Places, Please (173)

PSI-2

Erik and Seth had done pretty well carving out a bachelor existence in a half hour with limited supplies. There were random piles of filthy clothing on the floor, a half-eaten leftover piece of pie in foil, and a single instance of vomit. Both of them were in their underwear, and Seth was sitting on a cot and drinking orange juice straight out of the carton — which he stopped doing and tried to hide as soon as Ann appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I’m sorry, the coffee mug has butter in it,” he said.

Erik was wrapped in a blanket, with bare legs and a hint of white underpants showing beneath. He pulled the blanket a little tighter and padded to the bottom of the staircase, but did not try to come up it. One of the magic patches had zapped him on the way down and that was enough. He didn’t need more pain and neither did Seth. He looked up at Ann. “I…”

The radio said: Ann, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean for it to grab you like that! I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise…

There was a fizzle of static and Milo’s voice broke in, much louder and clearer: Oh, heck yeah! It’s doing the thing! Oh, shoot. I’m sorry, Erik. We won’t do that if it’s not okay. I’m sorry. Shut up! Stupid radio, we’re doing other stuff now! I’m not talking anymore.

The radio started to play the theme from A Summer Place, except you could tell it was Milo humming it.

Ann gave a ragged groan and pressed both hands over her eyes. “Erik, I’m sorry too. If you want the radio to talk for you, you’re going to have to fight Milo for it. Would you rather just switch it to the headphones and shut him up?”

Erik laughed weakly. He shook his head. “Milo’s okay.”

Seth snatched up his crumpled T-shirt and sneezed into it. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“We need stuff,” Erik said.

“I know, sweetheart. Can I see, um…?” She pointed to her hand. She wasn’t sure if Seth knew. She and Maggie and Soup and Cerise had been sitting on the other side of the doorway and watching Erik drip blood on the back of Seth’s coat.

Erik cast a sideways glance at the schoolteacher and then nodded. “Here.” He turned his body so Seth wouldn’t see.

Ann rushed down the stairs and hugged him. She bit down on her tongue and didn’t scold him. She didn’t even ask him not to shut her out again. She just hugged him.

Erik drew a shuddering breath and wrapped both arms around her neck, then hid his face against her shoulder. He shook his head. She shook hers too, then she sat down on the stairs and gathered him into her lap. “That’s all right. No. That’s all right now.”

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s all right.” She kissed his forehead. “Let me see.”

The nail on the middle finger of his right hand had cracked below the quick and bent backwards, but not quite pulled free. It was flopping like the cover over the safety valve on a malfunctioning engine. There was dried blood around it which Erik had made an attempt to clean with the bandage over the label on his left hand — but it hurt and it didn’t really help anything and Seth got really upset and puked on the floor.

“Ooh,” Ann said. “Well, thank goodness you just broke the nail.”

Erik blinked at her.

Like the ladies in the serials, and then they get really mad and kick everyone’s ass? said the radio, in Erik’s voice.

…Man, I hope it doesn’t swear like that at Calliope, Milo’s voice added. Shit! And then he began to sing ‘Supersonic Rocket Ship,’ acapella.

Ann sighed. She made a smile. “I think the serials mean like a chip or something, so it’s just a little thing and it’s funny to be mad about. Not so it hurts.”

Erik leaned in closer and lowered his voice, “It feels like I slammed my hand in a door but Seth thinks it’s his fault so I have to pretend it’s okay.”

Ann’s mouth tightened and she shook her head, just slightly.

Milo broke off singing and the radio said, Ann, no fighting, for him.

She shut her eyes. “I’m sorry, Erik. I really don’t want to have a fight. I’m not mad, I’m just worried. It comes out in bad ways sometimes. I want to make you be okay, but it’s not your fault I can’t and you’re not. Milo is just reminding me. The awful thing is I really do know how to fix nails, Cerise taught me. It’s practically the only magic I know but I can’t…” She looked up. “Erik, Cerise is here. She decided she likes us better than real toilets. She can do magic. She can fix this. Can she come down?”

Erik looked away from her. He knew Cerise was up there, she’d been walking around and through the invisible baby gates, but he didn’t want her to come down.

She’s really mad and mean, said the radio.

“Storms are hard for her, but she’s not a mean person,” Ann said. “Please, Erik. Otherwise I’m going to have to put you back together with glue and tape, and I’m not even sure we have the right kind of glue.”

