The Music of Razors (9 page)

Millicent laughs. “Yes!”

And so they do, taking every last rose from within Nimble’s arms and legs till they can see through her again like a lovely walking window.

“There we are,” says Nimble, surveying the fine crimson blanket they have made. “Princesses wake upon beds like this.”

Millicent surveys their beautiful work, but the smile slips from her face. “I wish Mama would smile again,” she says. “It’s been so long.”

Nimble’s heart-box speeds up just a little. Millicent deserves to be happy. “I know,” Nimble says. “Let’s play cat’s cradle.”

Millicent seems twice as forlorn now, her mouth turned glumly to the side, and she shakes her head. “No. But thank you. Mama will want me in bed soon.”

“Oh.”

“Good night, Nimble.”

Nimble waits for Millicent to call her back, but she doesn’t. That’s all right. Millicent wants time to herself nowadays, and so Nimble doesn’t intrude. Instead she sits upon an earthen slab in one of the larger caves and ponders. She runs a cool brass finger down one white cheek, and wonders where she came from.

“Hello,” says a voice, deep and thoughtful.

Nimble returns from her reverie. “Oh hello, Mr. Tub.” The little thing actually blushes. She begins again, inclining her head. “I mean, hello, Tub.”

“Hello,” Tub says again.

Nimble notices Tub has something in his broad hand: it is brightly silver and sings faintly—one of her creator’s instruments. “And how is Mr. Athelstane,” she asks.

“His friend died,” Tub says, low and thoughtful. “Fell under a streetcar, he did. And now he’s scared.”

“Mr. Athelstane is frightened?”

Tub nods, eyes wider than usual. “He says something talks to him. He wants it to stop talking to him, but it won’t.”

“How very, very odd. What is it, this thing that speaks to him?”

Tub shakes his head. “He won’t say. He says if I know about it, it’ll talk to me, too.”

“Oh dear. I see you here more and more often these days.”

Tub nods again. “Dorian doesn’t like me around as much anymore. He says when I speak it makes words from what I say. He hears words all the time, and I just make it worse by talking too much.”

“Then I suppose we shall be spending more time in each other’s company.” Again, Tub nods. Nimble shifts over, her legs hissing and clicking lightly and precisely, and with an elegant unfolding of wrist-hand-fingers tap-taps the seat beside her.

Tub doesn’t know where to look, and clutches the instrument to his chest with both hands. He makes his way over, uncertainly, and puts the instrument onto the slab before hoisting himself up. His thick arms make easy work of it. He shifts himself around, plops down, and clutches the instrument to himself once more. It sings high and faint. He is such a curious thing.

“Tell me, Tub,” she says. “Why were you made?”

Tub’s fingers drum slowly over each other, as if this were some critical test he might fail. “Um…,” he says. “Well…”

“You see,” Nimble says, “I was wondering why I was made, and I think I might have it. I was wondering if you knew why you were made, because that might help me decide if I have worked it out.”

“Um…,” Tub says again. “I think I just get things for Dorian. And make him laugh. Though I don’t do that so much anymore.” Tub braves looking up at her. “I know what you do. You look after his little girl.”

Nimble nodded, her heart-box spinning a little faster. “That I do.”

“What is she like?”

“Has Mr. Athelstane never spoken of her?”

Tub shakes his head. “Not really.”

“Ah,” says Nimble. “Then I was right.”

Tub just drums his fingers upon his soft chest and blushes. “Well,” he says, eventually. “I…suppose I should take this to Dorian.”

“Where is Mr. Athelstane at the moment?”

“Sam Framcisco,” Tub says, sliding heavily off the slab, keeping his eyes on the ground. Such a strange little thing. “I…like your dress,” he says, and then he is gone.

She smiles to herself. She is not wearing a dress. It is a tutu, a corrugated disk slotted through her.

Nowadays Nimble only sees Millicent at night. Her mother was taken back on at the milliner’s, finally, and Millicent spends her days either at school or making roses. Of late Millicent has seemed very far away.

