The Gray House

“Hear that? The oracles of antiquity got nothing on him,” Tabaqui says admiringly. “That’s why he’s so popular. Because he can toss off tired truisms and sound good doing it.”

We make a couple of rounds of the yard, looking at the oak now and then, at the canopy where Humpback is hiding from the world. Suddenly Tabaqui stops dead.

“There’s one other thing I think you need have a look at,” he says. “Give me five minutes and then come to the classroom. That should be enough for me to prepare it.”

“Prepare what?”

Jackal smiles mysteriously and drives off.

I watch with apprehension as he’s approaching the ramp. The weights are not going to be enough to hold the wheelchair upright when he’s on the incline. The backpack will tip the whole thing over.

Without slowing down, Tabaqui reaches over, extracts from the pocket on the back of Mustang a length of rope with a grappling hook on one end, unspools it, and makes a deft throw, catching it on the railing on the first try. He even neglects to give it a tug to check if it is lodged securely, simply flies up the ramp hand over hand on the rope. On the porch he can’t help himself and looks back at me. Have I seen that? Have I admired that?

I have, and I have. Tabaqui, looking very pleased, stows his siege weapon and disappears inside.

On the stairs between the first and the second floor I bump into Lary. He’s also plenty tanned and managed to grow a patchy beard. I didn’t get a good look at him yesterday.

“Hey, Smoker,” he says. “So you’re, like, healthy now? Nothing hurts?”

I tell him I’m fine and ask if by any chance he knows what that wondrous thing is that Tabaqui is planning to show me in the classroom.

“Oh. His collection.” Lary waves his hand dismissively. “It’s nothing. A pile of junk, if you ask me. But don’t even think of calling it that. Tabaqui’s going to kill you if you do.”

“Thanks for the warning,” I say.

“Anytime, man.”

He continues down, for his sunbathing session, and I go up to look at the collection.

Which turns out to be a pile of junk. Literally. Dumped in the middle of the classroom. The desks have been pushed against the walls, probably to give it more space. Mermaid has chosen one of them to sit on, completely cocooned inside her hair so that only the very tips of her sneakers peek out. Tabaqui, frozen in anticipation at the bottom of Mount Rubbish, almost seems like a part of the collection himself. A living exhibit.

“Well?” he says. “What do you think about all this?”

I make my face reflect deep cogitation and circle the collection. It is not exactly overwhelming. A garage sale. A couple of paintings, two huge photographs of the Crossroads glued to wooden frames, a rusted birdcage, an enormous high boot, a battered ottoman, a dusty box of cassettes, and assorted knickknacks spread on chairs: small boxes, books, pendants, trinkets.

I make another go-round.

Further driving seems pointless, so I tell Tabaqui, “Looks nice. What’s it supposed to mean?”

“What? You don’t remember? You were there when I started assembling it! Those are all nobody’s. Completely, totally no one’s. No one admits to owning them. No one remembers anyone else ever owning them. They just appear in odd places all by themselves, under mysterious circumstances.”

“Oh. I understand now.”

I don’t understand anything, of course. How could things be nobody’s? So those who had used them are no longer in the House, so what? The House has gone through so many people and things that it’s impossible to claim to know who owned what.

“All right,” Jackal grumbles. “Out with it. I can see the direction your thought process is taking.”

“Good for you,” I say. “I hope your collection happily grows and multiplies.”

Mermaid jumps off the desk and runs to me, the bells in her hair tinkling.

“You don’t believe us? But it really is nobody’s, all of it.”

I like Mermaid. She reminds me of a kitten. Not those postcard-ready fuzzballs, but a homeless, scrawny one, with hauntingly beautiful eyes. It’s impossible not to pick one up even if it isn’t asking you for it.

So I say that of course I believe them, I believe that everything they’ve assembled here really and truly does not belong to anyone, and that it must be amazing and odd, finding things like those, except I don’t understand why they need to do it.

Tabaqui’s eyes fill with disdain.

“You see,” he says, “life does not go in a straight line. It is like circles on the surface of the water. Every circle, every loop is composed of the same stories, with very few changes, but no one notices that. No one recognizes those stories. It is customary to think that the time in which you find yourself is brand new, freshly made and freshly painted. But the world only ever draws repeated patterns. And there aren’t that many of them.”

“But what does this old junk have to do with that?”

He sighs, visibly hurt.