Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  “I can see where this must have been a hard week for you,” she said.

  “It’s all right, Julie,” I told her. “I know it was hard for you too, feeling left out…”

  “Well…”

  “Adam told me you were jealous.”

  Julie blinked. “Jealous,” she said.

  “In a special-friends kind of way,” I added.

  “Jealous. Huh.” Julie tossed her head, in what might have been a sideways nod. “Oh-kay.”

  “So how are things with your mechanic?” I asked, trying to sound positive. “Reggie.”

  Julie made a seesawing gesture with her hand.

  “Not so good?”

  Julie shrugged. “He called me a couple weeks ago, after one of his friends gave my car a tow. It was the first I’d heard from him since, well, since the last time we were together. We’ve been having fun, but…” She shrugged again. “It could still turn out to have been a mistake. Probably will, in fact.”

  After lunch, I went and hung out at Julie’s apartment for several hours. It was the best, most relaxed visit I’d had there in over a year, and when I finally went home it was with a renewed sense that, yes, things were definitely looking up. I realize now that this was naive—that even if nothing else had happened, there would still have been plenty more problems with Julie and Penny both. But just then, and for the time being, I was blissfully, naively serene.

  My serenity lasted about twenty hours, until Sunday afternoon, when I killed Warren Lodge.

  After that, things started to get bad again in a hurry.

  14

  I was coming out of Magic Mouse Toys when I saw him, head down, hands jammed in his pockets, face buried deep in a blue jersey hood: a cougar in Pioneer Square.

  After breakfast on Sunday I decided to take a day trip into Seattle. I wanted to get away from Autumn Creek for a while, to not be home if Penny or even Julie decided to call. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to make things up to those souls in the house who’d felt shortchanged on time outside recently. So as I waited at the Metro bus stop on Bridge Street, I called Angel and Rhea out to the pulpit and asked them each to think of something they’d like to do in the city.

  Predictably, before Angel and Rhea had even had time to start considering possibilities, Jake, Adam, Aunt Sam, Drew, Alexander, and Simon all came crowding onto the pulpit as well, each clamoring for their own time in the body. Pretending to be surprised, I reminded them all that they’d already had their special outside time, during that first trip to Poulsbo to visit Dr. Grey. “Angel and Rhea are the only ones who didn’t get a turn. Fair is fair.”

  “Fair is not fair,” Simon complained. “The only outside time I got on that trip was five minutes on a stupid ferryboat. I didn’t get to pick what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do was go to the Westlake Center mall. What I wanted to do—”

  As I say, this reaction was predictable, and I’d already discussed it with my father when I’d asked his permission for this special outing. Now, following my father’s advice, I hushed Simon and laid down the law: “All right,” I said, “these are the rules. Everybody gets to pick one thing that they want to do in Seattle. It has to be something within reason; it has to be in downtown, so we don’t spend the whole day traveling around the city; and it can’t take more than ten minutes or cost more than two dollars. Because they got skipped last time, Angel and Rhea’s choices take precedence, and they get twenty minutes and four dollars each. Finally”—I focused in on Simon—“anyone who complains, gets impatient, or is rude not only forfeits their choice, they also spend the rest of the day in the house, locked in their room.”

  Drew still wanted to go to the aquarium, and Rhea decided that was a neat idea, so that was our first stop. The Seattle Aquarium, conveniently, is divided into two buildings; Rhea got to visit the seahorses, the tropical fish, and the giant octopus, while Drew checked out the salmon hatchery and the marine mammals. Next came rides on the waterfront streetcar: Angel rode from the Aquarium stop out to Pier 70; Alexander got the body for the return trip. We got off at Occidental Park, in Pioneer Square, where Aunt Sam found a café that served chocolate-covered croissants for $1.95.

  It was a little after noon now. Simon still wanted to go to Westlake Center. Adam was the only soul who hadn’t totally made up his mind, but he suggested that, if he couldn’t just go into a bar and have a beer—and he couldn’t—he might want to visit a “special” bookstore he knew of on Pike Street.

