“And smokers were cut right out,” Ginger fumes. “Because, get this, he doesn’t smoke! As if she couldn’t just quit if it came to that.”
I still want to talk more about Mermaid, but can’t work up the courage.
Blind wants to know when Rat is expected back from her foray into the Outsides. Rat is the House’s principal Flyer, and he placed a large and expensive order with her. Ginger doesn’t know when Rat will return. No one knows. Not even Rat herself. Black tries to find out where Rat sleeps when she’s in the Outsides and generally how she manages to stay there for extended periods of time, but neither Ginger nor Fly can tell him anything about that because they, too, have no idea.
Ginger looks up to the ceiling.
“You used to have this wall with all those animals living on it,” she says out of the blue. “And you kept the door locked. And put snares behind it. Traps. Or so they said. I dreamed of that wall so often that at some point it became very important to see it for real. So I sneaked into your dorm through the window.”
“There are bars, and nothing to step on,” Noble whispers, not taking his burning eyes off her.
Ginger glances at him and chuckles.
“There were no bars back then, and there’s this crumbly ledge along the wall. I followed it about halfway and got scared. I was stuck there for an eternity, unable to move. Until the seniors spotted me. It was horrible.”
“They picked you off,” I venture. “Fetched a stepladder and talked you down.”
“No. They stood below and watched. With interest. So I had to get going.”
“Yeah.” Humpback shudders. “They were good at that. Watching with interest, I mean. Don’t ask . . .”
“Quiet!” I crawl closer, anticipating something very important to be revealed any second now. “Go on,” I urge Ginger. “So, what happened? You climbed in and . . .”
“And there I was in your room,” Ginger says, half smiling, fiddling with the cigarette in her fingers. “At first I was just glad that I made it. That I was standing on a solid, dependable surface. Then I studied the wall. It turned out to be completely different from what I had imagined, but it was still so amazing. Like it was boundless, stretching out into infinity on both sides.” Ginger spreads her arms wide, demonstrating the vast expanse. “It’s hard to explain. I didn’t have much time, I knew you were going to be back soon, and I still had to make myself climb out of that window, travel along that horrible ledge, and slide down the drainpipe . . . I found this thick marker in the nightstand and drew a bird on the wall. It came out so ugly, so . . . insignificant. Spoiled the entire wall. It got me so depressed that I almost didn’t notice how I crawled out. Cried myself to sleep that night.”
“And two days later you returned to paint it in,” Sphinx says. “To make it white. You signed it Jonathan. And then Jonathan started leaving us presents.”
“Oh god,” Humpback moans. “So Jonathan was you all along? And there we were, fiddling about with the traps and everything.”
“Now this, my friends,” I explain to my fingernails, “is what’s commonly known as a shock to the system. When you suddenly find out what’s behind an unsolved mystery. In the twilight of your years. The fastest way to a psychological trauma, I’ll have you know. You see, Black, we kept finding these . . .”
“I get it,” Black interrupts me. “You don’t need to spell it out.”
But he doesn’t. Neither he, nor Noble and Alexander, nor Lary. The only ones who would get it are Vulture, Shuffle, Beauty, and Elephant. If we told them. But no one else.
Soft rustling. Humpback searches his pockets. Blind rummages in some hidden recesses as well. I unhook the earring. Our hands meet over the blanket. Humpback’s palm cradles a small brass bell. Blind has a coin on a string. I’m holding the earring.
“To the foul-smelling pirate from Jo, the one flying across oceans,” I recite. “Except the note is long gone, of course.”
Ginger bites her lip.
“You’ve kept it! After all this time!”
“Those are gifts from Jonathan.” Sphinx laughs. “Treasure. If I’m not mistaken, Noble also inherited one. The seashell.”
Noble grasps at the shell, gripping it tightly. Looks almost obsessive doing it.
“Oh, and by the way,” I add. “Blind always ended up with the most gifts, for some reason. Some greedy people, such as myself, used to take offense.”
