The Gray House

SMOKER

OF CONCRETE AND THE INEFFABLE PROPERTIES OF MIRRORS

The Fourth does not have a TV, starched doilies, white towels, numbered cups, watches, wall calendars, painted slogans, or any space on the walls. The walls are decorated from top to bottom with murals, shelves, and cubbyholes, and hung with bags and backpacks, pictures and posters, clothes, pans, light fixtures, and strings of garlic, chili peppers, and dried mushrooms and berries. It resembles a landfill that is trying to climb up to the ceiling. Some of its tendrils already have gained purchase there and now flutter in the drafts, rustling and clanking softly, or just hang out.

The dump is mirrored on the bottom by the giant bed, assembled from four regular ones. It is, at the same time, sleeping area, common room, and continuation of the floor for anyone who would like to cut through. I am assigned a personal zone on its surface. The other occupants are Noble, Tabaqui, Sphinx, and sometimes Blind, so my spot is tiny. To actually sleep on it requires special skills that I have not yet acquired. Those sleeping in the Fourth are routinely stepped or crawled over, or used as flat surfaces for cups and ashtrays or as convenient props for reading materials. The boombox and three lightbulbs out of a dozen are on continuously, and at any time of night someone is smoking, reading, drinking tea or coffee, taking a shower, looking for clean underwear, listening to music, or just prowling around the room. After the Pheasant “lights out” at twenty-two hundred exactly, this kind of daily routine is quite an adjustment, but I am trying to fit in. Life in the Fourth is worth any discomfort. Here everyone does whatever he wants whenever he wants, and for exactly however long he needs. There is, in fact, no counselor here. The inhabitants of the Fourth are living in a fairy tale. But it takes coming in from the First to appreciate that.

In the last three days I learned to:

—play poker

—play checkers

—sleep sitting up

—eat in the middle of the night

—bake potatoes on a hotplate

—smoke someone else’s cigarettes

—never ask what time it is.

I was still unable to:

—make coffee without it boiling over

—play the harmonica

—crawl in a way that does not make everyone else cringe

—stop asking stupid questions.

The fairy tale was somewhat spoiled by Lary the Bandar-Log. He could not get over my arrival in the Fourth. He was annoyed by everything. By me sitting, lying down, speaking, not speaking, eating, and especially moving around. Just one look at me made him wince in disgust.

For a couple of days he confined himself to calling me a moron and a chickenshit, then decided to break my nose for allegedly sitting on his socks. There were no socks under me, of course, but the morning was spent in explaining to various teachers the circumstances of my unfortunate fall while transferring to my wheelchair. Not one of them believed a single word of it.

The First had a ball at breakfast examining my appearance. The suspicious pill given to me by Jackal did nothing for the pain but made me so horribly drowsy that I had to skip the last class. I thought that a shower would perk me up but got only as far as the bathroom before falling asleep. Someone apparently dragged me back to the dorm.

I dreamed of Homer. With an expression of utter disgust on his face, he was whacking me with a slipper. Then I dreamed that I was a fox being smoked out of its hole by evil hunters. Just as they grabbed a hold of my tail, I woke up.

I opened my eyes and saw the corners of several pillows forming a tent over my head. There was a small hole left between them, and in it I could see a yellow kite on the ceiling looking down at me. It was capable of doing that because it had a face painted on it. Clouds of vanilla-scented smoke wafted about. I figured that those fox-themed nightmares had a foundation in reality.

I flattened the nearest pillow that was obscuring my view and saw Sphinx. He was sitting next to me, moodily studying the chessboard. There were very few pieces left on it. Most of them were now strewn around, and some were definitely under me, since I felt something small and hard poking me in several places.

“Give it up, Sphinx,” said the voice of Jackal. “It’s a draw if I ever saw one. You have to learn to accept the facts as they are. To maintain dignity while at the same time bowing to the inevitable.”

“As soon as I need your advice I’ll let you know,” Sphinx said.

I dabbed at my nose. It wasn’t as painful as before. Apparently the pill did work after all.

