Bubble in the Bathtub

by Jo Nesbo

  The woman replied without turning around, “It’s counting down to the end of time. And for you guys, that’s now. Out!”

  “What about that one?” Nilly said, pointing to one of the other clocks. “It’s not running at all. Are you selling broken clocks?

  “Sea spray!” she replied. “That’s just a clock that claims that time is standing still. And who knows?—maybe it’s right.”

  “Time can’t just stand still,” said Lisa, who had regained her composure.

  The woman stared at her. “You obviously don’t know anything about time, you stupid little girl, so you ought to keep your ugly mouth shut. Everything in history happens simultaneously, all the time, over and over and over again. But most people have such small brains that they can’t perceive everything all at the same time, so they believe things happen consecutively one after the other. Tick tock, tick tock, I don’t have any more time for clock talk, so quick: walk!” She spun around on her roller skate and raised her other foot to push off.

  “You’re contradicting yourself,” Nilly said. “If time is standing still, then you have all the time in the world.”

  The woman slowly turned back around. “Hm, maybe this dwarf doesn’t have a dwarf brain. But all the same, you have to leave now.”

  “We have a stamp to sell,” Nilly said.

  “Not interested. Out.”

  “It’s from 1888,” Lisa said. “And it looks almost new.”

  “New, you say?” The woman raised her eyebrows, which looked like they’d been drawn in over her eyes with a black, and very sharp, pencil. “Let me see.”

  Lisa held out her hand with the stamp.

  The woman fished a magnifying glass out of her pocket and leaned over Lisa’s hand.

  “Hm,” she said. “Felix Faure. Where’d you get this?”

  “That’s a secret,” Lisa said.

  The woman raised her other, equally thin eyebrow. “A secret?”

  “Of course,” Nilly said.

  “It looks like it got wet,” the hoarse, whispering voice said. “And there’s a whitish coating here along the edge of the stamp. Did you put this stamp in soapy water?”

  “No,” said Nilly, who didn’t notice the warning look Lisa was giving him.

  The woman stretched out her index finger and scraped a long, red-lacquered fingernail across the stamp. Then she stuck the fingernail in her mouth, which was just a narrow crack in her taut face. She smacked her lips. And then both her eyebrows shot up.

  “Well, shiver my timbers,” she whispered.

  “Huh?” Nilly said.

  “I’ll buy it. How much do you want for it?”

  “Not much,” Nilly said. “Just enough for the plane tickets to … Ouch!”

  He shot an irritated look at Lisa, who had kicked him in the shin.

  “Seven hundred dollars,” Lisa said.

  “You cat-o’-nine-tails!” the woman shouted in outrage. “Seven hundred for a stamp with a picture of a dreary, dead French president?”

  “Okay, five hundr—” Nilly started, but yelped as he was kicked in the shin yet again.

  “Seven hundred, right now. Otherwise we’re leaving,” Lisa said.

  “Five hundred plus a clock for each of you,” the woman said. “For example, this clock that runs slow. Specially made for people who have too much to do. Or this one that runs fast, for people who are bored.”

  “Yes!” Nilly cried.

  “No!” Lisa said. “Seven hundred. And if you don’t accept in the next five seconds, the price goes up to eight hundred.”

  The woman gave Lisa a look of rage. She opened her mouth, about to say something, but stopped when she saw the look on Lisa’s face. Then she sighed, rolled her eyes and spit out a resigned, “Fine, you keelhauling, barnacle-baiting urchin.”

  The woman disappeared behind the curtain on her roller skate and returned with a wad of cash, which she handed to Nilly. He licked his right thumb and started counting the bills.

  “I hope you can add,” the woman mumbled.

  “Simple math,” Nilly said. “Twenty-five twenties plus two old hundred dollar bills. That’s seven hundred. Thank you for your business, Miss …?”

  “My name’s Raspa,” the woman said, with a thin, cautious smile, as if she were afraid her face would rip if her smile were any bigger.

  “And what are your names, my dear children?”

  “Nilly and Lisa,” Nilly said, and handed the money to Lisa, who stuffed it into a pocket in her school knapsack.

