“Shut up!” I shout from my aerie.
They do.
Every possible variety of senility, all in one Nest. You could come in with the medical reference and check off the symptoms one by one. I’ve got crazies to suit any taste.
Horse’s snoring. I toss a matchbook at him. He perks up and tries to look like he was alert all that time. Who’s he kidding?
“Hooray for Vulture!” Bubble suggests out of the blue.
I have to wait out the assortment of odd-sized hoorays.
“Was that clear to everyone?” I inquire.
They nod. They scratch. With grating and huffing noises. As I look over them, a thought occurs: a girl’s got to have no brains at all to accept the invitation. Horse’s glum mug. Bubble’s multicolored one. Butterfly’s, rotting from both top and bottom. Lizard’s, bumpy. Beauty alone is a sight for sore eyes, him and Elephant. And they are all uniformly green. That’s from bad lighting. I look at the lightbulb. Something’s buzzing around it. Something that has not yet croaked in this cold. I take a swipe at it and miss.
Lizard doubles down coughing. Choked on smoke. Eight flippers pound him on the back. A Boschian masterpiece. In the dark.
“Lord, thy will be done,” I say to the bulb.
Uproarious fun. It’s a chronic condition with the pack. Whenever I am serious they imagine that I’m joking. I untie the red ribbon, fold it, and stuff it back into the bag. The buzzer goes off. They startle. It’s time for Angel’s drops.
“Still. Why do we need this?” Lizard drones. “Girls! We were doing fine without them. We should keep it that way. Now what? With half a year left . . . Blind took a roll with Long, and hey, there’s the new Law? Now we can’t even walk the hallways in peace.”
Angel opens his mouth and waits. For his portion of dew.
“Blind is off limits. Hallways are not. Girls are for chatting up, and inviting whenever feasible. That is all. Understood?”
Angel is waiting. Elephant bashfully giggles and covers his mouth. Beauty nods. Bubble grins.
“That’s nice. Go with my blessings, children.”
I slide down from the roost and hobble away. Away from the Nest. Away from everyone. Elephant catches up with me and presents me with Louis in the pot. To buck me up and for general cheer.
So we are three walking now. Me, Louis in the crook of my elbow, and the stooping figure in Levi’s and black sweater. He treads limping on his left foot just as I am listing to the right. The soundless ghost of Shadow, brother of mine. This place belongs to him as much as it does to me. In fact, he’s even more of the House than I am, since he could never leave it. I can see him whenever and wherever I wish, he’s always around, but always occupied with some kind of posthumous business, always on the run. He never even looks in my direction. Could be that he’s upset with me. We only ever talk in my dreams, and in the morning I have to struggle to remember them. Max is the reason people seldom come closer to me than three paces when I’m not walking. Many of them feel his presence.
There’s Black. Walking slowly toward me.
He nods at me, I nod at him. We don’t like each other very much, but
Plump Splutter sees Vulture, yanks off his beret, and assumes the Hound pose of respect. Head down, tail sweeping the floor. I go around him, Shadow plows through, and it’s not entirely clear what causes Splutter to shudder, his respect for me or the unpleasant feeling one gets when Shadow walks through him. I would have liked to bring clarity to this question, but my feet carry me on. I have lots of questions that will forever remain unanswered. We knew not what we were doing when we christened Shadow as Shadow. Wasn’t that inviting the fate that did befall him: to wander eternally, to cleave and be one flesh, to be always silent? Most of the other ghosts I know are quite chatty. He’s the only one to keep total silence.