  Both of those places were at the opposite end of downtown from where we now were, so it was Jake’s choice that came next: a stop at Magic Mouse Toys. This is Jake’s favorite Seattle toy store. It’s smaller than FAO Schwarz, but the selection is good and includes a lot more items in Jake’s typical price range.

  Not that Jake really needed to spend any money. There’s a trick most souls can do, that Jake has a special knack for: by holding an object in his hands, studying it from every angle, he can bring it inside, creating an imaginary copy of it in the house. This is a great way to acquire luxuries that you can’t otherwise afford, and, if used more generally, it would probably cut down a lot on the real-world clutter that makes life as a multiple so cumbersome. But the trick has its limits. It works best with simple objects, or complex objects that can be thought of simply—a rocking horse or an electric train set being much easier to bring inside than, say, a jigsaw puzzle. Also, not all souls are equally skilled copiers—Aunt Sam and I are both pretty good at it, but my father is surprisingly bad (building the house and the geography, he says, is enough creation for one lifetime), and Adam, to his eternal chagrin, can’t do it at all. Jake is a natural at it, but like most five-year-olds, he’s also greedy: given a choice between real toys and imaginary ones, he wants both. So I knew that however many stuffed animals and tin soldiers he duplicated, he’d ultimately find something to spend his two dollars on.

  I entered the store on the lower level, where most of the more expensive toys are kept, and turned Jake loose. He made a quick pass by the model trains; most of the locomotives and train cars were ones he already had copies of, but there were some new pieces of model scenery that he spent a moment absorbing. Then he moved on to the board games section.

  To better entice passing children, Magic Mouse keeps open demonstration copies of many of the games it sells, and on a previous visit, Jake had become fascinated with one of these, a German import called The A-Maze-Ing Labyrinth. The price was twenty-five dollars, way beyond Jake’s means, but he’d been trying—unsuccessfully so far—to copy it.

  Board games are hard to duplicate inside. Even the most basic ones tend to have a lot of details to memorize, and chance elements, like die-rolling, raise thorny metaphysical problems. This particular game was especially detail-heavy: the labyrinth of the title was constructed from several dozen cardboard tiles, all different, which got shifted around during play. There were cards, too—just thinking about it makes my head hurt. But Jake was determined to possess the game, in installments if necessary. He squatted down by the demo copy, which was on a low shelf, picked up a handful of maze tiles, and concentrated.

  “Now, you know,” a voice boomed, “the required number of players is written on the side of the box.”

  Jake startled and dropped the tiles. A salesclerk, an older man with glasses and a goatee, had come up beside him. I’m sure the clerk was only intending to be helpful, but having an adult stand over him—tower over him, from his small soul’s point of view—is inherently terrifying for Jake. “Wh-what?” he stammered.

  “The required number of players,” the salesclerk repeated. He tapped the side of the game box. “It’s written right here, along with the recommended age range and other useful information.”

  “Oh-oh-kay,” said Jake.

  The clerk nodded and wandered away.

  Jake picked up the tiles again.

  “Have you been to the store before?” the clerk asked, reappearing. Jake let out a cry and, losing his b
alance, started to fall over; the clerk caught his arm to steady him.

  “What is it you want?” I asked, standing up. Jake had left the body the moment the clerk touched him.

  “I asked whether you’d been in the store before,” the clerk said, smiling pleasantly, oblivious to the distress he’d just caused.

  “Yes,” I said, “we’ve been here before.”

  “Ah,” said the clerk. “Then I don’t have to tell you about Take Off.”

  “Take off?” I said, and for a dark moment wondered whether this pushy man really was a salesclerk after all. “Take off what?”

  “Take Off, the airplane travel game,” the clerk replied, indicating another, more prominent board-game display. “It’s our most popular seller, by far.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s nice, but…the fact is I’m interested in this game, over here, and I’d really prefer it if you left me alone.”

