Hyacinth crept out of her room wearing cuffed woollen socks that were sagging below her ankles and a practical white nightgown that dropped below the knee. She pulled up the socks and she peeked downstairs, over the railing.
The mage lights popped on at full strength when they detected her movement, and made her feel guilty and exposed. But it was full dark out, even Milo wouldn’t be up for a while, and Lucy was quiet.
Lucy kept no schedule. She might start in at any time, and get Calliope and Mordecai going.
I’ll say I was hungry. Or I was getting a glass of water.
…I don’t have to say anything. It’s my house. To hell with them.
She turned up her nose, folded her arms across her chest and padded down the stairs, to the front room, where she could see all the doors.
Room 101 was easily dealt with. Room 101 wasn’t even a person, just a mystery and an annoyance. If it died or moved away, she’d just be glad. It might be an inconvenience, depending on what manner of thing it was, and the circumstances. It might be some kind of eldritch abomination that she was required to outwit and slay, but she had every confidence that she could do that. She could ask the General to assist her, if need be.
I could do it by myself, if she wasn’t here. We got along fine without her before.
I could get along without you too, she thought, glaring at 102. Mordecai and his mental issues were damn complicated, and she had avoided doing this while he seemed especially fragile, but he was doing all right now. If he left, he’d take Erik with him, and he wouldn’t go off of a bridge. Erik was doing just fine too. They’d look after each other and make a life somewhere. It wasn’t a big deal if they left.
It would be easier, really. She wouldn’t have to put up with Mordecai’s crap. She wouldn’t have to tiptoe around Erik all the time, trying to be supportive and nice. They were both entirely too delicate, the pair of them. It was like living around a couple of porcelain figures. Better to donate them to somebody who liked that sort of thing, or just smash them and have done with it.
Room 103 was only newly occupied, there was no point in getting into Calliope and Lucy. This was only a way station for them, anyway. A convenience. It was easier for Calliope to have a place to stay while she looked after the baby, but not a matter of survival. She was weird, but not dumb. Mordecai was right about her. If she needed to find work, or, hell, if she did find work, she would be out of here and into more conventional housing like a shot. Probably after this business with Milo she was weighing her options, and if she found a better one, more power to her. Lucy could grow up in a house with a roof on it, like a normal kid. She wouldn’t even remember this one.
Room 204 never had a person. A lot of people, during the siege. The house had been full up to the rafters. But that was just a huge faceless mass of hurt needy people. She hadn’t been attached or anything. That sort of thing was unsustainable from the very beginning. When the siege was over, the whole world broke up and left, and that was fine. As it should have been. Expected.
Room 203? That was ridiculous. It was her house. But if, for any reason, she should pick up and leave, she had every confidence that her current crop of tenants would get along fine without her. Probably they would be relieved to quit paying rent. The neighbourhood might miss her, but there was a free clinic for medical necessities, and there were other shelters for storms, plenty of them. It would be a minor inconvenience at most.
Maggie and the General might go at any time, of course. The General hated it here, and she had enough money to leave. She was intending to send Maggie away to school in a few years too. They used to live on the boat, with Sanaam. For a little while they had lived on an island. They might do either of those things again, easily.
They’d get on without her, they were completely self-sufficient. Self-contained. They barely interacted with the rest of the household in the first place. Sanaam was never even here. It was nice to have access to an expert in magic at all hours, but in no way necessary.
The General was too good at magic, and Maggie was too cavalier about it. It was like having loaded guns in the house — which could somehow aim and fire themselves. She didn’t need that kind of aggravation, regardless of the occasional assistance that came with it.
So what if the house catches on fire? It’s happened before.
Barnaby, in the attic, he might go at any time too. He was old. Frail. Even if he didn’t drop dead on her, he was slowly losing whatever the hell remained of his mind. It might get to the point where he didn’t recognize her anymore, and she had to spoon-feed him and clean up after him. Bedpans, or not even those. Rubber sheets.
She’d been through all that with David, that was nothing new. She could handle it. She’d kicked Barnaby to the curb once already, and it had no appreciable impact on her life. She didn’t like him, and it wasn’t as if he liked her.
He’d probably be just thrilled to check out of reality now, however he does it, she thought with a smirk. Far be it from me to get in your way, Barnaby.
Ann and Milo…
Milo, she corrected herself, frowning. Milo is a goddamn loon. Everyone else in this house at least runs tangential to reality sometimes. He’s in parallel. He’s so crazy, he gets everyone else to go in on it. It’s like an anti-magic field. There is only one person in Room 201, and I can do without him just fine.
