Connie Willis - Spice Pogrom

Hutchins was looking at her curiously. “Who is that guy?” he said.

“He’s my fiancé,” Chris said. Molly had climbed up on the piano bench and was kneeling on the keyboard, trying to reach the curling iron. Chris grabbed it away from her and put it behind her back.

“You better give my curling iron back!” Bets said. “I’m going to tell my mother you stole it.”

“Out,” she said. She escorted both of them out of her apartment, slid the door shut, and went into the living room. She lifted up the pile of folded blankets on the end of the couch and stuck the curling iron under it.

“You’re really engaged to that guy on the phone?” Hutchins said, leaning against the door, his hands in his jeans pockets.

“Yes,” she said, straightening back up. “Why?”

“Because ‘let him do anything he wants,’ covers a lot of territory. What if Okee decided he wanted to carry you off with him to Eahrohhsani, or wherever it is they came from, and make you his bride?”

“Mr. Ohghhifoehnn… he is a very nice man. Alien. Eahrohh. And he would not…”

“Earrose. They drop an e and add some h ’s to make it plural.”

“Earrose. Mr. Hutchins, I don’t care what Mr.… he told you. You can’t stay here. There isn’t any space. The landlord has people living on the stairs.”

“Hutchins stay here,” Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh said. He peeked around Hutchins and then disappeared back into the hall.

Chris went after him.

“Tall,” he said, smiling and nodding. “High ceilings. Stay here.”

“But there isn’t any space. Mr. Ohghhifoehnnah… where will he sleep?”

“My room.” He took hold of the handlebars of the bike and started pulling it toward his door. Chris backed up against the piano to get out of the way of the handlebars. “I keep in here. Lots of space.”

“ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said brightly. She had put on her makeup, but not where Chris had expected it. She had the hapi coat draped over her arm.

“Where exactly do you work?” Chris said.

“Luigi’s Tempura Pizzeria and Sutorippu. That means strip show. I’m in the Fan Tan Fannie number,” she said. She turned around.

“I can see that,” Chris said.

“Cute idea, huh?” she said. “I just love my fans.”

“So do I,” Hutchins said.

Charmaine started edging out of the hall, this time trying hard not to touch Hutchins for fear of smearing her makeup. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh went on tugging at the bicycle. Chris tried to turn around to get out from the piano so Charmaine could get past and found herself nose to nose with Hutchins. She backed into the piano. The keys made a crash of noise as her open hands hit them. “Listen,” Hutchins said, taking a step toward her, and towering over her. He really was tall. “In all seriousness, there’s obviously been a mix-up. I met Okee on the bullet, and he said he’d sublet half of his room to me, and I said okay. I’d just gotten in on the shuttle, and I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. I felt like hell.”

He rubbed his hand across his forehead. He did look tired. Chris remembered what she had felt like when she came up on the shuttle. Everyone had kept telling her how lucky she was not to be nauseated, but she hadn’t felt lucky. She’d felt bone-tired, so weary she had burst into tears at the thought of getting through customs, even in the zero gravity of Sony’s axis.

“As a matter of fact, I still feel like hell,” he said.

“It’s shuttle-lag,” Chris said. “Aspirin helps. And vitamin A.” She didn’t say he should be glad he wasn’t the kind to get nauseated. “And you should get some sleep.”

“Sleep,” he said, leaning against the piano. “You wouldn’t know of any good hotels, would you?”

She shook her head. “There’s only one hotel on Sony, and it’s full of Eahrohhs. So’s everything else. There are over four hundred of them, you know.”

“Four hundred,” he said, looking at Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh, who had gotten the handlebars and the front wheel turned around so the bike wouldn’t budge. Hutchins helped him straighten it out. “Where are they putting them all?”

“All over. The officials, the headmen or chiefs or whatever you call them, and all the translators are staying at NASA. They’re negotiating a treaty. They’re going to give us a space program.”

“Are they?” Hutchins said with an odd note in his voice. “What about the rest of them?”

“They put them anyplace there was room. Vacant apartments, extra rooms. It wasn’t so bad when it was just the aliens, but now that all these sightseers have come up…”

“They’re living on the stairs,” Hutchins said. “What about that? Do you think your landlord would rent me a step or two?”

She bit her lip. “No. He lets as many extra people sleep on the stairs at night as the fire regulations will permit—he sells them ‘overnight leases’—but he’d already sold out by nine this morning.”

Mr. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh had gotten the handlebars of the bike wedged in the screen of his bedroom door and was struggling with it. “Want Hutchins stay,” he said.

If she threw Hutchins out and then Mr. Ohghhi… he got angry or refused to cooperate, Stewart would be furious. He had told her explicitly to do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted was for Mr. Hutchins to stay. While she was on the phone, she had decided to insist that Stewart come home with her after lunch and talk to him about all these things he was buying. She could ask Stewart what to do then, and he could find Mr. Hutchins an apartment.

“All right,” she said. Ohghhifoehnnahigrheeh got the handlebars unstuck and disappeared into his room with the bicycle.

“All right, what?” Hutchins said.

“You can stay here tonight and look for a room tomorrow.”

“I love you,” he said.

“Mr. Nagisha said you’re violating your lease by taking my curling iron away from me,” Bets said.

“It’s in the living room. On the couch. But if I catch you with it in the bathroom one more time, I’m flushing it down the o-benjo,” Chris said. Bets flounced off, stamping her feet so the ruffles on her petticoat showed.

“I’m only letting you stay because Mr. Ohghhi… he wants you to, and I don’t want to upset him. Negotiations are at a very delicate stage. Tomorrow when I have lunch with my fiancé, I’ll ask him about it, but I’m sure he’ll want you to find another place to stay.”

“Do you have any vitamin A?” Hutchins said.

“In the bathroom.” Chris pointed at the door. It was shut. “Bets, you come out of there. You are not allowed to have electrical appliances in there.”

Bets slid the door open. “I was brushing my teeth,” she said indignantly, holding up a pink toothbrush shaped like a bunny.

“I’ll bet.” She got Hutchins aspirin and vitamin-A packets and herded Bets out of her apartment. “I’ll get you a bathroom schedule and the apartment rules,” she said.

Mr. Nagisha’s cousins were squatting around a hibachi in the middle of the landing, cooking something vile smelling. Chris stepped over them and started down the steps. She wondered how Mr. Nagisha would take the news that Mr. Ohghhi .… her alien had sublet half of his room to Mr. Hutchins. Probably not very well, unless he could think of a way to make money off the deal. Mr. Nagisha had welcomed him with open arms since NASA had agreed to pay the equivalent of a six months’ lease.

Even at that, he had insisted on rent based on changing property values, which were soaring with the sudden influx of people. He was going to make a killing.

Molly was sitting on the steps above the landing reading Variety. “Have you seen Mr. Nagisha?” Chris said.