Chapter Fourteen
In which we break twenty thousand! our heroes are wrongfully imprisoned and Félix fires people.
Chapter 14
"Portia," Oscar said, as they disembarked from the plane in Japan, where four smiling young men in uniforms were waiting to carry their luggage, "We didn't leave Anastasia behind, bound and gagged, in a closet, did we?"
Portia sniffed haughtily. "She said she wanted to stay. Listen, it's not my fault her date groped me. I hit him with my purse. There's a roll of quarters sewn into the bottom, you know."
"Yes, I've seen that purse in action," Oscar agreed. "But what I'm saying is, did you then hit her with your purse? I heard shouting."
"All her. I didn't want him! I really didn't. He was philosophically averse to bathing."
"How gnostic of him."
"He wore glitter."
Félix groaned. They were both well aware of Portia's aversion to glitter, which Oscar admitted was perplexing given her fondness for shiny things.
"Besides, she said she wanted to stay in Berlin."
Oscar gave her a skeptical look.
"Listen, she said she wanted to stay, and I said let her, because she called me all kinds of bad names for getting involuntarily groped. I just figured, if she was going to..."
"Portia, what did you do?"
Portia reached into her pocket and dug out a bottle of liquid laxative. Félix laughed so hard he had to stop and lean on the wall.
"Portia, that's awful. I completely disapprove," he wheezed. "How could you do that to my friend?"
"Nobody's forcing her to drink the Cristal," Portia replied, and walked on.
***
If Berlin was dangerous, Japan was an absolute comedy of errors.
It was made all the more ironic by Félix, who, on the plane, had talked of nothing but the dignity and good sense of the Japanese people, which in its own way was a sort of stereotype. It was directly at odds with the ingrained American racism that Oscar and Portia had grown up with, watching Bugs Bunny reruns about yellow-faced Asians and Disney movies featuring lisping Siamese cats, but it still did not account for the ultimate stupidity of human beings. That in particular didn't change all that much from one country to the next.
Félix had studied art history, but only up until about the first world war, and he had little familiarity with the pop art of any country but his own. Portia was amazed to discover that he'd never seen any manga, and when she learned of his ignorance of anime, she sat him down in the airplane's little movie theatre, where they proceeded to watch a handful of Cowboy Bebop episodes and the really frightening parts of Akira from the DVD shelf in the corner. Félix was as baffled by them as Oscar had been when an ex-girlfriend tried to introduce him to the concept, but they both bore up well and agreed that at least if it was going to be incomprehensible, there was good art to make up for it.
The hotel they stayed in was designed for a certain class and type of tourist, and if he hadn't looked outside at the Tokyo skyline, Oscar wouldn't have known that he wasn't in an especially posh Holiday Inn somewhere in the midwest. Even the local housing agent that Félix's agent sent to show them around spoke excellent, unaccented English and wore an Armani suit. He pointedly did not ask about the healing scrapes and dirty yellow bruise on Félix's face.
He took them into the heart of downtown by taxi, Félix staring excitedly out the windows at the masses of people and the signs in Japanese; he looked like he'd come straight out of a film about a country boy who comes to the big city. It was difficult to even shepherd him off the street and into the doorman-guarded lobby of the apartment building. Brass and green enamel predominated, with large windows set into the walls and a glass elevator that rose up the side of the building like something out of a comic book.
"These apartments sell very well," the man said, as they rode up to the forty-third floor. "We used to keep a model flat on the second floor, but we had a woman who was afraid of heights make us an offer we simply couldn't refuse."
"But she wasn't afraid of living with forty-eight floors on top of her?" Oscar asked, out of terrified curiousity.
"I don't think she thought about it," the man replied with a smile. Félix was facing the glass, almost pressing his nose to it as the elevator rose and the horizon expanded. "If Mr. Carvell would be happier in a penthouse suite, we currently have one available. The rise in cost from the forties to the penthouse is negligible."
"Could we?" Félix asked excitedly. His reservations about the high-rises, back in France, seemed to have evaporated in the face of the glass-walled elevator. The agent smiled and punched a new code into the pad on the wall. The elevator picked up in speed slightly.
"Here we are," the agent announced, as the doors slid open directly into the flat. "The other penthouse is accessed from the northwest elevator," he explained, as he led them into the vast, expensively furnished living room.
