The Gray House

I dreamed of Homer. With an expression of utter disgust on his face, he was whacking me with a slipper. Then I dreamed that I was a fox being smoked out of its hole by evil hunters. Just as they grabbed a hold of my tail, I woke up.

I opened my eyes and saw the corners of several pillows forming a tent over my head. There was a small hole left between them, and in it I could see a yellow kite on the ceiling looking down at me. It was capable of doing that because it had a face painted on it. Clouds of vanilla-scented smoke wafted about. I figured that those fox-themed nightmares had a foundation in reality.

I flattened the nearest pillow that was obscuring my view and saw Sphinx. He was sitting next to me, moodily studying the chessboard. There were very few pieces left on it. Most of them were now strewn around, and some were definitely under me, since I felt something small and hard poking me in several places.

“Give it up, Sphinx,” said the voice of Jackal. “It’s a draw if I ever saw one. You have to learn to accept the facts as they are. To maintain dignity while at the same time bowing to the inevitable.”

“As soon as I need your advice I’ll let you know,” Sphinx said.

I dabbed at my nose. It wasn’t as painful as before. Apparently the pill did work after all.

“Hey, Smoker’s awake! I saw his eyes blink!” An extremely grimy little paw patted me on the cheek. “The Pheasantkind has some pluck left in it yet. Who said he was dead?”

“I don’t think anyone did, except you.” Sphinx leaned over me and inspected the damage. “Nobody dies over this.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” countered invisible Tabaqui. “Pheasants, even former ones, are capable of anything. What motivates their life? What causes their death? Only they themselves know the secret.”

I sat up, tired of being a bedridden patient and a topic of discussion. I couldn’t quite sit straight, but my field of vision expanded significantly.

Tabaqui was clad in an orange turban, fastened with a safety pin, and a green dressing gown that looked like it could cover him twice over. He was sitting on a stack of pillows and smoking a pipe. The vanilla smoke that had tormented the fox in my dream was emanating from him. Sphinx, ramrod-straight and serene, was meditating over the board. His sharp knees were poking out of the holes ripped in his jeans. He had only one prosthetic arm attached, and his tattered shirt was exposing its workings, so he resembled a half-assembled mannequin. I could also distinguish someone’s figure on the windowsill behind the drapes.

“I dreamed I was a fox,” I said, fanning away the cloying smoke. “I was being smoked out of my den when I woke up.”

Tabaqui transferred the pipe to the other hand and waved his index finger.

“When dealing with a dream the most important thing is to wake up in time. You seem to have managed, and I am happy for you, baby.”

And he launched into one of his bizarre, mournful songs with endlessly repeating choruses that made my skin crawl. They usually extolled the virtues of wind or rain, but this one was about smoke, rippling over the ashes of some burned-out building.

The figure behind the drapes twitched and pulled the fabric tighter to try and shield itself from Jackal’s dirges. The hasty movements betrayed it as Noble.

“Ahoy, ahoy . . . Black crows over the gray smoke . . . Ahoy, ahoy . . . Nothing left, it’s all gone . . .”

Sphinx suddenly buried his face in the blanket, as if pecking it, then straightened up and jerked his head, and I saw a pack of cigarettes flying in my direction.

“There,” he said. “It’s good for the nerves.”

“Thanks,” I said, examining the pack. There were no teeth marks on it, and no traces of saliva either. I coaxed out a cigarette, caught the lighter thrown by Tabaqui, and thanked him too.

“He’s so polite!” he exclaimed. “How nice!”

He started fidgeting, shaking out the folds of his dressing gown. The turban kept falling over his eyes. Finally he fished out a glass ashtray from somewhere. It was already full.

“Found it! Here you are.”

He tossed it at me, even though I was close enough to just take it from his hands. It lost most of its contents in flight, and the blanket acquired a dappled trail of cigarette butts. I brushed the ash off myself and lit up.

“Where’s the gratitude?” Jackal demanded.

“Thank you,” I said. “For missing.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, visibly delighted. “Always glad to help.”

The ahoys resumed at double the volume.

Sphinx said that he agreed to a draw.

“Finally,” a soft voice from the other side of the headboard replied. Snaking through the layers of bags hanging on the bed, a very white, very long-fingered hand worked its way up, turned the board over, and began assembling the little pieces into it.