“Hey, Smoker’s awake! I saw his eyes blink!” An extremely grimy little paw patted me on the cheek. “The Pheasantkind has some pluck left in it yet. Who said he was dead?”

“I don’t think anyone did, except you.” Sphinx leaned over me and inspected the damage. “Nobody dies over this.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” countered invisible Tabaqui. “Pheasants, even former ones, are capable of anything. What motivates their life? What causes their death? Only they themselves know the secret.”

I sat up, tired of being a bedridden patient and a topic of discussion. I couldn’t quite sit straight, but my field of vision expanded significantly.

Tabaqui was clad in an orange turban, fastened with a safety pin, and a green dressing gown that looked like it could cover him twice over. He was sitting on a stack of pillows and smoking a pipe. The vanilla smoke that had tormented the fox in my dream was emanating from him. Sphinx, ramrod-straight and serene, was meditating over the board. His sharp knees were poking out of the holes ripped in his jeans. He had only one prosthetic arm attached, and his tattered shirt was exposing its workings, so he resembled a half-assembled mannequin. I could also distinguish someone’s figure on the windowsill behind the drapes.

“I dreamed I was a fox,” I said, fanning away the cloying smoke. “I was being smoked out of my den when I woke up.”

Tabaqui transferred the pipe to the other hand and waved his index finger.

“When dealing with a dream the most important thing is to wake up in time. You seem to have managed, and I am happy for you, baby.”

And he launched into one of his bizarre, mournful songs with endlessly repeating choruses that made my skin crawl. They usually extolled the virtues of wind or rain, but this one was about smoke, rippling over the ashes of some burned-out building.

The figure behind the drapes twitched and pulled the fabric tighter to try and shield itself from Jackal’s dirges. The hasty movements betrayed it as Noble.

“Ahoy, ahoy . . . Black crows over the gray smoke . . . Ahoy, ahoy . . . Nothing left, it’s all gone . . .”

Sphinx suddenly buried his face in the blanket, as if pecking it, then straightened up and jerked his head, and I saw a pack of cigarettes flying in my direction.

“There,” he said. “It’s good for the nerves.”

“Thanks,” I said, examining the pack. There were no teeth marks on it, and no traces of saliva either. I coaxed out a cigarette, caught the lighter thrown by Tabaqui, and thanked him too.

“He’s so polite!” he exclaimed. “How nice!”

He started fidgeting, shaking out the folds of his dressing gown. The turban kept falling over his eyes. Finally he fished out a glass ashtray from somewhere. It was already full.

“Found it! Here you are.”

He tossed it at me, even though I was close enough to just take it from his hands. It lost most of its contents in flight, and the blanket acquired a dappled trail of cigarette butts. I brushed the ash off myself and lit up.

“Where’s the gratitude?” Jackal demanded.

“Thank you,” I said. “For missing.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, visibly delighted. “Always glad to help.”

The ahoys resumed at double the volume.

Sphinx said that he agreed to a draw.

“Finally,” a soft voice from the other side of the headboard replied. Snaking through the layers of bags hanging on the bed, a very white, very long-fingered hand worked its way up, turned the board over, and began assembling the little pieces into it.

“Ahoy, ahoy . . . The blackened cooking pans! Ahoy, ahoy, the frame of a stuffed bear . . . It used to be a coat hanger, it did . . .”

“Someone please shut that pervert up!” Noble begged from the window.

I couldn’t pry my eyes off Blind’s hand. In addition to the fingers being impossibly long and bending in ways that fingers weren’t supposed to bend unless they were broken, the hand also seemed unpleasantly autonomous. It traveled to and fro, slipping on the covers from time to time, extending its feelers, almost sniffing the air. I extracted the white rook that had been digging into my backside and carefully placed it in front of the hand. The hand stopped, waved the middle antenna, cogitated, and then grabbed it with lightning speed. I startled and quickly set to producing the rest of the pieces that had dropped under my body because I had a horrible suspicion that, if I didn’t, the hungry hand would just burrow in and find them. Sphinx observed me with a faint smirk on his lips.

“Ahoy, ahoy . . . The blackened pendant! A crow would take it, bring it to its young . . . A lovely toy to bring to its young . . .”

