Impossible Things

  Chris glanced warily up at the door. “We blew a fuse,” she said. “Mr. Hutchins is fixing it, but it’ll probably be an hour. Why don’t you ask Mr. Nagisha if you can use his bathroom?”

  “Would you pleathe be quiet!” Molly said from the landing. “We’re being interviewed.”

  Chris went on up the stairs past Molly and Bets. “I danthed in the road thyow of Annie Two,” Molly said to the redheaded man and then dropped to a stage whisper as Chris went past. “That’th her!”

  “The woman who rents the apartment?” he said.

  “Yes,” Bets said, and whispered something Chris couldn’t hear.

  In the hall Charmaine’s lawyer was standing by his printer, watching it chug out copies of something. “Tell Okee I’ll have these ready for him by tonight.”

  “All right,” Chris said, not really listening to him. She inserted her key in the door, thinking, please let him be taking a nap. But he wasn’t in the hammock or the hall, and the door to the bathroom was open. So was the door to Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. A key was still in the lock. She pulled it out, put it in her pocket, and went in.

  Mr. Okeefenokee had bought a bed. Though he must not have bought it today, Chris thought, because there wouldn’t have been time to deliver it, let alone get it in here and pile all those things on it.

  The bento-bako boxes were stacked on the foot of the bed next to a tangle of paper umbrellas and a set of encyclopedias. The rest of the bed was piled to the ceiling with boxes that appeared to be microwave ovens.

  She came around the end of the bed into a narrow aisle formed by stacks of boxes that went clear to the ceiling. One of the boxes read, “One gross dental floss.” Hutchins’s bicycle was propped against the boxes. Next to it was a baby buggy with a Christmas tree in it. She couldn’t see the piano anywhere, but there were four accordions sitting in the middle of the aisle.

  Against the back wall was a trampoline propped on its side with six pairs of roller skates and a wind sock hanging from it. Hutchins was kneeling in front of the trampoline, digging in a box full of Styrofoam packing. He lifted out a lava lamp and looked at it.

  “How did you get in here?” Chris said.

  He laid the lava lamp back in the box and stood up. “Okee gave me his key,” he said. “I thought you were going shopping.”

  “I thought you had a job interview at Luigi’s,” Chris said steadily.

  “I did, but I called Luigi and told him I’d be a little late. Okee wanted me to check on whether he’d bought a Japanese-English dictionary or not. He couldn’t remember. It’s no wonder with all the junk he’s got in here. At least we know what he wanted the high ceilings for. You don’t see a dictionary anywhere, do you?”

  “There aren’t any job openings at Luigi’s,” Chris said. “Charmaine told me he’s not even taking applications.” He stopped pretending to look for the dictionary. “She also told me she saw you on the axis this morning.”

  “Chris,” he said.

  She backed away from him into the Christmas tree. The balls rattled. “You’re a spy, aren’t you?”

  He looked genuinely astonished. “A spy? Of course I’m not a spy.”

  “Then what are you doing in here? And why did you lie to me about the job interview?”

  “All right,” he said. “I didn’t have a job interview. I went up to NASA to get my subvocalizer checked. I wanted to know what made it tick.”

  “Because you’re a spy,” Chris said, still backing. “I’m calling Stewart.”

  “No!” he said, and then in a calmer and even more unsettling tone, “No. You aren’t calling anybody. As soon as NASA works out a deal with the Japanese, they’re taking Okee down to Houston. I’ve got maybe two days to figure out what he means by ‘space program’ before the NASA people start demanding that he deliver a space program he doesn’t know anything about. I don’t have time to mess with your idiot fiancé.”

  “He’s not an idiot,” Chris said, feeling behind her back for something she could hit him with. Her hand closed on a golf club.

  “Oh, isn’t he? He’s engaged to you, for God’s sake, and he doesn’t even exercise his option. He puts you on hold and goes off and leaves you barefoot in the ginza and lets strange men sleep in your room. If I were engaged to you, I’d … I’m not a spy. I’m a linguist.”

  Chris’s grip tightened on the golf club. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Stewart said the American linguistics team was at NASA, talking to the Eahrohhs’ leaders.”

