Connie Willis - Spice Pogrom

“You’re kidding,” he said, and she could hear his head flop back against the pillow. “No wonder you wanted to get rid of him.”

“I didn’t want to get rid of him. I like him. It’s just that it’s such a little apartment, and he keeps bringing things home with him, like the piano, and I’m running out of room for .… where’s the piano? It wasn’t in the hall.”

“I helped him shove it into his room this afternoon,” Hutchins said. “It sounds like he’s got a spaceship in there, too. You don’t suppose he bought one at NASA Surplus when I wasn’t looking?”

“He might have,” Chris said ruefully. “I didn’t see him buy the bento-bako boxes tonight. Or Fan Tan Fannie’s fan.”

They both listened to the whooshing roar for a while. “How long does this go on?” Hutchins said finally, in between takeoffs.

“Sometimes he stops,” Chris said, thinking how she would have felt if she’d had to put up with this and shuttle-lag, too.

“And sometimes he doesn’t. But either way you have to put up with it because your prospective buyer told you to let him do anything he wants. Has he ever heard him snore?”

Chris didn’t answer. She was thinking that the next time Stewart tried to put her on hold she should play a tape of Okeefenokee’s snoring.

“I’ll bet he has,” Hutchins said, answering his own question, “and that’s why he pushed him off on you. Why is he staying here anyway? How come he isn’t with the rest of the Eahrohhs or keeping your boyfriend and his mother awake tonight?”

“He had to have a place with high ceilings,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t ask how high Stewart’s mother’s ceilings were. “He has vertical claustrophobia.”

“Which explains why Okee couldn’t stand to ride the bullet tonight or sit in Luigi’s. Did your prospective buyer tell you that? Face it, he found out about the snoring.”

“How’th a perthon thuppothed to get any thleep around here?” Molly shouted in Chris’s ear.

Chris snapped on the light. “You’re the one who wanted to sleep in here,” she said. Molly was standing over her, clutching her rag doll and Bets’s blanket. Bets was rolling up the sleeping bag. “You’re doing thith on purpothe to get rid of uth,” Molly said darkly, and stomped out in her footed pajamas after Bets.

“She wants to be alone with him so they can— you know!” Bets said loudly, and slammed the door. Chris turned out the light.

“It’s an ill wind…,” Hutchins said. “I wonder why Okee needs high ceilings. Or if that’s what he really needs.”

“What do you mean?” Chris said.

“Remember the incident of the rolls? Maybe he needed sealings, S-E-A-L-I-N-G-S, whatever they are. The Japanese word for ‘ceiling’ is tenjo, but tenjo also means palace. Maybe he really asked for a palace. Have you been in his room since he moved in?”

“No. He comes out when he wants to talk to me, and when he leaves, he locks the door. The first day when we went shopping in the ginza, I was going to go in and help him put things away, but…”

“He wouldn’t let you. I know. I offered to go get my bicycle and leave it outside. I wonder what he’s doing in there besides making lift-off noises,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you have a key to his room?”

“No. I gave him mine. And besides…”

“I know, your prospective buyer told you to let him do anything he wants to.” He was speaking into a sudden silence from the other room. He stopped talking. “You don’t suppose we woke him up, do you?” he whispered. The whisper made him seem somehow closer.

Chris didn’t answer. There was another long minute of silence, and another sound started up, high-pitched and rising.

“What’s that?” Hutchins said. “It’s what he did at Luigi’s. When the stripper came on.”

“No more sutorippu for him. And no more sake.”

The sound rose to the same keening note it had in the nightclub and then dropped and rose again. Whether it was because of the high ceilings, though, or because there was a wall between them, it didn’t sound like an air-raid siren this time. It sounded like an impossibly high trumpet, sweet and somehow sad.

“I think Omiko and her Orbiting Colonies reminded him of his wife,” Chris said.

“Ummm,” Hutchins said sleepily. “I missed her. That was when I was sleeping on you.”

“I know,” Chris said.

“Hutchins?” she said the next time Okee’s solo faded, and was answered by a faint snore that was nothing like Mr. Okeefenokee’s. “Good night,” she said, feeling pleased all over again.

“I don’t believe you,” Chris heard Bets say from the hall. “Why would he do that?”

“You don’t have to believe me,” Hutchins said. He was in the hall, too. That meant he had climbed down the ladder past her and it hadn’t even woken her up. She wondered what time it was. “All I said is that if I were Spielberg, I wouldn’t want two million little girls following me around, begging me for a part in my movie. I’d come up to Sony in disguise so I could get close to the aliens and decide which little girl I wanted in the movie. Sort of a close encounter of the Hollywood kind.”

Chris got up and pulled on a robe.

“He could be anybody,” Hutchins went on, and Chris wondered what he was talking about. “Me or Okee or one of Mr. Nagisha’s cousins, but whoever he is, he could be watching you right now. He could be giving you a screen test this very minute.”

“Mr. Nagithya’th couthinth aren’t watching uth. They got thrown out,” Molly said.

Chris came into the hall. Hutchins was standing against the wall where the piano had been, holding two towels and two shower bottles. Molly and Bets were sitting on the floor in fuzzy robes and bunny slippers looking at a movie magazine. A young man with blond hair whom Chris had never seen before came out of the bathroom, trailing his shower bottle hose, and grinned at Chris as he went out the door.

“Who was that?” Chris said.

“Charmaine’s old boyfriend. The lawyer. He moved in this morning,” Hutchins said.

“Mr. Okeefenokee didn’t sublet another half of my apartment, did he?”

“No, he’s living on the landing. But, listen, speaking of moving in, I want you to know I really appreciate your letting me stay here last night. I was so lagged, I’d probably be dead this morning if you hadn’t. And I wanted to tell you why I…”

“Mr. Nagisha’s cousins got evicted,” Bets said, studying a picture in the movie magazine. “We told Mr. Nagisha they were cooking on the stairs in violation of their lease.”

“You girls won’t even be extras at this rate,” Hutchins said.

“I don’t believe you,” Molly said. “Thpielberg wouldn’t dreth up like an alien.”

“I didn’t say he’d dress up like an alien. Maybe he’s dressed up like Charmaine. And if he is, I’ll bet he doesn’t appreciate being called a thlut.”

“I thtill don’t believe you,” Molly said. “You’re jutht doing thith tho we’ll act nither.”

“Fine. Don’t believe me. It’s your funeral.”

“But Mr. Nagisha’s cousins weren’t supposed to use the bathroom till after nine,” Chris said. “What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty,” Hutchins said. He handed her a towel and a shower bottle. “What time’s this lunch with your prospective buyer?”

“I’m meeting Stewart at thirteen-thirty,” Chris said stiffly. “Nine-thirty! Then what are you doing in line? You were supposed to be”—she squinted at the schedule on the wall—“seven forty-five.”

“I traded places with Charmaine. She had a date with her old boyfriend, remember?”

“We mithed our turn, too,” Molly said. “And it’th all your fault. If you hadn’t kept uth awake with all that thnoring and talking…”