  “Well then, Nilly and Lisa, I’ll throw in these gold watches.”

  She dangled two gleaming watches in front of them.

  “Cool!” Nilly said, grabbing for one of them, but Raspa pulled it back again.

  “First I have to set the time for the time zone you’re going to,” she said. “So where are you headed?”

  “Paris!” Nilly gushed. “The capital of France … Ouch!”

  His eyes bulged from the pain.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hit your leg?” Lisa asked. “Let me see it. Did I leave a bruise?”

  She leaned over toward Nilly and snarled softly into his ear so that Raspa couldn’t hear, “The postcard warned us not to say anything about where we were going!”

  “So sue me,” Nilly mumbled crossly.

  “Ah, Paris,” the woman sneered, showing a row of sharp white teeth. “I was there once. A lovely city.”

  “Nah, it’s not that great,” Nilly grunted, rubbing his leg. “Actually, we changed our minds. We’re not going there after all.”

  “Really? Why not?” Raspa laughed hoarsely.

  “Too dangerous. I hear the rivers in Paris are full of soggy, wet, venomous platypuses shaking water all over people.”

  Raspa leaned down closer to Nilly and breathed her rotten-meat-and-stinky-sock-breath on him, “Well, then, good thing these gold watches are watertight.”

  “W-w-watertight?” said Nilly, who had never ever stuttered before in his whole life.

  “Yes,” Raspa whispered, so softly that they could hear all the clocks in the shop ticking. “Which means that you can swim underwater with them. And wear them in the shower. Or, for example, in a bathtub. Right?”

  “B-b-bathtub?” Nilly said, wondering where his sudden stutter had come from.

  “I’m sure you catch my drift, don’t you?” Raspa asked, winking knowingly.

  “N-n-no,” Nilly said. Jeez, was this stutter here to stay?

  The woman suddenly stood back up and snatched the watches back in irritation. “As a matter of fact, I should give you something more valuable than this. A piece of travel advice.” Raspa’s hoarse whisper filled the shop: “Remember that death—and only death—can change history.”

  “Only d-d-death?”

  “Exactly. History is carved in stone, and only if you are willing to die can you change what is written. Goodbye then, children.” Raspa turned round and, on that squeaking, shrieking roller skate, she coasted through the shop like a haunted ship and disappeared behind the orange curtain.

  “G-g-g …,” Nilly tried.

  “Good-bye,” Lisa said, and pulled Nilly out the door behind her.

  To Paris

  LISA AND NILLY walked straight from the Trench Coat Clock Shop to Town Hall Square, where they caught the express bus to the airport. An hour later, they climbed off in front of Oslo International Airport and walked into the gigantic departures hall, which was swarming with people. They got in line at the Air France ticket counter. While they were standing there, Lisa thought she heard a familiar sound through the murmur of voices, scuffle of shoes, and the announcements coming over the loudspeakers. The squeaking noise of ungreased wheels. She whirled around but all she saw was a sea of unfamiliar faces and people hurrying on their way. She sniffed the air for the odor of rotten meat and stinky socks, but didn’t detect it. It was probably the wheels of one of those wheeled suitcases, Lisa thought. And jumped when she suddenly felt a hard finger poke her in the sma
ll of her back. She spun around. It was Nilly.

  “Go, go! It’s our turn,” he said.

  They walked over to an unbelievably beautiful woman with unbelievably tan skin and unbelievably white hair.

  “What can I help you with, ma’am?” she asked.

  “Two tickets to Paris, please,” Lisa said.

  “For you and who else?”

  An irritated response came from below the edge of the ticket counter. “Me, obviously!”

  The woman stood up and peered over the counter. “Ah, right. That’ll be six hundred dollars.”

  Lisa set the money on the counter. The woman counted the twenty-dollar bills first, but then stopped and raised her eyebrows when she saw the two hundreds. “Is this supposed to be a joke?” she asked.

  “A joke?” Lisa said.

  “Yes. These hundreds are no longer legal tender. They’re from …” She looked at them more closely. “From 1905. They should have been taken out of circulation ages ago. Don’t you have any other bills from this century?”

  Lisa shook her head.

  “Sorry, I can only give you one ticket to Paris.”

