The Gray House

We didn’t have much contact with the girls. None, as a matter of fact. Even though their wing was connected to ours by a common stairway. As far as I knew, no one ever used it to go up to them. They occupied the third floor; the second was taken up by the sick bay, and I had no idea what was there on the first. Probably that mysterious swimming pool with its eternal renovations. The only time we ran into them was on Saturdays, during movie nights. They sat separately and never joined in any of our conversations. In the yard they always kept to their own porch. I didn’t know where all those strict rules came from, but obviously not from the principal’s office. Or they would have been broken. Which they weren’t.

The other section of the poem related the story of some records being given to someone. And of a book THAT YOU HAVE SO GRACEFULLY DROPPED ON MY HEAD, WITH NARY A SHRUG OF YOUR SHOULDERS . . . The only place where one could drop a book on someone’s head would be in the library, standing on a stepladder. And girls never went to the common library.

The more I thought about this, the more intrigued I became. I remembered an episode that I’d witnessed in the yard once, in my very first month of being here.

Beauty, from the Third, and a wheeler girl, whose nick I didn’t know, were playing with a ball. This must have been the weirdest game I’d ever seen. The petite, dark-haired girl, with a little face as white as a china cup, threw a tennis ball down from the porch. Then, by miracle (with the role of the slightly clumsy miracle performed by Beauty), the ball would find itself back on the porch. Actually, Beauty missed more often than not. Then the girl had to wheel down and search for her toy in the bushes. In over half an hour, Beauty managed to throw it accurately, so it landed at her feet, only four times, and I’m not sure those weren’t just accidents. But each time she would smile. It certainly seemed that she was smiling at her own happy thoughts, because neither she nor Beauty ever looked at each other. Only at the ball. Watched it appear in front of them, time after time, as if from some other dimension. The girl was much better at it. Beauty kept losing his concentration and trying to trace the ball outside of his territory, but the girl . . . I could have shot a gorgeous short film starring her: The Girl and the Ball: Playing with Shadows. I was mesmerized by this spectacle. I didn’t realize that I was watching two lovers, and that this game was the closest they could allow themselves to be to each other. Back then I just figured that they didn’t know each other too well and were a bit embarrassed about it.

I was thinking about that time when Black appeared. Sleepy, surly, in a pajama top and untied sneakers. He’d put them on like slippers, flattening the backs. He approached, limping visibly, and inquired if I knew what time it was.

I didn’t. Like every other inhabitant of the Fourth I no longer had a watch. I mean, actually I did. Buried deep in the bottom of my bag.

“Quarter to midnight,” Black said. “The hallway lights are going to be out soon, and I doubt you thought to bring a flashlight along. You are going to get personally acquainted with every wall on your way back.”

“I was reading this poem,” I said, pointing at the barrel. “Very unusual. It’s about this girl. Can’t figure out who wrote it. Can you believe it, it says that she was dropping on him—that is, on the guy writing all this—some books, and also giving him records. Who could that possibly be? Do you know?”

Black glanced briefly at the barrel.

“It’s old stuff, from six years ago,” he said indifferently. “They graduated. Can’t you see, it’s all blackened and stuff.”

“Oh! I see! Boar, Poplar, Saurus—they’re all from the previous class.” I was a little disappointed in the mystery being resolved in such a mundane fashion. “So that’s why I couldn’t find a single familiar nick.”

“I think you managed to dig up just about the only place where their scribblings are still visible. Beats me how you found it,” Black grumbled, lowering himself onto the sofa. His face contorted as he did it, and he gingerly straightened his leg once seated.

“It was so quiet in the dorm. It felt . . . different. Alien, somehow. You were asleep, and anything I touched made an awful racket for some reason,” I said, trying to explain why I’d scrambled out of there.

“Yeah.” Black shrugged. “You think I don’t understand? I woke up and it’s, like, all dark and silent. Like I was in a coffin. I could hear my own heart beating. All I could do not to scream.”

I had a really tough time imagining Black screaming because he was scared. So I laughed.

“Really,” Black said. “You don’t believe me?”

He took a pack of Lucky Strikes out of his pocket and lit up. I was completely floored. I was sure he didn’t smoke.