Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Old Man looked crestfallen, and Ralph rushed to console him.

“Please understand. Here I've always been surrounded by decent people. Like you said, professionals. I probably got too used to it. Her arrival came unexpectedly for you, because it wasn't you who hired her. And I just thought—great, now there's someone on that side who looks like she knows what she's doing.”

Old Man shook his head again, but not as ruefully this time. The well-placed flattery was having an effect.

“Well, all right,” he said. “I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You young people just haven't the knack for paperwork, ’cause we always tried to shield you from it. Another one of my mistakes, now that I think about it.”

“don't blame yourself for everything,” Ralph demanded in a fit of self-loathing. “I'm not that young. You're entirely correct, I should've used my head.”

Old Man patted him on the shoulder, put away the empty bottle, and immediately extracted another one from behind the couch.

Ralph broke out in nervous laughter and said, “I would appreciate it if you'd explain to me one more time what a dunce I am. Tell me what she is trying to accomplish with her suggestions. I can't imagine why she would all of a sudden need to show everyone who was the boss here with only a few days remaining until graduation.”

Old Man perked up.

“Yes. Exactly. Few days remaining. And she's scared witless that her grandson is going to do any of that graduating. Because then, by the terms of his late grandfather's will, the family mansion passes on to him. So, she would either have to live with him under one roof, or go find herself another place, which isn't that easy at her age.”

He scratched his chin thoughtfully.

“I guess those two didn't get along too well. Or maybe they did at first and then they didn't anymore. Anyway, Grandpa played a nice dirty trick on his dearly beloved. I've seen quite a few people do that. How it's supposed to make them feel better when they’re dead, I have no idea.”

Ralph poured himself more wine.

“What about the parents?”

“The parents? That's a sad story right there. Mother killed herself at nineteen. Father—now you see him, now you don't, no one even knows who he was. Grandma and Grandpa shipped the boys to an orphanage with the mother still alive, right after they were born, and haven't given a hoot about them since. At least they never tried to find out anything about them once they were here. I mean, I don't think Grandpa ever did care, except he couldn't think of another way to get at her.”

“You are a genius,” Ralph said earnestly.

Old Man waved him away. His eyes were shining.

“Everything is actually very simple if you get the right information. And I still have ways of getting it, thankfully.”

They drank some more. Ralph had the sensation of his stomach congealing into a sticky blob. The syrup also messed with his head.

We're having a Fairy Tale Night, Ralph thought. Drinking and telling each other scary stories about the Outsides. Me and the former principal. Or rather he's telling and I'm listening. And I'm already plastered.

Suddenly a thought occurred to him that made him jump.

“Now wait a minute! I still don't understand... She wants to remove Vulture from the House, right? Hoping that it's going to break him down. All right. But. They told me that they expected me to make that choice. That I was the one to decide who it's going to be. Which means ...”

“Which means you got snookered.” Old Man shrugged. “Or did they guess right?”

“No. They didn't.”

“They’ll talk you into it, then. Dressing it up like that's what you wanted.”

Ralph felt cold fury flooding him. Trying to stanch this sudden shivering, he hugged his own shoulders, but the cold was spreading from inside. Even a fur coat would not have been enough.

So all this time, while he was fighting his conscience and mulling over the inevitable standoff with Sphinx, the damn hag was angling to throw out Vulture. And he would be her able assistant in that tomorrow, trotting out every last argument against removing Blind that he'd spend the night digging up. All she had to do was agree with him and then put out a counterproposal that he would have no choice but to accept. Because unlike the Fourth, the Third had no one who could take Vulture's place. The entire pack would just freeze. It was quite possible that in Shark's mind that would count as a huge victory in his battle to ensure safety at all costs. And the most disgusting part of it all was how well she'd managed to get into his head while sitting on the other side of the House, seemingly absorbed in her own duties and responsibilities. Ralph shuddered at the thought that the old crone had been watching him closely for the last four years and he simply didn't notice. Him, Vulture, and everyone else for that matter. She'd predicted Ralph's reactions to a tee, including the show he'd put up of quitting, and had woven them into her plans. There was only one wrinkle she didn't count on: an equally shrewd old-timer hiding in plain sight right under her nose.

Old Man was insistently pushing a restorative glass of wine at Ralph, getting more and more anxious.

“don't get so upset, my boy! Buck up! You look pale. You’ll need all the resolve you've got to fight the enemy. Do you hear?”

Ralph realized that he'd better take the glass before he got drenched. He drained it in one gulp and resolutely set it aside.

“I think that's enough for me for tonight. Or I might just go and bump off someone.”

This statement horrified the former principal.

“No! Never! Violence is never the answer! That would be your undoing!”

“No, you don't understand. I was not planning to kill her. No way. Revenge is a dish best served surreptitiously.” Ralph got up, realized that his legs weren't equal to the task, and lowered himself back on the stool. “Did you make this wine yourself?”

Old Man was kicking up such a fuss around him that Ralph felt slightly uneasy.

“My dear old gnome,” he said. “don't worry. I'm perfectly all right.”

This somehow failed to calm Old Man. He tripped over the kettle's electric cord and crashed down on the pile of magazines.

“Enough of that,” Ralph said, helping him up. “I told you, everything's fine. We're going to sit down now and have a nice long chat. You're going to share your wisdom and experience and provide advice. And I'm going to listen. And so on and so forth.”

“Perfect!” Old Man exclaimed hotly, steadying himself. “What a great idea! That's exactly what we’ll do!”

For the next hour, Ralph pretended to be listening to Old Man. To his stories of the tangled webs of intrigue from the old days. He even voiced agreement from time to time. The stories became more and more complicated as Old Man's speech became less and less coherent. After the fourth bottle, the headache returned and the sense of time vanished.

That's good... that's nice... just the way it should be. I need to get really far over the edge to be doing what I'm planning to do. Really, really far ...

Suddenly the lamp went off.

Ralph peeked out into the hallway and discovered that it was completely dark there too.

“Lights out,” Old Man grumbled. “Just what we needed. And in the most interesting place, too. I have some candles in the desk over there.”

Ralph pulled out the drawer, felt there for a bundle of thick tapers, and lit one of them.

“I had a flashlight,” he remembered. “But I don't anymore. I left it. In the library. In the coat. With the coat. Sloppy, sloppy.”

Old Man proffered him a saucer. As Ralph started dripping wax on it, he discovered with amazement that it was incredibly hard to make the drips land in the same place. The wax seemed to want to splash all over the desk. Defeated, he returned the candle and the saucer to Old Man and said that he had to go.