Spice Pogrom, Page 3

  “Why did you come up to Sony, Mr. Hutchins?” Chris said hastily.

  “Not to get married. So you thought Sony was a romantic place to come?” he said, watching Charmaine lean over the table.

  “Gee, yeah,” she said, leaning over even farther. “I mean, the stars and the moon are right outside and everything. It’s bound to have a romantic effect on a guy. It might even have a romantic effect on my old boyfriend, but I doubt it. I mean, he acted like he was a prospective buyer and I was a two-bedroom split-level. He kept calling our wedding a closing, and instead of going on a honeymoon, he wanted to ‘establish occupancy.’ Can you believe that?” She sighed an impressive sigh. “But I don’t know if Sony’s going to be any better. Omiko says the marriage contracts up here are really real-estate deals, with property clauses and everything, and that people get married all the time just to get their hands on a place to live.”

  “Does your fiancé have his own apartment?” Hutchins asked.

  “He lives with his mother,” Chris said stiffly. “Stewart says the lack of space on Sony makes property very valuable, and the marriage laws are bound to reflect that, but it doesn’t mean…”

  “Gee, your fiancé sounds just like my old boyfriend,” Charmaine said, leaning over about as far as she could go. “I mean, there’s gotta be a romantic guy around somewhere.”

  The waiter came back with the bottle of sake and four porcelain cups the size of soup bowls.

  “ ’Scuse me, I gotta go get ready for my number.” She wriggled away between the tables.

  “Now there’s a woman whose property value is in the high forties,” Hutchins said, pouring out the sake.

  “My wife has large cups, too,” Okee said. Hutchins poured sake on the table. Chris bit her lip. “They are not painted and made of…” Okee stopped and searched for a word. His face was screwed up into that odd expression again. He looked like a newborn baby about to cry.

  “Porcelain?” Chris said calmly, picking up the empty sake cup and handing it to Okee. “These cups are made of a kind of glazed clay called porcelain.”

  “Porcelain,” he said, the two lines above his nose deepening. “My wife would like these cups.”

  Chris passed the empty cup to Hutchins so he could fill it. Now he was the one with the odd expression, and she didn’t seem to be any better at interpreting his than Okee’s.

  “Cups,” he said thoughtfully, and poured some more sake on the table.

  “I didn’t know you were married, Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris said, mopping up sake with her napkin.

  “Yes,” he said, and his face screwed up again. He drank down his bowlful of sake in one swallowless gulp and set it in front of Hutchins. “My wife and I drink…”—he said an unpronounceable word with enough s’s in it to defeat Molly’s lisp—“out of cups like these. It is better than sake.”

  “ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said. She had put on her headdress, which consisted of giant red-lacquered chopsticks stuck at various angles into her brass-colored topknot. If she bent over Hutchins like she’d been doing before, she would do herself an injury. “Can I borrow Mr. Fenokee for a minute? The girls in the show all want to meet him.”

  Okee took another incredibly large swallow of sake and followed her through the crowd.

  “Don’t you think we should go with him?” Chris said, watching the bobbing red headdress work its way through the crowd.

  “He’ll be all right. How did you know he was talking about the sake cups and not Charmaine’s, um, selling points?”

  She reached for her cup of sake. “Just because they were the first thing that sprang to your mind…”

  He put his hand over hers. “I’m serious. How did you know for sure he was talking about the sake cups?”

  “Because he asked me at breakfast what the coffee cups were called, and I told him they were cups, so I knew he knew the word, and he doesn’t seem to be able to absorb more than one meaning of a word.”

  His grip tightened on her hand. “Give me an example,” he said urgently.

  “All right. Yesterday at breakfast we had rolls, and he asked me what they were called. When I told him, he took two of them and went out and gave them to Molly and Bets. ‘Here roll,’ he said, and Bets said, ‘We asked if you could get us a role. In the alien movie. Not this kind of roll,’ and threw it at him.”

  “A regular Shirley Temple. Did you try to explain what a role in a movie was?”