Nimble walks through one cave after another. Many are empty but a few are not. One is decorated as a most comfortable style of drawing room, though the hearth is always cold in Mr. Athelstane’s absence and the books are getting dusty. Still another is quite a lavish kitchen, though this, too, is dark and cloth-covered. And another is still of a more impressive size, and here are kept the instruments. This cave has a floor that is hollowed and sunken, making the chamber like the interior of some kind of sphere or ball, though the ceiling is hung with stalactites, and the rim of the room is studded with upward-thrusting stalagmites. Rude stairs have been carved from the entrance, leading down into the bowl, upon the floor of which a wide circular area has been curtained off with a shimmering drop of thick, blood-colored velvet. There are torches fitted around the periphery, but these are as cold as the hearths and stoves of the other rooms. However, this room in particular is not dim, for from behind the velvet curtain an ambience like strong moonlight emanates upward, illuminating the roof and revealing the entire chamber in a soft pearlescence. There is music here, something that might sound like a very distant choir, or it might not. It may instead be a library of notes rung from crystal and sustained, perfectly, forever. Or perhaps it is no sound at all. Perhaps it is a language once known to all, and now forgotten. These are the things Nimble thinks as she stands at the top of those rude stairs, and listens.

The curtain moves and someone steps out, drawing it closed behind himself.

“Tub,” says Nimble, just loud enough to be heard.

They leave the Drop and spend some time in a place somewhat more interesting.

“I fear I’m not as good a companion as I might be,” Nimble says, with the lights of Paris spread out before them.

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” says Tub, his short legs dangling in space.

Nimble shakes her head. “No. Quite often Millicent will call to me, and I will suggest some new game that we might play to lighten her mood. But it does not work as it did when she was younger and I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t you talk with her?”

“Oh, we talk constantly,” Nimble says, brightening. “When I am there, that is, which is not so often nowadays. We talk about things she enjoys doing, and how we might dress me next, and what games we might play, and stories…”

“She sounds lonely,” Tub says.

“But I was made so that she might never be lonely. At least, that’s what Mr. Athelstane said.”

“When I’m sad I don’t feel like playing games.”

“Sad,” Nimble says, tasting the word. “Yes.” She stops and thinks about it. “I do not know that I have ever been sad. Until now.”

“Why are you sad?”

“Millicent is lonely. I have failed.”

“Why is she sad?”

Nimble is unsure what Tub means, and then she realizes: if failing Millicent makes
her
sad, then something must likewise be causing Millicent to be sad. So…so if Nimble were to fix her failure…then…then she will
not
feel sad. And if
Millicent
is sad, then…then…

“This is so confusing,” Nimble says, the light within her heart-box dimming just a little. “Mr. Athelstane told me nothing of this.”

And she is surprised, then, to find that Tub has carefully reached over and is gently patting her hand.

“Millicent…”

Nimble reaches down to the darkened bed. A faint whisper-and-click unfurls a cold, brass finger, and she trails a knuckle down her friend’s soft white cheek. Dark hair drapes across one closed eye.

“Millicent…,” she says again.

The child stirs, then opens her black eyes. “Nimble.” She mumphs a little, then says, heavy-lidded, “I didn’t call to you.”

“I didn’t know I could do it, either.” Nimble smiles. “But here I am.”

Millicent sits herself up, blankets falling from her shoulders. Her nightgown shines pale blue in the breath of moonlight that slides past the drapes. “Why are you here? Is something amiss?”

Nimble sits herself on Millicent’s bed and takes her friend’s small hands in her own. “There is someone I would very much like you to meet. A friend.”

“A friend?”

“Tub? Would you come in please?”

Something takes a hesitant step on the other side of the room, in the dark. Millicent wipes her eyes, trying to see past sleep. One more step brings it into the light.

It would have the form of a primitive fertility goddess—squat, round, nude, and heavy—if it weren’t male. Broad hands, thick arms, feet wide and fat with splayed toes. Little tufts of hair on the shoulders, a single, crazed tuft of hair sprouting diagonally above one of its bulbous ears. It looks out at Millicent from small, dark eyes made smaller beneath a drooping brow. Its mouth is as wide as its neckless head, and two tusks jut upward from behind a wet lower lip almost as if to hitch on the thing’s heavy eyebrows.

It raises a handful of stubby fingers and waves.

Millicent shrieks and tumbles backward out of bed.

“I…I’ll go,” it says, with a voice as thick and heavy as a tropical river.

In another room Mama murmurs and goes back to sleep.

