The Gray House

The one accompanying me was too decrepit even for jokes. An old drunk with trembling hands and an unsteady gait. I was very concerned with the way he breathed. I couldn’t shake off the mental picture in which he keeled over before delivering me to where I needed to go, and then I would be stuck right there in this impossible jacket until they figured out the circumstances of his demise.

We crossed the third-floor hallway. In the tiny anteroom between two identical doors, he told me to turn out my pockets.

“Sorry,” I said earnestly. “I can’t bend my arms. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

Case decided I was trying to trick him.

“I wasn’t born yesterday, my boy,” he said reproachfully. “I’m too old to play these games with you. Come on, let’s go.”

And so I escaped being searched. As soon as the lock clicked shut behind me, I left the confines of the jacket and stretched out on the foam floor, relishing my new freedom. I was just lying there looking up into the ceiling.

It was not until about half an hour later that I suddenly understood: I was completely alone. And it was going to be this way for a while. Tabaqui really did give me a present. I just didn’t know enough to appreciate it at the time.

I was about to doze off but then remembered what Alexander said about the lights and willed myself to action. I needed to prepare. I wasn’t sure I could handle the extraction of the stashes from the jacket in the dark, even with the aid of a flashlight. I sat up, pulled the jacket toward me, and began disassembling it. Everything I took out I sorted into piles. I wasn’t even halfway through this when I needed a smoke, so I had to just shake the remaining stuff out and take care of the lining. There must have been a hundred different places I had to unfasten. I finally got to the cigarettes, folded the jacket into a cushion, put it under my back, and lit up.

The Poetry of Scandinavia, Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key,

The Annotated Book of Ecclesiastes, Moby-Dick. All four extremely worn, with pages falling out. Shaking The Glass Key also produced Jackal’s notes on it and a withered slice of salami. Moby-Dick

had a library stamp informing me that Black had checked out the book two years ago. The plastic cover bulged with paper scraps and also contained two photographs. I took out the photographs.

One was of Wolf. He was the guy who died at the beginning of last summer. I’d only been in the House for a month then, so I didn’t remember much about him. Skinny, frazzled, a frowning stare. An unlit cigarette in one hand, the other on the strings of a guitar. Rather grave face, as if he knew what was going to happen soon, although I guess we all have photos that could be used for the “he knew” purposes if needed—just because a person refused to smile. And this particular photograph was designed to be funny. A baby bird was sitting on Wolf’s head, and this must have seemed amusing to the person behind the camera. You couldn’t see the bird all too well, though. The corner of a striped blanket hanging from the upper bunk was in the way. I figured that Wolf must have been sitting on the common bed and that Lary, as usual, had not made his, and that it was summer. After a more careful examination I recognized the bird as Nanette. Still a chick. I shivered.

They found Nanette sometime in early June, which meant that the guy in the photo had only a little time ahead of him before dying under mysterious circumstances. But that wasn’t really important for me. Not that he died, or the way he died. It was the way he looked. He was home. He had a home and he was in it. I was never going to be like that in the Fourth. Not until I’d lived there for many years.

Wolf had been a part of the Fourth, but no one ever mentioned him while I was there. There wasn’t anything in the room that was said to have been his. I’d forgotten all about him, to be honest. Pheasants were really fussy about their deceased, and I had gotten used to such treatment. Two photographs in black frames hanging in the classroom. Two cups behind the glass doors of the cabinet in the dorm, never to be taken out. Two towel hooks in the bathroom, eternally empty. The dead of the First lived in its rooms alongside the living. They were quoted, recalled fondly, their parents continued to receive the collective holiday greeting cards. I’d never seen either of them, but I knew all about their likes and dislikes. Whereas Wolf had never existed, never was in the Fourth. This photograph was the first and so far the only trace of him that I had seen.