36
ONE NIGHT, I was lying in the young bamboo at the foot of the hill, waiting, watching for an opportunity, letting my thoughts ramble to keep myself from growing impatient and giving myself away.
Raskol was on the tower, and Marvin, who had been caught, was beside him. The turntable was running down, the beam from the lantern circling slower and slower. Raskol rewound the motor, and under cover of the noise of the rewinding I crawled forward a bit. The light began to sweep around again.
With the patience of a champion crawler, I settled in for as long as it might take until the time was right for another move. The water in the trash-can lid hanging from one of the waterwillows evaporated enough to turn Guppa’s automatic watering device on, the little bits of tin began whirring and clattering when droplets hit them, and I was able to cover a couple of feet before it shut off again. Thanks, waterwillow. Waterwillow, one of my favorite words. I let my mind drift, and I was soon off on a ramble, like Flo and Freddie taking off from one of the superfluous doodads on a fantastic contraption, or my own cross-referential rambles through the encyclopedia. Waterwillows. All of us watching Guppa and Mrs. Jones on “Fantastic Contraptions,” staring at the silver light, the light that lit up Ariane’s hip. Her perfume. Diffusion, another of my favorites. The intriguing aroma of Ariane, diffusing in the little room, the diffusing scent of Miss Rheingold’s perfume. Depreciation, the diffusion of a Studebaker. Bun soup, windflowers, court bouillon, Zwischenraum, shandy, ontology, epistemology, bills of lading—
I was going to laugh. I had come to a thought that was going to make me laugh. I bit my lip, but that made the thought all the clearer, the pressure of the laugh all the greater. A little of it escaped from me, as a snort, a small, ambiguous sound. Raskol’s flashlight swung in my direction, but it missed me, and in missing me reminded me all the more of the watchman’s light, of hiding in the locker, and—
I couldn’t hold it. I burst out laughing, and Raskol shone the beam full in my face.
“Got you,” he said. “What’s so funny?”
“Splines!” I cried.
[to be continued]
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