I have a strange aftertaste in my mouth after this exchange. As if I, too, know how she is, the girl who creates the most wonderful vests in the world and then gives them away to the first stranger she meets. This conversation calls for a smoke. Ginger and I light up in unison, except her cigarette, unlike mine, gets six lighters thrust at it from all directions, and the most insistent of them belongs to Noble, and I suddenly realize that he’s been kind of strangely bright red of color, and the looks he’s been giving Ginger are also strange. Probing and fiery. Predatory, one might even say. It is so obvious that I grow uncomfortable, and throw a sideways glance at Sphinx: Has he noticed yet?
Well, if he has, he’s not letting it show. He’s twirling the ashtray with the rake, all sleepy like. He and Wolf always looked like that when something piqued their interest. Deceptively relaxed.
“I tried my best to protect the ear.” Lary wades in with a non sequitur. “And still it got walloped. A nasty one, too. Hope it’s not going to get infected like the last time.”
He feels his ear and then examines the fingers. As if, when he touched it, the infection could have fallen out.
“You don’t look like your ears would be giving you trouble,” Fly notes kindly.
Lary considers this. Should he take it as a compliment?
We discuss the latest Gallery. The actual paintings there could be counted on one hand, but Lizard from the Third exhibited himself, painted. That was a sight to behold. Looking at Lizard is a scary proposition even under normal circumstances. But body-painted . . . Talking about the Gallery shakes Smoker out of his funk and he tells us about a couple of exhibitions he happened to attend back in the Outsides. Then we discuss the Fortune-Telling Salon. I worked there for a week as Madame Zazu, fortune-teller and palmist extraordinaire, and can impart some inside info. Fly and Lary proceed to gossip about the girls’ counselors—that is, Fly gossips while Lary nods excitedly. Ginger and I get into an argument about Richard Bach, also in a gossipy way. We both agree that he isn’t too bad as a writer, but as far as women in his life are concerned, he behaved like a complete bastard. Take, for example, his search for the One, where the aspiring girls more or less had to pass a private pilot’s exam at some point.
“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 . . .”
