The Face[脸]
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“SANDWICHES,” SAID FRIG.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
After conveying the dozen quake lights to his deep and special secret place, Fric had decided to return the empty picnic hamper to the lawn-and-patio-storage room, where he had originally gotten it. He had undertaken this task for some reason that had seemed logical at the time, though he could not now recall what it had been.
Mr. Devonshire, one of the porters—the one with the English accent, the bushy eyebrows, and the weak left eye that tended to drift toward his temple—had encountered Fric in the ground-floor west hall, at the end of which lay the lawn-and-patio-storage room. By way of friendly small talk, Mr. Devonshire had said, “What’ve you got there, Fric?”
Sandwiches, Fric had said. Now he said again, “Sandwiches.”
This was a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to say, let alone to repeat, because when Mr. Devonshire had first seen him, Fric had been swinging the hamper as he walked along the hall, swinging it in such a way that its light weight—and therefore its emptiness—must have been instantly apparent.
“What kind of sandwiches?” Mr. Devonshire asked.
[415] “Ham,” said Fric, for this was a simple response that he could not screw up in the nine thousand ways that he could probably mangle the words peanut butter and jelly.
“So you’re having a picnic, are you?” Mr. Devonshire asked, his left eye slowly drifting out of alignment as though he expected to be able to look behind himself while simultaneously studying Fric.
When the porter had first come to work at Palazzo Rospo, Fric had thought that he possessed an evil eye and could cast curses with a glance. Mrs. McBee had corrected this childish misapprehension and had suggested that he do some research.
Fric now knew that Mr. Devonshire suffered from amblyopia. This was a little-known word. Fric liked knowing things that most people didn’t.
Long ago Fric had learned to look at Mr. Devonshire’s good eye when talking to him. Right now, however, he wasn’t able to meet the porter’s good eye because he felt so guilty for lying; consequently, he found himself gazing stupidly at the amblyopic eye.
To avoid embarrassing Mr. Devonshire and himself, he stared instead at the floor and said, “Yes, a picnic, just me, something different to do, you know, ummm, not the old routine.”
“Where will you have your picnic?” Mr. Devonshire asked.
“The rose garden.”
Sounding surprised, Mr. Devonshire said, “In this rain?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Fric had forgotten the rain. He said, “Ummm, I mean the rose room.”
The rose room, as members of the staff continued to refer to it, was a small ground-floor reception parlor. Its windows presented a view of the former site of the rose garden.
A few years ago, at the urging of their feng-shui consultant, the rose garden had been moved farther from the house. Where the old rose garden had been, grass grew, and from the grass soared a massive piece of contemporary sculpture that Nominal Mom had given to [416] Ghost Dad on the ninth anniversary of their wedding, at which time they had been divorced for eight years.
Nominal Mom described the sculpture as “futuristic organic Zen” in style. To Fric it looked like a giant heap of road apples produced by a herd of Clydesdales.
“The rose room seems like an odd place for a picnic,” said Mr. Devonshire, no doubt thinking about the Zen turd pile beyond the windows.
“Ummm, well, I feel close to my mom there,” Fric said, which was so lame that it was almost clever.
Mr. Devonshire was silent for a moment, and then he said, “Are you all right, Fric?”
“Ummm, sure, I’m swell, just a little, you know, bummed out by all the rain.”
After another but thankfully shorter silence, the porter said, “Well, enjoy your ham sandwiches.”
“Thank you, sir. I will. I made them myself. From scratch.” He was the world’s worst liar. “With ham.”
Mr. Devonshire walked toward the north hall, and Fric just stood there, stupidly holding the hamper as if it were heavy.
After the porter disappeared at the intersection of the west and north halls, Fric continued to stare after him. He was convinced that Mr. Devonshire was hiding just out of sight and that the man’s eerie left eye would turn so far to one side that it would be hanging out of his head when he peeked around the corner.
The lawn-and-patio-storage room, to which Fric had been headed, was not set aside for the storage of lawns and patios. Rather, the cushions for the hundred or more outdoor chairs and sun lounges—and sometimes the furniture as well—were moved there in anticipation of bad weather. The big room also held lawn umbrellas, croquet sets, outdoor games, and such associated paraphernalia as picnic hampers.
Following his conversation with the porter, Fric could no longer simply return the hamper to the storage room. If Mr. Devonshire saw [417] him without it anytime soon, he would be exposed as a devious liar who was actually up to some kind of no good.
Suspicious, the staff might surreptitiously watch him, even as shorthanded as they were at the moment. Without realizing it, he might reveal his deep and special secret place to a keen observer.
Now that he had committed himself to the picnic story, he must follow through. He would have to lug the hamper to the rose room and sit by the windows, gazing out at the rose garden that wasn’t there anymore, pretending to eat ham sandwiches that didn’t exist.
Mysterious Caller had warned him about lying.
If he wasn’t ready to handle nice Mr. Devonshire, Fric wondered how he could expect to deceive and hide out from Moloch.
Finally he decided that the porter and his lazy eye were not lurking just around the corner, after all.
Certain that he appeared too grim for a picnicker, but unable to force a smile, he carried the damn hamper all the way from the southwest corner of the house to the northeast corner, to the rose room.
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