But if she’s truthful with herself, she also knows she wouldn’t hesitate to swallow it again.
Swanny opens a nearby wardrobe, looking for her coat. The applewood door creaks on its hinge, and she gasps at what she discovers inside. A tasteful rainbow of evening gowns sway upon their hangers: shades of Heartthrob, El Dorado, Secret Garden, Lagoon, Forget-me-not. Swanny runs her hand over the swaths of chiffon and damask and satin; she breathes in the hazy recollection of long-ago perfume. She checks the tags. They’re even queen-sized. They’ve been waiting just for her.
But where is she to wear them? In the confines of this doorless room? Is she to gaze eternally at her own reflection, half sick of shadows, while the city burns on without her? She hears singing: children’s voices, faint and distant, almost elfin, eavesdropped from the changeling zone.
I am the last practitioner of violence cartographical,
I map the topographic lines of features anatomical,
I took the pickled liver of Mad Krampus for my reticule,
And swiped the face of Sid LaFrange when he displaced my denticle
La la la la la la la la la la la la la-denticle,
Da da da da da da da da da-somethin somethin tentacle!
In accompaniment, she hears an occasional, arrhythmic tapping, like a tree branch against a window. Before Swanny can determine exactly where it’s coming from, a pane breaks on the opposite wall, and something pings off a silver punch bowl. She throws herself down on the ground, anticipating a fusillade, but when none comes, she gets up again and squeezes through the thicket of furniture to peek between the curtains.
Down in the alley below, two scrawny, rag-clad boys, no more than seven years old, are standing on cobblestones strewn with trash, holding a slingshot each. Swanny pushes up the sash, carefully avoiding the shards of shattered glass.
“Excuse me!” she calls down. “I believe you’ve broken my window?”
The boys almost simultaneously hide the slingshots behind their backs, and she realizes that they’re twins, alike but for their adorably mismatched haircuts, which look to have been performed late at night in the dark under a bridge during a rainstorm with rusty shears. They stare up at her mutely, as if her very presence stuns them.
“Don’t tell Sharkey,” pipes up the one on the left finally. “We didn’t mean to break it. We only meant—”
“Duluth said we were s’posed to help you. So we’ve been here since early,” chimes in the one on the right.
“And we couldn’t wait anymore.”
“Wait for what?”
“We wanted to see what you looked like.”
“What I looked like? Whatever for?”
The twins glance at each other.
“He said you were from Outside,” they answer together.
“Wait, wait. Who are you?”
“He’s Grub.”
“And he’s Morsel.”
“And you mean to tell me—you live here in Torchtown? You’ve never seen the city Outside?”
“Never ever.” Morsel is picking his nose while he speaks.
“But that’s disgraceful! You’re only children! What could your crime possibly be?”
“We’re natives,” Grub explains.
“You’re incarcerated. It’s an outrage. Someday, perhaps, I’ll found a political movement on your behalf. Or contribute to one…Did you say you were sent to help me?”
“That’s right, lady!”
“Draw me a bath, very hot and bubbly. With clean towels.” Swanny again tastes the metallic tang of blood in her mouth: good God, it must be a molar this time. How she longs for an extraction. How she longs to forget Corona’s letter. “And a toothbrush, I especially need a toothbrush. Where is the bathroom, I might ask?”
“Right downstairs from you!”
“It’s got a tub and everything!”
“Downstairs? But”—Swanny glances behind herself, almost expecting an egress to materialize—“there aren’t any stairs.”
“There must be!”
“Sharkey’s up there all the time!”
“Wait, where are you going?” They’re darting off barefootedly down the alley.
“To the hydrant!” Morsel hollers back.
“We’ll get it boiled up real quick!” shouts Grub.
With that, the children are gone. Swanny pulls the curtains back across the broken window and takes another turn around the room. She finally notices the iron handle of a trapdoor on the one unoccupied square of floor.
“Oh, of course,” she murmurs. Some part of her is disappointed. Sharkey’s done nothing to prevent her from leaving whenever she wants.
When Swanny sees the second-floor bathroom, she understands the twins’ enigmatic mention of the hydrant too. A claw-foot bathtub, cast iron and yacht-sized, much like theirs in Wonland, stands in the middle of crumbling tile, but it’s not attached to the plumbing or to anything else—as if it were abruptly summoned here from where it once belonged, in answer to her wish.
* * *
After Swanny’s bath, she brushes her teeth—the ones that she can see—over the pitcher and basin the room has in lieu of a sink. Then she returns upstairs to dress in one of the gowns (tea length, the blue of a starless sky), embellishing it with a string of black pearls she finds in a nearby jewelry box. She still can’t find her fur and brooch, but at least in the fisheye mirror, she’s beginning to recognize herself. She pins back her still-damp ringlets with a set of tortoiseshell combs and goes to look for Sharkey.
The Chaw Shop building is three floors: the garret, which she’s already thoroughly investigated; the second floor, which appears to consist of the bathroom and another chamber, unfortunately unviewable through its locked keyhole; and the entry level, to which she now descends. The stairs bring her into a cramped, dirty kitchen at the rear of the building, where yellow linoleum peels at the baseboards and mousetraps don’t go unused, judging from the two she can see. Light slatted through greasy blinds illuminates the ash motes. At a rust-flecked metal table, a galoot in an unwashed denim jumpsuit is carving a ham.
“Look who’s risen from the dead.” He eyes her distrustfully. He’s seven feet of solid muscle, square and durable, built like an appliance. They’re about the same age. “Didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”
“Why ever would you say something so foreboding? I don’t even know who you are.”
“I’m Duluth. Guess I call ’em like I see ’em.”
Of course: the driver. Swanny pulls out a chair and sits down at the table. “I don’t recall much of last night, I must confess.”
“Not much to remember. You were out cold when I hauled you upstairs.”
“And—Mr. Sharkey?”
“Told me to go home. So I did.”
“Did you overhear my conversation with him in the car yesterday?”
Duluth scrutinizes her, opening a bag of bread, rustically baked and hacked into ragged slices. “I’m not gonna answer that.”
“Why not?”
He slaps ham scraps into two hasty sandwiches. “You make me nervous.”