AllFreeNovel
Share Us
UD17 first Mrs. Thrash rolls him up in the Abominable Snowman rug. Ravi—Jane’s Ravi—is making anxious noises around first Mrs. Thrash, uncertain whether she might be destroying a priceless work of art or whether the snowman rug really is as awful as it seems.
“Why are you dressed like that?” Jane asks the pirate, crouching down at his head.
“For the love of a woman who hardly knows I exist,” the sad-clown pirate says gloomily, his floppy shoes sticking out of one end of the rug and his curly rainbow wig out of the other. He resembles a sad-clown hot dog.
“Do people always dress up like sad clowns here when they’re heartbroken?” Jane asks, trying to find patterns. Patterns are comforting.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m dressed like this because it’s how she dresses,” the pirate says as UD17 first Mrs. Thrash rolls him to the side of the corridor, then presses a button on the wall that allows her to communicate with Captain Vanders.
“I’m so confused,” says Jane. “Are you in cahoots with Lucy? I mean, Lavender?”
A bit farther along the corridor, the ceiling spits out an orange. It falls to the floor, bounces, and rolls toward Jane.
“Oh! Well! That’s just insulting,” the sad-clown pirate says from his rug roll.
“What?” says Ravi. “The orange? An orange is insulting? What’s wrong with you? God, I hate this dimension.”
“It’s my friend’s orange,” the sad-clown pirate says mournfully. “My friend has become part of the hull of this ship. After he cut through it, I mean. The hull shook his ship off, but hung on to him. It stuck his body into the opening to plug it up.”
“Like a finger in the dam?” Jane asks.
“The damn what?” he says.
“Your friend’s ship is gone?” says UD17 first Mrs. Thrash with rising alarm. “What do you mean? Does he have any air?”
“No,” says the pirate. “I watched him turn blue.”
UD17 first Mrs. Thrash stares at the pirate in disbelief. “Are you telling me that the house has killed him?”
“But decided to spare the orange,” says the sad-clown pirate. “It’s a bizarre ship you call home, if you don’t mind my saying so. Has some peculiar defensive capabilities. We weren’t warned of this. Judging by how summarily we were defeated, I feel that perhaps I have been used.”
“By whom?” Jane says. “For what?”
“By her, of course,” he says. “To create a distraction. Is it pathetic if I hope she gets away with it?”
“Huh?” Jane says. “What are you talking about? You’re not here for the portal?”
“Porthole?” he says. “What porthole?”
“Wait—are you even really a pirate?” says Jane. “Are you here for the art?”
“It’s true I am a painter of great talent,” the pirate says. “But I think I’ve said enough. Don’t you?”
“I—don’t know,” Jane says, trying to understand. Is Lavender after the art?
A number of staffpersons Jane doesn’t recognize have arrived with a gurney and are surrounding the rolled-up pirate. They lift him and the Abominable Snowman rug directly onto the gurney, then strap him in. UD17 first Mrs. Thrash is telling the staffpersons something chilly and grave about the dead man who’s currently plugging up the hole he himself cut in the roof. The staff doesn’t believe her. The house has never killed anyone before. Jane wonders if Captain Vanders will be surprised. She has a feeling she won’t.
Jane has been trying to remember where Lucy—Lavender—was headed the last time Jane saw her. “Ravi,” she says quietly. “Come with me.”
* * *
With perfect manners, Ravi offers to carry one of Jane’s umbrellas and makes no reference to how he kissed her in the halls of their own Tu Reviens that morning. He also takes off the roller skates to match himself to the clomping pace of her boots. Jane finds him easy company, really, when he’s not flirting all the time. It’s strange that her relief is mixed with wistfulness.
“Where are we going?” he asks, the skates dangling from his hand by the laces. When Jane was little, Aunt Magnolia used to walk with her to the park, then sit on a bench and wait for her, offering words of encouragement while she skated. On the way there and back, Jane would tie her laces together and carry her skates the way Ravi is carrying his.
“Well?” says Ravi impatiently.
“Huh? Oh. Second story, east wing,” Jane says. “Or 01 level portside, I think they say here. I have a theory.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not ready to say yet. But I don’t think those guys were pirates after the portal.”
