Connie Willis: Spice Pogrom

“Cups,” he said thoughtfully, and poured some more sake on the table.

“I didn’t know you were married, Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris said, mopping up sake with her napkin.

“Yes,” he said, and his face screwed up again. He drank down his bowlful of sake in one swallowless gulp and set it in front of Hutchins. “My wife and I drink…”—he said an unpronounceable word with enough s’s in it to defeat Molly’s lisp—“out of cups like these. It is better than sake.”

“ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said. She had put on her headdress, which consisted of giant red-lacquered chopsticks stuck at various angles into her brass-colored topknot. If she bent over Hutchins like she’d been doing before, she would do herself an injury. “Can I borrow Mr. Fenokee for a minute? The girls in the show all want to meet him.”

Okee took another incredibly large swallow of sake and followed her through the crowd.

“Don’t you think we should go with him?” Chris said, watching the bobbing red headdress work its way through the crowd.

“He’ll be all right. How did you know he was talking about the sake cups and not Charmaine’s, um, selling points?”

She reached for her cup of sake. “Just because they were the first thing that sprang to your mind…”

He put his hand over hers. “I’m serious. How did you know for sure he was talking about the sake cups?”

“Because he asked me at breakfast what the coffee cups were called, and I told him they were cups, so I knew he knew the word, and he doesn’t seem to be able to absorb more than one meaning of a word.”

His grip tightened on her hand. “Give me an example,” he said urgently.

“All right. Yesterday at breakfast we had rolls, and he asked me what they were called. When I told him, he took two of them and went out and gave them to Molly and Bets. ‘Here roll,’ he said, and Bets said, ‘We asked if you could get us a role. In the alien movie. Not this kind of roll,’ and threw it at him.”

“A regular Shirley Temple. Did you try to explain what a role in a movie was?”

“Yes, I told him there were two words that sounded like roll and that Bets meant an acting job in a movie, but I could tell he didn’t understand. He started nodding and smiling the way he always does when I tell him he’s got to stop buying things.”

“Because there isn’t any more room in your apartment,” he said, and caught up her hand in both of his. “That’s why .…”

“ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said sharply. She had brought Mr. Okeefenokee back. Chris hastily withdrew her hand from Hutchins’s.

“You’ll never guess who just showed up,” Charmaine said. “My old boyfriend. He said he came up to Sony to find me.”

“That sounds pretty romantic,” Chris said.

“Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “I told him I’d go out with him after I get off work, but if he says one word about escrow or closings… I gotta go. Thanks, Mr. Fenokee.”

Okee had several lipstick prints on the top of his bald head, and his face had smoothed out into that new expression, his mouth straight across, his cheeks bright orange.

“After we see the sutorippu,” he said, “I would like you to get married.”

The waiter appeared suddenly and slammed down three orders of sushi and spaghetti in compartmentalized bento-bako boxes. “Will there be anything else, sigñor?” he asked Hutchins. “The first show is about to start.”

Hutchins didn’t answer him. He was still looking worried. Chris wondered if his aspirin was starting to wear off. She hoped not. Between the shuttle-lag and the sake, he would really crash. Okee motioned the waiter over and said something she couldn’t hear.

“Please move over next to the gentlemen, sigñora,” the waiter said, and waved her over toward Hutchins, motioning her to turn the chair around so it was facing the wall. She moved the chair so hers and Hutchins’s were side by side.

“Chris,” Hutchins said, leaning toward her and yawning, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you about this subletting situation.…”

There was a sudden blast of music, and the wall in front of Chris rolled up and revealed Omiko and her Orbiting Colonies. Chris was glad she’d moved her chair. She would have fallen over into the orchestra pit. Mr. Okeefenokee was watching the activities on stage, which involved clear plastic stars and tassels, with the broad smile and wobbling nod that usually meant that he was going to buy something.

“If he buys Omiko and her orbiting colonies I’m evicting him,” she shouted at Hutchins over the deafening music. He didn’t answer. A heavy weight came down on her shoulder. He’s probably smiling and nodding at those LaGrangian points, too, and doesn’t even realize he’s got his hand on my shoulder, she thought. “What about the subletting situation?” she said suspiciously, and turned to glare at him.

He was sound asleep, his mouth a little open and his face looking somehow more tired in sleep. “Well,” Chris thought, feeling oddly pleased.

The music ground up to a finale, and Omiko put enough spin on her colonies to induce full gravity. Hutchins began to snore. “My wife does that,” Mr. Okeefenokee said, watching the stage, and let out a wail like an air-raid siren.

Hutchins slept all the way home on the bullet. Chris spent the trip explaining to Mr. Okeefenokee why he couldn’t buy anything else. He smiled and nodded, trying to juggle the two dozen bento-bako boxes and Fan Tan Fannie’s fan against the uneven motion of the bullet. Chris held the box containing the porcelain sake cups.

“There just isn’t any more room in my apartment,” Chris said. “Tomorrow I’m going to see my fiancé and ask him if he can store some of the things in his apartment, but…”

“Tomorrow you and Hutchins get married. Have closing. Honeymoon.” He pronounced honeymoon “hahnahmoon.”

“People who get married don’t really have closings. They have weddings. And they don’t just get married. They have to be in love, they have to know each other.”

“No?” Okee said.

“No. I mean, they have to be friends, to talk to each other.”

“You and Hutchins talk. You are friends.”

Chris glanced at Hutchins, who had his arm slung through one of the hanging straps to keep himself more or less upright, wishing he would wake up and explain things to Mr. Okeefenokee. “You can’t just be friends. You have to spend time alone together so you can talk without other people listening, and so you can…”

“Neck,” Hutchins said, yawning. He eased his arm out of the strap.

“Neck?” Okee said, with the smile starting again that meant he didn’t understand. He put his hand on his neck.

“Mr. Hutchins means kissing,” Chris said, glaring at Hutchins. He was looking at Okee, though, with that thoughtful expression on his face again. “This is our stop.”

It was raining when they came out of the station. People were asleep on the sidewalks, huddled under umbrellas and makeshift tents. There were half a dozen asleep under the overhang of Chris’s building. Inside, Mr. Nagisha lay curled up by the front door with his arm around his lap terminal and disk files.

“Shh,” she said, and tiptoed to the stairs.

Hutchins tiptoed after her, stopping to take off his shoes. Mr. Okeefenokee followed, juggling his bento-bako boxes. Fan Tan Fannie’s fan dragged across Mr. Nagisha’s nose. He sneezed but didn’t wake up.

Chris started up the stairs. The old man was stretched out like a corpse on the third step up, his hands crossed on his breast and the baseball cap over his face. His running shoes were on the step above him, and his feet in their pink socks stuck through the banisters.