Ginger reddens. In her eyes I read a reproach, a plea to stop burrowing into the memories and a lot of other things that make my tongue freeze and my head receive belated insights concerning the real reasons certain people made an appearance in this room tonight.
“Interesting,” Black remarks, sipping his tepid tea and not looking at anyone in particular. “So Jonathan played favorites?”
Ginger blushes even deeper, but straightens up defiantly and shoots back, “He did. Still does. So?”
If I were Ginger I wouldn’t be saying things like that, not under the heavy gaze of Noble’s burning eyes. In fact, with him looking like that, which is inhumanly beautiful, I’d have probably lost the ability to speak altogether. But girls are mysterious creatures. If she thinks she likes Blind better, there’s nothing anybody can do about it. After all, it’s not for nothing Jonathan risked her life climbing the ledges and sneaking into other people’s windows.
“I know this one solitaire,” Fly says, breaking up the awkward silence. “Dream a Little Dream, it’s called. Almost never comes out, but if it does it means that your innermost desire will come true. Cool, huh?”
“Wicked,” I say. “Do it right now. I am full of innermost desires.”
Alexander passes the deck and pushes the cups out to the edge of the blanket. Fly begins dealing, stumbling through the rules. Ginger shivers and wraps the blanket tighter around herself, pulling in her bare feet.
“If you’re cold, you can take my socks,” I say. “You can return them whenever. Next time you come here.”
She agrees and Alexander goes to the wardrobe to fetch the socks.
“How about my sweater?” Noble says plaintively. “It’s really warm.”
“There,” Fly says, crestfallen, holding the last remaining card. “This always happens. Didn’t I say it never comes out right? I think it’s designed that way, to keep you from getting bored.”
She turns to Noble.
“Can I have your sweater instead? I feel kinda cold too. Freezing, actually.”
Noble nods impassively.
“Sure.”
“What’s your innermost desire?” I ask Fly. “The one that never comes out right?”
She waves the card at me.
“Get away! You can’t say it, or it’ll never come true.”
Humpback and Lary yawn furtively. Ginger pulls on my socks.
“Nice place you have, guys,” Fly says. “But it’s getting late. Anyone got the time?”
“Shhh!” everyone hisses, and Fly, startled, puts her hand over her mouth.
“What?” she mumbles into her palm. “What did I say?”
“That which you just mentioned should not be mentioned in front of Tabaqui,” Humpback says, shaking his head. “It really shouldn’t.”
“What was it I mentioned?” Fly whispers. “I don’t remember.”
Humpback and Lary tap their wrists, miming nonexistent watches. Lary does it with a look of utter disgust on his face, probably channeling me. Now poor Fly’s completely confused.
“What is it? Some kind of disease?” she asks.
This entire conversation, and especially the gestures accompanying it, do start to make me sick. Slightly. I do not appreciate my psychological peculiarities being put on display, and crawl farther under the bed. Then I put my hands over my ears. Now let them say whatever they want. By the way, a mere mention of a watch is never enough for me to fly off the handle, they’re well aware of that. When I crawl back out they are already discussing something else, and getting ready to leave.
The
girls have discarded the blankets. Fly’s own speckled sweater is peeking out from under Noble’s gray one. She tugs on both, admiring her reflection in the wardrobe’s polished door, and cheerfully displays her teeth. Lary, putting on boots, heaps praise on her belt buckle that I completely failed to notice. Alexander rolls up the blanket formerly known as tablecloth. Sphinx and Blind are also going out, while Noble, who wheeled off into a corner to give everyone some space, watches Ginger from over there like a predator stalking its prey with a penetrating, unblinking stare.
I emerge fully, loath to miss even the smallest detail. But there isn’t anything to miss anymore: the guests are leaving, the evening morphed into the night, and the radio DJs are cheerfully greeting the insomniacs—in short, the predawn stupefaction is right around the corner. The saddest of all moods. Few are those who could gabble through the night with unrelenting intensity, like me, for example. Ginger is still wearing my socks and doesn’t seem to want to take them off before heading out, which means there’s a possibility of her coming back. On the other hand, she could always send them over with someone else.
