“Thanks,” he says. “I’m a coward. It’s simply blood moving too slowly there, like in a mermaid’s tail.”
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Alexander says and leaves. The green firefly of the lamp near the head of his bed switches off.
“Hey,” comes Humpback’s sleepy voice from the top bunk. “I thought I heard a song. Are you guys singing down there?”
Black stops in midsnore.
“No,” Noble says. “No one’s singing.”
He lies quietly now. What he’s celebrating with a fleeting smile on his lips and a hot bottle at his feet is a mystery even to himself. He won’t be able to sleep tonight. He could leave this pointless prone position, escape to the hallways for real now, on wheels, and dull the ache in the squeakily tiled kingdom of the bathroom, in the company of other insomniacs like him, endlessly drawing and discarding card after card. The faces of the queens would acquire her features, and he’d be compelled to shield them with his hands, hide them before everyone could see what he sees: the fire of her hair under the regal diadems, the blackness of her eyes staring at him from the cardboard rectangles. “What’s gotten into you, Noble?” they’d ask, and he wouldn’t know how to answer. So he stays. Lying on his back looking at the ceiling. It’s better to remain that way, bewitched, capable of spawning inquisitive specters. Mutely reliving the ghostly encounter.
A soft thing springs up, landing on his stomach, and sits down, wrapping its tail around its paws. A cat. Noble doesn’t brush it off, even though he could see it isn’t Mona. It’s a strange cat. Noble’s fingers sink into the fur, deep and luscious like a Maltese dog’s.
“Where have you come from?” he asks.
The cat doesn’t answer, as becomes a dumb animal. Instead, with a soft sniffle, Jackal awakens. His hair is standing on end, resembling porcupine quills. He looks like someone ran a jolt of electricity through him while he slept. He stares uncomprehendingly. Gradually his eyes fill up with reason and then with curiosity.
“Ah, so you’re awake,” he says. Then he looks in the direction of Noble’s knees. “What’s up with Mona? How come she’s so fluffy all of a sudden?”
“That’s not Mona,” Noble says, smiling distractedly. “That’s not Mona at all.”
TABAQUI
DAY THE EIGHTH
—Lewis Carroll,
In the morning we get a surprise. Flyer home from the Outsides, bearing the ordered goods. An exceedingly rare occurrence. Rat comes in before the first class with a black travel bag slung over her shoulder. She drops it on the teacher’s table. The zipper whines. Rat—black lipstick, white makeup, a regular vampire—pulls packages from it one by one and arranges them on the table. Lary snatches the one that obviously contains a record from the general pile and makes off with it. I pick up the heavy box tied with a pink ribbon. After that I am lost to the world until I am able to dispose of both the ribbon and the wrapper and have a peek inside. Oh, the heavenly scent! The chocolate backs all glistening in neat rows. Each in its own crinkly nest, on its own little placemat, covered with delicate tissue. I lift it, touch one of the backs, and lick the finger. Then I count how many there are. Two layers, four chocolates in each row, and the rows are also four. That seems to make thirty-two. I close the box and hide it in my desk. The ribbon goes there as well. Now I’m ready to look at what everyone else got.
Black has fled to the windowsill with a stack of magazines. Before Blind’s hungry, grasping tentacles Rat pitches three cans of coffee, four cartons of cigarettes, a pack of AA batteries, and dark glasses of an especially ghastly persuasion. Humpback has a set of combs and a meerschaum pipe. There are two more packets on the table, but we don’t get to open them, as R One appears suddenly in the middle of the classroom inquiring what it is we think we’re doing when the class has already started and the teacher is on the way. Rat somehow escapes his attention.
We quickly whisk away the items, the packaging, ribbons, string—in short, everything that smells of fun and can therefore upset the teachers, who are excluded from it. Rat zips up the bag and leaves.
“How’re you feeling?” Ralph asks, stopping at Noble’s desk.
“Good,” he says with a shrug.
Ralph nods, walks away, and hovers over Smoker’s head.
“What about you?”
Smoker blushes and blinks.
“All right, I guess.”
Ralph gives him a look, as if he has deep suspicions concerning Smoker’s all-right feelings, before scampering to his own chair.
During lunch break I keep pestering Sphinx until he relents and directs Alexander to take the map of New Zealand off the wall. We have two pictures stapled under it. Big ones, each almost the size of half the map.
