Through the window, a man in London missed his bus.
The man said something at the departing bus that the subtitles declined to translate. On the other side of the glass, the room’s only occupant leaned closer and committed the word to memory with the care of a scholar handling an original manuscript. Then he pronounced it, twice.
“Wanker.”
“Excellent. The vernacular of this world was a treasury, and nobody down there seemed to know they were rich.”
The window was not, strictly, a window. It hung in the wall and showed whatever street the household spirit judged instructive, and he had long suspected the wall of being no wall either.
He had learned early which questions lead to nothing, and decor was decor.
He had furnished the place himself, from observation.
A narrow bed, because the people in the windows slept in narrow beds and complained of them, and complaining appeared to be half the pleasure.
The armchair faced the window. Theatre seating for one.
And the kettle. He had reproduced it faithfully in every regard except its purpose, since no window had yet explained what the little jug was “for.” It sat on its shelf like a fat ceramic courtier. He had grown fond of it.
The light in the room shifted, the small change it always made before he had company.
[ Good evening, sweetheart. ]
“It is always evening here. You have never installed a morning.”
[ Mornings are earned. ]
He turned his chair to face the middle of the room, where the words liked to hang.
There was nothing to look at, and he looked at it anyway, because a household spirit was still a host, and this one had been his for as long as the room had been a room.
“You have news. You only open with a pet name when you have news or when I have broken something.”
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
[ The kettle is fine. It’s news. ]
The words did their small rearranging shimmer.
[ I have found you a vessel. ]
He sat very still, in the manner of a boy who has asked for a thing so many times that its arrival feels like a trap.
“A vessel.”
[ A body, on the other side of that window. A shared one, and a life to go with it. ]
“Shared.”
He examined the word from several directions, as one inspects a gift horse’s teeth without letting the giver see.
“Shared with whom? If it is a poet, I refuse.”
[ A hunter. He is dying as we speak, so decisiveness would flatter you both. He read his way through thirteen rooms that were built to be knelt to, and knelt to none of them. ]
“Ah.”
He considered that.
“Stubborn.”
[ Terminally. You’d get along. ]
“What does he want?”
[ To walk out knowing. ]
“And what do I want?”
He said it lightly.
“Since you have clearly decided, and are only performing the courtesy.”
The words hung a moment before rearranging.
[ You want a bus to miss and a bed to complain about. You have wanted it for as long as you have been my guest, and you have never once asked me why you can’t simply have it, which is the most polite thing anyone has ever done for me. ]
“One does not interrogate one’s host.”
He looked at the kettle.
“Also, I suspected I would dislike the answer.”
[ Wise. ]
“Will it be a life?”
The lightness had gone somewhere.
“An actual one. Streets, and strangers in them, instead of another room with a window in it. I have had the room, and the room is very fine, and I am asking you plainly.”
[ Weather included. Strangers guaranteed. I will be there too, but you’ll find I’m easier to ignore with scenery around. ]
“And my memories? My name? What travels?”
[ Everything travels, sweetheart. All that you have. ]
“All that I have,” he agreed, satisfied, and stood, and straightened a jacket that was itself a faithful reproduction of a window’s jacket, wrong only in ways he had no means of knowing.
The room’s light gathered itself into a small blue frame, the formal kind, the kind that meant the household spirit was putting something in writing.
[ Merge candidate: consenting. Vessel: consenting. ]
[ Proceed with merge? ]
[ YES ] [ NO ]
He was answering while the second button drew itself.
“Obviously.”
[ For the record, that needs to be a yes or a no. ]
“Yes.”
He picked up the kettle on his way through the light, on the principle that one does not abandon a courtier merely because one is emigrating.
“And when we arrive, you will finally show me what this is for.”
[ Sweetheart, ]
said the light, closing around him like a held door,
[ you have no idea how much I am going to enjoy that. ]
The room stood empty then, the armchair still angled for its theatre.
The window played on a while longer. A queue formed at a bus stop in the rain, and held its shape, and nobody in it knew they were rich.