There was a chrome bar in one corner, and a bar between the dining room and the living room in another. The walls were a deep matte silver, broken here and there in places by strange squares of black and white; the floor was thickly carpeted, and there were no doors between any of the rooms. The far side of the large, open living room was solid glass from floor to ceiling. Oscar felt as though he was seeing what Frank Lloyd Wright's hell must look like -- all his theories, vastly misapplied.
"Feel free to look around," the agent continued. "Mr Carvell, may I give you a tour?"
Oscar wandered over to the window as Portia began poking around in the bedrooms and Félix followed the agent on the official guided tour. Snatches of the conversation drifted back to him as he inched as close as he dared to the windows that looked out on a half-mile drop to the ground.
"...servants, of course, but it's so nice to have the industrial-grade kitchen..." "...close to Shibuya -- definitely the district for the young crowd, you'll love it..."
Portia was pouring a drink from the functional, stocked minifridge under the bar. Oscar glared at her.
"What?" she asked. "It's perks."
"Forgot your flask at home?"
"I'd have brought one if I knew they stocked it with Grey Goose," she replied cheerfully.
"...remote access electronic control, lights, heat, air conditioning..."
"It's weird, isn't it?" she continued, looking around her. "I mean, where would Félix put all his stuff? You buy the place fully furnished, whether you like it or not, and the maid comes through once a week and makes sure it looks like you just bought it."
"...maid service, daily, scheduled around your privacy requirements..."
"Well, Félix is used to living with servants," Oscar said charitably. "And really, I mean, for him in particular it's sort of ideal, isn't it? Everything's automated, all the bills are paid -- "
"...out of the monthly building association fee..."
" -- and there aren't any, uh, sharp corners..." Oscar finished, with a slight grin.
"Félixproofing the flat?" Portia asked. "There's not much he can ask you to do on it though, is there?"
Oscar glanced around. "Well, he could ask me to paint the walls, get rid of all the furniture, and replace the lighting fixtures," he said.
"You're getting snide in your own age."
"I hate grey on walls and lamps should look like lamps, not spaceships."
"...website, just log in and tell it to start your oven or turn on the lights..."
"So what will you do? If he does pick this one?"
Oscar shrugged. "If he doesn't need me, I'll go back to New York. Or Paris."
They stood there at the bar for a minute or two, while Félix and the agent crashed around in the kitchen.
"Portia, if he stayed here, and I did go back to Paris..."
"Yes?"
"Would you stay with Félix? Or would you come with me?"
Portia leaned against the bar, turning to look at the wall of windows. "Oscar, you know the answer to that. You're my best friend in the world."
Oscar laughed. "Stupid of me to ask. But you'd be my Asian Textiles contact, wouldn't you?"
"Of course. And I'd send you a box of sushi every Christmas."
"...and if you'd like to take a look at the control panel, I can show you how this particular feature works," the agent finished, as he and Félix arrived again in the living room from the master bathroom. Portia slipped past them and into it, feeling around for a sliding door in the frame.
The agent was leaning over Félix, who had seated himself at a desk near the windows and was staring at a flatscreen computer monitor, manipulating a wireless mouse on the desktop. Suddenly the lights all went out, and Félix laughed, gleefully, before clicking them back on.
"Oscar, Oscar, come and try this," he called. "You can do anything you want to the house! Look, there," he said, as Oscar leaned over his other shoulder and took the mouse from his hand. There were several large icons on the screen, some with labels in Japanese and English, some with little arrows that indicated they led to other menus. Oscar, curious, clicked on an open door with an arrow, and was shown a floorplan of the apartment, vastly simplified to his architect's eye. Curious, he clicked on the bedroom, and heard a whirring noise behind him. A door was snicking shut.
"They open when someone presses the release on the inside of the room, or when you release it," the agent said helpfully.
"Oscar, close the bathroom door?" Portia called, and Oscar clicked on the master bathroom. Two lines, representing doors, slid across the doorways of the master bath.
"They're all individually controllable too, of course, but right now we've set them to default to this computer's control," the agent said, taking over the mouse from Oscar. "Now you can see -- "
There was a beep.
Anyone familiar with computers, in even a basic sense, would have known that beep. It was the beep of a dissatisfied servant who has decided to rebel. The beep not only of anger, but of suicidal resolve. The beep of lost wordprocessing files, failed and fatal compiler errors, time lost, words lost, art lost.
Oscar had a moment of philosophical revelation in which he saw how temporary and insubstantial anything is until it is created in more than pixels, but the revelation fell by the wayside in a second when the basic human urge to throw a beeping computer out a window had to be suppressed.
