And Karou did stop, not because of Zuzana’s plea, but because she caught a familiar flutter in the corner of her eye. No no no, she said to herself. She didn’t—wouldn’t—turn her head. Not Kishmish, not tonight.
Noting her sudden silence, Zuzana asked, “You okay?”
The flutter again, in a circle of lamplight in Karou’s line of sight. Too far off to draw special attention to itself, but unmistakably Kishmish.
Damn.
“I’m fine,” Karou said, and she kept on resolutely in the direction of Poison Kitchen. What was she supposed to do, smack her forehead and claim to have remembered an errand, after all that? She wondered what Zuzana would say if she could see Brimstone’s little beast messenger, his bat wings so bizarre on his feathered body. Being Zuzana, she’d probably want to make a marionette version of him.
“How’s the puppet project coming?” Karou asked, trying to act normal.
Zuzana brightened and started to tell her. Karou half listened, but she was distracted by her jumbled defiance and anxiety. What would Brimstone do if she didn’t come? What could he do, come out and get her?
She was aware of Kishmish following, and as she ducked under the arch into the courtyard of Poison Kitchen, she gave him a pointed look as if to say, I see you. And I’m not coming. He cocked his head at her, perplexed, and she left him there and went inside.
The cafe was crowded, though Kaz, blessedly, was nowhere to be seen. A mix of local laborers, backpackers, expat artist types, and students hung out at the coffins, the fume of their cigarettes so heavy the Roman statues seemed to loom from a fog, ghoulish in their gas masks.
“Damn,” said Karou, seeing a trio of scruffy backpackers lounging at their favorite table. “Pestilence is taken.”
“Everything is taken,” said Zuzana. “Stupid Lonely Planet book. I want to go back in time and mug that damn travel writer at the end of the alley, make sure he never finds this place.”
“So violent. You want to mug and tase everybody these days.”
“I do,” Zuzana agreed. “I swear I hate more people every day. Everyone annoys me. If I’m like this now, what am I going to be like when I’m old?”
“You’ll be the mean old biddy who fires a BB gun at kids from her balcony.”
“Nah. BBs just rile ’em up. More like a crossbow. Or a bazooka.”
“You’re a brute.”
Zuzana dropped a curtsy, then took another frustrated look around at the crowded cafe. “Suck. Want to go somewhere else?”
Karou shook her head. Their hair was already soaked; she didn’t want to go back out. She just wanted her favorite table in her favorite cafe. In her jacket pocket, her fingers toyed with the store of shings from the week’s errands. “I think those guys are about to leave.” She nodded to the backpackers at Pestilence.
“I don’t think so,” said Zuzana. “They have full beers.”
“No, I think they are.” Between Karou’s fingers, one of the shings dematerialized. A second later, the backpackers rose to their feet. “Told you.”
In her head, she fancied she heard Brimstone’s commentary:
Evicting strangers from cafe tables: selfish.
“Weird,” was Zuzana’s response as the girls slipped behind the giant horse statue to claim their table. Looking bewildered, the backpackers left. “They were kind of cute,” said Zuzana.
“Oh? You want to call them back?”
“As if.” They had a rule against backpacker boys, who blew through with the wind, and started to all look the same after a while, with their stubbly chins and wrinkled shirts. “I was simply making a diagnosis of cuteness. Plus, they looked kind of lost. Like puppies.”
Karou felt a pang of guilt. What was she doing, defying Brimstone, spending wishes on mean things like forcing innocent backpackers out into the rain? She flopped onto the couch. Her head ached, her hair was clammy, she was tired, and she couldn’t stop worrying about the Wishmonger. What would he say?
The entire time she and Zuzana were eating their goulash, her gaze kept straying to the door.
“Watching for someone?” Zuzana asked.
“Oh. Just… just afraid Kaz might turn up.”
“Yeah, well, if he does, we can wrestle him into this coffin and nail it shut.”
“Sounds good.”
They ordered tea, which came in an antique silver service, the sugar and creamer dishes engraved with the words arsenic and strychnine.
“So,” said Karou, “you’ll see violin boy tomorrow at the theater. What’s your strategy?”
“I have no strategy,” said Zuzana. “I just want to skip all this and get to the part where he’s my boyfriend. Not to mention, you know, the part where he’s aware I exist.”
“Come on, you wouldn’t really want to skip this part.”
“Yes I would.”
“Skip meeting him? The butterflies, the pounding heart, the blushing? The part where you enter each other’s magnetic fields for the first time, and it’s like invisible lines of energy are drawing you together—”
“Invisible lines of energy?” Zuzana repeated. “Are you turning into one of those New Age weirdos who wear crystals and read people’s auras?”