Nimble raises a hand. “No, Tub, wait.” Nimble gets up from the bed and tippy-toes around to the other side, where Millicent is gathered in the corner, peering over the tops of her knees, past the bed, to the ogre by the window.

“Millicent,” Nimble says evenly. “This is Tub. Tub, this is Millicent. Millicent, Tub is a very good friend of your father’s.”

Millicent looks up at her friend. “Father?”

“Yes. Mr. Athelstane made Tub, just as he made me.”

On the other side of the room the thing waggles its fingers again. “Hello.”

Millicent stands up, straightens her nightgown, and looks from Nimble to Tub. “Please accept my apologies,” she says, uncertainly. “It was unkind of me to react as I did.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Tub says. “I’m not s’posed to be pretty.” And then he does a little dance.

For most of the night Nimble sits, and watches.

At the moment, Millicent and Tub are talking. They have been talking for a little while now. Tub has grabbed both feet and is rolling around the room.

“He lives all over the place,” Tub is saying, narrowly avoiding knocking over an oil lamp. “Just goes through the Drop. Just like me. Belize today, Sam Framcisco tomorrow, New Zealand the day after…” He rolls to a stop right in front of Millicent, chubby toes gripped in stubby fingers. “Nimble says you’re sad.”

Millicent shrugs weakly. “Mama is sad.”

“I would feel sad if I missed Dorian.”

Millicent nods again.

“But,” Tub continues, “I wouldn’t
be
sad.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not sad. You’re Millicent. Millicent with a sadness upon her.”

“Meaning…?”

Tub scratches his eyebrow, then pulls his bottom lip over his head.

“I think what Tub is saying,” Nimble suggests, “is that sadness comes and goes. Best not to think of yourself as actually
being
sadness.”

Tub nods, fiddling bashfully with his hands. Millicent giggles. Tub slides one corner of his lip over a tusk and peers out at her. “See?” he says.

“I am Millicent with a sadness upon me,” she says.

Tub rolls backward and comes up standing. His lower lip comes free with a wet flop.

“What does Father do,” she asks as Tub starts dancing again.

“Well,” Tub says, pumping his elbows as though walking briskly. “He likes learning all sorts of stuff.” With each movement his bulky rear end moves in counterpoint while his tongue edges out of the corner of his mouth with great concentration. “Other times…hmph…he stays up…hah…late and…hmph…sings a lot. With…ho…friends.” Every now and then he stops elbowing, juts out a foot and points to his toes with both hands, then goes back to elbowing and wiggling before pointing to the other foot. Repeat.

“What
are
you doing,” Millicent asks.

“The Dance of Victory,” Tub says humphing and hooing his way through it. Now he has turned around and is going through it all again for the benefit of the window. “I do it whenever Dorian figures something out.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

Millicent gets to her feet and stands beside the little ogre.

“Hmph huh ho hey…”

After a minute she gets the steps down pat, and the two of them dance for the moon.

Dorian is in Manaus, and laughing. His arm is around a lady that Tub does not know. Dorian is very drunk. They are in a dingy little place. Tub wonders if maybe it’ll fall down soon. Tub is in the next room, watching Dorian and this lady he doesn’t know through a brown screen. The color reminds Tub of his river. He doesn’t like it when Dorian is drunk with other people. It’s different from when he’s drunk by himself.

“Go to New York First National,” his creator says to the sagging ceiling. “And grab a handful of Mexican Eagle silver dollars. Then get yourself over to Chengdu. Leave the money for Lei, along with this note—” Dorian drops a scrap of paper over his shoulder, behind the seat. “—then come back here with the opium.”

The woman giggles, says something Tub doesn’t understand.

“And make it quick,” Dorian says, leaning into her. “The night is aging.” Dorian kisses her, and the room goes quiet as they disappear below the seat. Tub makes his way in, retrieves the note, and pops back into the Drop.

Nimble is here, sitting on an earthen slab. Her face is ruby-lipped porcelain. Her body is art. Through her chest, past her heart, Tub can see the light of the torches she reads by. “Hello there,” she says, putting her book down.

“Hello,” Tub says. He wants to say something else, looks at his feet. “Millicent is nice.”

Nimble smiles, and Tub’s chest feels the way his feet do before a fire on a cold night.