“Bye,” she and Fly say to me, Noble, and Alexander.
Everyone else is planning to walk them home. With flashlights.
“Bye, Jonathan,” I reply. “Come again.”
She nods uncertainly and steals a sideways glance at Blind. Blind, of course, is not aware of that, but, honestly, he might have guessed. The others dutifully hold off inviting her back for a few seconds, giving him first dibs. When they do, they invite Fly as well. Lary, giggling, tells her to bring Gaby along. Idiot, that one.
Finally they file out. The whole crowd, leaving behind me, Alexander, Smoker, and also Noble. Ginger’s departure takes the sparkliness and fieriness out of him, leaving him dull and sullen.
I climb on the bed and start tidying it up. Spread out the plastic bag, shake the ashtrays out over it, add the half-eaten pieces of this and that, peel the gum blobs off the railing. Make a pile out of the textbooks and notes. Once the mess is localized and pushed to the edge, I create a burrow near the headboard and dive in. It’s warm and cozy here. Alexander’s broom swishes softly. Noble is completely quiet. I condense a cloud of drowsy fog around myself, a small one, to make it even cozier, and start remembering.
Jonathan. The ghost haunting our room. Probably the only case in the entire history of the House when a room had its own ghost. We were extremely proud. Countless times we had discussed the gifts he was leaving us, trying to decipher who he was. Countless times we had invented more and more elaborate snares and traps, only to come up empty again and again. Which served as irrefutable proof of his nonhuman nature. At first we had suspected our neighbors from next door. Then, the seniors. But neither could possibly know about our traps and snares, while Jonathan somehow evaded them all. Having despaired of catching him, we set to uncovering his identity through his handwriting. We diligently collected samples for comparison by stealing homework left in the staff room to be graded. We accumulated a sizable pile and were just about to destroy the evidence when a janitor stumbled upon it and told the administration on us.
I shuffle through the memories of that time. Funny how no one had even considered to snatch a girl’s notebook. Because, quite obviously, Jonathan was male. One thing we couldn’t grasp, though: Why hadn’t he chosen a more inventive nick? Why a simple name? Once the hopes of catching him had evaporated, we started leaving notes for him.
Why Jonathan?
In lieu of an answer, we received a skinny book about a seagull. We had collectively read it aloud, as was our custom back then. Because of Blind, because of Beauty, who could barely put letters together, and because of Elephant, who didn’t even come as far as the letters. So it was an obvious solution. Naturally, Wolf was best at reading, so he’d get the longest chapters. For some reason everyone agreed that I was the worst. We learned about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but that hadn’t really helped us in figuring out the identity of our mysterious visitor. The book hadn’t been checked out of the library, so it didn’t have a card we could examine for clues, and pointedly dropping the word seagull around did not lead us to its supposed owner. Among seniors almost everyone had read the book; among juniors we were the only ones.
Are you a seagull? was our question to Jonathan in the next letter. Jonathan maintained his silence, leaving us instead a suspicious brownish feather. We kept the feather and showed it to anyone who had even a passing familiarity with ornithology. The scholars concluded that the feather did not belong to a seagull, but whose it was they couldn’t say.
I remember all of this and many other things besides, fall asleep, wake up again, remember some more, and suddenly it strikes me that I have missed a chance to unravel one of the mysteries that had so tormented us when we were kids. How did she know in advance about all of our traps? The fact that Jonathan turned out to be Ginger doesn’t explain anything at all. The more I think about it the more it bugs me that I didn’t think to ask. Now I have to wait until the next time she comes. And what if she never comes again? This thought strips the sleepiness clean off. I toss and turn, I sigh, I call myself stupid. Well, all right, so I did a stupid thing. But what about the others, the supposedly smart ones, huh? No one thought to ask about what’s most important! Unless . . . Unless they did. Of course! I shake myself up, peek out of the burrow, and look around.
