Jane goes to the catalog, pulls out the W drawer, and looks for the first book that comes to mind, Winnie-the-Pooh. “Milne, A.A.,” the card reads. “Glimmering Section. Crimson-ginger. Lettering: gold.”
“Glimmering Section,” Jane says, turning curiously to the room. Across from her is a crimson section that doesn’t seem quite mild enough. It’s bright and loud, not glimmering. Jane walks to the middle of the room again, turning in circles. A small section of books glows softly crimson, silver, and gold on the second level, above the French doors, on the north wall.
Jane climbs a spiral staircase to the library’s upper level. By the time she gets to that glowing patch of books, she’s imagining an umbrella that feels like this library. The pressure on her ears is still present, but she’s barely noticing it anymore.
It astonishes her how quickly she’s able to find the Milne. “Well done, Charlotte,” she says, reaching out to it. The book settles into her hand with a pleasurable shiver, like a satisfied cat arching its back against her palm. Once in her hands, it falls open to the story “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place.” Pooh visits Rabbit, then eats so much honey that he can’t fit through the round doorway. He gets stuck, like a plug, and can’t leave. On the outdoor side, Christopher Robin sits with Pooh’s head and reads him stories. On the indoor side, Rabbit makes the best of it, hanging his washing on Pooh’s stubby legs.
Something is strange, though, about this copy of the book. Jane knows, or she thought she knew, how this story is supposed to end. It’s one of her favorites, one she read repeatedly, wedged into the armchair with Aunt Magnolia: Pooh stops eating, Pooh grows thinner, and after a week has gone by, Christopher Robin, Rabbit, and Rabbit’s friends and relations take hold of him and pop him from the hole.
In this version, something different seems to be happening. As the week goes on, Pooh’s body starts to meld with the edge of the dirt hole. It hurts. Pooh is crying.
Jane slams the book shut, alarmed, then angry, actually, at whatever writer thought it would be funny to rewrite it that way. And she’s left with the most surreal sensation of being stuck in a hole in a wall, with Mrs. Vanders hanging washing on her legs, oblivious to anything strange about her new drying rack. “Tut-tut,” Mrs. Vanders sings. “It looks like rain.”
Jane shakes herself. She is not a part of the wall. She’s a person, standing on the library’s mezzanine. Her ears feel unlike anything she’s ever felt before, and she’s beginning to realize how wrong this is.
“Charlotte reached a whole new level of obsession with the library,” Kiran says, from below. “Octavian practically had to move in here in order to spend any time with her. Seems like he still hasn’t moved out.”
Looking over the banister, Jane finds Kiran in a darkish corner across the room, behind one of the metal spiral staircases. The books in that section are blacks, browns, and deepest purples. In a room of moving color it’s easy to miss the divan there, which is piled with blankets, books, ashtrays containing the detritus of the pipe tobacco Jane now realizes she’s been smelling since she came into the room. An ancient-looking record player sits on a low table at the head of the divan.
Jane doesn’t care. She wants to leave.
“This must be his nighttime haunt,” Kiran says, wrinkling her nose in distaste, then moving an overflowing ashtray from its perch on a rumpled blanket to the edge of the table. “What a way to spend all your waking hours. Ugh. Do you ever feel like there’s an inevitability to every version of your life?”
“What does that mean?” asks Phoebe.
“In this version of his life,” Kiran says, “was Octavian always going to be depressed? Does it matter what any of us do?”
“I’m not following,” says Phoebe. “Of course it matters.”
“I don’t want to talk about Charlotte anymore,” says Jane.
“I’m not talking about Charlotte,” says Kiran. “I’m talking about Octavian. Do your ears hurt?”
Jane’s head feels like a balloon. “But Octavian haunts this room because he’s depressed about Charlotte,” she says stubbornly, “right? It’s all about Charlotte.”
Lucy St. George, still carrying The House of Mirth, has crossed to the other side of the room and is gently stroking the burnished wood of the bookcases. Jane finds herself synchronously rubbing the railing of the mezzanine banister. It’s an odd compulsion. Snatching her hand away, she says, “Yes, my ears hurt. I have work to do. I’m going back to my rooms.”
“What work do you do?” Lucy asks.
“I make umbrellas.”
“Really?” Lucy says. “Do you repair them? I’ve got one that doesn’t open right.”
“Bring it to me,” Jane says impatiently, heading for the spiral staircase, “east wing, third floor, at the end. Come right in. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” Lucy says, then cries out and yanks her hand away from the bookcases.
“What’s wrong?” asks Phoebe.
“Nothing,” says Lucy, inspecting her palm. “Just a splinter, or some kind of—electrical short, or something.”
“How could a bookcase have an electrical short?” asks Phoebe.
All the hairs of Jane’s body are standing on end. Get out, she’s telling herself as she moves down the stairs; Get out. Jasper presses his nose to the glass of the terrace door, anxiously whining. Jane lets him in, then crosses the room with him as quickly as possible. She’s rude. As she passes through the doorway into the Venetian courtyard, she doesn’t say good-bye to the others.
“Jasper,” Jane says, stopping in the courtyard to take a breath of the sunlit air. “It was weird in there.”
Jasper leans his head against the back of her ankles and pushes, whining softly.
“You didn’t like it either?” she says. “Let’s go.”
She’s almost to her rooms before she realizes she’s still holding tight to Winnie-the-Pooh.
*
Back in her rooms, the light is bright and warm and Jane thinks maybe work will help clear her mind.
Last time she worked, it was on the self-defense umbrella in brown and gold. She still likes this idea. In fact, she has the nebulous sense of something she’d like to defend herself against, some feeling in the air that’s trying to fuzz her brain. Silly, she chides herself. I probably just need some coffee. I’ll get some, right after I lie on the floor so I can think about my umbrella. She uses Winnie-the-Pooh as a pillow. The morning sun pours in; the shag rug is soft; Jasper tucks himself lengthwise beside her.
When Lucy St. George pushes through the doorway with a navy umbrella, Jane has just dozed off.
“Wow,” Lucy says, surveying the roomful of colorful umbrellas.
“Mrph,” Jane says, sitting up, trying to focus. She’s lost in a peculiar dream she can’t grasp; she’s already forgetting it. Jasper is snorting beside her. “Sorry. Patch of sun.”
“I’m embarrassed to show you my umbrella now that I’ve seen yours,” Lucy says. “It’s positively dull.”
Jane has forgotten all about repairing Lucy’s umbrella.
“Ow,” Lucy says, shaking out her free hand as if it hurts.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, my hand still stings from that splinter or whatever. Here.” She passes her umbrella to Jane. “See, it opens funny.”
Lucy’s umbrella does indeed open funny, but Jane can see that it’s just because a metal rib is bent and needs reshaping and reinforcing. “It’s a simple fix,” she says. “Listen, I don’t have the right paints just now, but you can do cute things on this type of nylon with the right kind of glue and the right kind of glitter.”
Lucy St. George is pinching her lips together to stop a grin. “Are you saying you want to make my dull umbrella sparkly? Go ahead.”
“Really?” Jane says. “It might not be subtle.”
“Do your worst,” Lucy says. “I’m curious.”
“Hey,” Jane says, surprised and smiling. “Thanks.”
“Do you think this house has moods?” Lucy says.
“Huh?”
“Moods,” Lucy says. “You know. Does it have emotions, and intentions, and objectives?”
“The house?”
“Yes.”
“Um,” Jane says. “Isn’t that a little bit fantastical?”