  “Okee’s the leader.”

  She let go of the golf club, and the whole bag of clubs went over and spilled out. “But Stewart said he was just a passenger.”

  “The Eahrohhs told the Japanese linguistics team that Okee was noru hito. That means passenger. It also means proclaiming one. That means he’s the one who’s supposed to deliver the space program, only I don’t think he’s got one. Do you remember what you said to Okee when I moved in? You said, ‘There isn’t any space.’ ”

  “Oh, no,” Chris said. “And he only understands one meaning of a word.”

  “The first one he hears. But those idiots over at NASA think that if an alien who has known our language less than two weeks says space program, he has to mean astronauts, rockets, and zero-gravity bathrooms. It never even crosses their minds that ‘space’ also means a vacuum, that ‘program’ also means a series of musical numbers. Okee could be giving us radio, for God’s sake.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to do what I’ve been doing for the last two days—try to figure out what the hell he means by ‘space program.’ He can’t pronounce ‘honeymoon’ right. What if he can’t pronounce ‘space program’ either? What if he’s offering us a spice program and NASA’s going to find itself with eighty tons of cinnamon? What if it’s a spaze program, whatever the hell that is? Or a space pogrom? We’ve got to find out before he goes down to Houston. That’s why I was in here. I thought maybe he was keeping some machine in here or secret plans or something, but all he’s got is a swing set and a gross of Girl Scout flashlights. I don’t know. Maybe he’s a smuggler.”

  “What about the subvocalizers?” Chris said. “You said you tried to find out what made them work.”

  “Nothing,” Hutchins said. He pulled his out of his pocket and looked at it. “It’s two pieces of metal with five millimeters of air between them, not even vacuum, just air.” He put the subvocalizer back on. “All they could tell me over at NASA was that it does what it’s supposed to.”

  “It does what it’s supposed to,” Chris said. She thought about him taking it off so he could come over here without being followed, about talking to her at lunch with it. “Your giving me the subvocalizer, that was all a setup, wasn’t it, so you could make sure I didn’t tell Stewart about you?”

  “I couldn’t risk your moving me out. I needed to be where I could talk to Okee.”

  “Did you really come up on the shuttle yesterday, or was that part of the act, too?”

  “It wasn’t an act. I was supposed to come up with the rest of the team, but I’d heard how much trouble the Japanese team was having communicating with the Eahrohhs. I figured it was because everybody was trying so hard to get the names pronounced right and learn the language that it made the Eahrohhs nervous. So I thought if I could come up here incognito—”

  “Like Spielberg,” Chris said bitterly.

  “ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine’s cheery voice floated up from downstairs.

  “They’re home!” Hutchins said. “We can’t let him find us in here!” He dashed back into the aisle of boxes. Chris scrambled to pick up the bento-bako boxes and stack them on the bed again. Hutchins jammed the golf clubs back into the bag and came to help her.

  “I gotta be at work at nineteen o’clock, Mr. Fenokee,” Charmaine said, sounding so close she could have been using a subvocalizer. “We better get all this stuff put away.”

  Chris and Hutchins dived out the door and slid the shoji
i screen shut. “Where’s the key?” he said.

  Chris pulled it out of her pocket and fumbled to lock the door. The lock seemed to take forever to read the key. She pulled it out.

  “Can you get the door, please, Molly?” Charmaine said, there was a long pause, and the door of the apartment slid open. Chris put her hands behind her back.

  “ ’Scuse me,” Charmaine said. She was carrying an unsteady stack of boxes and a shopping bag. Hutchins took half of the boxes for her. “Gee, thanks. Would you believe that rotten kid wouldn’t even open the door for me? She said after tonight she was going to be a star and wouldn’t have to do anything anybody told her.” She bent over in her red strapless dress to put the rest of the boxes down.

  “Where’s Mr. Okeefenokee?” Chris said.

  “He stopped to talk to my ex-boyfriend,” she said. “Look, I gotta be at work in half an hour, and I don’t even have my cherry blossoms on yet, so could you guys help put this stuff away?”

  “Sure,” Hutchins said. Charmaine grabbed a small sack out of the shopping bag and disappeared into the bathroom.

