulations.
“My friends! Time, our principal and primary enemy, is implacable. The years take their toll as they roll by. The old grow older, the young grow stronger. Little dragons leave the ancestral shells and cast their misty sights at the sky! Improvident Bandar-Logs enter into matrimony with no regard to the consequences! Cute little boys turn into mean surly youths with a pronounced tendency to snitching! Our own reflections disrespect our advanced age!”
“Oh wow,” Ginger says. “All this, and he hasn’t even had a drop yet.”
I feel Noble’s hand on my shoulder, and his crutch clangs against Mustang’s weights.
“That’s my coffee talking. Those of a thieving nature always get a high when acquiring something that isn’t theirs.”
“All right, but not to that extent!”
“The creaky bones ache, feeling the chilly breath of the grave,” I insist. “Recently proud men now permit the assorted riffraff to blatantly trample their self-respect. It pains me, pains me and frightens me, my friends! As does the fact of my nonparticipation in all these happenings . . . But Jackal is Jackal, he never grows up, And marry never will he! He’ll say good-bye to all of his friends, and forever nowhere he’ll be!”
I’m being patted from three different sides. Ginger is cradling my tear-stained head, saying, “Come on, Tabaqui, what’s with you, don’t cry . . .”
Noble says, “Stop soothing him, or he’ll never shut up.”
At the next table Viking is trying to wrestle the razor from Hybrid, while Hybrid’s bellowing, “No! No! Give it back! He’s right about everything! Everything, I tell you!”
In short, it’s quite a hubbub, but my own time has frozen in a little lump. And while a part of me is hamming up the unquenchable sorrow, this devious and cunning lump senses through the shirt the two warm bumps, positioned so frighteningly close to each other. Soft and firm at the same time. And if a man in the throes of agony would draw spasmodic gasps, no one would suspect that he is in fact desperately sniffing something. Because it’s quite likely that never again in my life will I have an opportunity to smell a girl this close, in direct contact, and it would be a crying shame that my nose is full of snot, except that if it weren’t for the snot she wouldn’t be pressing me to her breasts.
But I must have shifted wrong at some point, because Ginger pulls away abruptly and looks down at me like I’ve just bitten her. And goes red. Terribly red, the way gingers do, when y
ou expect them to burst into flames at any moment. I must have gone red too. Ginger narrows her eyes. I close mine, waiting for the well-earned slap across the face, but before I do I have time to notice that our little pantomime didn’t escape Noble’s attention, while completely escaping Mermaid’s, who’s too busy being upset.
Still there’s no slap coming. This is a bit insulting. She can’t be pitying me, can she? I open my eyes. Ginger has traveled to faraway places. She’s fingering the wet shirt and looking in my direction, but not seeing me at all. Mermaid pushes a handkerchief at me.
I blow my nose loudly.
Ginger snaps out of her trance and says, “Tabaqui. It’s OK.”
And goes back to her chair. That’s it. Still, it would’ve been satisfying to receive the well-deserved thrashing. That would put me on the same level as all other full-blown smart alecks sniffing at other people’s girls.
Mermaid keeps petting my head and whispering that I am not at all old and that no one is planning to say good-bye to me and be forever nowhere.
“You silly child. You little naïf. That’s their destiny. And my destiny is to look at them receding in the distance and wave the wet hanky. It’s life, baby.”
Viking has disarmed Hybrid. Now all Hybrid can do is to stare at me with puffy eyes and transmit secretive signs and winks. Probably inviting me to join him in the hallway so we can hang ourselves together or something.
The Hound table is deep in a heated argument concerning whether it’s possible to get drunk from one sip, and if it is, what should be in the cup. Another minute, and they’re going to be driving over to check, so I take a hasty gulp of the Doom. Their inspections are always bad news.
Hound Rickshaw, having split right at the beginning of my attack of melancholy, now returns with Sphinx, Alexander, and Smoker in tow. If that’s how he’s been planning to intercede and save me, he’s way too late.
Alexander, still white as a polar mouse, dives behind the counter straight off. Sphinx joins us, grabbing a free chair on the way with his foot and plopping it down next to Mustang.
“There,” Noble says. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s one of the proud men who’s been permitting us to trample their self-respect. Sphinx, please stop permitting it, it interferes with Jackal’s nervous system.”
“Wait, what was that? Trample what now?”
“It’s not my quote. Self-respect. Assorted riffraff trampling it blatantly, and you tolerate it.”
“You snitch!” I fume. “Dirty stoolie!”
Noble smiles beatifically. It’s Mermaid who goes red instead of him. Smoker, ensconced in the corner, takes out his diary, maintaining his customary sour grimace.
“Time affects different people differently,” Gnome shrieks at the Hound table. “Just look around, and you’ll see . . . some grow up and change, and the others don’t. Why’s that? Tell me!”
“Crazy stuff,” Noble says and takes a nonchalant swig out of my cup.
“I found this strange tape in your nightstand,” Smoker informs me, bent over his daily toil. “With crunching sounds and some kind of snorting. And nothing else. Is that supposed to mean something?”
So he stumbled on one of those six tapes ruined by the pursuit of the elusive ghost cart. The last one that I didn’t bring over to the classroom. I try explaining it to Smoker. He keeps looking at me with the same “you can’t convince me and don’t even try” expression that’s really started to grate on me lately.
“Time is not a solid substance and can’t therefore act on some and not others,” Owl expounds in an edifying voice. “It’s fluid, one-directional, and not subject to outside influence.”
“Not subject to your influence, maybe,” Gnome says, pointing in our direction. “And those who do have influence over it would never say anything, and that’s why we think it doesn’t happen.”
“Wow, people sure hold entertaining opinions about us, don’t they,” I say in surprise. “Did you hear that? I’m blushing.”