It wasn’t like it would’ve been her fault, if he died. She didn’t ignore a cry for help or misinterpret it or miss it altogether. Milo didn’t cry out, he hid. He had always hidden. He didn’t trust her enough to go to her for help, or trust anyone. She couldn’t be expected to have any sort of effect on that level of stupidity.
Besides, he wouldn’t have killed himself. He wasn’t serious about it. He was just under the worktable, crying. He wasn’t up on the roof or in the kitchen going through the drawer with the knives. He was upset. He’d lived through being upset plenty of times. He’d hurt himself before too!
Even if he had killed himself, if she’d come home too late or if he hadn’t been playing the radio so she noticed him… If she’d found him in a crumpled heap in the front yard with the rest of the trash, or dangling from the bar in his closet like one of Ann’s dresses… She would’ve been surprised, sure. Scared. Sad. All that stuff.
But the world wouldn’t end. Her world had come a lot closer to ending than one dead tenant, and she’d still picked up the pieces and moved on. A shell that fell through the roof could be broken down for the metal. She always needed metal.
She guessed there’d be an inquest, like David. That wasn’t anything new either. It wasn’t like they would convict her of anything. She hadn’t even been home. No big deal, right? Just a few more hours out of her life, and she’d have to start doing the shopping herself…
She was crying.
◈◈◈
“Barnaby…”
Barnaby was sitting in his desk chair at the top of the attic stairs, arms folded, with a sour expression, waiting. “If free will exists, you have employed it poorly. I am not a cuddly toy, Hyacinth.”
She tramped up the stairs anyway. He was quite used to people ignoring his warnings, and he accepted her tear-streaked embrace with a sigh.
“Do you frequently wander around the house in the small hours of the morning, metaphorically cutting off your limbs and imagining how you’d cope with it?” he asked her. He was certain that was the nature of the disturbance, it was in how the shadows fell across her nightdress. Now, as to how the metaphor applied to reality… that was a bit more uncertain. He was sure that whatever it was it was stupid, though.
She choked and shook her head. “No. Yes. Sometimes. I don’t know. Shut up!” She pounded her fist on his chest.
He enveloped her hand in his own and pulled it down. Gods, look at you. You’re built like a stuffed squab. I think I could still strangle you, if I wanted. “Alice, what is it that you want from me? I haven’t any gin and tonic. Are you feeling guilty about me for some reason?”
Her expression soured. She pulled back from him. “Why would you say that?” she said thickly.
He sighed again. “I don’t know. Perhaps I just feel that you should. I am old and insane, I am not required to consider my words or make sense. My function is to sit up here and supply vague portents as needed. If you want someone to coddle you, I can provide you with several addresses.”
She sat on the floor with a thump and wrapped an arm around her bent knee, pouting. He was firmly and involuntarily reminded of when she used to slop around David’s townhouse in nothing but a chemise. Her hair was a mess, as always. He heard David’s voice, or perhaps did not hear but merely understood it, shrill with shocked offence: Haven’t you been conditioning? I have bought you conditioner!
And yet, somehow, it was not David’s voice as well…
“I want you to sit with me,” she said. “Is that so hard? Do you have an appointment or something?”
“Several,” he said. “But my dance card is frequently illegible. I prefer my attic and my solitude.”
“I’ll make hot chocolate,” she said.
“You will also put more wood in the oven and retrieve me the leftover pie from the cold box in the basement,” he replied, hauling to his feet.
◈◈◈
“There’s enough for two,” Hyacinth opined of the pie.
“No there isn’t,” Barnaby replied, sticking his fork directly into the tin. “I intend to remain only as long as it takes me to finish it. That is a favour to you, Hyacinth.”
“Some favour.”
He sat forward eagerly. “Unless you would prefer your kitchen reorganized?”
“No, no, no.” She waved a hand. “By all means, distract yourself.”
“It is a reward,” he replied. “I am a strict behaviourist. You should be as well,” he added, referencing several years worth of imported chocolates that had gone into making Hyacinth at least somewhat presentable. “David is the exception that proves the rule. I assure you, I made several efforts to train him to leave me alone. Perhaps I was inconsistent about it.”
“You do realize that if he even halfway liked what you were giving him, he would’ve kept coming back to you for more?” said Hyacinth.