  “Of course,” the clerk said, unperturbed. He nodded and wandered away again.

  “Jake?” I said, turning back to the cardboard labyrinth. “Do you want to give it another try?” He didn’t; his concentration was shattered, and he was so spooked that it was all I could do to coax him back out onto the pulpit. “It’s all right, Jake; we’ll go upstairs now.”

  Magic Mouse’s upper floor is largely devoted to novelties, things like Silly Putty and Pez dispensers. I browsed, picking up various items and commenting on them in a leisurely tone of voice. Eventually Jake calmed down enough that I was able to pique his interest with something: a spotted yo-yo that made a mooing sound as it traveled up and down its string. It cost more than two dollars, but I bought it for him anyway.

  With the yo-yo in my pocket, I stepped out of the store onto First Avenue. “My turn next,” Simon said. “Your turn next,” I agreed, trying to decide whether to catch a bus or just walk to Westlake Center.

  It was then, as I stood distracted on the sidewalk, that a tall figure in a hooded blue jersey brushed past me, headed south along First Avenue. The man—I assumed it was a man—jostled me as he went by; ordinarily I might have ignored this, but coming so soon after the incident with the salesclerk it made me angry, and I called after him: “Hey!”

  He didn’t break stride or turn around; he gave no sign of having heard me at all, just kept walking, crossing Yesler Way against the light. Which might have been the end of it, except that on the far side of Yesler, two other men were loading an antique wardrobe into the back of a truck. As he stepped onto the far curb, the man in the blue jersey looked up, so that his face was momentarily reflected in the mirrors on the wardrobe doors. It was only a brief glimpse, and the man’s face was still partially obscured by the jersey hood. But I recognized him.

  Warren Lodge.

  I didn’t really believe it at first. He’d been on the run for ten days, and by now I would have expected him to have left the state, if not the country—the Canadian border is only a hundred miles away, after all. Then too, I’d only ever seen him on TV, and as a picture in the newspaper; to literally bump into him on the street, in the flesh, was like spotting the boogeyman on line at the post office.

  But as the blue-jerseyed figure ducked past the men with the wardrobe, Adam, who’d gotten the same glimpse I had, spoke up from the pulpit. “It’s him,” he said.

  You know that sensation when you’re going along, not really paying attention to the weather, and all at once the sun goes under a cloud, and with the sudden dimming of the light you find yourself in a different landscape than the one you were walking through a second ago? This was like that: in an instant, the whole character of the day changed.

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “It’s him,” said Adam. “It’s Warren Lodge.”

  Then Simon—who didn’t know or care who Warren Lodge was, but was smart enough to guess that the afternoon’s itinerary had just been revised—chimed in: “Hey! What’s the holdup? It’s my turn now!”

  “Go to your room, Simon.”

  What do you do when you spot a cougar running loose on a city street? That’s easy: get the police. But looking around me I couldn’t see any, not even a traffic cop. There were some tough-looking civilians—the wardrobe-movers, for example—and I suppose I could have tried to enlist their help in detaining Warren Lodge, but even if that had occurred to me, it would have taken time to explain what I wanted…and meanwhile the figure in the blue jersey was getting away.

  I started after him.

  “Andrew,” Adam said, “what the hell are you—Shit! Watch out!”

  The light for the Yesler Way crossing was still red, and as I stepped out into the street, a car very nearly ran me down. Fortunately the driver was more attentive than I was and slammed on the brakes.

  “Andrew,” Adam tried again, when we were safely across the street, “what are you doing?”

  “Following him,” I said, “what do you think? That’s Warren Lodge, we’ve got to catch him!”

  “Catch him? Are you crazy? We’ve got to get the police. Let them catch him.”

  “I don’t see any police here, do you?”

  “So go to a pay phone—right there, there’s one. Call the police.”

  “Not until I know where he’s going.”

