Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (3 page)

I ignored this and
waited for the rain to wash the mud off of my coat. I dipped my hands into my
pockets, the insides of which were especially wet for some...oh no. I pulled my
hands out at once to find them dyed black-purple, right down to the fingertips.
I remembered that I had been toting a small inkwell that must've overturned
when I fell. Angry, I pitched the empty vial into the mud, only to watch it
skip over the surface like a perfectly timed stone.

“You have great
skill,” the Frenchman said.

“Sure,” I replied,
staring at my hands. “It takes a special breed of idiot to change his skin
purple.”

“Indeed it does!”

I raised an
eyebrow at him, the old loon playing in the street like a child.

“Eh...thanks.”

“Are you a child
of the Revolution?”

“I don't think
so.”

He cackled and
wheezed again. “Forgive me,” he said at last. “You must think me terribly rude.
But I find you endlessly entertaining.”

“Thanks,” I
grunted.

I wandered off
towards an orange orb that I figured was a lamppost when the sloppy footsteps
of the coot hurried beside me.

“Now, now, now,”
he said. “Wait, wait, wait. You can't go just yet!”

“I can't?”

“No!”

“I don't know. Look
at my legs. Left, right...yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm perfectly able to leave.
Good evening, sir.”

“Hang on a bit!”
he pleaded, grabbing at my coat. “I need to reward you.”

“Reward? What
for?”

“The
entertainment.”

“I appreciate it,
but you don't have to celebrate me falling down in the mud.”

“Of course I do!”

“In fact, it's the
sort of thing I like to try to forget.”

“Oh, you shouldn't
do that, friend. You should never do that. Besides you added a critical, yes,
an absolutely critical element to my investigation. You, sir, are a stimulant
and a vital touch of that great magic.”

I slid against a
wall under a small awning and enjoyed a small cover from the showers. The
Frenchman chose to remain in the rain, smiling wide at me.

“I hate to tell
you,” I finally said. “But if you're expecting to get any magic out of me,
you're going to be greatly disappointed.”

“Says the man with
the magical hands.”

I looked down at
my purple skin. It was already starting to run with the rain.

“That's only ink.”

“Maybe. Or maybe that's
your clever little lie. Keep all the magic to yourself.”

“You overestimate
me.”

“I think not,
storyteller.”

“How did—“

“How can you tell
a duck's bottom feathers are wet?”

Hmph...lucky
guess. You see a man with ink on his fingers and you make assumptions. He
could've very well called me clerk or bookkeeper. I wasn't buying this muddy
oracle act. I didn't answer his question and instead shook my hands. The color
was quickly fading. I held them up for presentation.

“Sorry,” I said to
the man. “Looks like my magic's run dry.”

“How sad for a man
of your ability.”

“Maybe. But I'll
live.”

He took a deep
breath of rainwater and spit it out. “I suppose you will.” He retrieved from
somewhere unseen a long cigarette and a single match. Cupping both from the
rain, he lit the match against his heel and put it to the other.

“Now it's my turn
to laugh,” I remarked. “If you think you're going to be able to smoke while
standing out there.”

He said nothing,
arched his back, and began taking long, pronounced drags on the cigarette under
the downpour. I watched in amazement as the hot red glow of the tip continued
to burn through the dousing rain. Impossible. The Frenchman released a round of
smoke through his nostrils, flicked ash to the ground, and continued smoking. Impossible!

“How did you do
that?”

“Just maybe,” he
said to me. “Just maybe I have lost in my years less magic than you. Here.”

He reached a
wrinkled hand under the awning and handed me four soggy, long cigarettes. They
were wrapped in purple papers and smelled very slightly fragrant.

“I don't really
smoke.”

“Take them. Try
smoking in the rain sometime.”

“Uh...sure,” I
said, plopping them into my coat pocket without thought.

A splash of wind
spit through the rain. I started to shiver.

“You were asking
about shelter, right?” the old man said.

“No. Never
mentioned it.”

He shot me a wild
eye.

“But you meant
to.”