  “Yes, I told him there were two words that sounded like roll and that Bets meant an acting job in a movie, but I could tell he didn’t understand. He started nodding and smiling the way he always does when I tell him he’s got to stop buying things.”

  “Because there isn’t any more room in your apartment,” he said, and caught up her hand in both of his. “That’s why .…”

  “ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said sharply. She had brought Mr. Okeefenokee back. Chris hastily withdrew her hand from Hutchins’s.

  “You’ll never guess who just showed up,” Charmaine said. “My old boyfriend. He said he came up to Sony to find me.”

  “That sounds pretty romantic,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, I know.” She sighed. “I told him I’d go out with him after I get off work, but if he says one word about escrow or closings… I gotta go. Thanks, Mr. Fenokee.”

  Okee had several lipstick prints on the top of his bald head, and his face had smoothed out into that new expression, his mouth straight across, his cheeks bright orange.

  “After we see the sutorippu,” he said, “I would like you to get married.”

  The waiter appeared suddenly and slammed down three orders of sushi and spaghetti in compartmentalized bento-bako boxes. “Will there be anything else, sigñor?” he asked Hutchins. “The first show is about to start.”

  Hutchins didn’t answer him. He was still looking worried. Chris wondered if his aspirin was starting to wear off. She hoped not. Between the shuttle-lag and the sake, he would really crash. Okee motioned the waiter over and said something she couldn’t hear.

  “Please move over next to the gentlemen, sigñora,” the waiter said, and waved her over toward Hutchins, motioning her to turn the chair around so it was facing the wall. She moved the chair so hers and Hutchins’s were side by side.

  “Chris,” Hutchins said, leaning toward her and yawning, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you about this subletting situation.…”

  There was a sudden blast of music, and the wall in front of Chris rolled up and revealed Omiko and her Orbiting Colonies. Chris was glad she’d moved her chair. She would have fallen over into the orchestra pit. Mr. Okeefenokee was watching the activities on stage, which involved clear plastic stars and tassels, with the broad smile and wobbling nod that usually meant that he was going to buy something.

  “If he buys Omiko and her orbiting colonies I’m evicting him,” she shouted at Hutchins over the deafening music. He didn’t answer. A heavy weight came down on her shoulder. He’s probably smiling and nodding at those LaGrangian points, too, and doesn’t even realize he’s got his hand on my shoulder, she thought. “What about the subletting situation?” she said suspiciously, and turned to glare at him.

  He was sound asleep, his mouth a little open and his face looking somehow more tired in sleep. “Well,” Chris thought, feeling oddly pleased.

  The music ground up to a finale, and Omiko put enough spin on her colonies to induce full gravity. Hutchins began to snore. “My wife does that,” Mr. Okeefenokee said, watching the stage, and let out a wail like an air-raid siren.

  Hutchins slept all the way home on the bullet. Chris spent the trip explaining to Mr. Okeefenokee why he couldn’t buy anything else. He smiled and nodded, trying to juggle the two dozen bento-bako boxes and Fan Tan Fannie’s fan against the uneven motion of the bullet. Chris held the box containing the porcelain sake cups.

  “There just isn’t any more room in my apartment,” Chris said. “Tomorrow I’m going to see my fiancé and ask him if he can
store some of the things in his apartment, but…”

  “Tomorrow you and Hutchins get married. Have closing. Honeymoon.” He pronounced honeymoon “hahnahmoon.”

  “People who get married don’t really have closings. They have weddings. And they don’t just get married. They have to be in love, they have to know each other.”

  “No?” Okee said.

  “No. I mean, they have to be friends, to talk to each other.”

  “You and Hutchins talk. You are friends.”

  Chris glanced at Hutchins, who had his arm slung through one of the hanging straps to keep himself more or less upright, wishing he would wake up and explain things to Mr. Okeefenokee. “You can’t just be friends. You have to spend time alone together so you can talk without other people listening, and so you can…”

  “Neck,” Hutchins said, yawning. He eased his arm out of the strap.

