Tubby is asleep, leaning against the door to the third floor. Shapeless and miserable. He sighs heavily and mutters in his sleep. Humpback lifts him up, revealing a half-dried puddle and two chewed-up guitar picks. Tubbs was probably using them to try and pry open the lock. Humpback, naturally attuned to the suffering of the Insensible, is almost in tears as he wraps Tubby in his coat, narrowly avoiding getting tangled in his own hair. Sphinx waits, banging his heel against the railing. The stairway drafts nip at his bare ankles. Tubbs grumbles and sniffles but doesn’t wake up. The walk back takes longer. Humpback struggles to light their way because of bundled Tubby in his arms, and Sphinx can do nothing to help him without the prosthetics. The pocket-radioed someone sneezes again. The sky in the Crossroads windows is still pitch-black.
“Give me the flashlight,” Noble says, rolling at them out of the darkness.
Humpback, startled, barely manages to hold on to Tubby but passes the flashlight over gratefully.
“What are you doing here?”
“Taking the air,” Noble snaps. “What do you think?”
Vulture, limping, hauls something bulky in the direction of the Nest. It trails behind him on the floor. He stops and greets them in his usual immaculately polite fashion.
“Nice weather,” he says. “I hope you are faring well. Noble I already had the pleasure of encountering.”
“What about Blind?” Sphinx says.
“Alas, no such luck,” Vulture admits, visibly crestfallen. “Pity, I’m sure.”
The five of them proceed together. Vulture doesn’t let out a single word about Red. He talks exclusively of weather, and even when his flashlight illuminates Blind near the Third, he informs him only that “Oh, the weather outside is delightful.” Blind’s response is barely intelligible. Vulture bids them good-bye and disappears behind the door, carrying in front of him the bunched canvas of the tent and the poles crisscrossed with straps. The beam of Noble’s flashlight jumps and shakes.
“Where’ve you been?” Sphinx says to Blind.
The anteroom meets them with bright lights, falling mops, and shaggy heads in the doorframe. Humpback brings sleeping Tubby inside.
“There he is, our dear tubbylicious maniac!” Tabaqui’s voice enthuses. “Our beloved adventurer . . .”
Blind takes a detour into the bathroom. Sphinx follows him.
“Whose blood is that?”
Blind doesn’t answer. But Sphinx isn’t expecting him to. He lowers himself down on the edge of the low sink and observes. Blind, his face in the other sink, waits out a bout of nausea.
“The night has been going on for too long. Too long even for the Longest,” Sphinx says, mostly to himself. “I don’t like them in general, and this one in particular. I think that if everyone went to bed it would end sooner. So, whose blood?”
“Red’s,” Blind says darkly. “Later, OK? I feel really sick now. Our old friend Ralph just kicked the dinner out of me.”
Sphinx sways impatiently on the edge of the sink, licking a bleeding spot on his lip.
“Because of Red? Was it you who cut him?”
Blind turns his face, with two red sores in place of eyelids, in Sphinx’s direction.
“Don’t be absurd. Because of Pompey. If I understood him correctly. He knows. Somebody snitched. He was rustling a scrap of paper all that time.”
“Why now? I mean, tonight? Has he gone mad?”
“Could be. Certainly a possibility, if you listen to his blabbering.” Blind bends down to the sink again. “Or if he hasn’t cracked yet, he’s going to soon. Bet you he’s shaking all his watches right now, one by one, and changing the batteries in them. Trying to figure out who’s punking him. Who bit the morning off and gobbled it up.”
“Don’t laugh, or you’ll throw up again.”
“I can’t. He ordered me not to touch them. Bleeping Solomon and Squib along with Don. Couldn’t see them himself, but considers it his duty to intervene. ‘I know your Laws,’ he says.
Sphinx sighs.
“Now, correct me if I’m wrong. Solomon, Squib, and Don cut Red, and Ralph hit you because you wouldn’t promise to leave them alone? Why do I get the impression there’s more to it than that?”
“He punched me because he thinks I don’t talk politely enough,” Blind says, straightening up.
“Do you?”
“Depends.” Blind adjusts the sweater drooping off his shoulder. “Damn, I’m going to fall out of this thing. Is this what they call cleavage?”
“It’s what they call a sweater that’s three sizes too big. So was it because of Solomon, or because of Pompey?”
“Because of nerves. He got cut too. So of course he’s jumpy. And now those snitches . . . He made me wipe it all off before letting me go.”
Blind frowns and goes silent. Sphinx doesn’t like the expression on his face. He climbs down from the sink and comes closer.
“Something else?”