  “Chris,” Hutchins said. Chris pretended not to hear him. She put the key in her pocket and started for her room.

  “Did you take our chip recorder?” Bets said indignantly from the door. She was wearing an aproned blue dress. Her yellow curls peeked out from under a turned-up Dutch cap. “It had ‘Tiptoe Through the Tulips’ on it.” She stamped her wooden shoe. “You better give it back.”

  “I don’t have it,” Chris said, and amazingly, Bets turned around and stomped out. Chris heard her say loudly, “She says she doesn’t have it, but I’ll bet she took it. She’s always doing mean things like that to us.”

  “Chris, listen,” Hutchins said, putting out his hand to keep her from passing. “I should have told you the truth to begin with.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You should have.”

  “The first thing I heard you say to Stewart was that you didn’t have any room for the piano.” He looked thoughtfully at Mr. Okeefenokee’s door. “I didn’t see the piano in there, did you?”

  “No,” Chris said. “So you figured if I didn’t have room for a piano, I certainly wouldn’t have room for you, and you were going to have to romance the landlady into giving you a place to sleep. So you fell asleep on my shoulder and brought me Charmaine’s shoes and fed me a tempura dog.”

  “Now you and Hutchins get married,” Mr. Okeefenokee said, carrying two shopping bags full of boxes and Mitsukoshi sacks. His wispy orange-pink hair was flying out in all directions. “Go on hahnahmoon.”

  “Mr. Okeefenokee, I thought I explained …,” Chris said.

  “We’re thyure you took it,” Molly said, with her hands on the hips of her Dutch dress. “If you don’t give it back, we’re going to tell our interviewer all the thingth you did.”

  “Fine. Mr. Okeefenokee,” she said again, but he had already disappeared through his door.

  “I hope we didn’t miss any bento-bako boxes,” Hutchins whispered to her. The door slid open and Mr. Okeefenokee emerged, picked up the packages Charmaine had left on the floor, and disappeared into the room again.

  “You’ll be thorry you were mean to uth.” Molly slid the apartment door shut with a crash, and Chris and Hutchins were abruptly alone.

  “Thanks for not spilling the beans to Okee,” Hutchins said.

  “What would you have done if I’d tried? Bought me another tempura dog? Fallen asleep on my shoulder again? You’re no better than Charmaine’s prospective buyer, you know that? Talk about your real-estate deals.”

  “What do you think of my cherry blossoms?” Charmaine said, emerging from the bathroom with the red dress over her arm. “Do you think that pink’s too dark?” She peered over her shoulder. “It always looks different on your—”

  “It looks fine,” Chris said.

  “Omiko said to tell you guys to come to the show tonight, and she’ll see that Mr. Fenokee catches her orbiting colonies’ tassels,” she said, and clattered out. Chris watched her red high heels.

  (Chris, listen, I wasn’t romancing you for a place to sleep,) Hutchins said in her ear. (I was—)

  She turned around furiously, yanked the receiver off her ear, and handed it to him. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, fishing her subvocalizer out of her pocket and putting it in his outstretched hand. “You can stay. I won’t tell Mr. Okeefenokee who you are. Just leave me alone.” She pulled the door of her apartment open. “I’ll go ask Charmaine if I can bunk with her tonight.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Hutchins said, looking down at the subvocalizer in his hand. “I’ll sleep in the bathroom,” but she went on out anyway, slamming shut the sliding door with almost as much force as Molly.

  Charmaine had already left. She tried to catch her, brushing past Molly and Bets, who stopped in the middle of singing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” to glare at her from the landing, and practically stepping on the old man in the baseball cap, who was, amazingly, sleeping through it, but by the time she got to the door, Charmaine had already disappeared into the crowd.

  She came back up the stairs. Molly and Bets stopped for her again, folding their arms and tapping their wooden shoes impatiently, and then started up again as soon as she was off the landing, singing their own accompaniment in piping, slightly flat voices. Hutchins was at the end of the hall, talking earnestly to Charmaine’s lawyer and frowning.