Noble pulled aside the curtain and flowed down. He did it a bit more noisily than usual, but still, it was all I could do not to weep from envy, looking at him.

“Stop gawking,” came Tabaqui’s advice. “You’ll never be able to do that.”

“I know. I’m just curious.”

Jackal imitated a coughing fit and looked at me significantly, as if to warn me about something.

“It would be better if you weren’t just curious.”

I didn’t have time to ask why before Noble climbed up to the communal bed. I admired the precise movements. Where Tabaqui crawled, Noble hurled himself forward. He tossed his legs in front of him and then hopped after them on his hands. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant sight in itself, and would border on creepy if slowed down, but not from the point of view of a paraplegic. Besides, Noble was so fast that such deconstruction was often impossible. I was enthralled and I envied him bitterly, fully aware that this was way beyond me. I was no acrobat. Tabaqui moved just as fast, but he was half Noble’s weight and he had some control over his legs, so looking at him crawl did not make me depressed.

Once on the bed, Noble stared at Jackal with a sort of vicious anticipation. It was clear that with one more ahoy things would get really hairy for Tabaqui.

“Why are you so jumpy today, Noble?” Tabaqui said apologetically. “That was the end of the song.”

“Thank god,” Noble snorted. “Or it would have been the end of you.”

Tabaqui feigned shock.

“Horrible, horrible words! And because of such a trifle! Come to your senses, dearest!”

His turban settled down over one eye again. He hoisted it back up and puffed on the extinguished pipe.

The coffeepot on the floor sounded like it was about to boil. I pushed apart the backpacks and bags that were hanging on the bars of the headboard.

On the floor on the other side of the bars, Blind was sitting. His black hair fell over his white face like a curtain. The silvery eyes glowed coldly from behind it. He was smoking and looked totally limp. The hand searching for the chess pieces was almost done. It did not appear to have anything to do with him. While I was watching, it decided to return, and Blind appreciatively patted it with the other hand. I didn’t dream this, it really happened.

The door slammed.

I heard a clatter of heels.

My mood crashed. This noise could only mean one thing—Lary had returned. I dropped the bags back in their place, obscuring Blind again, and tried to make myself inconspicuous. I didn’t hide, of course, just froze. I wasn’t exactly scared, but Lary’s presence drained all energy out of me. He invariably blew up whenever I showed any signs of life.

Thin, cross eyed, and disheveled, he came up to the bed and stared at Jackal. He looked so miserable that Tabaqui choked on his pipe.

“Heavens, Lary!” he squeaked anxiously. “What happened?”

Lary’s gaze was acerbic.

“Same old, same old. Which is quite enough for me.”

“Oh.” Tabaqui calmed down instantly and adjusted his turban. “And here’s me thinking there was something we didn’t know yet.”

Lary grunted. It was a very expressive grunt. Blatant, even. Noble, who detested all sudden noises, asked if Lary would mind keeping it down.

“Down?” Lary demanded as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You mean even more down? If we were any more down we’d be six feet under! We’re not making waves! We are the masters of quiet! We’re so quiet we’re going to grow moss any day now.”

“You’re overreacting.” Noble frowned. “And by down I meant you personally. At this particular moment.”

“Oooh, I see!” Lary jumped at the opportunity. “The particular moment, that’s all we care for. Only the moment, never before or after. Nothing can ever be worth anything except for the precious moment. We can’t even wear watches, or someone might try to think more than two minutes ahead!”

“He wants a fight,” Tabaqui explained to Noble. “A bloody massacre. He needs to fall down by the bed insensate and not have to worry about anything.”

Noble paused in the careful filing of his nails and said, “This can be easily arranged.”

Lary stared at the nail file and did not like the sight of it for some reason. He seemed to have second thoughts about the fight.

“I’m not overreacting,” he said. “Walk the corridors like I do, you’d react the same. You have any idea what kind of atmosphere is out there right now?”

“Lary, enough,” Sphinx said. “We’ve had it up to here with your atmosphere. Stuff it.”

