Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

“Looks nice, actually,” I say, “just unusual. I promise I’ll get right on getting used to it.”

Noble's already awake. He's endured the shock stoically, as he has both the strawberry and the pantsless youth..

“Play something on the harmonica,” he says.

I can take a hint. He's trying to get me to stop talking. But that's part of being a true friend to your friends, not refusing a request even when it's directed at shutting you up. So I take out the harmonica and play. Noble crawls closer to the bed rail, spreads himself across it, pulls out the guitar, and positions it on his belly.

It is easier for the harmonica to follow the guitar than the other way around. So at first we keep bungling it, unable to get in sync, hissing and swearing, but then it starts to take shape, and we’re happy with that, even though the sound is nothing special. In these matters the process itself is what's important, just as in the packing, so we sink deeper and deeper into it and get thoroughly stuck. It's not long before I feel a Howl coming up. I'm guessing Noble does too. He starts to hum and whistle. Things like that wind me up enormously, me and my Howl voices.

I tamp them down until I can't anymore, and when that moment comes I drop the soaking-wet harmonica, screw up my eyes tightly, and screech, “Gangway down to the water! Circle the wagons! Artillery ready! Fire!”

Thus bringing our cooperative music making to an abrupt end. In the ringing silence that follows the Howl, I open my eyes and see Sphinx sitting on the nightstand.

“Again,” he says.

“Again,” I agree sadly.

Screams of all sorts have taken residence inside me lately. Some days, after an exhausting whirl around the House observing this and that, I'm overwhelmed by the desire to bark in a manly voice, “Women and children to the shelters!” What women? What children? The subconscious would not be pushed and is silent. It just wants to herd everyone into a shelter, and that's it. I think it's the first response area of the genetic memory. Or take the “artillery,” for example. Every time I hear it I immediately imagine these ancient catapults. With a depressing regularity. Generally when I need to scream I scream, I don't bottle it in. Better to have a nice scream or two and be done with it than to be constantly on the edge. Except my screams make the pack nervous. They can't seem to get accustomed to it.

“Whoever heard of a gangway being lowered to the water?” Noble asks in a dying whisper. He's slightly on the greenish side, due to him being too close when I blew up.

“Exactly!” I say indignantly. “The subconscious really went rogue. And really needed to lower it in that fashion. And to circle all the wagons. Or we'd all be screwed.”

“And did you lower it?” Sphinx inquires.

“I did.”

“Wagons duly circled?”

“They are.”

“Thank goodness. We can relax until the next time.”

I wipe off the harmonica. An exceptionally stifling day. No air at all. Noble is prostrate under the guitar. He peeled off the lewd boy but left the strawberry, a scarlet patch over his eye. Smoker is still waiting for news from the ceiling. Alexander has split.

“Hey,” I say to Sphinx. “Have you seen Alexander and his amazing snow-white coat? Clean as a whistle and white as a daisy?”

He nods.

“And how do you like it?”

“I think he looks nice.”

“He even slicked back his hair. He's behaving in an unusual manner. To say nothing of the fact that he always hated white. Pointedly so. So quit pretending that you don't understand what I mean.”

“Could it be he's trying to convey the message that he's sick of cleaning up everybody's messes?” Smoker offers without taking his eyes off the ceiling.

There's that prosecutorial voice again. Implying an entire sea of issues that he chooses to leave untouched for the time being. Fortunately for us.

“No one's making him do that,” I say. “Never has.”

Smoker smirks, without even a glance in my direction.

So I did lie on the second point, of course, but that was out of simple forgetfulness, not malice. This is not the first time today that I want to throttle Smoker. If this keeps up it’ll become a recurring theme.

“I had made him do that,” Sphinx says. “And I had made Noble, too. And Lary, when it comes to that. Only you got skipped over. For some reason.”

“I wonder why,” Smoker says smoothly.

“Me too. And Alexander's image refresh does give us an opportunity to remedy that. How about today's your turn to clean?”

Smoker finally deigns to turn over, bestowing his surly visage on us. On Sphinx, more accurately. Looks at him with a sort of perverted longing.

“Sure. If you can make me,” Smoker says. “The same way you made all of them back then. So that even Tabaqui would say that it never happened.”

A breathtakingly rude remark, so much so that my nose starts itching, and the areas of the brain responsible for talking and acting are telegraphing up new Howls, along the lines of “Traitors against the wall!” and “Take no prisoners!” I barely manage to subdue them.

Sphinx is looking straight at Smoker, and it's unclear if he's going to kill him right now or simply laugh. Just looking. He at Smoker, and Smoker back at him. The silence seems to drip in huge heavy drops.

“Goodness,” Noble says reverentially. “So much drama.”

I can't hold on to an inappropriate and somewhat oily snigger, and it escapes.

Sphinx switches off the headlights and then puts them back on, directed at us. That's the way the man blinks, what of it? The eyes are cheerful and a bit on the impish side. He would have laughed. Most likely. But on a day as hot as this one you can't be sure of anything.

Alexander reappears and sits on his bed this time.

“Hello, polar explorer,” I say to him. “You've almost caused a conflict here. If there's one thing we hate, it's for things to be left unsaid. So if this is some sort of protest, just say so. Otherwise we have Smoker here speaking for you, and we've already learned by and by that he has a dust allergy.”

Alexander always looks terminally earnest. You almost start believing everything he says even before he's said it. It is therefore a blessing that he says so little, because listening to really honest words is somewhat tiring.

“I hate the color white,” he says.

This tires me instantly and very deeply. The mental effort of it, I mean.

Alexander looks at us, obviously expecting that we've already understood everything, but since our faces display a profound lack of understanding, he adds, “I dreamed I was a dragon. I hovered above a city and singed its streets with the fire of my breathing. The city was empty, because of me there. And I... it scared me.”

I pull at the earring hard. It hurts, but also clears the mind. Both when I'm drunk and in cases like this, when I see things. Things like scarlet-winged lizards flitting between charred houses. Lizards that look like bonfires. Alexander said nothing about the color red, but I know. And I also know that when your true color is ripping you apart from the inside you can swathe yourself in a dozen layers of white, or black, and it won't help a single bit. It's like trying to mop a waterfall with a tissue.

“The white shirt isn't going to save you,” Sphinx says, putting my thoughts into words.

Alexander's stare is unblinking. I imagine that in another moment all the bones in his face are going to be exposed, and then the only thing for me to do would be to count them and go kill myself quietly. They're almost out already. The bones, the gray skin, and the swampy puddles of the eyes, with tadpoles for pupils.

“But it wouldn't hurt either,” he says uncertainly. “Besides, who knows?”