The Gray House

“Is it the ficus tree at the Crossroads he’s talking about?” Ginger muses.

“I know! It’s your bear!” Mermaid gasps.

Ginger feels in the backpack that’s hanging off the back of her chair.

“The bear is right here with me. And since you mentioned it, it’s not dusty at all. Just old.”

I look at the window. Is it me, or did the sun really go away? The windows are always draped in the Coffeepot, and it’s already twilight outside, but I still imagine that the weather’s changing.

“Come on, come on,” I whisper. “Bring in the clouds, drop down the rain, water the trees, bathe the crows . . .”

“Magic,” Mermaid sighs respectfully. “I wish I could do that. Bring the storm.”

“The entire House has been trying for the past month,” Ginger scoffs. “If even one of them could really do it we’d already be flooded up to the roof.”

“Speaking of, where’ve you been lately? It’s doom and gloom in the dorm. As soon as you take your eyes off someone, bang, he’s asleep. No one to talk to. Humpback is up in the oak, Lary is down on the first, and now you have disappeared too.” I wipe off my nose and chin and tease the coffee puddle over the placemat. “Boring.”

“Needle’s been sewing the wedding dress,” Mermaid says, springing a surprise on me. “In our room, so that no one could see her. She and Lary are getting married as soon as . . . well, you know. As soon as they can. And I’m in charge of decorations. White beads all over, imagine that.”

“All over Lary?” I say, horrified.

Ginger snorts, spraying coffee, and bangs her feet against the floor.

“Of course not. All over the dress. She wants everything to be proper.”

I picture Lary at the altar, in his customary black leather, spearing the wedding band with his long pinkie fingernail, and almost faint.

“Yuck! Disgusting petty properism, that’s all I can say about this. Still, I’m going to give them my blessing. And a present. I think I’ll get them a richly illustrated edition of the Kama Sutra.”

Suddenly I feel desperately sad. As if Alexander and his realization of the inner self weren’t enough, now it’s Lary and his wedding. I come to the conclusion that I should be drinking something stronger than coffee, drinking and drowning my sorrows in that something. But the Coffeepot is the Coffeepot, it never stocks anything nerve-calming. However, I remember that Ginger used to carry a flask.

“This calls for a drink,” I say. “It’s not every day Lary makes a decision this momentous.”

“Today is not the day he’s made it,” Ginger demurs.

I give her a reproachful look and say, “Don’t tell me you’d begrudge me!”

The flask is passed over, accompanied by a look of deep offense. I pour out a little into the coffee cup. It’s Doom, just as I expected. I invented this pick-me-up myself. It’s unlikely that a dose as small as what I’ve managed to beg is going to have any effect, but better a little something than a big nothing. I raise the cup and, to my own surprise, my voice is trembling from all the tribulations.

“My friends! Time, our principal and primary enemy, is implacable. The years take their toll as they roll by. The old grow older, the young grow stronger. Little dragons leave the ancestral shells and cast their misty sights at the sky! Improvident Bandar-Logs enter into matrimony with no regard to the consequences! Cute little boys turn into mean surly youths with a pronounced tendency to snitching! Our own reflections disrespect our advanced age!”

“Oh wow,” Ginger says. “All this, and he hasn’t even had a drop yet.”

I feel Noble’s hand on my shoulder, and his crutch clangs against Mustang’s weights.

“That’s my coffee talking. Those of a thieving nature always get a high when acquiring something that isn’t theirs.”

“All right, but not to that extent!”

“The creaky bones ache, feeling the chilly breath of the grave,” I insist. “Recently proud men now permit the assorted riffraff to blatantly trample their self-respect. It pains me, pains me and frightens me, my friends! As does the fact of my nonparticipation in all these happenings . . . But Jackal is Jackal, he never grows up, And marry never will he! He’ll say good-bye to all of his friends, and forever nowhere he’ll be!”

I’m being patted from three different sides. Ginger is cradling my tear-stained head, saying, “Come on, Tabaqui, what’s with you, don’t cry . . .”

Noble says, “Stop soothing him, or he’ll never shut up.”

At the next table Viking is trying to wrestle the razor from Hybrid, while Hybrid’s bellowing, “No! No! Give it back! He’s right about everything! Everything, I tell you!”