  “Neck?” Okee said, with the smile starting again that meant he didn’t understand. He put his hand on his neck.

  “Mr. Hutchins means kissing,” Chris said, glaring at Hutchins. He was looking at Okee, though, with that thoughtful expression on his face again. “This is our stop.”

  It was raining when they came out of the station. People were asleep on the sidewalks, huddled under umbrellas and makeshift tents. There were half a dozen asleep under the overhang of Chris’s building. Inside, Mr. Nagisha lay curled up by the front door with his arm around his lap terminal and disk files.

  “Shh,” she said, and tiptoed to the stairs.

  Hutchins tiptoed after her, stopping to take off his shoes. Mr. Okeefenokee followed, juggling his bento-bako boxes. Fan Tan Fannie’s fan dragged across Mr. Nagisha’s nose. He sneezed but didn’t wake up.

  Chris started up the stairs. The old man was stretched out like a corpse on the third step up, his hands crossed on his breast and the baseball cap over his face. His running shoes were on the step above him, and his feet in their pink socks stuck through the banisters.

  There were at least five extra people sleeping on the landing, each clutching an overnight lease contract. Mr. Nagisha must be making a killing. Molly and Bets’s mothers were asleep sitting up against the banister, still holding an open copy of Variety between them.

  Molly was asleep against the door of Chris’s apartment, wrapped in a sleeping bag with blue kittens on it. Chris couldn’t get the door open without cracking Molly on the head. Hutchins took hold of a corner of the sleeping bag and pulled her out of the way, yawning. “Here’s Dorothy, but where’s Lillian?” he said, and yawned again. “Shh,” Chris said, and unlocked the door. Hutchins and Mr. Okeefenokee both seemed to snap awake at the whirr of her key being read. Okee hoisted up his dragging fan and managed to make it through the door before she did, and Hutchins straightened to his full height and cleared his throat. Chris looked at him warily and opened the door to her room.

  The blankets she had left stacked on the end of the couch were draped unevenly over it, the tail of one of the quilts trailing on the floor. In the middle of them, sound asleep, lay Bets, her golden curls spread out endearingly against the pillow and her thumb in her mouth. She was hugging a teddy bear and a frayed pink blanket. Chris glanced at Hutchins, wondering if this was what all the throat-clearing had been about, but he was bending over Bets, shaking his head. “I was wrong about the kid’s acting ability. She’s doing an amazing imitation of an innocent child asleep.”

  “Bets,” Chris said sternly. “Wake up. What are you doing in here?”

  Bets sighed, a sweet, babyish sigh, and turned over.

  “I know you’re awake, Bets,” Chris said. She knelt down and snatched the teddy bear away from her. “Tell me what you’re doing in here, or I’ll call your agent and tell him both your front teeth fell out.”

  “You better not,” Bets said. She sat up, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright with sleep. “You better give me back my teddy bear.”

  Chris stuck the teddy bear behind her back. “Not until you tell me what you’re doing in here.”

  “The door was open and I came in here just for a minute and your bed looked so soft I guess I just fell asleep.” She shrugged daintily.

  “She ate my porridge all up, too,” Hutchins said. “Where’s your phone, Chris?”

  Bets stood up in the middle of the couch. Her pink nightgown had a ruffle around the bottom that almost covered her bare toes. “My mother says we’re first on the list and you can’t just sublet your room to some boyfriend of yours. She says…”

  “I did not sublet my room to anybody. Mr. Okeefenokee sublet his room to Mr. Hutchins.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Bets said. “Then what’s that doing in here?” She pointed up at the ceiling.

  “What is that?” Chris said, looking up at the hammocklike arrangement of straps and white padding hanging from the ceiling. There was an aluminum ladder hooked onto the wall above the couch.

  “It’s an astronaut’s sleep restraint,” Hutchins said. “Okee bought it at the NASA Surplus Store. It was used on the space station, but don’t worry. It’s been reinforced for seventy percent gravity. It won’t fall down.”

