The Gray House

There isn’t a single soul inside the Coffeepot. Blind goes behind the counter and rummages there, searching for coffee. Sphinx directs his actions. After having obtained two cups of black coffee, they independently choose the same table, under the window that no one’s bothered to reglaze. Somebody has put a rag under it, but didn’t think to push away the table, and now the oilcloth features an elaborate puddle of grayish rainwater. Blind plops an ashtray in the middle of it and is surprised when he has to shake the droplets off himself.

Sphinx looks out, at the cloudy sky.

“Looks like there’s going to be more rain tonight,” he says.

Blind sits next to him, lights a cigarette, positions it on the edge of the ashtray, and immediately lights a second one. He leaves it in his left hand, picks up the first one with his right and holds it in the air with the filter pointing away. Sphinx doesn’t have to bend or even turn his neck, the cigarette is hanging directly in front of his lips. To take a sip of coffee, Blind lowers both cigarettes into the ashtray and lifts his cup with one hand while simultaneously holding Sphinx’s cup in the other. All of this he does reflexively, without giving it a single thought, and just as reflexively Sphinx drinks the coffee and smokes in sync with him.

“Well?” Sphinx says when there’s less than half remaining in the cup. “Ask. Let’s get it over with.”

“You already know what I’m going to ask.”

“I do,” Sphinx says. “Am I staying or leaving?”

Blind nods.

“I am leaving. I’m sorry, Blind.”

His hands. Look at the hands, not the face, Sphinx says to himself. Then he looks up and sees the puzzled grimace. It dawns on Sphinx that what he said could have sounded to Blind as exactly the opposite of what he meant. If he’d said, “I am staying,” Blind would have understood right away. He still understood, but not because of the words, purely by the tone and the apology, he needs a couple of seconds to square it with the meaning of Sphinx’s “mistake,” and when he does his face turns to stone.

Sphinx wants to apologize again but stops himself. It would be worse than silence. He realizes that the way he misspoke, purely by chance, told Blind more than any explanation he could come up with. Maybe it’s for the best.

“Is this final?”

“Yes. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Blind frowns.

“But I do. It’s because of them, isn’t it? Those who can’t leave?”

“No, not because of them. All right, maybe it is. But I wouldn’t have stayed even if everyone else did.”

He probably shouldn’t have said that. But he’s trying his best to be honest. Just as Blind is trying his best to remain calm.

“Why?” Blind says.

“It’s my life,” Sphinx says. “I want to live it. It’s no one’s fault that for you the real world is there, and for me it’s here. That’s just the way it is.”

“Does Mermaid know yet?”

“No.”

Sphinx turns away, to avoid looking at Blind’s face suddenly lit up with hope.

“But it doesn’t matter,” he says. “She will choose what I choose.”

“Happily, I suppose?”

Blind’s subtle clarification remains unanswered, to his delight.

“You sound very sure of yourself,” he says. “I get it, it’s love . . . for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer and all that. But what if she doesn’t have the same choice?”

“That can’t be.”

“It can. Believe me, it can.”

Sphinx feels a fleeting prickle of fear. Of a cold, hungry void. But then he sees the trace of a triumphant smile on Blind’s lips and realizes he’s toying with him.

“Blind, stop it,” he says. “I am not staying. And you are very bad with threats.”

“She can’t remain here,” Blind persists. “She is of another world, there is no place for her in this one.”

Sphinx looks at him, heavily and darkly, trying to gauge the degree of his sincerity, and can’t decide if Blind is lying or telling the truth. As usual.

“So be it,” Sphinx says. “If that is true, then we weren’t meant to be together. But admit it, you invented that a moment ago.”

Blind’s face remains unclouded. It’s his breath that sounds suddenly ragged, as if someone has just hit him.

“Yes,” he says after a pause. “I invented that a moment ago. To scare you. Of course she’s just a common girl. There are thousands more like her. The Outsides is lousy with them.”

The vengeful notes in his voice make Sphinx sit up.

“Do you know something about her? About where she came from?”

“From her parents, where else?” Blind feigns surprise. “Otherwise you’d have to assume she hatched out of an egg, right?”

Sphinx closes his eyes resignedly.