Chapter 48

CHAPTER 48

M arley came into the shop with the huge, ugly teapot we'd seen when we bought the chairs and handed it to me.

"You'll have to kin-sue-whatsit," he said. "But I drilled the holes for the wiring so whenever you're ready, give me a call and I'll hang it wherever you want. Where do you want it?"

I pointed to the middle of the shop, just past the archway into the other side.

"Over that table, I think." Right where it could be seen as somebody walked through the door. If I moved Mom's rainbow display there, with that big teapot in the middle, people could walk right over to it and then go through the archway. Maybe I'd paint the bookcases there purple. Unexpected. Genius. I looked at the teapot, which was this ugly brick-ish color. "Kintsugi is for broken things. I'm going to paint this white," I told him. "Maybe do something Alice-ish with it."

"Who's Alice?" he said.

"In Wonderland. Never mind. I want it there, over the table." I pointed to the place where two bookcases made an L shape, one against the side of the laundry room and the other against the wall between the buildings, next to the archway.

"Okay. Consider it done." He frowned. "Where's your mom and Max?"

"Mom is out on her morning walk," I said. "Max is upstairs. He's sick."

"The river will do that," Marley said. "Harvey hasn't stopped by again, has he?"

I shook my head. "I think you scared him away. And then Fernanda stomped him and Maggs went for his throat and my mom pepper-sprayed him." Mom had told me everything this morning before she left. I thought I'd hated Harvey Ware before, but now I wanted him gone forever. "He may be lying low for a while. Max wants him dead, too."

"Good."

Marley spent some time staring at the ceiling and the shelves, and I figured he was assembling the whole teapot thing in his mind. He'd told me once that he always made the shot in his mind first whenever he did a free throw, that it was a way of getting his mind to get his body to do what he wanted. I thought that was pretty smart.

Then he frowned and went over and opened the laundry room door and looked in, and then walked into the side room. When he came back, he was frowning harder.

"What's wrong?"

"You've got a dead space."

I must have looked confused because he took my arm and pulled me into the first room of the shop and back to the laundry room. "See how deep this laundry room is? Not very. Just deep enough for the washer and dryer."

"Yes." I was pretty sure he wasn't patronizing me.

He tugged on my arm and pulled me into the archway between the two rooms. "Look how thick the wall is here."

"Well, yeah it has the laundry room on one side and the bookcases on the other."

"It's too thick for that. There's a dead space there, probably from the space between the two buildings when Oz had them combined."

"Okay," I said. "So . . ."

He looked at me, his handsome face patient. "What are the chances that Oz would let a dead space go to waste?"

"Oh."

"You never noticed?"

"Not until you pointed it out. Marley, they brought me here from the hospital when I was born, this is the only place I've ever known. No, I never measured the space, especially since there was so much stuff piled up here?—"

"Okay," he said. "You're right. You never notice the place you live in when you're a kid. But you're not a kid anymore. Come on."

He went around to the bookcases on the opposite side of the laundry room wall, the part that was the middle room before the library now and stared at that for a minute. "Yep," he said and pulled out one of the tables.

"Yep what?"

"This bookcase," he said when he had it clear and was tugging on it, "is not like the others." He squinted at it, running his fingers along the edges, stooping to look at the bottom and then going back to the edge of one of the shelves. "Stand back."

"Why?"

He grinned at me. "Because if I pull this down on us, I want you to be the one who survives."

"Thank you. I want us both to survive."

"Yes, but I must know what's behind this bookcase." He made a shooing motion with his hand.

I stepped back into the library, and he fumbled with something inside the left-hand edge of the case.

"What are you doing?"

"There's a latch here," he began and then something clicked and the bookcase moved out about an inch. He pulled the case out a little at a time until it swung free, like a massive door, creaking on old hinges. "Whoa," he said, and I went to stand beside him now that it seemed probable neither one of us was going to die.

There really was a narrow dead space there, the width of the space between the two buildings—maybe two feet—and it was full of boxes.

"Any idea what's in those?" Marley said.

"No, but I'm thinking I don't need to worry about restocking for a while," I said and started to pull the boxes out.

An hour later we had most of the boxes out—so much for my nice empty rooms on that side—and had started to unpack them. Some of them were marvelous. One had a bunch of Halloween animal masks in it that Ozzie had put name stickers on, like a big white rabbit mask that had a post-it that said "For Coral." My mom was going to go nuts for those. At least I hoped she would. Maybe start making art again. I'd rather see her dancing again, but I'd take art as a good start. It also meant Ozzie had liked mom's art. He'd never said anything about her previous creations, although now that I thought about it, he'd also never said anything negative, which was actually a compliment coming from Ozzie. I wish men would learn to talk more.

Another box had a fairly boring statue of a fish that I knew she could make an assemblage of if she started making art again. But there were others that were just things like ugly teacups that would make Mrs. Baumgarten very happy. And there were some real stuffed animals, taxidermy that made me very unhappy since I bet somebody had killed them to have something to stuff. That's just vile. And there were more old books, so it's a good thing Mom thinks she can make things with them.

Then he opened a box that had "Vintage Japanese Egg Cups" on the side, and we both just stared for a minute. They were fragile, very thin porcelain, but they were also horrifying, these bright little yellow chick cups with huge, staring zombie eyes, gray-shadowed with pinprick dots for irises. And there were like two dozen of them.

"The Egg Cups of the Damned," I said.

"Zombie Egg Cups," Marley said at the same time.

I nodded. "They stagger through the shop at night muttering, ‘ Braaaiins .'"

"No," Marley said. "They mutter, ‘ EEEEEGGGGGGS. '"

I laughed again because that was exactly what they would mutter, and he laughed, too, and said, "You can't sell these, they're a danger to humanity," and I said, "No, no, we can't sell all of these," and I put the box aside. Because we were gonna sell some of them. They'd go like hotcakes.

When Marley left, I took four of the Egg Cups of the Damned upstairs and put them on the bookshelf across from my bed so they'd be the first things I saw when I woke up from my nightmares, and then I'd laugh, hearing Marley say, "EEEEEGGGGGGS." William hissed at them, but I loved them.

I was a little disappointed that we hadn't found any money, but my mom was gonna love those masks. She could collage them, she'd love that. And maybe she'd be so happy, she'd dance again.

I'd love that.