  “It won’t fall down because you’re taking it down. I agreed to let you stay in Mr. Okeefenokee’s room, not in here.”

  “I know, but Okee has trouble understanding more than one meaning of a word. That’s what I was trying to tell you at Luigi’s. You told him there wasn’t any more room in your apartment, so he thinks ‘room’ means ‘available storage space.’ ” He pointed at the ceiling. “He apparently decided this space was available.”

  Chris didn’t wait for him to finish. She marched down the hall and pounded on the door of Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. “Mr. Okeefenokee!” she shouted. “I have to talk to you.”

  “Shh,” Hutchins said. “You’ll wake up that DeMille crowd scene outside.”

  “I don’t care if I wake the orbiting dead. You’re not sleeping in my room.”

  “You’d better give me back my teddy bear,” Bets said.

  Okee pushed open his shoji screen an inch and a half and peeked out.

  “Mr. Okeefenokee, there’s been a misunderstanding. Mr. Hutchins can’t sleep in my room. I said you could sublet your room.” She could see the smile coming.

  “Remember ‘role’?” Hutchins said. “Remember ‘cups’? Remember ‘neck’? I spent fifteen minutes trying to explain the difference to him this afternoon.”

  “And then you suggested that we go out for dinner so we wouldn’t get back here until it was too late for me to do anything about it,” she said furiously. “You probably timed it so it was raining, too.”

  “Look, I’m too tired to argue with you, and in about five minutes I’m going to be too lagged to even make it up that ladder and into bed. So if we could please talk about it in the morning…”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. I’m calling Stewart.”

  “What for? He told you to do whatever Okee wants. Okee wants me to stay.”

  “Stewart was not talking about a man sleeping in my room.

  “I’m not sleeping in your room. I’m sleeping in Okee’s room, which happens to be above your room.” He shuffled off down the hall. “I’m going to bed. G’night.” Bets padded barefoot after him. They disappeared into the living room.

  Chris punched in Stewart’s number and let it ring. After the first ring, she hit the time key on the screen. It flashed twenty-three o’clock. Stewart’s mother went to bed at twenty-one-thirty. Chris hit the hang-up button.

  Okee was still peeking at her through the tiny space in the sliding door. “All right,” she said, “he can stay tonight, but tomorrow…”

  “Tomorrow you and Hutchins get married,” he said, and slid the screen shut with a bang.

  Hutchins was already in the sleep restraint, one arm dangling limply over the side. Bets and Molly were in Molly’s sleeping bag, which they had dragged over next to the couch. Their eyes were squeezed shut and their hands were tucked up under their cheeks.
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  “I said Mr. Hutchins could stay,” Chris said. “I didn’t say anything about you two. Out.”

  Molly sat up and rubbed her eyes with her chubby little fists. “We have to thtay to thyaperone you,” she said, “tho people won’t think you’re a thlut.”

  Chris was suddenly too tired to argue with them. It’s the sake, she thought irrationally. He tried to get me drunk so I’d let him stay. He had the whole thing planned.

  She undressed in the bathroom and put on her nightshirt, even though there wasn’t enough room in there to raise her arms over her head. Molly and Bets had kicked their covers off. She put Bets’s pink blanket over them, turned off the lights, and got into bed.

  She could hear Hutchins breathing above her in the darkness, a heavy, even breathing that meant he was already asleep. Poor guy, she thought in spite of herself.

  When she had emigrated to Sony, she’d barely made it through customs and into the Hilton before collapsing. There was no way she could have made it through a dinner and a sutorippu. Half a sutorippu, she thought, feeling pleased all over again at the way he’d fallen asleep during Omiko’s act.

  Bets turned over and murmured something that sounded like “I’m going to be a star!” A sound like the shuttle taking off roared from Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. It went on for a full minute, subsided, and then started up again.

  “What in the hell’s that?” Hutchins said. She could hear the sleep restraint creak as if he had sat up.

  “It’s Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris whispered.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Snoring, I think. He does it every night.”

  “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?”