Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (24 page)

“It means, Pocket,
that we're heading to the Gaslight Tea House.”

It all began with
the fog.

“What did?”

“The story, Alan.”

“What story? A
new
story?”

“No, I mean my
time at the tea house.”

“Ah.”

It all began with
the fog. I was sitting on moist grass, holding a sandwich between my hands, as
the haze rolled across the clearing.

“So what?”

“What do you mean,
so what?”

“Britain's
notoriously foggy.”

“Not like this
fog. It felt...different...otherworldly, almost. As if the pieces of the world
that it encased existed solely because it was there. Breathing in the misty air
of that fog, my friend, made one wonder if the dirt where he sat would vanish
into complete nothingness once the fog dissipated. It was much like living
inside of a dream.”

“I think you're
saying that so your story is more interesting.”

“When did you stop
being a dreamer, Alan?”

“Oh, I wasn't
complaining. By all means, pour on the mysticism. Sounds much better than
sitting around eating in clammy weather.”

“So I may
continue, then?”

“Dream away,
bard.”

It all began with
the fog. I was sitting on moist grass, holding a sandwich between my hands, as
the haze rolled across the clearing. No one said anything at first because we
were far too focused on the meal. You see, out of the madness of the city, away
from the prices on our heads, the hotheaded Magnates, and those boorish
Motorists, the sense of danger finally started to fade. And as danger faded,
hunger set in. We were soon aware that we were starving, being too busy with
the various attempts on our lives to eat anything since getting up. Well,
except for Eddie, who had eaten before joining up with our unfortunate band of
travelers, and the Doll, who enjoyed one mouthful of pie courtesy of the
Marvelous Marins.

The fog rolled on
as I chewed my sandwich and watched as it moved away from me. The fog, not the
sandwich. You would've had to shoot me dead to get
that
out of my grip.
The fog stretched out to the horizon, covering everything in the misty white.
We were soon dining in a parked cloud.

“How about that?”
Kitt said, breathing in the weather.

“Is it dangerous
for you?” I asked the Doll. She was clearly puzzled. “The moisture,” I
continued. “Couldn't it, I don't know, get inside of you and damage your
gears?”

She laughed and
took a pronounced bite of her sandwich. “You worry far too much.” She swallowed
and took another bite. “Thank you for the sandwiches, Mister Eddie.”

“Hey, my
pleasure,” he said, rubbing his back against a tree. “Sorry they're not
fresher.”

Once the subject
of food had been raised during our trek through the forests, Eddie remembered
that he had been storing a bit in a bag behind the seat of his motorbike’s
sidecar. The sandwiches, a bit...eh...compressed due to this method of storage,
were offered to us, and we found a safe clearing to rest and have lunch.

“You have a knack
for showing up and saving the day, don't you, Eddie?” I said.

He snorted at the
remark. “I don't know about all of that,” he said. “I'm just usually around at
the right time.”

“A victim of
fate?” I asked.

“Of luck,” Kitt
suggested.

“Circumstance,”
the Doll argued.

Eddie shook his
head at all of this and finished the rest of his sandwich.

Gren, on the other
hand, had been unusually silent. He sat crosslegged and stonefaced, staring
into the grass.

“You all right?” I
said to him.

“Fine,” he quickly
said with a nod.

“You sure?”

“I'm fine. Just
quiet.”

“That's why I was
concerned.”

“I
am
capable of not talking from time to time,” he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah,” I
said, throwing a stale bread crust in his direction. I quickly realized what I
had done, retrieved the crust, wiped the dirt specks from it, and swallowed it.

“Very nice,” he
said, slightly disgusted.

“I have too much
respect for food to render it as garbage,” I replied, brushing my hands clean.
“So what's wrong, Gren?”

I could see the
walls of defense falling from his eyes, which he then moved from me to Dolly.

“You...” he said
to her. “You're actually...a machine?”

She got instantly
angry and crossed her arms. “I do
not
like that word, Gren-Gren.”

“But...your
insides, are you really all…eh…”

“Yep!” Kitt jumped
in. “Gears and cogs. She's like a big, walking clock!” The Doll aimed her angry
face at him. “Except a girl,” Kitt added as an apology.

“Unbelievable,”
Gren whispered.