  Chris slid her door open. “Why did you refuse to sublet your apartment to Molly and Bets?” the redheaded man said. He stuck a chip-cam in her face. She tried to brush past him. “So you admit you refused to share your apartment with two innocent tykes and then blatantly rented half of it to—”

  She got the door shut with some difficulty since his foot was wedged in it, went in the living room and shut and locked that door, too, and then leaned against it, feeling as tired as if she had just come up on the shuttle.

  Chris spent the evening huddled on the couch under a blanket.

  “I brought you some supper,” Hutchins called through the door about nineteen o’clock. “No tempura dogs. I’ll leave it outside the door.”

  Chris opened the door. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, not looking at him. “I’m sleeping in here. You can sleep with Charmaine,” and then was afraid he would say, “I don’t want to sleep with Charmaine. I want to sleep with you,” but he only said, “I’ll sleep in the hall,” and handed her a pastrami sandwich and a packet of milk.

  He knocked again at twenty-thirty and called out, “Molly and Bets’s interview is on. Mr. Nagisha’s got his TV set up on the landing. The little girls told me to tell you because, and I quote, ‘Thith ith what thyee getth for thtealing our recorder.’ I thought maybe you might want to come see what revenge they’ve cooked up.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Okay,” he said, and knocked again immediately.

  “Go away,” Chris said.

  “You and Hutchins get married tonight,” Mr. Okeefenokee said. “I must talk to you about closing.”

  She opened the door. Mr. Okeefenokee came in, wearing his solemn expression. “Why are you not wearing your thuwevrherrnghladdis?”

  Chris put her hand up to her throat. “It hurt to wear it,” she said. “Charmaine said to ask you if you’d like to go see the show at Luigi’s tonight.”

  “I cannot go. You and Hutchins get married tonight.”

  “We can’t get married, Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris said. “I’m engaged to Stewart, and even if I weren’t, Hutchins doesn’t want to marry me. He just wanted a place to stay.”

  “You like my wife,” he said, continuing to look at her solemnly, the lines above his nose deepening.

  “I thought Omiko reminded you of your wife.”

  “Omiko sake cups like wife,” he said, reverting to pidgin. His cheek knobs were bright orange. “But you like her most.”

  “You miss your wife, don’t you?” Chris said, and then remembered that he wouldn’t
understand that meaning of “miss.” “It makes you sad that she is far away.”

  “Far away,” he said, nodding and smiling vigorously.

  “Far away,” she said, walking to the end of the hall. “Far away.” She came back and stood in front of him. “Close.”

  “Closing,” he said, and his face smoothed out into his expression of understanding. “Hahnahmoon. I bought bed. Put on subvocalizer. You and Hutchins get married after interview.” He went bustling out, his wispy hair trailing behind him, like sunset clouds.

  “I don’t think so,” Chris thought sadly, sliding the door shut. I’m engaged to Stewart and Hutchins just wanted a place to stay. Mr. Okeefenokee hadn’t understood her when she’d said that. “I bought bed,” he’d said, and he hadn’t understood “close” either. Or “far away.”

  She had a sudden terrible vision of Stewart trying to explain what a space program was. “Space program,” she could hear him saying, “go far way,” and Mr. Okeefenokee would nod and smile vigorously.

  I’d better tell Hutchins about “far away,” she thought. She went out in the hall to look for him. He wasn’t on the stairs, but everybody else was, including Mr. Nagisha’s evicted cousins. They were watching Molly and Bets’s holographic images in front of the TV. Molly and Bets, still in costume, were dancing alongside their three-dimensional images, and both Mollys were bawling “Tiptoe Through the Tulipth.”

  Chris went back inside and went to bed, locking her apartment door but leaving the door of her room slightly open so she could hear Hutchins when he came back. If he comes back, she thought sadly. After a while she heard someone come in, and got up, but it was only Mr. Okeefenokee. He disappeared into his room and began to snore almost before he had the shoji screen shut.

  “Chris, wake up,” Hutchins said in her ear, and at first she thought he was using the subvocalizer.

  “I took it off,” she said sleepily, and opened her eyes. He was squatting beside the couch, his hand on her shoulder. He had on jeans and no shirt. “What time is it?” she said, reaching for the light. “And what are you doing in here?”