Barnaby blinked, and briefly ceased processing a mouthful of pie. He swallowed it. “Human beings are self-defeating creatures.”
“You’re sure it’s not just you?”
“Positive,” he replied, regarding her.
She grumbled and drew a fist across her eyes. “Shut up about it. You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“No, but that’s never stopped me.” He was smiling. She was positive he was not offering comfort, only smugness.
“I took it too far,” she muttered. “That’s all. I got him mixed up with David again. It was insupportable.”
“Milo and David?” said Barnaby, investigating the surface of his hot chocolate. The pale continents of bubbles were circling the centre in tight orbits. “They are similar, aren’t they?”
“You’re just thinking the dresses.”
“I’m thinking the pathological need for attention, actually. Milo doesn’t wear dresses.”
“Huh,” said Hyacinth. Need wasn’t the same as want, or able to process without it melting my tiny brain. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Barnaby grinned at her. “Shall we kill this one, too, Alice? As long as history is repeating itself, we may as well preempt it.”
Hyacinth stood and addressed him with a pointed finger, “You’re the reason I’m maladjusted! You and your damn chocolates! You didn’t think to teach me some rudimentary coping skills, did you? Nothing but liquor and screaming for eight… for twenty-eight years!”
“If you count my most recent stay in the safe harbour of your support, it is twenty-five.”
“Are you hearing the anger and frustration coming out of my mouth or is it all just trombone noises and numbers?”
“I think it is amusing that you choose to blame me for your emotional shortcomings, rather than, say, the parents that abandoned you or the insane ass who was responsible for the majority of the screaming — and that is even if you count my occasional descent into incoherency. I would need to scream nonstop for at least a decade to get within…” He chuckled. “…shouting distance of David.”
“This is what you taught me to do,” Hyacinth spat. “Talk about serious, painful shit like you don’t care about it, and when you can’t do that anymore, self-medicate or lash out at everyone and everything. And then pretend that didn’t matter either.”
“Well, it seems to be working out for you,” he said.
“Yeah, Barnaby, I am the picture of mental health over here.”
“Have you heard the joke about the man who was going in for surgery, Hyacinth? He says, ‘Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after this?’ ‘Yes, my good man, you certainly should be able to.’ ‘How splendid! I’ve never been able to play the piano before!’ I am not capable of spinning straw into gold. With your circumstances, you ought to be patting yourself on the back every time you get up in the morning.”
“I’m not certain whether that’s sympathy or condescension,” Hyacinth said suspiciously.
“You assume a binary choice where there isn’t one,” Barnaby replied. He sipped his chocolate. “You would like everything to be simple, wouldn’t you? Bitter or sweet. Coin flips and dice rolls are intentional limitations. I have become intimately familiar with myriad possibilities in the simplest of gestures. It is impossible to parse and answer even a yes or no question, not completely.”
Well, if he was going to sit there like a jackass being all philosophical, “What is the meaning of life, Barnaby?”
“Orgasms and pie.”
She snorted and banged her head on the table, attempting to conceal a laugh.
“Perhaps just the pie,” he added. He lifted his fork and contemplated the crumbs upon it. “I am willing to put up with it provisionally, as long as the pie holds out.” He sighed. “I say that sort of thing because all of the evidence seems to suggest life’s purpose is suffering. If that is not the purpose, it seems doubly cruel. It was the universe’s intention that I meet you again, wasn’t it? Not yours.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Are you saying that was cruel of me or cruel of the universe or just picking up some random vibe here?”
“Oversimplifying again,” he said.
“I wasn’t the one who sold the damn house and took off, you know.”
“What else was I supposed to do? It was empty.”
You were supposed to be there, she thought, frowning. Other people, other parents, are perfectly okay knocking around an empty house and waiting for their children to visit. Even my ratbag family had the decency to stay where I left them!
Although, she did not for one moment entertain the fantasy that they had been expecting her to return home or hoping she would.
And he wouldn’t have been there. She was forever going back and correcting her memory in red ink on that matter. He was a state augur, though retired, and there was a war on, so of course he wasn’t going to be there. He was just supposed to have maintained some vague connection to the house so she could’ve found him, that was all. An empty place with covered furniture and boarded windows would have been perfectly acceptable. Or some renters. Not a family full of strangers telling her that, no, dear, they owned it.
She’d slept in an alley that night. That was probably the low point of her entire existence. Curled up in an alley with a cheap coat and a duffle bag and crying.