“You know what I mean. First date, holding hands, first kiss, all the smoldering and yearning?”
“Oh, Karou, you poor little romantic.”
“Hardly. I was going to say the beginning is the good part, when it’s all sparks and sparkles, before they are inevitably unmasked as a**holes.”
Zuzana grimaced. “They can’t all be a**holes, can they?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe just the pretty ones.”
“But he is pretty. God, I hope he’s not an a**hole. Do you think there’s any chance he’s both a non-orifice and single? I mean, seriously. What are the chances?”
“Slim.”
“I know.” Zuzana slumped dramatically back and lay crumpled like a discarded marionette.
“Pavel likes you, you know,” said Karou. “He’s a certified non-orifice.”
“Yes, well, Pavel’s sweet, but he does not give of the butterflies.”
“The butterflies in the belly.” Karou sighed. “I know. You know what I think? I think the butterflies are always there in your belly, in everyone, all the time—”
“Like bacteria?”
“No, not like bacteria, like butterflies, and some people’s butterflies react to other people’s, on a chemical level, like pheromones, so that when they’re nearby, your butterflies start to dance. They can’t help it—it’s chemical.”
“Chemical. Now that’s romantic.”
“I know, right? Stupid butterflies.” Liking the idea, Karou opened her sketchbook and started to draw it: cartoon intestines and a stomach crowded with butterflies. Papilio stomachus would be their Latin name.
Zuzana asked, “So, if it’s all chemical and you have no say in the matter, does that mean Jackass still makes your butterflies dance?”
Karou looked up. “God no. I think he makes my butterflies barf.”
Zuzana had just taken a sip of tea and her hand flew to her mouth in an effort to keep it in. She laughed, doubled over, until she managed to swallow. “Oh, gross. Your stomach is full of butterfly barf!”
Karou laughed, too, and kept sketching. “Actually, I think my stomach is full of dead butterflies. Kaz killed them.”
She wrote, Papilio stomachus: fragile creatures, vulnerable to frost and betrayal.
“So what,” said Zuzana. “They had to be pretty stupid butterflies to fall for him anyway. You’ll grow new ones with more sense. New wise butterflies.”
Karou loved Zuzana for her willingness to play out such silliness on a long kite string. “Right.” She raised her teacup in a toast. “To a new generation of butterflies, hopefully less stupid than the last.” Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons. Or maybe not. It was hard to imagine feeling that magical tingling sensation in the pit of her belly anytime soon. Best not to worry about it, she thought. She didn’t need it. Well. She didn’t want to need it. Yearning for love made her feel like a cat that was always twining around ankles, meowing Pet me, pet me, look at me, love me.
Better to be the cat gazing coolly down from a high wall, its expression inscrutable. The cat that shunned petting, that needed no one. Why couldn’t she be that cat?
Be that cat!!! she wrote, drawing it into the corner of her page, cool and aloof.
Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn’t. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and… cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.
The door opened. She looked in the mirror and suppressed a curse. Slipping in behind some tourists, that winged shadow was back again. Karou rose and made for the bathroom, where she took the note that Kishmish had come to deliver.
Again it bore a single word. But this time the word was Please.
11
PLEASE
Please? Brimstone never said please. Hurrying across town, Karou found herself more troubled than if the note had said something menacing, like: Now, or else.
Letting her in, Issa was uncharacteristically silent.
“What is it, Issa? Am I in trouble?”
“Hush. Just come in and try not to berate him today.”
“Berate him?” Karou blinked. She’d have thought if anyone was in danger of being berated, it was herself.
“You’re very hard on him sometimes, as if it’s not hard enough already.”
“As if what’s not hard enough?”
“His life. His work. His life is work. It’s joyless, it’s relentless, and sometimes you make it harder than it already is.”
“Me?” Karou was stunned. “Did I just come in on the middle of a conversation, Issa? I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
“Hush, I said. I’m just asking that you try to be kind, like when you were little. You were such a joy to us all, Karou. I know it’s not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you’re not the only one with troubles.”
And with that the inner door unsealed and Karou stepped across the threshold. She was confused, ready to defend herself, but when she saw Brimstone, she forgot all that.
He was leaning heavily on his desk, his great head resting in one hand, while the other cupped the wishbone he wore around his neck. Kishmish hopped in agitation from one of his master’s horns to the other, uttering crickety chirrups of concern, and Karou faltered to a halt. “Are… are you okay?” It felt odd asking, and she realized that of all the questions she had barraged him with in her life, she had never asked him that. She’d never had reason to—he’d scarcely ever shown a hint of emotion, let alone weakness or weariness.