“Yeah!” Eddie
agreed, far more optimistically. “That's pretty wild, you know?”

“So,” Gren said to
the Doll, “how then are we to properly...interact...with you?”

“Gren, she's not a
pressure boiler,” I said. “Interact however the hell you want.”

“I do not need
special treatment,” Dolly said. “As a matter of fact, I hate it.”

“Good for you!”
Eddie said, holding up an imaginary glass of imaginary wine. “Here's to being
un-special!”

“To mediocrity!” I
said, raising one back. We laughed and toasted each other and finished our
meals as the fog settled. Then we returned to the bikes and continued on our
way.

“You know,” the
Doll said quietly to me as we drove through the woods. “I don't
really
want
to be all that typical. Not overwhelmingly so.”

“I don't think you
have to worry about that, Dolly.”

“Or you either.”

“That's sweet of
you, but I'm afraid I'm as classically, backwardly human as they come.”

“And that's
exactly why.”

It was late
afternoon before we finally reached our destination. The setting sun made a
burning orange that sat beautifully diffused behind the screen of fog. Eddie
steered us down a roughly-hacked path that snaked between a patch of grey-white
trees. The path eventually emptied out into an open yard and we were there.

The Gaslight Tea
House.

From the outside
it wasn't so unusual, apart from, of course, standing in the absolute middle of
nowhere. It was a two-story house, rather beaten, with a slightly crooked roof.
I remember thinking at the time that the house appeared to be wearing the roof
like a hat, a little tilted for style. In the front yard stood a wooden sign
shaped like a large teabag. Words were painted in large letters and dried lines
of paint ran down the sign from each character. It read:

THE GASLIGHT TEA HOUSE

OPEN TWELVE DAYS A WEEK AND TWICE ON SUNDAYS

LADY ALEXIA, PROPRIETOR AND SITTING WOMAN OF VISIONS

Kitt and Gren
drove up behind us and parked their bike. Kitt jogged up to the sign, curious
as ever, and read it aloud.

“Huh,” he said.
“How can you operate twelve days a week?”

“The Cat finds a
way,” Eddie said with a smile.

“Cat?” Kitt asked.

Eddie grinned. He
then took out a pocket knife and carved two little cat ears over the word
ALEXIA. “Cat,” he said, pointing with the blade.

He headed up to
the front door and gestured for us to follow.

“It's been a while
since I've been here,” Gren said to me as we walked.

“That's right,” I
responded. “I keep forgetting you and Eddie go back.”

“I wouldn't say
'go back,' Pocket.”

“What would you
say?”

Gren scratched his
neck. “We're both bastard children crawling around this country, and from time
to time we bump heads.” It was a good line. I was starting to get annoyed at
these people for taking my poetic territory away from me. But no matter.

Eddie banged his
fist against the front door. It was wooden and painted purple. It also
contained a large, magnified glass set into a gold-looking ring that was
screwed into the center. Eddie knocked again and a giant eye was magnified on
the other side the glass.

“We've been
spotted,” Eddie joked.

The door swept
open and a waft of sweet-smelling vapor rolled out of the place like fire from
a dragon's maw. Standing in the doorway was a thin woman and in her gloved
hands was a pomegranate.

“Welcome!” she
announced. She then promptly dug her slender fingers, gloves and all, into the
flesh of the fruit and split it in two. She held out the two halves to our
group, her fingertips now a bright pink. “A gift for your safe arrival!”

“She's does this a
lot,” Eddie whispered to me.

Lady Alexia.

Proprietor and
sitting woman of visions.

Lady of the tea
house.

And the most
charming maniac I have ever met.

“Come in! Come
in!” she had demanded once we held her offered fruit. We were shuffled into the
doorway and into the main room. Once inside, Alexia walked a small circle
around our group, tugged her fingers at the edges of her dress, and gave a
cordial curtsy. The dress was a sharp royal blue with whitish trim that
appeared to be slightly browned by staining, most likely from her involvement
with tea. She wore a thin but tall lady's top hat upon her dark hair. The
unusual thing about her apparel though was that it was riddled with timepieces.
Built into her dress, above the middle, was a ticking clock face. Similar, much
smaller clock faces, cannibalized watches, I'd wager, were worn at the tops of
the high boots she wore. The hat was built in layers from the brim up with very
petite, miniature drawers, like one would find in a cabinet, only smaller.
Perhaps the drawers one would find in a dollhouse cabinet. I later learned that
she kept in this unusual hat a grand variety of bagged teas, one flavor per
drawer, with a secret drawer to hold what she only referred to as “The Special
Tea.” I was fairly certain that I wanted nothing to do with that mixture. And
on the very top of the hat there sat a fastened hydrometer, which she claimed
helped her monitor moisture and control flavor. The lady appeared to be quite serious
in her brewing.

