Hasn’t had enough playing, obviously. Half the night spent over cards doesn’t count. Apparently no one needs sleep in this room except me. I don’t need it either, but it’s all I can do not to yell at them. Pack them away to bed, turn off the lights, and in the darkness wait for the morning to come, pretending to slumber peacefully. I don’t like this night. Or any of the other nights like this, starting from the very first. The morning after that first Longest was much, much worse than the night itself. I’m lucky not to remember almost any of it. With one exception. We all have our own well-worn nightmares. Mine is the white sail. Even now, when I can remember loads and loads of bad stuff to balance it, it still is without equal. It’s not that it simply keeps me up at night, no, it shakes me up and fills my throat with tears. I love Jackal dearly, but I can neither understand nor accept his fervent passion for the Longest. He did live through that first one with me. With all of us. How can he still manage to enjoy them so much? Is it possible that he doesn’t remember? I walk to the door, probing Tabaqui’s suspiciously selective memory for the umpteenth time. I have to find Smoker. I need to assemble them all here, in the dorm.
“And what do you know, it’s R One with Tubby. He tosses him over to us, bang! And those screams, screams everywhere . . .”
It’s dark in the anteroom, but the light is on in the bathroom, and voices are coming from over there. I lean against the doorframe and listen. I don’t have to see them to figure out who’s bullying whom.
“It was me, but not exactly me,” Smoker explains. “I was scared half to death, and at the same time it was kind of pleasant. I don’t know how that works . . . Knowing that you look like that and not dying right then and there.”
“What else did you expect, doing junk?”
I don’t see them, but I know that Black’s chin is suspended now over Smoker’s head like a hammer over an anvil. And when it strikes we’re going to see sparks.
“A cat, a kangaroo, a dinosaur . . . Whatever’s your heart’s desire, it can be arranged here. All you have to do is ask. Jeez! Crawling over to Vulture and guzzling crap in his hole! He hasn’t eaten anything
“That’s not what I mean!”
Poor Smoker. He’s been boxed into a corner and tries to bite back, though timidly. He doesn’t know whom he’s dealing with.
“That’s not my point . . . I’m talking about how it made me feel. I liked it, you see?”
“Yes, I see,” Black echoes sourly. “Do you see where this is going, who it is you are trying to buddy up to?”
“But Tabaqui . . .”
“Don’t tell me about Tabaqui. Better yet, don’t say anything at all. Just think. Go back to the room, look at them all really hard, and think. What did Blind tell you?”
“Not to go out at night.”
“Ha!”
Black tries to cram his entire stock of irony into that one syllable.
“But that’s exactly what you’re saying!”
“Except I was in the room the whole time. While he was—who knows where? Have you seen him? The way he looks?”
The door squeaks. I interrupt my listening session and take a step back, hiding under the coat rack. It’s someone small and dark, tracking close to the wall.
“Who?” I call softly to the visitor.
“Me.”
Ginger’s voice.
“It’s me, Sphinx.” Her hand touches me and flees. “Are you hiding?”
“Not anymore.”
I come out into the sliver of light on the floor seeping from under the bathroom door. We continue the conversation in whispers.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to know. Red. What’s happened to him? People say all kinds of things . . .”
The Sepulcher is sprouting out of her words. Three kids in a trashed room. Girl’s hair, bright as a flame. And the pillows flying from one bed to the other, spraying feathers.
“It’s all right. He’ll live. Just got cut a bit.”
I’m saying what I think is the truth, not what I learned from Jackal. If Jackal is to be believed, Red’s corpse is already cold.
“Thank you,” the girl whispers in the dark, and starts crying.
She finds it herself, by touch. We’re standing there in the shadows, her face buried in my jacket. Water is rushing down in the bathroom, and Black’s voice continues tormenting Smoker, pouring poison in his ears. In the dorm Tabaqui is composing a song about the night’s events, and the one event he considers the most entertaining is that the guy that this girl crying into my shoulder thinks of as her brother got cut. A perfect subject for a nice song. I am fuming, even though I’m not sure who or what is more deserving of my anger. Probably this night that refuses to end.
