“Maybe I’m spoiled,” Sphinx says, not turning his head. “By Alexander. His wordless understanding. Or even Noble, who was too proud to ask questions. Maybe I’m biased, or simply irritated. But I also see you behaving very strangely, Smoker. Like there’s something I am supposed to ask forgiveness for. From you.”
Smoker catches up with him.
“Is it true you used to beat Noble, forcing him to crawl?”
Sphinx stops.
“It is
“But did it happen?”
“It did.”
The first-floor corridor—lantern-like lights, linoleum crisscrossed by wheelchair tracks. Someone is torturing the piano in the lecture hall. Hounds yip in the changing room. Sphinx takes a quick look inside all the doors they’re passing. He’s looking for Blind, and he keeps thinking:
They meet Blind at the very end of the corridor. He is knocking the stuffing out of a vending machine, hoping to get back the coin it swallowed.
“Thirsty?” Sphinx asks.
“Not anymore.”
One last punch, and the machine spits out a paper cup. Blind picks it up.
“Nine,” he says. “Nor a drop to drink, in any of them.”
“Blind, this machine has been dispensing nothing but empty cups for the past hundred years.”
Next to them Bubble, from the Third, is roaring down the highway, slamming into the oncoming cars and shaking the game console.
“You wouldn’t happen to have met Red in these parts?”
“What happened to your voice?” Blind inquires. “You sound hoarse.”
“Safeguarding the pack’s property from long-legged sluts,” Sphinx says darkly.
“Oh? Gaby has been?”
Sphinx is overcome with a burning desire to kick Blind. Shatter his ankle, make the dear Leader lame for a while. A long while.
“She has,” he manages, restraining himself. “And I sincerely hope that she won’t again. That you are going to take care of that.”
Blind listens intently, head to one side, then steps behind the machine, taking his legs out of Sphinx’s reach.
“My bad,” he says. “I shall be more careful next time. Who’s that with you? Smoker?”
“Yeah. I took him out for a walk.”
“He’s uneasy, isn’t he,” Blind says indifferently. “Didn’t I tell you? Black damaged him.”
Smoker, mute with indignation, looks up at them both. Two shameless, self-absorbed bastards discussing him as if he weren’t here. Bubble’s screen switches off, the machine squeaks the first few measures of the
In the lecture hall, pimply Laurus pushes the stool away from the piano and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief.
“Now do something less boring,” the audience demands.
Laurus smiles haughtily at no one in particular. These people know nothing about real jazz, and there’s no use in trying to explain. The wheelers in collars burst out in applause. They applaud the smile, not the music.
Smoker, abandoned, drives around the first floor. Smelling the soot of the streets. He pointedly wheeled away from Sphinx and Blind, and is now regretting having done that. He should have stayed and listened to what else they had to say about him. Once the first angry flash subsided, Smoker began to suspect that what he had heard was meant for his benefit. And that once he left they switched to something unrelated. And that Sphinx received another confirmation that he, Smoker, doesn’t know how to listen.
“To hell with you,” he says. “I don’t have to listen to your stupid remarks.”
“Whose?” someone asks probingly.
Smoker raises his eyes and meets the Cheshire Cat smile beaming at him, as performed by Red.
“Nobody’s,” he mutters distractedly.
He still can’t get used to members of other packs engaging him in conversation. Their readiness to actually exchange words confuses him, as if he were still a Pheasant.
Angry at himself for that, he says swiftly, “Sphinx and Blind. They were talking about me right in my face, like I wasn’t there. It really pissed me off.”
“Woooow,” Red drawls, his smile becoming even wider. “Lofty stuff. Not for the likes of little old me.”
Smoker winces. He’s being made fun of again. But the innate respect for a Leader, albeit a total buffoon such as Red, prevents him from turning around on the spot and leaving.
Red proceeds to proffer a pack of cigarettes like it’s no big deal, then flops down on the floor and lights up himself. His hair is the color of caked blood, and his lips are just as bright, so it looks like he’s wearing lipstick. Chin scraped while shaving, a bundle of dried chicken bones around his neck. In a word—weird, as all Rats are, but even more so up close.
“Red,” Smoker says, surprising himself. “What do you know about Mother Ann?”
Red throws back his head. The shades flash with the reflections of the hallway lights.
