The Gray House

He takes off the safety rope, loops it around his hand, and stuffs it back into his pocket.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking.”

“That’s some thinking! All right, I’m going back up to get Noble down before he’s devoured. That Chimera seems a bit unstable. It would be better not to leave them alone for long.”

He disappears and I forge on, all the way to our room, where I sit on the floor just inside the door and observe Tubby wander under the bed, humming and getting covered in dust.

I look at him for such a long time that he manages to traverse the space under the bed, crawl to the center of the room, flip over a chair, and gum everything that fell off it.

Then Noble and Humpback return.

Humpback is just in time to take someone’s sock away before Tubby puts it in his mouth. Noble throws a towel on the table and says that water is out in the whole House.

“Why were you doing that?” he asks. “What did you need her confession for?”

“I have this feeling that it concerns me too,” I say. “I don’t quite understand why or how, but it concerns me. And I don’t like it.”

Noble sidles up on the bed and pulls off the colored smock.

“Forget it,” he says. “Forget the whole thing. Disgusting business.”

“He can’t,” Humpback says. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, but whatever it is, Sphinx is not letting go of it. I can see it in his eyes.”

Nanette angles to drop on his head but slips on the hard hat and flops down on the floor, deeply offended.

“How do you do it?” Noble asks. “I had this impression that she was going to spill it all, whatever you needed to know.”

I close my eyes.

“It was back in the summer,” I say.

Chimera didn’t say that, it’s my own insight. Why is it important that I shouldn’t know who it was? Is it because he too is afraid of me? I’ve almost caught him. I think I can figure it out now even without diving into Chimera’s eyes.

“I’ll go find Blind,” I say, getting up.

“Wait. I’ll go with you.” Noble pulls a knot of shirts out of the dresser. “Except I need to change first. Still, I don’t understand why it’s suddenly so important to you.”

“Neither do I,” I say, and an unpleasant chill down my spine makes me cringe.

Half an hour later, in Black’s giant red-and-white jersey with a number on its back, my back crisscrossed with surgical tape, I scour the House in search of Blind. Noble also has on one of Black’s jerseys, in white and blue. His number is twenty-two. People we meet on the way ogle us in shock, apparently suspecting that this is an advance notice of the new fashion about to be established. The progressive-sporty style. These stares seem to unnerve Noble, but he’s handsome even in a jersey hanging down below his knees. It gives him this edgy hobo flavor with a dash of the dump. Combined with his looks, the effect is simply stunning.

I have to wait for him and adapt to his pace, because he’s much slower on crutches than in the wheelchair. After the second circuit of the hallway, complete with peeking in every door, nook, and cranny, Noble asks for a breather.

“He’s not going anywhere. And my armpits are killing me. And hell’s bells, they’re all staring at us, like we’re a trained monkey show. I’m sick of that.”

“Deal with it,” I say. “You volunteered to tag along. Or have you forgotten?”

“Because I worry. About you, about your wanderings, and about this whole business. I have to be close. By the way, what makes you think Blind knows anything about this?”

“Nothing makes me think that. He either knows or he doesn’t. But if there’s anyone at all who does, it would be him.” I stop for a moment. “Coffeepot! We haven’t checked there!”

I make a beeline for the Coffeepot. Noble shuffles after me, swearing under his breath.

Coffeepot is all dusk and billowing smoke, as usual. The table lamps throw green palm fronds of light on the walls. The curtains are drawn on the windows, but the sun still finds its way in through the cracks here and there, ruining the attempts at coziness.

Blind is there. Perched on a mushroom-shaped stool, in his epauletted black frock coat. Young Dracula hiding from the deadly rays. There are three cups of coffee on the counter in front of him. The next mushroom is occupied by benignly scowling Vulture, except in place of coffee he has a pot with a cactus in it.

I crash on the nearest toadstool, and my body responds with a full-throated wail in a hundred different places.

“Heavens,” Vulture says, emerging from his personal smoke cloud. “What happened to you, boys? You both look . . . er . . . somewhat unusual.”

“The water’s out,” I say. “These are Black’s rags. Blind, I’ve been looking for you. I need to ask you something.”

“I am at your service.”

Blind peers vacantly into emptiness, hands folded on the counter, like a dutiful student in the presence of a teacher.

“Who tried to kill himself last summer by jumping off the roof?”