My foot pushed
against the wall and propelled me off once more into the rain. We walked for a
bit, stomping around in the slop. Once we had been stomping for a good while,
he began rubbing his chin, as though the act powered his brain through some
strange utility of kinetic energy.

“I'll tell you
what you need,” he said to me. “A good woman. You have a woman, friend?”

“No.”

“You should find
one. Great way to gain some magic.”

“Great way to lose
some magic too.”

“Hmm...I suppose,”
he cackled. “But find one with nice enough curves and you'll never mind.”

“Heh,” I smirked.
“If you say so.”

“Why, boy? What's
wrong with a shapely woman?”

“Not a thing in
the world.”

And so the old man
led me in his frenzy through the wind and the rain and the overwhelming
darkness of the night through the veins of the city, through the crooked,
weaving lines that wiggled through the southside. I hopped bins and crates,
squeezed between buildings, and hurried down alleyways. At last he led me to
this faint glow in the night which revealed itself as an inn. Or what used to
be an inn. The look of the place alone suggested that it hadn't been properly
run for years. But there was definitely a life about the place, something in
the ether I couldn't quite sort out, and when I asked the Frenchman about its
condition, he was more than happy to respond.

“Optimum
operation, boy! Optimum operation!” he said as we approached the front door. “This  
place is no longer simply a nailed-up box of lodging, of refuge. Yes, boy, we
can extend the courtesy of a dry roof and a warm bed, but this is
more!
This
is an outpost of essence! A phantom limb to the body of revolution I left
behind in Paris!”

“Look, you might
want to quiet down with all that 'revolution' talk. The King's not that keen
about words like that.”

“Oh, you English
are so drab, with your militarists and your industry! I'm talking of a movement
of passions! Of humors! Of...boy, could you lend a shoulder? The door's stuck
again.”

“Sure.” Push.
Thud. Squeak. We went inside. Electric Bohemia,
he had called the place.
It was written across the walls of the lobby in scavenged letters taken from
city notices that must've been previously posted on the premises. The “EM” in
BohEMia, for instance, was stamped with a familiar government typeface. And
given the state of the establishment, I dared to suppose that it may have very
likely been clipped from the word “CondEMned.”

A man with a curled beard was sleeping behind the front desk. The
Frenchman rang a rusted bell and the gent woke in a bustle. He then blinked and
asked my escort how his nightly experiments had fared. They made small talk, or
not, maybe it was some probing debate on the fiber of all humanity. I wasn't
paying attention.

“Now!” the
Frenchman announced, clapping his hands at me. “All seems to be in order. There
remains only the matter of your gift.”

“Gift?”

“I owe you for the
entertainment, remember? How quickly the youth of this world forget!”

“Really, sir. The
dry room is gift enough. And those unusual cigarettes.”

I lightly patted
my soggy pocket, assuming the already-dampened tobacco sticks were by now
reduced to a glob of sour pulp.

“Nonsense! Petty
offerings! You need something more...
appropriate
for the favor.”

“Oh? And what's
appropriate for a mud puddle performance?”

“Hmmm...that seems
to be the question...”

He started rubbing
his chin again. I shook some rainwater off of myself.

“Look, sir,” I
began, softly. “Really—“

“Got it!” he said,
beaming. “Entertainment for entertainment! A fair trade!”

“Fair trade?”

“You like to be
entertained, don't you, friend?”

“I…suppose so…”

“Then why don't
you make yourself good and comfortable, and I'll see if I can't send something
nice and expressive your way. You like expressive entertainment, don't you?”

“Oh...sure.
Expressive is fine.”

“Good! I thought
so! On your way, then.”

He took me by the
arm and led me through the lobby, pushing along deeper into the inn.

“That-a-way, young
man,” he instructed as we ventured along. “Go on.”

He then vanished
through a side door and initiated loud conversation with another on the
opposite side. The discussion was clear and blunt, but being a little cold and
dizzy from the weather, I did not pay adequate attention to exchange.

“The boy wants
'expressive beauty,'” I half-heard the Frenchman say. “You're an expressive
beauty, right?”

“I can do
expressive,” said another.