Lary was shaking all over, and the bed was shaking with him. I could not understand why they wouldn’t just let him speak. I would’ve thought that could calm him down a little. It’s not a pleasant experience to be sitting next to someone who’s shaking from some unexplained emotion. Especially if that someone happens to be a Bandar-Log.

Alexander appeared next to the bed, an obsequious shadow in a gray sweater. He distributed cups of coffee from the tray and disappeared again. Either crouched down on the other side of the headboard or flattened against the wall. The cup was boiling hot and I turned my attention from Lary to the coffee, so it was a complete shock when he turned his to me.

The long nail of his trembling finger was pointing right at the middle of my forehead. “There! This entity here is the reason we’re all knee deep in shit! And he’s having coffee in bed instead of wearing a concrete suit!”

Tabaqui gasped in delight.

“Lary! Lary, what are you prattling about?” he squeaked. “What is this nonsense, my dear boy? How would you go about it? Where would you get your hands on that much concrete? Where would you mix it? And then how do you propose dunking Smoker in it? And what were you planning to do next? Flush the block down the toilet?”

“Shut up, you pipsqueak!” Lary howled. “Keep your mouth shut, just for once!”

“Or what?” Jackal wondered. “You’ll call upon your Log brothers to deliver a barrel of mixed concrete and a convenient footbath? Answer me this, buddy: if you’re so handy with all this stuff, how come you still can’t even cook a plate of spaghetti?”

“Because . . . shove it up your ass, you freaking idiot!”

Lary’s screeching swept Nanette off the locker. She landed on the table. And other things did too. Our crow liked to butcher old newspapers in her spare time, and the pieces of the newsprint puzzle flew into the air and settled down like a short, dirty blizzard. Two scraps ended up in my coffee.

Then Lary’s face, with the viciously squinting left eye, was right next to mine, and then a lot of things happened at once.

The coffee scalded my hand. My shirt collar twisted and squeezed my neck. The ceiling started spinning. With it spun the yellow kite, the empty birdcage, the wooden wheel, and the last pieces of the newspaper snow. This spectacle was so sickening that I closed my eyes to avoid seeing it. Miraculously, I managed not to throw up. Then I was lying faceup on the bed, gulping saliva mixed with blood and desperately trying to hold on.

Tabaqui helped me sit up and earnestly inquired how I was feeling.

I did not answer. I brought the faces around me into focus as best I could. Lary’s wasn’t among them. I had no doubt that this time he did break my jaw. I couldn’t hold back tears, but the pain was nothing compared to the sweet concern everyone was showing. They behaved as if something heavy had just happened to fall on me.

Tabaqui proffered another one of his miracle pills. Sphinx told Alexander to get a wet cloth. Blind appeared from behind the bed and asked if my head was still spinning. Not one of them had intervened when all of that was happening. Or even told Lary what a bastard he was. This kind of treatment made me lose all desire to talk to them or answer their questions. I tried not to meet their eyes. I crawled to the edge of the bed somehow and asked for my wheelchair. I don’t think the words came out right, but Alexander immediately brought it around. Then he helped me into it.

Once in the bathroom I washed my face, trying not to press on the tender spots, and then just sat in front of the sink. I didn’t want to go back. A familiar feeling. I used to have it a lot in the First, except there, no one was allowed to be by himself for long. Here nobody cared about stuff like that. Anyone was free to wander anywhere he wanted, deep into the night.

The bathroom looked exactly the same as in the First. If anything, it was even more dilapidated. More cracks in the walls. The tiles fell away in a couple of places so that the piping showed through. And each remaining tile was covered in scribbles. The marker didn’t hold well, it smeared and faded, and the flowing script made the Fourth’s bathroom a bizarre sight, like a place that was draining away. That was urgently trying to convey a message but couldn’t because it was melting and evaporating. The writing was on the wall, but no one could read it. I tried. It was legible enough, but added up to complete nonsense. It destroyed your mood. I usually ended up reading the same one every time, the one arcing above the low sink: Without leaving his door he knows everything under heaven. Without looking out of his window . . . The rest of it was smeared, leaving only the very last word: Tzu. It drove me crazy that I found myself rereading it, and I’d even contemplated erasing it with a sponge, but something always stopped me from doing that. Besides, then I would have had to write something else in the glaringly empty space.