“It’s your own fault.” Noble scowls. “That’s what you get for publicly hinting at exclusive abilities.”
“I was in mourning!”
“It didn’t have to be that ostentatious!”
I spy with my little eye that Sphinx, who’s been affecting boredom all this time, is suddenly no longer bored. He’s frozen, coiled like a spring, pupils dilated. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but I do. I prick up my ears and sniff at the air intently, trying to determine if something’s changed in it.
Not obviously. It’s a bit less stifling than before, or maybe it only seems that way because I’ve simply gotten inured to it. The window drapes sway and snap back. And Alexander, having dropped off the cups, suddenly grabs the edge of the table, as if someone’s trying to pull him away.
“You missed the best bit,” Noble says to Sphinx.
“I’ve already gathered that.”
“And it’s you who’s at the bottom of his complexes, if you dig deep enough.”
“Tabaqui doesn’t grow up, because he knows the secret,” Owl says to Gnome, but loud enough so that everyone else can hear it too. “He’s just said so. ‘But Jackal is Jackal’ and so on.”
Alexander is staring at the window, all strung out under his white vestments, like an arrow that’s already chosen its target. Like something winged, cooped up uncomfortably in a closed jar. The gnawed fingers, now clenched on his own shoulders, elongate and darken before my very eyes, turning into talons. The sand-colored clouds of the Outsides cross his face, flashing the unfallen rain when they reach his eyes.
“Ow. Ow. Ow,” I mumble, not able to look away.
Tired, cross, and not a little scared, Smoker asks if he understood it correctly that my cassettes contain recordings of various night noises.
“They contain evidence of an otherworldly phenomenon,” I tell him patiently.
“You mean they don’t.”
“Which is the same thing. Ghosts cannot be captured on tape.”
And no Howls in my subconscious, not one. Leached out. Only a helpless grunt. The stuffy Coffeepot air, viscous with smoke, begins to luminesce faintly, setting the silhouettes of its inhabitants trembling. Mermaid retreats behind her hair, like a frightened bird. Ginger turns to stand up. The universe around us floats outward in spirals, like invisible waves from a stone thrown in water. Hound Rickshaw crosses the Coffeepot hobbling lamely, trying to outrun them.
“So the fact that there’s nothing there proves the existence of ghosts?”
Smoker’s voice is desperate and betrays his almost final conviction in my mental incompetence. When a person talks in this fashion he is definitely in need of being rescued, except I can’t decide who needs saving more: Smoker, who’s on the verge of desperate wailing, or Alexander, who’s on the verge of flying out the window, breaking both the glass and the bars outside. Because I definitely can’t get to both of them in time.
“I’ve had it! You are just trying to drive me insane, all of you!” Smoker shrieks, his pallid eyes bugging out.
He drives right at me, clearly intent on running me over. But at the same moment there’s another shriek, and something fiery-scarlet singes the ceiling, flying across the room with a blinding flash. All sounds fall away.
“Avast!” I yell, pushing away from the table, and to the disjointed accompaniment of the fading echo of my own “vast-vast-vast,” I keel over.
Disgustingly slowly. Judging by the clatter, Smoker’s wheelchair crashed into Mustang, weights and all. I am on my back, observing the curious crystal rain fanning out across the floor. The small beads hang in the air, suspended over the faster, bigger shards. I reach out with my hand, mesmerized, trying to catch one of them, but miss. Obviously, I comprehensively squandered my chance to get to Alexander, and obviously it was him I needed to rescue first and foremost while Smoker could wait, because it’s one thing when someone is cracking because of loneliness and it’s quite another thing when someone else turns into a dragon and scoots off. Hav
ing realized this, I attempt to climb out of the wheelchair and do at least something, which puts me straight under Smoker’s wheels. My universe is temporarily dark, boring, and stinking of soot.
When I come to, I’m under the table. How I arrived here is a mystery. Next to me is Owl, and there’s a muddy coffee rain dripping peacefully off our common roof. There’s also an ample goose egg on my forehead, spreading down over the eye. I feel it, remembering the glass rain, and gasp.
“You know what,” Owl says irritably, glasses flashing, “your pack is completely out of bounds. It’s an outrage what you’ve been up to lately.”
“Right. The guy had a fit. What were we supposed to do? It is a sometimes occurrence with epileptics.”
“A fit? Epileptics?” Owl cackles unpleasantly. “So that’s what you call it in the Fourth!”
I endeavor to explain to Owl where exactly he can stuff his indignation, preferably in written form and wrapped with razor wire.
“Screw you,” Owl mumbles as he extricates himself from under the table.
The coffee drops, now less frequent, plop on his scruff.
I wait for him to crawl away and then peek out myself. Legs, shards, water, clumps of foam. A couple of people are trying to tidy up, while the rest just prance around ogling the scenery. Hounds, Rats, even the girls. Must have forgotten that we’re in a state of war. The surviving part of the windowpane seems to be frosted over. The slightest touch, and it’ll come tumbling down too. There’s a gaping hole in the middle. Resembling a starfish. I stare at it, and then feel myself being lifted up by Black. He picks me up and carries me away, briskly striding through the throng of people and shoving those who don’t step aside. It’s good to be purposefully carried. You can just relax and go with the flow. At the Coffeepot entrance, a gaggle of gawkers serenades us with whistles and murmurs.
“Don’t cry,” Black keeps repeating to me.
“I’m trying.”
There’s no viscous luminescence anymore. The world is back to its regular shape, the sounds carry clearly and loudly, but something did change. Here and there the windows creak and slap, and the wind strolls down the hallways. The door to our room snaps to behind us with such force that even Black startles and my teeth clank.
The Gray House Page 83