Asleep. All of them, snuffling shamelessly. Smoker on the other end, Sphinx to the left of me, while Noble is nowhere to be seen. There’s a lonely silhouette on the windowsill, though, gazing at the stars. Very romantic. Must be him.
I kick Sphinx in the ribs.
“Hey! Hey, wake up! I need to ask something, quick.”
“Tabaqui! You bastard!” Sphinx shakes his bald head sleepily. “Never in my life have I met anyone half as nasty as you. What is it now?”
“Have you by any chance thought to ask how she managed to evade all our traps? You know, the most important and fascinating thing?”
“I have,” Sphinx grumbles and lowers his head back on the pillow. “But I’m not telling. Not until you mend your dirty ways.”
“Sphinx, please! Pretty please! Or I won’t be able to sleep . . . Tell me . . .” I keep jostling him gently in sync with my entreaties. “Sphinx, tell me . . .”
He sits up again.
“Damn it, Tabaqui! I would have told you everything when we came back, except you were asleep, and I respected that, by the way. And this is the gratitude I get . . .”
“I wasn’t asleep!”
I indignantly crawl out.
“See that? I’m fully dressed. Wouldn’t I be in pajamas if I were really asleep?”
“I see. So what I was supposed to do is dig up your nest and check if you’re dressed or wearing pajamas?”
“Yes, you were! Especially considering that I wasn’t asleep at all. I was thinking.”
Blind sits up on his mattress on the floor.
“Just tell him, Sphinx. He’s going to chew us all up by morning if you don’t.”
“She got it from Elephant,” Sphinx says reluctantly. “That’s all there is to it. And in return she allowed him to touch her hair.”
I remember now. Every time Elephant saw Ginger he would try to reach for her hair, huffing, “Want! Want!” Something of an unusually vivid color in a place where other people don’t have anything interesting—that’s all he saw. And more than anything in the world Elephant liked to touch unusual things: soap bubbles, cats’ tails, burning matches.
I sigh, disappointed. What a mundane explanation for the most intractable enigma of our childhood. It would have been better not to know.
“So that’s it,” I say. “Simple and boring.”
“And for that you had to wake me up,” Sphinx says vengefully.
“Yes. The suspense would’ve killed me. And now we can all sleep in peace.”
Blind lights up, and Sphinx sidles up to him to mooch a couple of puffs. My burrow is in shambles. I have t
o construct a fresh one. I quietly hum a new song, stacking the pillows. Mysteries revealed, Jonathan unmasked! Now that I’ve had time to think, that’s a great thing, and the rest is small details, not worth getting upset about.
Truth is the greatest friend. Now we can sleep in peace.
Certainty came in the night. There was a knock at the door.
The snowball crashed on the board! Then she entered the room!
Bearing the torch of Knowledge. Here’s how the story goes . . .
“Do you like her?” Sphinx asks Blind, a shadow from where I’m sitting.
I cut the song short, afraid of missing the answer.
“No,” Blind says after a pause. “Not really. She had this disgusting habit when she was little. She’d knock me over and run away laughing. It really ticked me off. Elk told me never to hit girls, or I’d have given her a thrashing.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Sphinx says thoughtfully. “She always tried to shove you. I couldn’t really understand it. She wasn’t usually that way.”
I position myself by the entrance to the freshly constructed burrow, hugging Sphinx’s pillow.
“Yep,” I say. “In civilized societies little boys pull the hair of the little girls they like. And put dead mice in their pockets. To say nothing about tripping them. Which is how they express their love. We borrowed this kind of behavior from our prehistoric ancestors. Those were simpler times. You see a girl, you ogle at her, you whack her on the head with a woolly-mammoth bone—and that’s your wedding, right there. Later generations were more interested in peeking under the long skirts of their girl companions, where they, being smart to those ways, wore lacy underpants. Besides, the sight of a crying girl all spattered with mud is so touching. They unleash a maelstrom of feelings in the heart of the suitor, those pretty tears.”
The Gray House Page 48