The Gray House

Ralph climbed up to the third floor, to the break room where the meeting was scheduled for three o’clock. Originally this was supposed to be a home away from home for counselors, but the drab institutional furnishings and rickety tables piled with dog-eared magazines invited the ghosts of a dentist’s waiting room, so there never had been any volunteers to spend their free time here. Finally the administration hauled in three desks and a slide projector, put up a dry-erase board, and designated it a meeting room. This breathed new life into the space, and soon counselors claimed parts of it for storage, divided up the chairs, and declared the tiny balcony to be the smoking area, and Sheriff even brought his favorite boombox. Now at any time of day or night someone would be in, even if most often that someone was Homer, dozing on the sofa.

Today the room reeked of menthol and medical alcohol, again reminding Ralph of the dentist.

Homer and Raptor, slumped in chairs, had all the appearance of victims of a natural disaster. Homer’s balding dome was crowned by an enormous cold pack. Raptor stared fixedly at the ceiling. Their ties looked like they’d been used recently in vigorous attempts to strangle their owners. Their jackets were nowhere to be seen.

One desk was occupied by Darling, applying a fresh coat of paint to her face; another, by downcast Sheep, preparing a new cold pack. Sheriff crowded the door to the balcony. The smoke from his cigar wafted into the room, and that concerned him not a bit: his body was safely in the smoking zone, and where the smoke chose to go was its own business. Sheriff wasn’t about to miss a single detail of what was going on in the room.

Ralph sat on the sofa between the two chair dwellers, moaning Homer and ominously silent Raptor. Sheep tiptoed over to Homer, changed the cold pack, and shot Ralph a reproachful glance. “Where have you been hiding while we were in agony here, desperately in need of your help?” was the approximate message of that glance. Or maybe she was just chiding him for staying silent. Or for lack of compassion. Or maybe neither. Sheep’s watery stare seemed always on the verge of tears and always accusing of something. The playful curls of her hair and the girlish ruffs of her dresses clashed with the permanently sour expression on her face.

“Thankfully I was able to refrain from throttling anyone today,” Darling muttered through clenched teeth, studying her reflection in the compact’s mirror. “An amazing feat of self-control . . .”

“Ha, ha,” Raptor said grimly, as a reminder that he was still alive.

“And to think, I assumed Lenses had set the bar impossibly high,” Darling continued. “But that oversexed cow Bedouinne managed to top even her.”

“How can you say things like that about a child?” Sheep exclaimed indignantly.

“A child?” Darling almost dropped the compact in surprise. “A child? The dumb little slut looks older than her mother!”

“Language,” Sheep squeaked.

This was obviously far from the worst language that had been uttered in the room recently, and Sheep’s indignation somehow lacked conviction. Ralph again congratulated himself on not coming up here earlier. The hysterics seemed to have died down, and he wasn’t enough of a sympathetic listener to precipitate another round. He had no doubt, however, that all the sordid details of the indignities suffered by each of them would be rehashed anew before the meeting started.

“What is it you’re trying to see there?” Homer said caustically. “New lines that appeared since morning?”

“No!” Darling snapped the compact shut. “New gray hairs in my nose!”

They exchanged looks full of deep mutual loathing. Homer self-consciously probed his own nose. There was plenty of hair in it, gray as well as other colors, projecting happily far beyond its confines, so he could only take Darling’s remark as a personal jab.

“Look who’s talking! Like he’s the one aggrieved,” Darling sneered. “After everything that we had to listen to on his account!”

Homer moaned, jerking his legs in untied shoes, and hoisted the cold pack higher.

“He has the temerity to portray himself a victim!”

Sheep, seemingly to cool down the room’s overheated atmosphere, switched on the fan standing in the corner. Sheriff stomped to the windowsill and mounted it.

Darling, unexpectedly pretty in anger, her eyes shining and even her nose appearing somewhat shorter, addressed Ralph directly.

“Now you tell me, whatever has he been thinking, dragging three Pheasants to meet with the parents of one of them? I wish someone would explain that to me!”

Nobody was planning to explain to her anything about Pheasants, Ralph least of all, but Darling wasn’t really in need of explanations. She wanted to spill out her frustration. A silent listener was perfectly acceptable. But she got some unexpected competition.