I wheeled over to that sink. Its edge was crusted with toothpaste, and the drain sported a clog of scum mixed with disgusting hair clippings. The hair was black. Having absorbed a large dose of this still life, I moved to the next sink. None of the wheelers in the Fourth had black hair, which meant that one of the able-bodied was carefully bending down to one of the low-hanging sinks while shaving, just to bestow the fruits of his piggishness on us. Or rather, I suspected, on me.

In came Alexander.

He brought another cup of coffee and an ashtray. Placed them on the edge of the sink. Put a cigarette and a lighter into the ashtray. The sleeves of his sweater flashed his fingers for a second; the nails were brutally gnawed off, bleeding. Then they went into hiding again. The sleeves were stretched and hung low, but he also grabbed them with the fingers from the inside to make sure no one saw his hands.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Not at all,” he answered from the door. And vanished.

So here were two things that I learned about him in one go. That he could talk and that he was eating himself alive.

Alexander’s servility was more scary than pleasant. It brought to mind those nasty Pheasant tales of how other groups treated new arrivals. How they made them into slaves. I’d never believed them, but then I met Alexander, who seemed to have come straight out of those stories. A real person and at the same time a horror story made flesh. The way he carried himself was seriously shaking my resolve not to believe.

What did I know about the Fourth, when it came down to it? That, except for Lary, they behaved more or less normally toward me. They seemed nice, almost too nice for all those horrors attributed to them. But maybe I was exactly the reason? Who would need a slave in a wheelchair? Useless. He can barely serve himself. One who could move, now that’s different. One like Alexander. Having arrived at this thought, I realized that the Pheasant poison was inside me and that I was going to die from it. But not before carrying it through the rest of my life.

That was the last straw. I looked in the mirror. At the swollen nose and the swelling jaw. Touched the bruise. Pressed it harder, locked eyes with my reflection, and suddenly burst into tears.

They came so easily that I was astonished. As if I was always on the verge of them, ready to go. I was ogling myself in the mirror, cup in hand, and crying away. To mop up the fluids that sprung out of me, it took at least a couple of feet of paper towels. I blew my nose one final time and in the mirror saw Sphinx.

Not his face, he was too tall to fit in the mirror designed for the wheelchair-bound. But even without looking at his face, it was clear that he’d been there in time for the deluge.

I didn’t want to turn around, so I decided to behave like I hadn’t seen him. I put down the cup and busied myself with washing. A very long and thorough washing. Finally, I wiped my face and saw that he was still standing in exactly the same place as before. Apparently he wasn’t here to demonstrate discretion, so I had to pretend as if I’d just noticed he was there.

Sphinx had the same semi-assembled look, except he’d wrapped a shirt over his shoulders. The shirt clearly had been through a contentious encounter with liquid bleach at some point, and the jeans weren’t much better, but taken together, the appearance was stunning. Sphinx was one of those types on whom any old rags looked presentable and expensive. I had no idea how he pulled it off.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“A bit.”

To avoid looking him in the face, I stared at his sneakers. They were worn out, and he’d wrapped the laces around the ankles. Mine were much cooler.

“Bad enough to cry?” he continued.

Yeah. Discretion was not his strong suit.

“Of course not,” I managed.

It was silly of me to have expected that he would just turn around silently and leave me alone with my embarrassment. Now he was surely going to start an inquiry into why I seemed so unhappy.

“Your coffee’s getting cold,” he said.

I felt the cup. It was still warm.

Whether it was because I didn’t see Sphinx, who was now standing behind me so I could not see him in the mirror, or because he never did ask me anything, or because I wouldn’t have known what to answer if he had, or all of it together, the dam burst again. Except now it was words gushing out of me in a flood instead of tears.