Alexia was, from
my very first impression of her, an animated woman. Her eyes were always bright
and it seemed hard for her to sit still for longer than a few moments. Her
steps were poised but indeed frequent, as if the very steam she harnessed for
her craft was endlessly rising and burning the bottoms of her feet.

“Her craft,
Pocket?”

“Yes, Alan.
Remember, she presented herself to the world as a woman of visions.”

“What sort of
visions are we speaking of, then?”

“Just you wait.”

We stood there in
the front room and politely waited for Alexia to finish curtsying, an act that
should have concluded much sooner than it did. Seconds passed by as she bent
herself lower and lower to the floor with grand exaggeration.

“Well,” Gren began,
“glad to see nothing's changed since—“

“Shhh!” Alexia
said with a nasty look. As punishment she further embellished her bow and held
it for an additional ten seconds. I could easily understand Eddie's
characterization of her as a cat. At long last, the performance was over and we
made introductions. We all gave our true names, having no need to worry, Eddie
assured us, of being handed over to the police whilst in their company. Miss
Alexia took immediate interest in the Doll, setting her calculating eyes on
her.

“Hello,” Dolly
said, slightly on edge.

“Hello...” Alexia
replied, batting the greeting back. Then, after finishing her visual
inspection, she snapped her posture to an almost militaristic state and wrapped
her fingers together.

“So!” she said
with proper inflection. “Have you traveled far?”

“Years upon
years,” I said. This got her attention, but I countered with a shake of my hat
before she could begin inspecting me in the same manner as Dolly. “Just from
the city,” I corrected. She brought her lips into a tight smile, and I suspect
she may have been aware of my attempts at shifting the conversation.

“You must be
hungry,” she said.

“Food would be
nice,” Kitt said, “though your husband was kind enough to feed us sandwiches
along the way.”

“Husband?!?” she
said, peering at Eddie. Both fell into a fit of laughter, and the slightest red
blushing circles appeared on both of their cheeks.

“He's the hired
help, fox,” Gren muttered to Kitt.

“How was I
supposed to know?” Kitt whispered back.

“Dinner then!” Alexia
announced. “Come, Eddie! Miss Dolly and Mister Spader and Mister Sunner and
Mister Pocket and I and you require a meal of upbringing and I will not serve
them shabby
entrees!
”

She popped the
last word with flair as she began dragging the much larger Eddie into the
adjoining kitchen as if he weighed less than paper.

“You know, you
don't have to wave your French words around to anyone who shows up,” he said as
they went off and clanged some pots.

The four of us
waited and shuffled our feet in the foreign room.

“She seems nice,”
Kitt said.

“Yeah,” Gren said.
“The tea lady's a saint if you're on her good side.”

“What if you
aren't?”

“Then keep a safe
distance.”

“How will I know
if she likes me?”

“I don't know.”

“Oh. Then how will
I know what distance is safe?”

“No one knows.”

Kitt sat down on
the floor and rubbed his ankles. “I see.”

The Gaslight Tea
House was quite remarkably decorated. The wooden floors of the main room were
covered in the most formerly dazzling rugs. I say formerly because the many
twisting and captivating woven patterns were marked all over by wear, staining,
and I what I dearly hoped were not burn marks. The walls were old and warped,
but this served not to render the room decrepit to the human eye, but rather to
give it a sense of flavor and lineage. One half of the wood-paneled walls was
papered in mismatching prints, a quarter was bare, and a quarter was painted.
Most peculiar though were the tea bags. There were dozens, fresh and untouched,
hanging just above our heads. Each was tied to the end of a long string that
dangled and was held in place under a fat nail that was half-lodged into the
ceiling. It was a flying sea of tea, as ever present and lingering as the thick
fog that continued to loom outside.