  “But …,” Lisa began in desperation. “But …”

  “That’s fine,” said the voice from under the edge of the counter. “Give us one ticket.”

  Lisa glanced down at Nilly who was nodding at her encouragingly.

  When she looked up again, the woman already had the ticket ready and was holding it out to her. “Bon voyage. Have a good trip to Paris. I assume there are some grown-ups there who will be meeting you.”

  “So do I.” Lisa sighed and nodded, eyeing the ticket and Raspa’s old hundred-dollar bills.

  “What do we do now?” Lisa asked anxiously as she and Nilly walked toward the security checkpoint.

  “Relax,” Nilly said. “I have an idea.”

  “You do? What’s your idea?”

  “For you to go alone,” Nilly said.

  Lisa stared at him, shocked. “A-a-alone?”

  There. Now she was stuttering too.

  AS LISA STEPPED onboard the plane, a flight attendant who smelled nice and had very neat lipstick smiled at her and said, “Welcome aboard. Two carry-ons?”

  “Lots of homework,” mumbled Lisa, who was looking a little lost and alone as she stood there.

  “Here, let me help you,” the woman said, grabbing one of the bags, lifting it up and wedging it into the overhead bin between two wheeled suitcases, and then slamming the front of the bin shut.

  Lisa found her seat, put on her seatbelt, and yawned. This day had already been way too exciting and she had hardly slept the night before. She closed her eyes, and when she did, the words of that woman in the Trench Coat Clock Shop started echoing through her head:

  “Only death can change history. Only if you are willing to die can you change what is written.”

  With that, Lisa fell asleep and didn’t wake up until she heard the captain’s voice instructing them to buckle their seat belts for landing. It had gotten dark and thousands of Paris lights twinkled and gleamed below them. Lisa knew that millions of people lived down there. And she was just one, a little girl from Cannon Avenue. Suddenly Lisa felt terribly alone and had to bite her lower lip to get it to stop trembling.

  After they landed at an enormous airport that was named after some dead president named Charles Something-or-Other, the flight attendant helped Lisa get her bags down, gave her a comforting pat on the cheek, and chirped that she hoped Lisa would have a lovely weekend in Paris. Lisa walked down a long corridor, stood on a long escalator, waited in a long passport line, and exchanged the rest of her old Norwegian money for new French money. She was completely worn out by the time she found herself outside the terminal building, sliding her bags into the back-seat of a taxi and climbing in after them.

  “Ooh allay-vooh??” the cab driver asked.

  Now, although Lisa could not speak a single word of French, she assumed that the first thing a cab driver would ask was where she wanted to go. Unfortunately, she also realized that in her confusion she couldn’t remember the name of the hotel, all she remembered was that it had something to do with potatoes.

  “Hotel Potato,” she tried, holding on to her bags tightly.

  “Keska vooh zaavay dee??” the driver said. His tone of voice made it sound like a question, and he was looking at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Uh …,” Lisa said. “The Potato Chip Inn?”

  The driver turned around to face her and again asked: “Ooh?” but louder now. And his voice definitely sounded irritated.

  Lisa’s head, in which everything was usually right where it was supposed to be, was one big chaotic jumbled mess right now. “Yukon Gold?” she tried and could feel in her throat that she was about to cry.

  The driver shook his head.

  “Hotel Mashed Potato?”

  The driver spat out a couple of angry French words that probably weren’t expressions of politeness. Then he leaned over to the rear door next to her, pushed it open and yelled, “Out!” pointing firmly to the street.

  “Frainche-Fraille!” came from the back of the cab.

  The driver stiffened and stared at her. Probably because the voice that had just said “Frainche-Fraille” did not sound anything like the voice the little girl had had a moment ago. And it also hadn’t sounded like it came from her, but from one of the pieces of luggage she was clutching on to.

  “Aha,” said the driver, lighting up. “L’Hôtel Frainche-Fraille?”

  Lisa nodded, quickly and eagerly. “Yes, Hotel French Fry.”

  With a grunt, the driver shut the door again, started the cab, and began driving.

  Lisa sat back in the seat and exhaled in relief.