“I’m a Pheasant,” I said to my puffy reflection. “A freaking Pheasant. I am for some reason not happy drinking my coffee right after a punch in the face. And you know what the funniest part is? That Lary doesn’t think I’m one. Oh, he calls me a Pheasant, but he doesn’t believe it himself. Or he wouldn’t be doing this. No Pheasant would ever take it, he’d snitch in an instant. So on the one hand he hates me for being a Pheasant, and on the other he counts on me not being a Pheasant. Isn’t that special? What if I were to wheel out of here right this moment and go to Shark’s office?”

I felt my face again. The swelling was visibly spreading. By dinnertime it was going to occupy half of my face. Much to the joy of the First.

“You can put some foundation cream on it,” Sphinx suggested. “It’s in the cabinet to your left.”

I bristled. He was so sure that I wanted to hide that shiner. Lary was too. What if I wanted to reveal it to the world? Tell everyone of the circumstances of me acquiring it and see what happened next? This was the Pheasant talking, of course, and it was scary.

“I am going to tell Shark,” I said out of sheer contrariness.

Sphinx came up to the adjacent sink and sat on it. He even crossed his legs, like it was a chair. I immediately thought of the caked toothpaste and wondered if he’d still look cool with toothpaste smeared on his butt.

“Right now?” he said.

“What?”

“Are you going to tell right now?”

I didn’t answer. Of course I wasn’t going anywhere, but he at least could have pretended to believe me. And try to talk me out of it.

“It was a joke,” I said crossly.

“Why?”

As I thought about it, he answered himself.

“Well, obviously you wanted to be talked out of it. To begin with. What else? Did you want to scare me? Possibly. But why me and not Lary? Or maybe you’d like me to stand up for you next time? Something like a covenant to protect you from him in the future? Sorry, I can’t promise you that. I’m not your nanny.”

I felt myself reddening from my ears all the way down to my heels. Sphinx’s interpretation of my behavior turned it pathetic. And it was very accurate. I just wasn’t thinking about it in those terms.

“All right,” I said. “Enough.”

Sphinx blinked.

“No, wait,” he said. “I said I can’t promise you anything, but I can go find Lary and tell him how hard it was for me to talk you out of going to Shark. He’d believe me and would never lay a finger on you again. That’s all I can do. If that’s something that works for you.”

“It does,” I said quickly. “It does work for me.”

I was this close to telling him that all I’d wanted was to irk him, but stopped myself just in time. I snatched the cigarette left for me by Alexander, clicked the lighter, and took a drag so hard that my eyes almost bugged out. The wretched creature in the mirror imitated my greedy gesture, making me ashamed for him and for myself.

“Listen, Smoker, why is it that you never fight back when someone’s beating you up?”

I coughed up smoke.

“Who? Me?”

“Yes, you.”

The faucet behind Sphinx’s back leaked, so the bottom of his shirt was getting wet. The deepening cyan color was making his eyes even more green than normal. He sat hunched up, not straight like he always did, as if trying to draw out my soul with those water-sprite eyes of his. Pull it out and then dissect it at his leisure.

“What good would that do?” I said.

“More than you can imagine.”

“Sure. Lary would have a laughing fit and forget to swing his fists.”

“Or be so surprised that he’d stop thinking of you as a Pheasant.”

He seemed to genuinely believe in what he was saying. I couldn’t even get angry at him for this.

“Sphinx, stop it,” I said. “This is ridiculous. What was it I should have done? Scrape his knee?”

“You should have done whatever. Even Tubby bites when he feels threatened. And you had a cup of hot coffee right in your hand. I think it scalded you when you fell.”

“So I was supposed to pour my coffee on him?”

Sphinx closed his eyes for a second.

“Better that than pouring it all over yourself.”

“I see,” I said and crushed the cigarette in the ashtray. It flipped over and I barely managed to grab it. “You guys crave entertainment. You’d like to see how I flap my arms at Lary, bite his finger, and douse the bed in coffee. I guess Tabaqui would even make a song about it afterward. Thank you so much for the advice, Sphinx! How can I ever repay you?”

Sphinx suddenly shot off his perch and was next to me in just a couple of steps. He was looking at me in the mirror. He had to bend down, like he was peering at someone behind a low window.