“Will… it… hurt?” Erik said softly.

“If you let her do it, it won’t hurt at all,” Ann said.

He nodded and she left him sitting on the bottom step.

———

Steven was shuffling a deck of cards at the folding table, although it looked like Ted and Maria were no longer interested in playing, and Tania and Elizabeth had just gone into the kitchen looking for food, when Ann popped out of the basement looking for Cerise.

Tommy and Penny came out of Room 103 shortly thereafter. “Hey, Steve?” said the green teenager. “You got room for two more?”

“Yes, but you’ll have to squeeze around Mrs. Taube’s birdcage,” said the dry cleaner, as tactfully as possible. As the elderly woman did not seem to be paying much attention, he pointed at the plate of egg rolls on the table, which she had put near him as if feeding a pet, and mouthed the words, So racist! in Penny’s direction.

The dark brown girl with the headscarf snickered and covered her mouth with both hands. “It’s just kind of silly, Tom,” she said softly.

“Mrs. Taube, I am not accepting any more relationship advice during a magic storm, and if you try we’re gonna grab a board game and play with the kids, okay?” Tommy said.

“Suit yourself,” said the milk white woman with the melon in the birdcage. She nodded to the girl in the headscarf and fanned her cards. “Mr. Yaojing, you’re not eating.”

“I’m just not hungry at the moment, Mrs. Taube. I’ll get to them.” The pink gentleman broadly shook his head at both Tommy and Penny and rolled his eyes heavenwards.

Hyacinth made a perfunctory effort to assert that she was still glued to the wall and she had things she needed to do, but Cerise and Ann went back into the basement without addressing her, which was about what she had expected. Her voice was getting hoarse from yelling at people about how to operate her house and none of them were paying attention.

A largish white object that bore a vague resemblance to a hunk of branching coral descended from above and hung in front of her face, wreathed in yellow light and bobbing like a balloon. “Pardon me, Miss Hyacinth! Does this object make you feel joy?”

…None of them were paying attention except that crazed yellow woman upstairs, who seemed to desire constant input.

“I’m not capable of feeling joy right now, Kitty!” snarled the woman glued to the wall, not for the first time.

Kitty strode halfway down the stairs and looked over with a disapproving expression. The remains of her hairstyle looked like a funnel cloud evacuating a tied kerchief. There was even debris stuck in it. “Miss Hyacinth, if you don’t participate in the process, you’re never going to learn to improve your behavior!”

Barnaby let go a cackle — which he quickly muffled against his sleeve — at the idea of Hyacinth improving her behavior in any way.

“I want it if you don’t, Cin!” Calliope called down, invisible. “It looks like a frozen orgy!”

“I want him aussi,” Chris’s weird accent muttered disconsolately.

“He’s in my house, I got dibs,” Calliope said. “You can visit.”

“Florian made that by accident last year and I don’t care what you do with it, I’m upset about the living beings that you are assassinating!” said Hyacinth.

Barnaby leaned down. “We’re shooing them, Alice. We’re shooing them.” He stamped automatically on a cockroach and then danced a quick shuffle, trying to conceal it.

“You are evicting them without cause!”

“I’ll put it in Calliope’s pile,” Kitty said. She waved the object away. “Do you want any of these clothes?”

“I want the murders to cease!”

The General peeked out of Room 102 and addressed Ted and Maria, who were sitting on the dining room floor and holding each other’s hands. “Excuse me. Literal murders or is she still on about the mice?”

“The mice,” Ted said.

She withdrew for a moment and said, “It is safe for them to come out whenever they’re ready, Captain, and relatively calm.”

Maria smiled at her. “General D’Iver, I wonder if you’d mind watching Pablocito for a little while? And what’s-her-name?”

Pablo was drawing on the wall with crayons and Lucy was eating one undeterred.

The General detected a waning interest in being responsible adults and nodded. “Give me a moment to fulfill the demands of the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Rebellion and I will take them off your hands.” She paused at the invisible baby gate and leaned cautiously over it. “Mordecai? The children have requested ‘anything but the worst cookies known to mankind’ but do you mind if I select an assortment? You have no judgment.”

“Why don’t you come in?” he said.

She looked down, saw nothing in the doorway that would help allay her suspicions, and looked up again. “I am watching the babies,” she said.