Rather than ponder
the implications of these words, I shook a little water from my ears and wandered
forward, drippy and alone, on my way.

The old man had
sent me in the direction of a crooked hallway toward the back of the
establishment. It was dim and a smell I could only classify as week-old sour
milk led me by the nose down the corridor to a small corner bedroom, windowless
and warmer than the rest of the inn.

I closed the door
and sat on the edge of a table. The walls were mustard yellow, though clearly
not originally. Still, the stained color brought a sense of décor to the box,
and I let my eyes bounce from the yellow to the green of the untrimmed potted
plants that had been stacked in one corner. An overstuffed and overused sofa
sat across from me. To this day, I do not know what possessed me to choose a
tabletop to nest on in place of the obvious seating arrangement, but I went
with my gut and knocked songlets and diddies into the wood with my knuckles,
waiting for God knows what to appear.

A good quarter of
an hour later, a woman finally came through the doorway, tried once, twice, and
finally succeeded in closing the peel-paint door, locking it with an old brass
key. She was wearing the faintest shade of green I'd ever imagined and looked
me over with great exaggeration while her right hand tugged on the one-piece
leotard she wore. The choice in wardrobe made me instantly associate her with a
golden-haired trapeze artist I had seen as a child, and I found it suddenly
very difficult not to regard her as an acrobat.

“You the one the
old man sent me for?” she spoke.

“I think so,” I
answered, a little cautiously.

“You're all wet.”

“It's raining.”

“Oh.” She rubbed
her painted thumbnails over each other and caught a look at a neatly arranged
triangle of bubble-bottomed glass teacups. “Oh! The hell did you do with
those?”

“Not a lot.” In
truth, I had found the three cups lying overturned on the floor upon entering
the room and, in waiting, had properly arranged them to kill time and make a
good impression. My act seemed to have had the opposite effect.

“Well, just
great,” she spat. “There's nothing left to be arranged, is there?”

“I...suppose not.”

“Wonderful.” She
grabbed at the veil she had been wearing on her head and cast it to the floor.
“Can't really play servant when you've left me no task to serve, can I?”

I didn't know what
to say, so I apologized.

“I'm...sorry.”

She looked with a
fiery-green annoyance hard into my eyes, no easy task as my sloppy wet bangs
were trying their hardest to curtain them. She then suddenly softened into a
smile and placed her painted fingers on her hips.

“That's all right,
sugar. No harm.”

“Glad.”

She nodded,
politely smiling like a show horse, and took four pronounced steps backward.
Slowly, like a lady of breeding, she lowered herself onto the old couch, her
weight pushing a few rusty springs up through the material, and struck an
exaggerated pose.

“I'm ready,” she
said calmly. “Begin when you please.”

“I'm...sorry?”

“I already said
there's no harm, so you can begin.”

I caught my breath
and attempted to solve this riddle.

“No...” I said, a
little stupidly. “I mean...I'm sorry?”

“What?”

“I mean, I don't
understand.”

With a sigh and a
grunt, she arched her back up and threw another fiery-green stare my way.

“You artist types
are the absolute worst, you know that? You have to spell out everything!”

“I...think there's
been a mistake. The old gentleman—“

“Frenchie's a
coot, but he pegged you right. Stop with the babbling, artist, and start
sketching.”

“Sketching?”

“That is what you
types need, right? I'm doing the modeling thing, so get going.”

“I can't draw.”

“What?”

“Or paint.”

“This a joke?
Frenchie called you an artist.”

“I am. Of the
written and....uh....spoken word.”

“Oh, I get it.”
She cracked her knuckles and stood up. She then began to tap her pointed feet
on the floorboards, stretching her bare and bruised legs. “Bookish type. Okay.
What's your name, love?”

“Will Pocket.”

“Nice to meet ya,
Will. I think I know what you need.”

She dropped to all
fours and began pulling a rather large steamer trunk in the opposite corner
from the leafy greens.

“And what's your
name?” I asked.

“Not important.”

“Of course it is.”

“Not to you. Call
me whatever you want. Your treat.”