The Gray House

They fell silent. Two tall stick figures in black leather, legs crossed. The sharp toes of the boots rocking in the air. It would be difficult to tell them apart from behind if not for Horse’s blond mane done in a ponytail.

“Pompey said . . . ,” Horse began cautiously.

“Please don’t.” Lary grimaced. “Whatever it is he said, I don’t want to know. We have plenty of time ahead of us to listen to it, anyway.”

“What do you mean? You think he’s going to pull it off? That’s not certain.”

Lary sighed.

“Don’t try to console me. I’m already resigned to everything.”

Horse pulled at his lip a couple of times.

“Damn it, Lary,” he said angrily, “you have no right to think that way! How can you be so . . . unpatriotic? If I were you I would never allow myself to do that.”

Lary stared at Horse.

“Are you serious? What’s patriotism got to do with it? There’re ten of us and more than twenty of them. Can you, like, count?”

“Sometimes one warrior is worth ten,” Horse said loftily.

Lary looked at him pityingly.

“Can you count?” he asked again.

Horse didn’t answer. He dug in his pockets, produced a piece of candy, and handed it to Lary. A gust of wind threw a handful of dry leaves through the open window. Horse picked up one and examined it, scratching his nose.

“Autumn,” he declared, scrunching the leaf. “It’s a long way until next summer. Pompey may not be one of the old ones, but you and I both know—”

“That nothing really scary can happen before the last summer,” finished Lary with a faint smile. “Well, Horse, that’s about the only thing keeping me afloat. Or I would’ve gone crazy by now.”

Horse brushed the remains of the leaf off his palm.

“So hold on to that,” he said plaintively.

SMOKER

OF CONCRETE AND THE INEFFABLE PROPERTIES OF MIRRORS

The Fourth does not have a TV, starched doilies, white towels, numbered cups, watches, wall calendars, painted slogans, or any space on the walls. The walls are decorated from top to bottom with murals, shelves, and cubbyholes, and hung with bags and backpacks, pictures and posters, clothes, pans, light fixtures, and strings of garlic, chili peppers, and dried mushrooms and berries. It resembles a landfill that is trying to climb up to the ceiling. Some of its tendrils already have gained purchase there and now flutter in the drafts, rustling and clanking softly, or just hang out.

The dump is mirrored on the bottom by the giant bed, assembled from four regular ones. It is, at the same time, sleeping area, common room, and continuation of the floor for anyone who would like to cut through. I am assigned a personal zone on its surface. The other occupants are Noble, Tabaqui, Sphinx, and sometimes Blind, so my spot is tiny. To actually sleep on it requires special skills that I have not yet acquired. Those sleeping in the Fourth are routinely stepped or crawled over, or used as flat surfaces for cups and ashtrays or as convenient props for reading materials. The boombox and three lightbulbs out of a dozen are on continuously, and at any time of night someone is smoking, reading, drinking tea or coffee, taking a shower, looking for clean underwear, listening to music, or just prowling around the room. After the Pheasant “lights out” at twenty-two hundred exactly, this kind of daily routine is quite an adjustment, but I am trying to fit in. Life in the Fourth is worth any discomfort. Here everyone does whatever he wants whenever he wants, and for exactly however long he needs. There is, in fact, no counselor here. The inhabitants of the Fourth are living in a fairy tale. But it takes coming in from the First to appreciate that.

In the last three days I learned to:

—play poker

—play checkers

—sleep sitting up

—eat in the middle of the night

—bake potatoes on a hotplate

—smoke someone else’s cigarettes

—never ask what time it is.

I was still unable to:

—make coffee without it boiling over

—play the harmonica

—crawl in a way that does not make everyone else cringe

—stop asking stupid questions.

The fairy tale was somewhat spoiled by Lary the Bandar-Log. He could not get over my arrival in the Fourth. He was annoyed by everything. By me sitting, lying down, speaking, not speaking, eating, and especially moving around. Just one look at me made him wince in disgust.

For a couple of days he confined himself to calling me a moron and a chickenshit, then decided to break my nose for allegedly sitting on his socks. There were no socks under me, of course, but the morning was spent in explaining to various teachers the circumstances of my unfortunate fall while transferring to my wheelchair. Not one of them believed a single word of it.

The First had a ball at breakfast examining my appearance. The suspicious pill given to me by Jackal did nothing for the pain but made me so horribly drowsy that I had to skip the last class. I thought that a shower would perk me up but got only as far as the bathroom before falling asleep. Someone apparently dragged me back to the dorm.