Olga Grushin - Forty Rooms

“It’s green,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed happily. “So finish the pink one already. They have something blue too. Embrace the rainbow.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” the girl in the mask announced unexpectedly and wandered off, walking on tiptoe, her long black hair slapping against her back.

I looked after her.

“Does she live here?” I asked.

“No. This is Hamlet’s place. She wants to be his girlfriend, I suspect. Who doesn’t, though? But he is trouble. And if you’re not going to drink that, pass it over.”

The folksy hurly-burly had given way to an Oriental whine, and a boy in an ankle-length caftan spread his arms wide and twirled about the room, keening loudly.

“Lisa, who are all these people? And what’s with the music?”

“It’s eclectic,” she said, unperturbed, and gave her cup an energetic shake; a few ice cubes leapt out and somersaulted in the air before plunking back with a green splash. “And I told you already, they’re in my theater class. You really should leave your library cubicle more often.”

For a while we watched the crowd, most of them dressed in black, the rest decked out in some outlandish garb, a few wearing masks. The lights were turned down low, but what little could be seen of the apartment—a flea-market couch, beige wall-to-wall carpeting, shelves made of crates—created a contrast I found unpleasant, as if all present here were trapped in a simple, one-dimensional story and were striving frantically, almost shrilly, to clown their way out in order to inhabit a more interesting one.

Someone thrust a potted geranium at me in passing.

“Enjoy,” he said with a beatific smile.

Feline whiskers, I saw, were scrawled across his cheeks with an orange marker.

I set the pot on a nearby crate and poured my untouched pink drink into it.

“Lisa, I’m going back to the dorm,” I said. “I’m bored. And I’m not dressed for this anyway.”

“One day, you know,” my roommate sang out, “one day you’ll look back at your youth and regret all the things you haven’t done. Talk of years wasted! Here you are, almost twenty years old, and have you ever been drunk? No. Have you ever had a proper boyfriend? No. Have you ever even—”

Quickly I interrupted, “It’s too loud, I can’t hear anything, I’ll see you later.”

I wound my way toward the doorway, swerving widely so as not to step on a python that slumbered in a woven basket in the middle of the floor, skirting some commotion; people were beginning to drag the furniture against the walls. Past the living room, the kitchen was deserted; a wet trail of bare footprints glistened across the entire length of its white linoleum floor. I followed the footprints into the hallway, in time to see a bare-legged girl, her face hidden by a soaked tangle of long, dark hair, her shoulders heaving with sobs, being draped in an oversize trench coat and gently pushed across the threshold by a tall, thin man.

The man closed the apartment door behind her and turned, and saw me.

Embarrassed to have witnessed something private and unpleasant, I squeezed past him with my face averted. In the hallway mirror, my awkward double in blue jeans and a checkered button-down shirt, her hair pulled back in an unfashionable ponytail, her face bare of any feminine artifice save a careless swipe of gloss across her lips, prodded the lock.

“Leaving already?” his voice asked softly at my back.

“I have a paper due on Monday.”

“That’s a pity. You are easily the most fascinating person here.”

I looked up at him for the first time. He stood watching me, leaning with casual elegance against the wall, dressed in a cardigan of gray cashmere, his face pale and vivid and arresting in its fierce intelligence, a gray cat draped around his shoulders. Behind him, framed by the two doorways, I could see the dim rectangle of the party room, now freed of its couch and armchairs; just then, a conga line of slender girls was undulating across it, crowned by a gigantic papier-mâché dragon’s head.

My mousy reflection nudged me with her shoulder.

“I seriously doubt it,” I said, and resumed tugging at the lock.

He glanced back into the room.

“Oh, you mean them?” he said. “No, no, they try too hard to be original. All they really do is create a background against which true originality stands out… But I see you’re anxious to go. I won’t detain you, of course, but won’t you take just a sip of this very fine whiskey for the road, so I’m not left feeling that my hospitality was wholly lacking?”

He held up his drink in a squat crystal tumbler. I heard the ice clink invitingly against the glass, and thought: No plastic cups for this one. He was looking at me over the rim, one eyebrow lifted. The cat was looking at me too. Their eyes were alike, light and cold and amused. I renewed my assault on the door.

“Thank you, but I don’t drink whiskey.”

Oh, what the hell was wrong with this thing, did it turn right or left—

The man spoke unhurriedly.

“Is this a principle of yours, or do you simply not care for the taste?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“Then forgive me the obvious question: How do you know you don’t like it? Personally, I’m an ardent follower of the immortal lessons of Dr. Seuss.”

“Who?”

“Dr. Seuss. Green Eggs and Ham . You know. Try them, try them, and you may ?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” I said, abandoning the lock to look at the man once again. I was intrigued by my sudden realization that he was only a year or two older than I, and yet I did not see him as a boy, the way I summarily perceived—and dismissed—all the boys in my dormitory or my classes.

“Oh, no. I thought I’d detected an accent. You must be one of those unfortunates who didn’t imbibe Dr. Seuss’s classics with their mother’s milk. This simply can’t go on, it must be remedied this instant. Please follow me.”

He had spoken without smiling, then, before I could object, turned and walked off, not pausing to check whether I followed. I did, after a moment’s hesitation. We threaded our way through the confusion of the noisy living room, to a door shut at the end of a corridor. “My humble abode,” he said with a half-bow, opening the door, sweeping me inside, closing the door behind me. The music and the stomping grew remote. I tried not to wonder about the soft click of the lock, and then forgot to wonder about it, distracted by the room in which I found myself.

It did not appear to belong to the apartment we had just crossed. It was spare and refined, furnished in uniformly muted gray tones—a soft sea-gray rug, velvety mossy-gray curtains, a thick gray throw on the bed, a slim floor lamp with a mushroom-gray shade. In spite of my profound obliviousness of, not to say distaste for, all things interior decorating, I discerned that everything here bore a mark of distinctive taste. There were architectural engravings in black and white frames on the walls, bookshelves of leather-bound volumes, and on the ceiling, for some unfathomable reason, an enormous mirror. It made me uncomfortable, this room. I felt as if I myself had strayed into someone else’s story, and I was not sure that I liked the style.

“I can only stay for a few minutes,” I announced sternly, just in case he had misinterpreted my presence.

“Yes, your paper on Monday, I remember.” He topped off his glass from a cluster of bottles on a silver tray, reached for a book, sat cross-legged on the floor, his movements leisurely yet precise. “Not to worry, it’s very short. I’ll read it to you, it’s best when read aloud.”

As I settled across from him on the carpet, the gray cat flowed off his shoulders and pooled into my lap.