Spice Pogrom

by Connie Willis

  “I gotta be at work at nineteen o’clock, Mr. Fenokee,” Charmaine said, sounding so close she could have been using a subvocalizer. “We better get all this stuff put away.”

  Chris and Hutchins dived out the door and slid the shojii screen shut. “Where’s the key?” he said.

  Chris pulled it out of her pocket and fumbled to lock the door. The lock seemed to take forever to read the key. She pulled it out.

  “Can you get the door, please, Molly?” Charmaine said, there was a long pause, and the door of the apartment slid open. Chris put her hands behind her back.

  “ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said. She was carrying an unsteady stack of boxes and a shopping bag. Hutchins took half of the boxes for her. “Gee, thanks. Would you believe that rotten kid wouldn’t even open the door for me? She said after tonight she was going to be a star and wouldn’t have to do anything anybody told her.” She bent over in her red strapless dress to put the rest of the boxes down.

  “Where’s Mr. Okeefenokee?” Chris said.

  “He stopped to talk to my ex-boyfriend,” she said. “Look, I gotta be at work in half an hour, and I don’t even have my cherry blossoms on yet, so could you guys help put this stuff away?”

  “Sure,” Hutchins said. Charmaine grabbed a small sack out of the shopping bag and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Chris,” Hutchins said. Chris pretended not to hear him. She put the key in her pocket and started for her room.

  “Did you take our chip recorder?” Bets said indignantly from the door. She was wearing an aproned blue dress. Her yellow curls peeked out from under a turned-up Dutch cap. “It had ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ on it.” She stamped her wooden shoe. “You better give it back.”

  “I don’t have it,” Chris said, and amazingly, Bets turned around and stomped out. Chris heard her say loudly, “She says she doesn’t have it, but I’ll bet she took it. She’s always doing mean things like that to us.”

  “Chris, listen,” Hutchms said, putting out his hand to keep her from passing. “I should have told you the truth to begin with.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You should have.”

  “The first thing I heard you say to Stewart was that you didn’t have any room for the piano.” He looked thoughtfully at Mr. Okeefenokee’s door. “I didn’t see the piano in there, did you?”

  “No,” Chris said. “So you figured if I didn’t have room for a piano, I certainly wouldn’t have room for you, and you were going to have to romance the landlady into giving you a place to sleep. So you fell asleep on my shoulder and brought me Charmaine’s shoes and fed me a tempura dog.”

  “Now you and Hutchins get married,” Mr. Okeefenokee said, carrying two shopping bags full of boxes and Mitsukoshi sacks. His wispy orange-pink hair was flying out in all directions. “Go on hahnahmoon.”

  “Mr. Okeefenokee, I thought I explained…,” Chris said.

  “We’re thyure you took it,” Molly said, with her hands on the hips of her Dutch dress. “If you don’t give it back, we’re going to tell our interviewer all the thingth you did.”

  “Fine. Mr. Okeefenokee,” she said again, but he had already disappeared through his door.

  “I hope we didn’t miss any bento-bako boxes,” Hutchins whispered to her. The door slid open and Mr. Okeefenokee emerged, picked up the packages Charmaine had left on the floor, and disappeared into the room again.

  “You’ll be thorry you were mean to uth.” Molly slid the apartment door shut with a crash, and Chris and Hutchins were abruptly alone.

  “Thanks for not spilling the beans to Okee,” Hutchins said.

  “What would you have done if I’d tried? Bought me another tempura dog? Fallen asleep on my shoulder again? You’re no better than Charmaine’s prospective buyer, you know that? Talk about your real-estate deals.”

  “What do you think of my cherry blossoms?” Charmaine said, emerging from the bathroom with the red dress over her arm. “Do you think that pink’s too dark?” She peered over her shoulder. “It always looks different on your—”

  “It looks fine,” Chris said.

  “Omiko said to tell you guys to come to the show tonight, and she’ll see that Mr. Fenokee catches her orbiting colonies’ tassels,” she said, and clattered out. Chris watched her red high heels.