"It's a temporary processing pause," the agent said confidently. They waited, Félix with his arms crossed, Oscar doing the dance of Maybe If I Move The Mouse It'll Unfreeze. Finally there was a polite knock on the bathroom door.
"Oscar?" Portia called. "Can you let me out? The switch in here isn't working."
"The computer's down," Oscar called back.
"Processing!" the agent insisted.
"We'll get you out soon, Portia," Félix said, crossing to lean against the wall next to the bathroom door. "At least you won't die of thirst!"
"That's very reassuring," came Portia's muffled grumble.
"How long does this processing generally take?" Oscar inquired innocently. Something began to whir in the kitchen.
"Not long," the agent said casually. Félix poked his head into the kitchen.
"The sink disposal is going off," he announced. "And it looks like the oven's switched itself on."
"Routine maintenance, I'm sure..."
"Uh, Oscar?" Portia said, through the door.
"Yes, Portia?"
"The toilet is flushing itself. Repeatedly."
Oscar glanced up at the agent, who was pointedly looking out the window at the skyline view.
"I'd really like to leave the haunted mansion, if it's all the same to you..." she continued.
"We're trying, Portia," Oscar answered, reaching around behind the computer and jiggling wires.
"What are you doing?" the agent shouted, but Oscar had already pulled the power plug out of the back of the CPU.
"Rebooting the building," Oscar said calmly, plugging it back in. A boot-up screen appeared.
"It's like a Twilight Zone episode," Portia said through the door. "Home of the Future Eats Future Residents."
"Nobody is getting eaten," the agent said tensely. Finally, Oscar clicked through the menu and the door to the bathroom slid open. Portia burst out.
"Thank god," she said, as Félix came back from the kitchen. Oscar beamed and turned off the oven and sink disposal. "I was getting a little claustrophobic in there."
"With proper instruction, I am sure Mr Shelley will learn how to prevent the computer from crashing," the agent said.
"Oh, I don't think that will be necessary," Félix said. Portia poured herself a shot of vodka, downed it, winced, and sat down. "I think we'll be going now. I don't want to live somewhere the doors don't do as I say."
"And we're taking the vodka," Portia said. Her glare dared the agent to say anything.
"Now, where are the stairs?" Félix inquired.
***
Oscar woke, the night after the disastrous visit to the high-rise apartment, to the sound of Félix talking in the next room; the hotel suite was large, but they could only build the walls so thick, and Félix's door out into the atrium was open. Rising, Oscar pulled a sweatshirt on over his pyjamas and crossed to his own door, pushing it open a crack. Félix was on the telephone, having a clearly calm-but-furious argument. It took Oscar a moment to clear his head enough to understand the rapid-fire French, and any guilt he might have had evaporated in the effort.
"Listen to me, we're going in circles because you won't listen. I don't want to see any more prefabricated houses. I don't want to see any more luxury apartments unless you want to sell me the entire building. Because I want a home, not a display case! Well, I am not your other clients. No. No. I've told you."
As he spoke, Félix wandered out into the atrium and poured himself a glass of cranberry juice from the bar. Oscar grinned.
"I have an architect -- yes, he is perfectly competent, at least you know that much. Because I've had him on retainer, that's why. There's been no way to put him to use for the corporation, he's not some hack you put to building model homes and strip malls."
There was a long pause, and Oscar wished Félix's back wasn't turned to him. Finally, in a voice like ice, Félix said, "Perhaps I will. No, you don't understand, I see that now. Your service are not required further. Consider yourself terminated. My assistant in Paris will contact you with the severance fees and paperwork."
He hung up the mobile phone and bent over the bar, fishing for the ice bucket and dropping a few small cubes into the juice.
"Joudeau?" Oscar asked, quietly. Félix turned to look at him, one hand rubbing the back of his head, and gestured Oscar forward.
"Seabreeze?" he asked, holding up his glass.
"I think I'll just have juice," Oscar answered, and Félix gave him a rare sheepish look as he poured.
"You heard all that, then," he said.
"Most of it," Oscar agreed. Félix made a vague gesture in the air.
"I don't want houses," he said. "He doesn't understand. He's paid a fee to advertise certain houses and such. I can't blame him too much. He's a businessman, not an artist."
"Where were we going next?"
"San Francisco. We may still. I'll call Eugenia soon."
"You'll probably like it there. I hear it's a fun town."
"Fun," Félix mused.
"Now you're down on the idea of fun? Are you sure that thump upside the head didn't permanently damage you?"