  Then she heard a whispered voice next to her: “Psst! What about letting me out now?”

  Lisa opened the lock on the front of the bag and pulled open the top of the bag. And then a tiny boy with enormous freckles and a red Elvis hairdo jumped out.

  “Oh, delicious taste of freedom, CO2, and dust particles wafting in the air,” Nilly said, sitting down contentedly next to Lisa with his hands clasped behind his head. Lisa noticed that her best friend appeared a little wrinkled, but otherwise he seemed like he was in great shape. “Now then, my dear Lisa, were you very worried about me during the flight?”

  “Actually, no,” Lisa said. “I slept. What did you do?”

  “I read Animals You Wish Didn’t Exist until the battery on my pocket flashlight ran out. Actually, now that you mention sleep, there was a section in there about the Congolese tse-tse elephant.”

  “Tse-tse elephant?” Lisa asked, but regretted it the second it came out of her mouth.

  “It’s as big as a house and suffers from narcolepsy,” Nilly explained. “Which means that it’ll just suddenly, without any advance warning, fall asleep and tip over. So if you don’t keep a safe distance, you risk having an eighteen-ton Congolese tse-tse elephant flop down on your head at any time. Several years ago, someone tricked a circus into buying a gigantonormous elephant from a little pet shop in Lillesand. What they didn’t know was that it was a—”

  “Congolese tse-tse elephant.” Lisa finished Nilly’s sentence, sighed, and looked out the window, resigned.

  “Exactly,” Nilly said. “The elephant fell asleep right in the middle of his first performance, and then they had to dig three generations of Russian trapeze artists out of the sawdust.”

  “Oh, enough already. Elephants like that don’t exist!”

  “They do too! My grandfather told me he saw a couple of them at the zoo in Tokyo. They had just flown the elephants straight there from the jungle in the Congo and because of the time-zone difference, they obviously still had jet lag. One time they fell asleep …”

  Nilly’s mouth kept moving like that until the cab stopped and the driver said, “Madame and Mussyer, l’Hôtel Frainche-Fraille.”

  And sure enough, they had pulled up in front of a tall, thin building that was
so crooked you might suspect that the stonemasons had enjoyed a little too much red wine when they were building it. But the hotel had small, charming balconies and a glowing sign that said HÔTEL FRAINCHE-FRAILLE. Well, actually it said HÔT L FRA NC E-F ILLE” since a fair number of the letters seemed to have burned out.

  Lisa paid the driver, and they clambered out onto the sidewalk. In the distance they heard accordion music and the sound of champagne corks popping out of bottles.

  “Ah,” Nilly said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, “Paris!”

  Then they stepped in the front door of the hotel. Standing behind the reception desk there was a smiling, red-cheeked woman and a pleasant, plump man who made Lisa think of her mother and father back home on Cannon Avenue.

  “Bohnswaar,” the woman said. And even though Lisa didn’t know what that meant, she could tell it was something nice, so she responded by saying “Good evening” and curtsying a little. Then she elbowed Nilly, who immediately bowed deeply. She knew a little curtsying and bowing never hurt. This was obviously true in Paris, too, because now the two standing behind the counter were smiling even more warmly.

  “Doctor Proctor?” Lisa asked hesitantly, preparing for another round of linguistic confusion. But to her delight, the red-cheeked woman lit up, “Ah, le professeur!”

  “Yes,” Lisa and Nilly said in unison, nodding eagerly. “We’re here to see him.”

  “Vooh zet famee?” the woman asked, but Lisa and Nilly just stood there staring at her blankly.

  “Paarlay-vooh fraansay?” the man asked cautiously.

  “Why are you shaking your head?” Nilly whispered to Lisa.

  “Because I’m pretty sure he’s asking if we speak French,” Lisa whispered back.

  The two behind the counter discussed something between themselves for a while, and Nilly and Lisa realized that French must be a very difficult language even for French people. Because to make themselves understood they had to use their faces, both arms, all their fingers—well, actually, their whole bodies.

  Finally, the woman grabbed a key that was hanging on a board behind them, came out in front of the counter and motioned that Nilly and Lisa should follow her as she hurried over to a wooden staircase.