  (Chris, listen, I wasn’t romancing you for a place to sleep,) Hutchins said in her ear. (I was—)

  She turned around furiously, yanked the receiver off her ear, and handed it to him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, fishing her subvocalizer out of her pocket and putting it in his outstretched hand. “You can stay. I won’t tell Mr. Okeefenokee who you are. Just leave me alone.” She pulled the door of her apartment open. “I’ll go ask Charmaine if I can bunk with her tonight.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Hutchins said, looking down at the subvocalizer in his hand. “I’ll sleep in the bathroom,” but she went on out anyway, slamming shut the sliding door with almost as much force as Molly.

  Charmaine had already left. She tried to catch her, brushing past Molly and Bets, who stopped in the middle of singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” to glare at her from the landing, and practically stepping on the old man in the baseball cap, who was, amazingly, sleeping through it, but by the time she got to the door, Charmaine had already disappeared into the crowd.

  She came back up the stairs. Molly and Bets stopped for her again, folding their arms and tapping their wooden shoes impatiently, and then started up again as soon as she was off the landing, singing their own accompaniment in piping, slightly flat voices. Hutchins was at the end of the hall, talking earnestly to Charmaine’s lawyer and frowning.

  Chris slid her door open. “Why did you refuse to sublet your apartment to Molly and Bets?” the redheaded man said. He stuck a chip-cam in her face. She tried to brush past him. “So you admit you refused to share your apartment with two innocent tykes and then blatantly rented half of it to—”

  She got the door shut with some difficulty since his foot was wedged in it, went in the living room and shut and locked that door, too, and then leaned against it, feeling as tired as if she had just come up on the shuttle.

  Chris spent the evening huddled on the couch under a blanket.

  “I brought you some supper,” Hutchins called through the door about nineteen o’clock. “No tempura dogs. I’ll leave it outside the door.”

  Chris opened the door. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m sleeping in here. You can sleep with Charmaine,” and then was afraid he would say, “I don’t want to sleep with Charmaine. I want to sleep with you,” but he only said, “I’ll sleep in the hall,” and handed her a pastrami sandwich and a packet of milk.

  He knocked again at twenty-thirty and called out, “Molly and Bets’s interview is on. Mr. Nagisha’s got his TV set up on the landing. The little girls told me to tell you because, and I quote, ‘Thith ith what thyee getth for thtealing our recorder.’ I thought maybe you might want to come see what revenge they’ve cooked up.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Okay,” he said, and knocked again immediately.

  “Go away,” Chris said.

  “You and Hutchins get married tonight,” Mr. Okeefenokee said. “I must talk to you about closing.”

  She opened the door. Mr. Okeefenokee came in, wearing his solemn expression. “Why are you not wearing your thuwevrherrnghladdis?”

  Chris put her hand up to her throat. “It hurt to wear it,” she said. “Charmaine said to ask you if you’d like to go see the show at Luigi’s tonight.”

  “I cannot go. You and Hutchins get married tonight.”

  “We can’t get married, Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris said. “I’m engaged to Stewart, and even if I weren’t, Hutchins doesn’t want to marry me. He just wanted a place to stay.”

  “You like my wife,” he said, continuing to look at her solemnly, the lines above his nose deepening.

  “I thought Omiko reminded yo
u of your wife.”

  “Omiko sake cups like wife,” he said, reverting to pidgin. His cheek knobs were bright orange. “But you like her, most.”

  “You miss your wife, don’t you?” Chris said, and then remembered that he wouldn’t understand that meaning of “miss.” “It makes you sad that she is far away.”

  “Far away,” he said, nodding and smiling vigorously.

  “Far away,” she said, walking to the end of the hall.

  “Far away.” She came back and stood in front of him.

  “Close.”

  “Closing,” he said, and his face smoothed out into his expression of understanding. “Hahnahmoon. I bought bed. Put on subvocalizer. You and Hutchins get married after interview.” He went bustling out, his wispy hair trailing behind him, like sunset clouds.

  “I don’t think so,” Chris thought sadly, sliding the door shut. I’m engaged to Stewart and Hutchins just wanted a place to stay. Mr. Okeefenokee hadn’t understood her when she’d said that. “I bought bed,” he’d said, and he hadn’t understood “close” either. Or “far away.” She had a sudden terrible vision of Stewart trying to explain what a space program was. “Space program,” she could hear him saying, “go far way,” and Mr. Okeefenokee would nod and smile vigorously.