“Dibs on Room 201!” Ted cried.

“103 has a double bed,” Tommy called over. He was sorting his cards and not yet interested in a room.

“A double bed?” said the yellow man. He ran to the door and looked in, confirming it. “A double bed! We won’t have to squeeze!”

“Viva the double bed!” Maria said, laughing.

“Viva!” responded most of the front room.

Calliope laughed and applauded. “Hey, if it makes you happy, go nuts!”

“We peut placer cosas-cosas on the ceiling?” Chris said.

“Louder and slower white gesturing, hon,” she replied.

“VERY MUCH… COSAS,” he pointed to the boxes around them, “GO,” a shooing motion, “THE CEILING!” He pointed at the chair with papers glued to it which GO… THE CEILING about an hour previously and was still up there. “Please?”

Calliope snickered. “Bien sûr!”

———

“How is that?” Cerise said. She turned over Erik’s hand and gently tapped the nail. It was glossy pink and had the appearance of being sculpted. “I’m sorry about the color. I might be able to match your shade of green, but it’s still going to look painted.”

“I don’t mind,” he said softly. He flexed his fingers. “Feels better.”

“I suppose that’s all that matters, but I wouldn’t like the other children to tease you. Do you have friends or anything or are they scared of your head? Annie, don’t clean that up.” Ann had already picked up all the discarded clothing and she was mopping the floor with Erik’s nightshirt. “It’s always the men who make the messes and the women who clean them up. You have enough to do!”

Ann folded her arms and smirked. “Cerise, angel, you already know this doesn’t work like baseball teams. I like the uniform, but you can’t recruit me.”

Cerise pouted. “You’re at least a pinch hitter.”

“A fan,” Ann said. She mimed waving a flag. “Go team lady!”

“You still shouldn’t have to clean it up,” Cerise said.

“It’s my fault,” Seth said. It usually was. Even if it wasn’t he was willing to take the blame to preserve the peace. “I’m sorry. I should’ve cleaned it.” There weren’t any towels, just fire blankets and clothes. He still didn’t feel right about using Erik’s nightshirt, even though Ann was the one doing it.

“Sick people do not clean their own vomit,” Ann said. “It’s Marselline law. I think it’s in the Florentine Conventions! Cerise, you can just sit back and enjoy watching a man in a dress tidy.”

Erik had sat down on the cot next to Seth and was hugging him. “If you let Hyacinth down she’d tidy,” he said, muffled against the blankets.

No she wouldn’t, said the radio.

Cerise looked at Seth. “What did you say?”

He had been wiping his nose on his crumpled T-shirt. He took it down and shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. It’s the radio.” He pointed to the glowing object on the worktable. There were way too many lights and buttons and it obviously worked on magic. “It’s the storm.”

It’s not interesting, go away, said the radio. I’m the weather report! It’s rainy! And now! Uh… The stock market! It’s… I don’t know what the stock market does. It’s high? A bear? I’m so stupid.

Cerise stood and approached the worktable. “Is it alive?” Her delighted expression faded into a frown. “Annie, you’re not supposed to do that. I think that really is in the Florentine Conventions.”

Ann was wincing. She put a hand over her mouth and spoke through it, hugging the dirty laundry. “It’s not alive. It’s Milo.”

The radio said: Damn it, Ann! This thing has no filter and I’m just going to upset her! What if it says I think those overalls make her butt look big… I don’t think that! That was an example! Stupid radio! Cancel! Cancel! If I didn’t need you for Calliope I’d beat you to death right now!

Cerise leaned on the table with both hands and peered at the speaker box. She looked up with a smile. “Milo talks?”

Ann nodded weakly. “All the time. But you can’t usually hear him. Please don’t tell Calliope. We might not be able to show her today and we wouldn’t want her to be disappointed.”

Hi, Cerise, said the radio, shyly.

Cerise flicked a hand in Ann’s direction. “Annie, get me a cup of tea and let us talk.”

Ann slumped forward and dumped all the clothes on the floor so she could gesture with both hands. She couldn’t even say it. She just groaned like a movie monster.

Cerise considered her for a moment. She brushed at the front of her overalls as if it were a skirt.

Oh, gods, I’m dumb, said the radio in her voice.