“Great,” he says. “Another mystery.” Ravi is not comfortable walking the corridors of this Tu Reviens. Jane can tell from his voice, and from the way he keeps glancing over his shoulders.
The lights in the second-story east wing are flickering wildly. They hold steady as Ravi and Jane arrive, as if they’ve been trying to get someone’s attention, and these two people will do. Jane supposes she’s not entirely surprised to find Lucy—Lavender—alone in the corridor. She’s standing there, whimpering, because her hand has been sucked up by the wall. It’s happened right at the edge of a small painting—really, almost behind the painting—of a woman writing a letter at a table while her frog stands peacefully nearby. It’s nighttime in the painting. The scene is softly lit by a swirling galaxy of stars.
“Lucy-Bear!” cries Ravi. “Clown Lucy! What happened?” Then, “Holy shit. Look at that Vermeer.”
“Vermeer?” Jane says.
“That gorgeous picture,” Ravi says. “A Lady Writing a Letter with Her Frog—or at least, that’s what it’s called in our dimension.”
“Oh, right,” says Jane, remembering. “Mrs. Vanders actually mentioned your Vermeer this morning.”
“She did?”
“She was worried about it, possibly?” says Jane. “She wanted you to look at it.”
“Worried? Hang on, what’s this?”
Ravi bends down to get a better look at a small canvas lying flat on the floor beside Lavender’s oversized clown shoes. Then he freezes. Putting his skates down carefully, handing Jane the umbrella he’s carrying, Ravi picks the canvas up and holds it at arm’s length. It’s a painting of a woman writing a letter while her frog stands nearby. It’s identical to the painting on the wall.
He turns to Lavender. Ravi, suddenly, is almost crying. “Lucy,” he says. “What are you doing?”
“My name is Lavender,” says Lavender, gasping. “And you’re not even my real Ravi.”
“All this time,” Ravi says, “you’ve been pretending?”
“It’s none of your business if I’ve been pretending!” Lucy—Lavender—cries out. “You’re not you. I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you! To any of you!”
“You told me you loved me.”
“Oh, listen to yourself. That wasn’t me and you, it was you and someone else, me and someone else. Anyway, you don’t even know what the word means!”
“Which painting is the real one?” Ravi asks, his voice choked.
“Figure it out,” Lavender says, “if you care so much! You don’t care who’s in your bed, but ohhh, it matters what painting is on your wall!”
“I will figure it out,” says Ravi. “I assure you. And I’ll tell your father and your cousin what you did. I’ll tell everyone!”
Lavender begins to laugh, a disgusted laugh that turns into a short scream as the wall sucks harder on her hand.
“I’m calling the police,” says Ravi, placing the canvas carefully on the floor where he found it. “Or the captain. Whatever it is you’ve got in this goddamn dimension for dealing with clown-nosed, lowlife art thieves. Guard the paintings,” he says to Jane stiffly. “I’ll be back.”
“All right,” Jane says. Then she waits, patient an
d still, an umbrella in each hand, until, swearing quietly, Ravi has retrieved his skates and rolled off down the corridor.
Jane turns back to Lavender. The wall, it seems, is steadily consuming Lavender’s hand. She’s in deeper now, almost to her elbow, and she’s gasping in pain. Tears are running oily tracks through her makeup; black is dripping onto her white shirt.
“Did you pay those two men to distract the house while you stole the painting?” Jane asks.
“I assure you,” Lavender says with a weak rush of fury, “you’re the last person in the multiverse I would ever explain myself to.” Her eyes go bright and flash at Jane. “The second-to-last person,” she cries out. “You’re just a copy! Of a nobody! Of Ravi’s latest in a string of nobodies!”
“What are you stealing it for?”
“Why does anyone steal anything?”
“Money?” Jane says, disgusted.
“It’s a painting,” Lavender spits at Jane. “It’s a thing. It doesn’t hurt anyone for me to take it. Other than Ravi, maybe, and he deserves it!”
“One of your associates died,” Jane says. “The house killed him.”