  I’d better tell Hutchins about “far away,” she thought. She went out in the hall to look for him. He wasn’t on the stairs, but everybody else was, including Mr. Nagisha’s evicted cousins. They were watching Molly and Bets’s holographic images in front of the TV. Molly and Bets, still in costume, were dancing alongside their three-dimensional images, and both Mollys were bawling “Tiptoe Through the Tulipth.”

  Chris went back inside and went to bed, locking her apartment door but leaving the door of her room slightly open so she could hear Hutchins when he came back. If he comes back, she thought sadly. After a while she heard someone come in, and got up, but it was only Mr. Okeefenokee. He disappeared into his room and began to snore almost before he had the shoji screen shut.

  “Chris, wake up,” Hutchins said in her ear, and at first she thought he was using the subvocalizer.

  “I took it off,” she said sleepily, and opened her eyes. He was squatting beside the couch, his hand on her shoulder. He had on jeans and no shirt. “What time is it?” she said, reaching for the light. “And what are you doing in here?”

  “Twenty-one o’clock,” he whispered. “Don’t turn on the light. You’ll wake Butch and Sundance.” He pointed at the floor, where Molly and Bets were curled up in the pink blanket. “Where’s the key to Okee’s room? I can’t get him to open the door.”

  “How did they get in here?” she said, rummaging through her clothes at the end of the couch.

  “I don’t know. Probably Molly had another key.”

  She found the key and handed it to him. “Another key?”

  “This is Molly’s key, too. I threatened to tell her redheaded interviewer that she was really eleven if she didn’t give it to me.” He stepped over Molly and Bets.

  Chris hunted for her robe for nearly a full minute before she realized she was hearing the sound of Mr. Okeefenokee’s snoring. “He’s asleep,” she said, but Hutchins was already out in the hall. She went after him. “He’s asleep.”

  “Remember how he said we woke him up with our talking? Well, I’ve been shouting through the door at him for the last fifteen minutes. I’ve done everything short of kicking in his shoji screen.” He fitted the key in the door and waited for it to be read. “Something’s wrong.” He slid the screen open. “Okee? Are you in here?”

  The snoring continued. Chris followed him inside and slid the door shut behind her. Hutchins was staring at the bed. Mr. Okeefenokee had cleared off the bento-bako boxes and the microwave ovens and made up the bed with red-and-green-patterned sheets. There was a stack of boxes on the foot of the bed with a piece of paper and a deck of playing cards on top of it. Molly’s chip recorder was lying on the pillow.

  “Charmaine must have picked out the sheets,” Chris said. “There are fans on them.”

  Hutchins picked up the recorder and hit a button. The snoring stopped. “He’s gone,” Hutchins said.

  “Gone where? And how did he get out? I thought you were sleeping in the hall.”

  “I didn’t come in until after he was asleep.” He stopped and corrected himself. “Until I thought he was asleep. I was down in Mr. Nagisha’s apartment trying to get Charmaine’s boyfriend to tell me what Okee’d been talking to him about, while Okee and everybody else were watching Sacco and Vanzetti tiptoe through the tulips on TV. Charmaine’s lawyer kept pleading client confidentiality until the interview was over, and when I came back up here, I could hear Okee snoring.” He tapped the recorder on his hand. “He must have hidden in the hall till I came in and then sneaked out.”

  Chris picked up the piece of paper and looked at it. “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he’d found out I’d been lying to him. We probably missed one of the bento-bako boxes or Molly and Bets told him I’d been in here or something. Damn it, coming up here incognito was a truly inspired idea! If I knew where Spielberg was, I’d tell him to come out of hiding before he hurts somebody! Okee’s probably halfway back to Eahrohhsani by now!”

  “He didn’t go home,” Chris said. She handed him the list. “He’s probably down at Luigi’s trying to catch one of Omiko’s tassels.” She pointed to the middle of the paper. “This is number three: ‘Time alone. Talk.’ ”

  He read the list aloud. “ ‘Be friends, talk, time alone, neck, bed, close, honeymoon.’ What is this?”

