Мариам Петросян - The Gray House

Humpback blinks glumly.

“No,” he says. “It won’t.”

And walks away.

Smoker feels embarrassed. Everyone is looking at him. At him and Black. Not exactly with disapproval, but with a kind of weary resignation, as if they have worn out their welcome. Both of them. And even though what Black just did was the exact same thing Smoker himself had done to Sticks, he's still uneasy. He wants to distance himself from it somehow.

“Black. Please don't,” he says.

“I don't give a crap about all those rules and manners,” Black says, his tone of voice indicating clearly that he's over the edge. “All those taboos. don't say this, don't mention that. I'm going to talk about whatever I want to talk about, got that? This is the last year for all these ostriches with their stupid heads in the sand. They only have six more months to keep it down there, but look at them, Smoker. Just look at the way they lose their collective shit anytime anyone tries to say anything about it!”

The deathly stillness that follows these words scares Smoker, but also fills him with an unexpected gloating.

Humpback, crumpling the handkerchief, his face slowly reddening.

Tabaqui, in his cloak of many colors, frozen solid, with the bite of food he was chewing visible under the skin of the cheek.

Blind, fingers on the strings almost as thin as the strings themselves. His face remains hidden.

Sphinx on the headboard, like a perched bird, eyes closed.

“One's all about chicks and shells, the other—ostriches,” Sphinx mumbles. “One set of metaphors for both.”

“Why don't you please shut up,” Black says, breathing heavily. “Like you didn't piss yourself. You're the same as them!”

“Sure. Not the same as you, thank God.” Sphinx sighs. “All right, if you're done trying to mess with our heads ...”

“Oh no-o-o,” Black smirks drunkenly. “I haven't even begun. That was... by way of introduction. Letting Smoker have a nice, clear look at you. At the way you ...” Black is shaking with mute laughter, unable to speak. “At the way you all alerted. Dogs, every one of you. Crazy, huh?”

He wipes the tears off his cheeks.

“Black, what were you drinking?” Humpback asks, panicked. “Talk to me. How are you feeling?”

Tabaqui makes frantic swallowing motions, trying to dislodge the piece of a bread roll stuck in his throat.

“Great!” Black shoots up and displays a wide, toothy smile. “I am feeling great!”

Smoker moves away a little. Black grabs his shoulder and whispers loudly in his ear, drenching him in alcoholic reek, “Did you see that? No, I mean it. Did you see them?”

“Yes. Yes, I saw them,” Smoker says, wincing. Black has him in a steel grip. “Black, I saw everything. Calm down, please.”

“You saw them, right?” Black shakes him. “Remember it well, and just wait till graduation day comes. We're going to have so much fun!”

It's not fun for Smoker right now. He yelps when Black tightens his grip even more, and tries to pry his fingers apart, hissing in pain.

“Black, let go! Please!”

Black releases him, and Smoker falls back on the bed with a sigh of relief.

“But tell you what, graduation is nothing. What I would really, really like to look at is them in the Outsides. Just a glimpse, you know! A minute or two! Because I can't imagine them there, I really can’t, you know. I am trying and trying, and I simply can’t.” Black screws his eyes tightly shut. “Maybe I could help one of them cross the road or something,” he mumbles.

Blind recognizes himself in Black's fantasies and smiles.

“Or hold back my dog if it decided to jump on them.”

Tabaqui finally defeats the roll and issues an indignant squeal.

“Your dog? What do you mean, your dog? Where did that come from? It's not enough for you to roam the Outsides stalking your former packmates with the intent of dragging them from curb to curb, you have a dog now? Is it trained to hunt us? So that all you need to do is just sic it? Make it sniff the socks you swiped from us and then say, ‘Get ’em, my precious.’ Is that it? That disgusting... Disgusting ...”

“Bull terrier,” Sphinx prompts in a whisper.

“Right! Bull terrier! That man-eating horror! That ghastly, revolting beast! What kind of sick shit is that?”

“Tabaqui, pipe down.” Blind laughs. “He said he's going to hold it. I'm facing a real possibility of being dragged across the street whether I like it or not, and I am not complaining. Even though I might have left all of my worldly possessions on the other side. Both the begging bowl and the piece of cardboard with ‘Blind, destitute, please help’ on it.”

“Hold?” Tabaqui screams, his eyes ablaze. “Hold? Ha! You can't stop those bulls when they get an idea in those idiotic stumpy heads of theirs. They're all completely loony. And this one is going to be specially trained! don't you get it?”

“But Black, he's not some kind of wimp, see,” Sphinx says, shaking his head. “Besides, it's going to be his doggie, his pride and joy, his sweetie girl. Hunt together, eat together ...”

“Shut up, you morons!” Black screams. “Assclowns!”

“I can just see it. The morning stroll. Him in a gray checkered overcoat, and the bachelor's delight by his side in a gray sweater. He is holding Blind's old sock in his hand... In a plastic bag, to better retain the scent... They're out on their daily quest.”

“Shut up! You are all scared shitless, that's what!”

“Of course we are,” Sphinx confirms, frowning. “We’re petrified, believe me. One look at your dog ...”

“That god-awful abomination,” Tabaqui jumps in.

“Especially when you can't really see it,” Blind adds.

“That bandy-legged gait.”

“That pirate squint.”

“That studded collar. Oh my, oh my!”

“And the gray sweater.”

“Leave my dog alone!”

Black's scream is drowned by the squall of laughter. Sphinx slides down the bed frame and crashes on the floor.

“Cretins! Nitwits!”

Black shakes the common bed, then overturns it, growling, and storms out, tripping over his own legs.

“Crazy bastards,” comes his voice from the anteroom, his retreat punctuated with crashing and clanking.

“The mop. The water bucket,” Alexander whispers, carefully fishing Smoker from under the mattress.

Sphinx flings the blankets aside with his feet.

“If he's busted the boombox, he'd better not be coming back. I'm going to kill him personally.”

“Did you see the way he went at us for that crummy dog?” Tabaqui exclaims happily, crawling among the shards of broken glass. “He could've crushed us all! Now that's power. That's what I call a proud owner!”

Smoker feels his head, realizing that, to his total surprise, it doesn't hurt anymore. He couldn't help laughing with the others, and now he's racked with guilt. As if by that he betrayed Black. Black, lonely and furious, expertly provoked and goaded. Could he maybe not have seen that Smoker was laughing?

Humpback and Alexander turn the bed back up and start picking up stuff off the floor.

“Actually... ,” Humpback says thoughtfully. “Actually, bull terriers are remarkable animals. Very brave and very loyal.”

“Who says they aren’t?” Blind asks.

Humpback shrugs.

“I don't know. I got this impression that you are not too fond of them.”

Tabaqui clucks contentedly.

The boombox suddenly screams at full tilt, and Blind quickly hushes it down.

“It's alive. Black is in luck today.”

Sphinx wiggles his shoulders to make the jacket settle properly. One of his cheeks is covered in wet tea leaves, and the collar of his shirt turned brownish.