“You’re welcome,” he said, addressing that someone. “Don’t mention it. Lary himself would have given you the same advice if he happened to be here.”

His jumping startled me so much I swallowed all the curses that were ready to come out.

“Of course,” I said. “He’d have nothing to lose.”

Sphinx nodded. “And he’d finally be able to leave you alone. Do you know why Logs are always picking on Pheasants? Because they never fight back. Not in principle and not in practice. Just close their eyes and go wheels up without a peep. And until you stop doing that, a Pheasant will be all Lary sees when looking at you.”

“You said you were going to set him straight.”

Sphinx was still trying to mesmerize my reflection. The reflection that was still looking worse and worse.

“I did. And I will. Not a problem.”

His tricks were making my head spin. I felt that there were three of us here.

“Sphinx, will you stop talking to the mirror?” I blurted out. “The me that’s in there is all wrong!”

“Yep. You’ve noticed it too, haven’t you?”

He turned around absentmindedly, as if he really was talking to someone else and I’d interrupted him. Then he focused on me, which was even more disconcerting. I felt a headache coming on.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s forget about that you, the one living in the mirror.”

“Are you saying he is not me?”

“He is. But not quite. He is you seen through the lens of your image of yourself. We all look worse in the mirror than we actually are, didn’t you know that?”

“I’ve never thought about it that way.”

Suddenly it dawned on me how crazy it all sounded.

“Cut out this nonsense, Sphinx. It’s not funny.”

Sphinx laughed.

“It is funny,” he said. “It really is. Funny how, as soon as you start to grasp something important, your first reaction is to shake it out of yourself.”

“I’m not shaking out anything.”

“Look over there,” Sphinx said, nodding at the mirror. “What do you see?”

“A pathetic cripple with a shiner,” I said darkly. “What else can I possibly see?”

“You need to keep away from mirrors for a while, Smoker. At least until you get over feeling sorry for yourself. Have a talk about this with Noble. He never looks in the mirror.”

“How come?” I said in astonishment. “I wish I could see in the mirror what he sees when he looks in it.”

“How do you know what he sees?”

I tried to imagine that I was Noble. Looking at myself in the mirror. Massive attack of narcissism.

“He sees something like young David Bowie. Only more beautiful. If I looked like Bowie, I’d—”

“Whine that you look like elderly Marlene Dietrich and dream of looking like Mike Tyson,” Sphinx said. “That’s a direct quote, so don’t think I’m exaggerating. What Noble sees looking in the mirror is completely different from what you see looking at him, which is only one example of reflections behaving strangely.”

“I see,” I said. “Makes sense.”

“It does?” Sphinx sounded surprised. “It still doesn’t quite for me. Even though I spent some time researching the subject.”

I was suddenly overwhelmed by desire to ask him something. Something that had been gnawing at me for a while.

“Listen, Sphinx. Alexander . . . How come he’s like that? Did you just feed him to Lary? Or is that how he was when he came in?”

“How come he’s like what?” Sphinx frowned.

“You know. Helpful.”

“Oh man, not another one,” Sphinx drawled. “What horrors did we inflict on him? We didn’t. But you don’t believe me, so there’s no point in my telling you this.”

I didn’t believe him. Not for a moment.

“Why is he always cleaning up after everybody? Bringing people things? Does he like it?”

“I don’t know why. I have an idea, but I don’t know for sure. I know one thing, though: it’s nothing to do with us.”

The expression on my face must have been telling. Sphinx sighed.

“All right. I guess that’s how he sees his purpose in life. His previous job was much harder. He worked as an angel, and he got really fed up with it. So now he’s doing his best to prove his usefulness in any other capacity.”

“Worked as a who?”

Sphinx was the last person I expected to be pulling a stunt like this. It just wasn’t his style. Now, Tabaqui I would understand, that would be his area of expertise.

Sphinx wasn’t about to elaborate.

“You heard me,” he said. “I’m not going to say it again.”

“OK,” I mumbled. “Got it.”

“Just observe. You’ll notice that he’s always trying to preempt our requests. Do something before he’s asked to. He generally doesn’t like it when people talk to him. Doesn’t like to be personated.”