  “It’s his list. ‘You and Hutchins get married.’ I told him people have to have a chance to be alone to talk before they got married.” She picked up the deck of cards and looked at it.

  “And I said, ‘Neck.’ ”

  “Which is number four.” There weren’t any black cards in the deck. She fanned them out to look at them.

  There weren’t any hearts either. “You notice those aren’t checked off yet. He’s trying to give us some time alone.”

  Hutchins reached for one of the boxes. He took the lid off and held up a black lace nightgown. “It looks like he thought of everything.”

  “Yeah,” she said, spreading out the cards so he could see them. “Charmaine told him diamonds are a girl’s best friend.”

  “So he got you diamonds,” he said. He tossed the list on the bed. “God only knows what he thinks a closing is. Or a hahnahmoon.”

  “Or a space program. We’d better go look for him. Maybe if I asked him about his space program, he’d explain it to me.”

  “In a minute,” he said. He put the nightgown back in the box. “Okee wanted us to talk alone. Your prospective buyer said to do anything Okee wanted.”

  She was suddenly very aware of her skimpy nightshirt and Hutchins’s bare chest. “You leave Stewart out of this.”

  “I’d be glad to. The hell with what Stewart says. The hell with what Okee wants. I want to talk to you alone.”

  Chris backed away from him, knocking over the bento-bako boxes again. “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said unsteadily.

  “Fine. Don’t say anything. I’ll do the talking. I didn’t ‘romance’ you, as you call it, because I needed a place to stay. And I didn’t pretend to be shuttle-lagged. I was shuttle-lagged, damn it, and all I could think of was keeping close to Okee.” He came around the bed, ignoring the scattered bento-bako boxes. “It took about one good look at you to make me realize I should tell you the truth, but every time I tried, we were interrupted by some damned vaudeville act.”

  Chris kept backing down the narrow aisle between boxes, which was even narrower now that the microwaves were stacked on one side. “And that’s why you kept interrupting my lunch with Stewart?” she said, and crashed into the Christmas tree. Two ornaments hit the floor and bounced. “Because you were trying to tell the truth?”

  “I was trying to keep you from marrying somebody who only wants yo
ur apartment,” he shouted. “He doesn’t care about you! He pawns some alien off on you without even knowing if he’s friendly. What if it is a space pogrom and Okee’d decided to start with you? What if he’d decided to take you home to Eahrohhsani or marry you off to someone else?”

  “He did,” Chris said.

  “And Stewart doesn’t know about it, right? No, of course not. Because he’s too busy telling you to do whatever Okee wants. So, fine, let’s get married!”

  There was nowhere left to back. Another ornament hit the floor and rolled, and tinsel shimmered onto Chris’s hair and shoulders. “Married?” she said.

  “Sure. Why not?” he shouted. “Okee’s got everything we need right here: champagne, diamonds, Stewart’s permission.” He waved his arm at the room. “I’ll bet if we dug through this mess, Okee’s even got a justice of the peace in here someplace.”

  Hutchins was very close, and since they were both barefoot, he loomed over her. “I thought you didn’t want to get married,” Chris said unsteadily.

  He looked at her for a long, silent minute. Then he reached forward and plucked a piece of tinsel out of her hair. “I changed my mind,” he said.

  The shoji screen slid open. “I know they’re in here,” Molly said. “I heard them thyouting.”

  “Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh!” Stewart called. “Chris! Where are you?” He appeared at the end of the hall. “Where’s Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh?” he said hurriedly, giving Hutchins and Chris the barest of glances. “We need him up at NASA immediately.”

  “He’s not here, Stewart,” Chris said.

  “Obviouthly,” Molly said, her arms folded across her chest.

  “Well, where is he, Chris?” Stewart said impatiently.

  “I don’t know,” Chris said, shaking tinsel out of her hair.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? This is an emergency. The linguistics team just discovered that Ohghhifoehnnahigrhee’s the leader of the Eahrohhs. If they find out up at NASA that he’s missing—”