Читать книгу Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles - Kira Henehan - Страница 10

4

Murphy found me collecting myself in the doorway. He smelled of sun and of something else, synthetics perhaps. Perhaps something else. Those were great gray days.

It was probably not his fault.

Things stick to Murphy, things and other things like people. For instance: If three of us—say me, Binelli, and Murphy—were to be coated in honey and tied to a post, and a hive of bees were to be slashed open, the bees would settle on Murphy. He would be covered in honey, and covered in bees, and covered in welts. He would be filled with fear and pain. It was probably not his fault, whatever that other smell was. I could overlook it. I took the bad with the good.

—Was that lacrosse-team remnant you were sitting with the Up All Puppets! guy, he said.

—Evidently not, I said.

—Then who was it?

—Someone who was not the Up All Puppets! guy.

The smell was rankling me a bit. It wasn’t, I was sure, Murphy’s fault, but nonetheless I became ever so slightly brusque. Where had he found sun. Those were great gray days, smelling of any number of things. Sun not being one.

He shrugged.—I didn’t think so, he said, unwarrantedly smug.

Binelli interrupted before I had the chance to shun Murphy viciously.

—Finley, he said.

—Murphy, he added.

—Binelli, we said in a remarkable unison that must have pleased Binelli to no end. Love of order, all that. His face softened ever so slightly.

—Finley, Mr. Uppal has agreed to a brief meeting over a not-even-close-to-inexpensive bottle of port I’ve ordered for his table. The cost of which will, incidentally, be withheld from your wages.

Wages?

—So if you would please get back in there with all due haste, he suggested,—we can begin to repair the damage your ineptitude has so far caused this Investigation.

I paused, wondering if this was not perhaps the best time to wonder aloud about these wages he’d mentioned.

Binelli clapped his hands sharply in front of my face however, not just once but three times, in rapid succession.—Now? he said in a way that sounded like but was certainly not a question. I nodded quickly and made for the door.