  Warren Lodge was half a block ahead of me now, still heading south. I made an amateurish attempt to hide the fact that I was tailing him, pausing every few yards to stare into the window of whatever building I was passing, whether or not there was anything to see. If Warren Lodge had looked behind him even once, it would have taken him all of three seconds to figure out what I was really up to.

  But he never did look back; just kept plodding forward steadily, block after block. Then, as he neared the intersection of First Avenue and King, he suddenly pulled up short, seeing something that he didn’t like. He darted across the Avenue and vanished around the corner.

  I hurried to the end of the block. Off to the right, I saw what had frightened Warren Lodge: a police car sat parked by the curb. But it was empty, and there was no sign of the officers who’d left it there.

  I turned left, looking down King Street in the direction Warren Lodge had run. The sidewalk was empty all the way to the Amtrak station, two and a half blocks away. I broke into a jog, checking side streets and alleyways as I went, but reached the train station without catching sight of him again. Intent on picking up the trail before it went completely cold, I ignored a side door that said SECURITY OFFICE and entered the main terminal on my own.

  “This is really dumb, Andrew,” Adam said. “I mean, he’s not going to be in here, but it’s really dumb anyway.”

  King Street Station is small, and it took me less than a minute to check the lobby and the passenger waiting area. I got excited when I spotted someone in a sports jersey standing at the ticket counter, but it turned out to be a woman with short hair.

  By now my father had got wind that something was up. “What’s going on out here?” he said, following Seferis onto the pulpit. “Simon is running all over the house complaining that he’s been cheated.”

  “We saw Warren Lodge,” I told him.

  “You saw Warren Lodge? On the street?” He looked out, taking in our surroundings. “So what are we doing in a train station? Why aren’t you talking to the police right now?”

  “Andrew decided to make a citizen’s arrest,” Adam explained helpfully.

  “He what?”

  My father is a difficult soul to ignore even when he isn’t hopping mad, but for just a moment, I pretended he didn’t exist. “Adam,” I said, “where do you suppose Warren Lodge was going on First Avenue?”

  “I don’t know,” said Adam. “Maybe nowhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well he’s a fugitive now, right? The cops are watching his house, and they’ve probably frozen his bank and credit accounts. So if he can’t go home, and he’s got no money—”

  “Homeless,” I said. “So you think he might just be roaming around Pioneer S
quare?”

  “Could be. Which is another reason why you don’t need to chase after him personally, because sooner or later—”

  “So if he got scared, and wanted to go somewhere around here where he could lose himself in a crowd for a while, where would that be?”

  Adam didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to; I already knew the answer. It was a place I’d been to once already today: Occidental Park.

  “Andrew,” my father said, as I raced up Occidental Avenue. “Andrew, are you hearing me?”

  “I can hear you,” I said, “and I know you’re upset with me, but—”

  “Do you understand how dangerous this is? You’re putting the whole house at risk.”

  “I’m not going to confront him,” I promised. “I just want to find him, and then—”

  “Andrew…”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Occidental Park stretches the length of two city blocks. Its southern half is lined with art galleries and antique furniture stores, but its northern half is seedier, bordered on one side by a parking lot, and with its many wooden benches it is a natural gathering spot for homeless people.

  “Andrew…”

  “There!”

  He was sitting alone at the northernmost edge of the park. The hood of his jersey was still pulled up, and he was hunched over, as if sick or in pain, but it was him. Adam confirmed it.

  “All right,” I said. “Now we call the police.”

  There was a pay phone not far from where I was standing. I went to use it, but before I could dial 911 I noticed another of the park’s occupants—a homeless man with a very long beard and even longer hair, like a desert island castaway—approaching the bench where Warren Lodge was sitting. The castaway, a true schizophrenic, came up shouting and waving his arms; Warren Lodge jolted upright in alarm, slid sideways off the bench, and ran out of the park, fleeing along Washington Street.