She gasped, and then glared at it and darkened under her uneven makeup. She cleared her throat, stepped forward and gathered clothing from around Ann’s feet. “I’ll get my own tea, why don’t you both sit down for a moment?”

“Please bring Seth some tea too, and a box of tissues, and if you can’t find Cin’s doctor bag either ask her or let her down from the wall,” Ann said.

“I’ll ask her,” Cerise said.

———

The General was still waiting for Mordecai to fill her bakery order and she caught Cerise by the arm on her way to the kitchen. “Pardon me, Miss Poirier. I know today is difficult for you but perhaps at some point in the future you and Miss O’Hara,” she raised her voice to be heard in the kitchen, “will be able to mull over the fact that my husband and I have had a ‘mixed relationship,’” the quote marks were implied, “for over twelve years and we remain quite happy together.”

“Don’t be silly,” Cerise said.

Tania approached the doorway with her arms folded across her chest. “General D’Iver, you do not have a mixed relationship. You and your husband are both white.”

Cerise nodded firmly.

“I’m sorry. What?” said General D’Iver.

“You are white people,” Cerise enunciated. “Racially speaking.”

“My husband is black.”

Elizabeth wandered over. She had a half-eaten roll in her hand. “General D’Iver, I’m black.”

“You are black, but you’re not black,” said the General. She snorted and waved a hand. “Racially speaking. We call blackness certain features that indicate Ifran ancestry, no matter how distant.” She paused. “Although I believe that is where humankind evolved, so there must be a cutoff at some point…”

“We know that, General D’Iver,” Cerise said. “Your husband is ‘black,’” she made the quote marks with her fingers, “but he’s not colored. He’s white.”

“Bianca Taube is white,” the General said suspiciously.

“She is colored,” Elizabeth said. “And white,” she allowed. “But not white.”

“And you are colored and black but not black,” said the General.

“I suppose I am,” Elizabeth said. She chuckled. “Your husband is certainly not black, more of a dark brown. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a black white person.”

The General opened her mouth and then closed it with a hand. “My husband is white and black but not black,” she said finally.

There was a brief pause. Tania, Elizabeth and Cerise burst out laughing and the General made a faint smile.

“Do we have another language we can use for this?” Cerise said.

“I think it just speaks to the fact that it is all completely arbitrary and stupid,” said the General. “Among white people, my husband and I are considered to have a mixed marriage. We were also told that we came from two different worlds and had nothing in common, but we’ve gone ahead anyway and done quite well for ourselves. So please try to keep it in mind when addressing Master Thomas and his girlfriend whose name escapes me.”

“Different worlds?” Elizabeth said. “Do you think Teddy and Maria have a mixed marriage?”

The General considered it. “Strictly speaking, people from Iliodario are considered white — although not white or in Mrs. Toussaint’s case white… or white. My gods.” She put a hand to her face and shook her head. “There is a so-called white rhinoceros in Ifrana. It fits none of the three definitions of white which we are currently juggling and only bears the name because its upper lip is wide and there was a translation error.

“There is also a black rhinoceros. It is neither black nor black.” She sighed. “But getting back to the subject at hand, I think the Toussaints would have gotten much the same treatment as the Captain and I, so — although it makes no sense at all — they are mixed. Yes.”

Elizabeth laughed and clapped her hands. “We’ll have to tell them when they get done with the double bed. They’ll think it’s a scream!”

“My husband will also be interested to know he is white,” said the General. “And black, but not black.”

“But you are certainly a man, Mr. Poirier,” Tania said.

Cerise made a twisted smile. “Miss O’Hara.” The smile broadened a touch. “Tania, may I call you Tania? You and I have just shared a very human moment and I feel kindly disposed towards you. But if you call me a man or ‘mister’ again, I will kick your teeth down your throat. Now get out of my way, I want tea.”

The General lowered her voice and addressed the red woman in Cerise’s absence. “I have come to understand calling people what they ask to be called as a matter of respect, but perhaps in her case it is one of self preservation. Trained dancers are nearly as good at kicking as trained martial artists and sometimes better.”

“I think I’ll just go and see if there’s any room for me at the card table,” Tania said. She tripped over the baby gate and fell to her knees on the dining room floor.

The General helped her up, but did not seem to have been able to catch her. “Do be careful, Miss O’Hara.”