But, the next day she’d found a legitimately empty house, broke in and set up shop, so it wasn’t like it mattered.
She wouldn’t’ve have done much business as an ex-medic uptown, anyway. Not after the siege. It was better that she’d ended up in Strawberryfield, really.
I’m doing it again. She groaned and hid her eyes in her hand. Was the only way she knew how to experience comfort by making herself as miserable as possible first and then dismissing it as fine? Or was she jabbing herself in the brain with a sewing needle and trying to build up a callus?
“You fancy yourself a phoenix, don’t you?” Barnaby said. “Emerging from the ashes. Even if you have to burn something down to do it.”
“You were going to leave,” Hyacinth muttered. “Does it make any difference which one of us went first?”
“I’d like to imagine I would’ve written you occasionally,” he replied.
“It’s not as if you didn’t know where I was.”
“Yes. ‘Goodbye, Barnaby, I’m going off to be a medic. Don’t wait up.’ It’s not as if you sent me a postcard or a telegraph when you got there.”
“I was busy.”
He set down his empty mug of chocolate with a frown. “Well, so was I.”
“Like hell you were.”
“I was busy eventually!”
“Well, I knew you were going to be!”
They were both hovering an inch out of their seats and leaning forward with hands flat on the table, as if in a territorial dispute over the sugar bowl. Barnaby sat down first. He ate pie. There were crumbs on his chin, which he was either ignoring or felt were symbolically important in some way.
I suppose I might as well mop him up, thought Hyacinth. I’ll probably be doing that eventually. At least it’s not applesauce. She winced as if she’d picked up a piece of hot metal.
Sure. Yeah. Preempt the future. Get used to it. A boiling frog doesn’t suffer if you turn up the temperature slowly enough. Let’s kill Milo again too. Shall we have him in the front yard or the closet? Maybe he’ll get hit by a bus on the way to work!
“If it is any comfort,” Barnaby said, “if I should ever come across any indication that I am going to go out like David, I intend to make off with myself at an appropriate moment without involving you. And I have encountered no hint of Milo intersecting with a traffic accident, although there may be a collision with a plate of funny brownies at some point.”
“That already happened,” said Hyacinth.
Barnaby straightened and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Really? Are we now at the point where funny brownies are occasionally on offer to the household? I haven’t seen any notes.”
She knew he didn’t mean in person.
“There was one note,” she said, “but Ann crumpled it up and yelled at Mordecai about it, so we’re just nudging each other and whispering when there are some.”
“You might’ve nudged me.” He sighed. “But I suppose I don’t really want any. I don’t think I would enjoy it very much.”
“I mean, I know why you wouldn’t,” she said, “but why would you… I mean… Barnaby, aren’t you sick of that kind of thing by now? Drugs? Parties? Pretty people? Complications?”
She was sick of it. She didn’t mind an occasional brownie or pretty person, but she was never going to take it up as a hobby again. And riding around in fast cars with boys was right out. Was Barnaby up in that attic secretly pining after showgirls?
Or, gods help him, Veronica?
“I am old and broken,” said Barnaby. “It is possible that if I were younger, I might consider my misspent youth and repent of it, but I do not have that option. I can’t be sick of something that I no longer have the capacity to endure. That part of my life is over. Sometimes I feel sorrow, and others only relief.” He glanced up at her and lifted a single brow. He was good at that. “And what are you sick of, Hyacinth? Pretty people or complications?”
“You’re oversimplifying,” she replied smugly.
“Somehow I doubt you’ll be willing to specify,” he said. “I’d get better answers from my pie tin.” He lifted it to his ear. “What’s that, pie tin? Alice has a pathological fear of attachment? But she gathers so many people around her, pie tin, how do you reconcile that? You say, ‘the question is, how does she reconcile it?’ Ah, pie tin, you are indeed witty.”
“I’m about ready to medicate you for my own convenience,” said Hyacinth. “But I can’t decide whether to make it a tranquilizer or some kind of industrial laxative.”
“I would think you’d had enough crap out of me for one evening, but I suppose you were the one who asked me to keep you company. I suspect a deep-seated masochistic streak.”
“You should be damn glad I have one. There’s no other explanation for this relationship.”
He changed it up and lifted the other brow this time. “Is that what we have, Hyacinth? I always thought we were like two moons orbiting a large screaming planet. The planet blew up, but we’ve no way of changing our own trajectory, and nothing else whatsoever to do with each other.”