“To be what now?”

“He. Doesn’t. Like. Being. Noticed,” Sphinx chanted. “Being talked to. Asked. Paid any attention. It annoys him.”

“How do you know? Did he tell you that?”

“No. I live next to him.”

Sphinx bent over and scratched his ankle with the prosthesis, like he was using a stick.

“He likes honey and walnuts. Likes seltzer, stray dogs, striped awnings, round stones, worn-out clothes, no sugar in his coffee, telescopes, and a pillow on his face when he’s asleep. He doesn’t like when people look him in the eye or stare at his hands. Doesn’t like strong wind and flying cottonwood fluff, can’t stand white clothing, lemons, and the scent of chamomile. All of that would be obvious to anyone with a working pair of eyes.”

I decided not to mention that I hadn’t been living in the Fourth long enough to distinguish the fine details in the most inscrutable person in the House.

“You know what, Sphinx, don’t say anything to Lary. I changed my mind.”

He lowered himself to the mirror again.

“Why?”

“It was all your idea. And I don’t want him to think I’m a snitch.”

“Really?”

Sphinx appeared suspicious of my reflection, which did in fact look unpleasant. Furtively snitchy. Confused and distrustful. And at the same time I was feeling nothing of the sort.

“Really,” I said nervously. “I don’t want to be a snitch, whether real or imaginary. And you promised to leave my reflection alone.”

Sphinx looked back at me over his shoulder. Like he was comparing.

“I did. I am just fascinated by the contrast. Sorry. Won’t happen again. So, I am not to talk to Lary? All the assurances go out the window then.”

“To hell with them.”

I sighed with relief. I was almost sure I was doing the right thing. And did it in the last possible moment, almost when it was already too late. It all had to do with mirror Smoker. He was a nasty character. A veteran snitch, an expert even. And my talks with Sphinx in bathrooms were becoming a nice tradition. Just him and me, surrounded by sinks and commodes. We’d have a talk, and then suddenly everything would be different. Upside down, or maybe the other way around. Somehow I sensed that there was going to be no such upheaval this time. That I managed to avoid it.

Sphinx was examining his pants, having finally noticed their sorry state.

“Lary has been asking for it anyway. Look at this mess.”

“How do you know it’s him?”

“Who else could it be? Thumbtacks in the sheets, gum in the shoe, toothpaste on the sink, that’s right about his range. Tabaqui operates on a different level altogether. Jackal’s pranks lay waste to half the House. He’s not into the small stuff. So it must be Lary. See, he’s just a child really.”

I laughed and said, “A child that shaves.”

“What’s so unusual about that? A very common occurrence.”

He scratched the leg again, wincing.

“What’s with the scratching?” I blurted.

“Fleas. Definitely. Did they get to you yet? No? Strange.”

“Fleas?” I was a bit lost. “You mean Nanette’s got fleas?”

“I wish. We could hope to get rid of them then. No, it’s Blind hauling them in. We can’t exactly spray our Leader with pesticides, now can we? And fleas aren’t even the worst of it. Sometimes he comes in covered in ticks. In the dead of winter. And not a couple, mind you, several different species at once. Have you ever extracted a tick? The trick is never to pull too abruptly, otherwise the head breaks off and stays inside.”

“You must be kidding.”

“Of course I am,” Sphinx said gravely. “I’m the resident joker, didn’t you notice?”

“Why can’t you just tell someone to shut up if his questions are getting on your nerves? Why this rigmarole?”

Sphinx did not answer. He sighed, scratched his leg, and walked out. In a wet shirt and with toothpaste blobs on his butt. The toothpaste was not really visible and the dripping shirt only added coolness. So it wasn’t about the clothes at all, it was about Sphinx. About his self-esteem.

I stared at my reflection.

The mirror Smoker was looking better, but still noticeably spiteful. I struck a pose. He assumed an even more idiotic stance. I guess my self-esteem still sucked.

“So what,” I said. “Even Noble doesn’t like himself in the mirror.”

I finished the coffee that really was cold by now and wheeled back to the dorm.