———

A few minutes later, the General opened the door of Room 102 with a tray of baked goods balanced in her off hand. She emerged an instant later with a small smile, buffeted by the sound of maniacal cackling, and then a scream: “You mean I’M a white boy?!”

———

Cerise made her own tea. Making tea in Hyacinth’s house worked a bit like a logic puzzle, and it was missing multiple pieces. For example there didn’t seem to be any teacups. Or a kettle. Well, at least it was a magic storm and there was no difficulty boiling the water.

She used four jelly-glasses. That was some for everyone in the basement and the extent of tea service she was willing to provide. She magicked them to follow her around, floating at head height, and went looking for a box of tissues, and then the doctor bag.

She couldn’t find the doctor bag. It wasn’t in the kitchen or the bathroom. She asked Mordecai but he just wanted to know if she’d seen any eggs around.

“I think I saw a carton in the basement,” she said.

“Could you get it for me?” he said desperately. “I’ll make you anything you want! I can’t seem to get out of the kitchen. The baby gates don’t like me.”

(Erik didn’t like him, but he only sort of vaguely remembered Erik existed.)

Cerise sighed and rolled her eyes. “A chocolate cheesecake with cherries on top, but it’s not as if you wouldn’t make it anyway. Do you even need eggs?”

“I want to make hollandaise!”

“The gods alone know why,” she muttered. “All right, give me a moment.”

She delivered the tea and tissues to the basement and picked up the egg carton. Annie stood up and said she would get the doctor bag and Cerise directed her to sit back down. “I’m performing a ritual to summon a cheesecake and I have to go back up anyway.” She saluted Ann with the egg carton.

Ann, what do Calliope’s rubber ducks have to do with a cheesecake? the radio said, but Cerise had already gone.

———

Hyacinth was crying. Big, sloppy sobs which she couldn’t muffle with her hands.

Cerise juggled the egg carton but managed to keep hold of both it and her righteous indignation. “Oh, what? Does she have to pee? I’ll let her off if she has to pee, but I’m putting her right back up again!”

That large man, the General’s husband, had come out of the bedroom and was drying her face with a pocket handkerchief. “It’s not that,” he said, rather scoldingly.

“They found a nest,” the General put in, from her place in the dining room. She was holding a baby but it was difficult to tell which one.

“A nest?” said Cerise. “A nest of what?” She was picturing hornets or cockroaches. That would certainly make her cry, if it were in her home.

“Babies!” said Hyacinth. “All the mothers have gone and they’re not going to come back for their babies. They’re all going to starve to death up there!”

Sanaam paused, clutching his handkerchief. “Hyacinth, mouse mothers have this tendency to eat their babies when they’re stressed, so either way at this point…”

“That’s not any better!” shrieked the blonde woman glued to the wall.

Barnaby leaned over the railing and called down, “Hyacinth, I’ll just drop a box on these and put them out of their misery, all right?”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Mice,” Cerise said, frowning. She put the egg carton on the end table next to the contraceptive charms. She was afraid she’d grip it too tightly and break everything inside, and that would just ruin her gardening outfit. She fisted both hands and stuffed them in her pockets. “You don’t seem to care one way or another about throwing away a human being, but you’re falling apart over a nest of mice.”

“I don’t like killing,” said Hyacinth. She sniffled and Sanaam dabbed under her nose with the hanky again. “There’s been enough killing. I’ve seen enough killing. There’s been enough death. I hate it!”

“Miss Hyacinth,” said Cerise. She folded her arms across her chest. “I am going to give you one chance to care more about a human being than a load of mice and bugs, or at least pretend you care more. Understand? I’m going to tell you a very sad story about why I’m here in your crazy house with no toilets instead of dancing with the Novikov Ballet. I didn’t die, but I got very close a few times and part of my life ended. So I want to see tears. Pretend I’m a mouse if you must. And then, once I am satisfied you’ve had an appropriately devastated reaction, I will let you down from the wall. Are you reading me?”

Hyacinth appeared somewhat suspicious but still very upset about the mice. She couldn’t nod. She sniffed and then said, “Okay.” The word was congested and sounded more like “ogheh.”

“My tea is in the basement getting cold,” Cerise said. She picked up the high-backed upholstered chair from the bottom, dumped Tania out of it, then turned it around so she could sit on it herself. “It was all because they never let me have pointe shoes…”