Hyacinth sat back with a shocked smile. “So there’s no freedom of association here at all?”
“I very much doubt it,” he said. “Do you find that comforting?”
“…Yeah. Kind of.”
He blinked at her. “I shall continue my research into the concept of free will. Perhaps if I can eliminate it altogether, it will set your mind at rest. I find it has rather the opposite effect on me.”
“What, you want to be responsible for this mess?” said Hyacinth.
“I would prefer…”
There was the soft sound of crying from across the dining room, followed by two doors opening and closing.
“Ah, Hyacinth,” said Barnaby, “I believe the universe has set you on a collision course with a comforting asteroid.” He finished his pie in three quick bites.
“I think you have the ‘ass’ part right,” said Hyacinth.
Mordecai stumbled into the kitchen just a few moments too late to hear them insulting him. “Oh,” he said, blinking.
Barnaby rose and indicated him with both hands, “Behold! A cuddly toy!” He looked Mordecai up and down, noting his ensemble of nightshirt, greatcoat, and wingtip shoes sans pants. “Yes, you look terribly sane that way. Do have fun with Hyacinth’s mental health issues. I abdicate the responsibility.” He bowed and exited, leaving his dirty dishes to whomever wanted to deal with them.
“I am not cuddly,” Mordecai said, far too late to have any effect on Barnaby. He therefore frowned acidly at Hyacinth. “Where in the hell does he get off saying I’m cuddly?”
“Where in the hell do you get off saying you’re not?” said Hyacinth.
“I despise people,” said Mordecai. He filled a glass pot and set it down on the stove, next to the hot chocolate.
Hyacinth stared at him. “You’re a schizophrenic. And I mean that literally. You are a man with two brains.”
“Says the woman with less than one.” He had selected a tin of formula from the pantry and now he was standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking lost.
“Can I help you?” said Hyacinth.
“Baby bottle,” he replied.
“Cabinet.” She pointed at it. “No. No. Left. You’re looking right at them.” She got up and lit the stove for him, while she was at it. “It’s very nice of you to help her out like this, in spite of despising her.”
“I despise people in general.” He measured into the bottle and shook it. “Calliope is tolerable and she is having a hard time of things.” He snickered, depositing the bottle in the pot. “But I think she’s giving me busy-work. I’m going to have to train myself to go back to sleep without checking up on her. What are you doing up?”
“Clearing out the pie tin.” She indicated it on the table.
“How thoughtful,” he said.
“It’s a service I provide. Included in the rent.”
“And will the dishes be included as well?”
“We’ll see about it. I might leave you the responsibility if you’re going to come back and make pancakes for me and Barnaby.”
“Those are for Milo,” said Mordecai.
“Well, he’s not eating them.”
“I know he’s not. He’s not eating at all. I’m worried about him.”
“You are aware, you mad bastard, that Ann has been seen eating?”
“I didn’t say it made sense, you insensitive cow, I just said I was worried.”
“I suppose I am too,” she allowed, “but I don’t make pancakes. There’s hot chocolate left, you want some?”
“I suppose so.” He shifted the pot on the stove, as if he might be making popcorn instead. When she handed him a cup, he asked her, “Hyacinth, do you remember Babbette?”
“I’m going to need a little bit more than that,” she said.
“She was here during the siege.”
She inclined her head and smirked at him.
He sighed. That really wasn’t fair. He could give an age, or a time period, or where she’d been sleeping, or the thing about the cabbage leaves, any or all of that might’ve done it, but this wasn’t a game of Twenty Questions. Even if Hyacinth remembered “grumpy old lady who lived in the basement,” it wouldn’t mean the same to her.
“I guess it’s not important,” he said. He sipped hot chocolate while he waited for the water to simmer.
I just think I’d like you to end up like her, that’s all. Not dead in a basement during a siege with no family, but eighty years old, tough as nails, with a great big grin and thirteen grandchildren. I think you’re probably not going to get them the regular way at this point, but I’ll spot you Erik’s kids. I can share. Hell, you can have Maggie’s kids too. And Milo’s and Calliope’s, however they end up.
He grinned at her. “Hyacinth… I think it would be a lovely gesture if Lucy called you ‘Grandma,’ don’t you?”
“I think it’s a bad move to insult a lady who’s standing within striking distance of your head and holding a glass pot. What if I damage one of your brains?”
“So long as you aim for the cuddly one,” he said.