"No, no...I like, oh, lots of fun things, and I'm not a bad businessman. When my parents give me tasks, I succeed -- even when Danielle gives me the dead-ends, I at least make them break even. I like some business. Meeting people, buying things..."
Oscar sat silently, drinking the juice in measured sips.
"I just wonder why," Félix finished.
"Why you like business?"
"Why the family is so obsessed with business. Why I go along with it, why I'm fairly useless as anything else. I like art and music you know, honestly, and I understand them, I think. But I couldn't do them, not for the pleasure of others, not in any way that would support me. Why I can't be satisfied with business. I..." he paused. "I hoped you would know that the hotel wasn't business, ever. The money never mattered to me. I think sometimes that's why she burned down, why I lost. Some sort of divine judgement for not caring enough. Danielle should run the company. She cares about it."
"I knew," Oscar said. "Anyone who heard you talk about the hotel knew. I loved it too."
"And if I care too much about anything other than the business, now -- I'm still a Carvell, one doesn't escape that -- perhaps what I care about will be taken from me, too. Which means I shoul apologise to Joudeau, and begin looking at homes in Paris. I don't really want to live in Berlin or Madrid anyway. I did like Rome, but there are too many people in Tokyo..."
"Do you want to live in America?"
Félix considered his juice.
"America is not America," he said finally. "To a modern European, the idea of a country so large, it boggles the mind. We picture it as little countries banded together into an empire, I think. So...I would live in San Francisco, but not in Omaha. Chicago, Boston, Miami...but not Seattle..."
"Why not Seattle?" Oscar asked, distracted for the moment.
"The Space Needle frightens me," Félix confided. "But do you see? I would live in New York City, but I would hate to live in America. Why did you come back to France?" he asked, abruptly.
"Returning to the scene of the crime," Oscar joked.
"Let's go to New York," Félix said suddenly. "I liked it there, and you and Portia must miss it."
"Well, my family calls me a little more often than I'd like, actually -- "
"Yes! Your family. Will you visit them?" Félix asked, interestedly.
"My dad'd probably kill me if I didn't," Oscar said reluctantly.
"I can't look at that brownstone now -- breach of contract or something," Félix mused. "Well, I'll ask Eugenia -- certainly that can't be the only brownstone for sale in New York, eh?"
"I could ask around, I've got a cousin who's a realtor -- "
"Oh yes?" Félix's eyes lit up. "He could help?"
"He couldn't hurt, and my parents are going to insist on meeting you anyway..." Oscar said. "We can make it really quick, though."
"Nonsense, clearly you are the son of extraordinary people," Félix proclaimed.
"Not really. My mom's an accountant and my dad, uh..." Oscar's brow wrinkled. "I'm still not sure what he does. He does something for some business that makes...things."
Félix grinned. "Your father and mine would clearly have something in common."
"Oh, I don't think my -- " Oscar stopped himself, horrified. I don't think my father would like yours very much....
Félix looked at him with eyes that were, despite their usual innocence, suddenly very keen.
"Anyway," Oscar continued, nervously, "I could call them -- I could call them right now, in fact, I think. It's, what....we're....uh....say...twelve hours ahead."
"Nice round number," Félix agreed.
"So it's two pm there? Somewhere thereabouts?"
"Use my telephone, it's international," Félix said, unfolding his mobile.
Oscar nodded and dialed the country code for America, one of the NYC area codes, and his family's telephone number. It was amazing the numbers you could memorize when you had to.
"Hi ma? It's Oscar," he said. "Hey, can you tell me what time it is there?"
Chapter 14
"Portia," Oscar said, as they disembarked from the plane in Japan, where four smiling young men in uniforms were waiting to carry their luggage, "We didn't leave Anastasia behind, bound and gagged, in a closet, did we?"
Portia sniffed haughtily. "She said she wanted to stay. Listen, it's not my fault her date groped me. I hit him with my purse. There's a roll of quarters sewn into the bottom, you know."
"Yes, I've seen that purse in action," Oscar agreed. "But what I'm saying is, did you then hit her with your purse? I heard shouting."
"All her. I didn't want him! I really didn't. He was philosophically averse to bathing."
"How gnostic of him."
"He wore glitter."
Félix groaned. They were both well aware of Portia's aversion to glitter, which Oscar admitted was perplexing given her fondness for shiny things.
"Besides, she said she wanted to stay in Berlin."
Oscar gave her a skeptical look.
"Listen, she said she wanted to stay, and I said let her, because she called me all kinds of bad names for getting involuntarily groped. I just figured, if she was going to..."
"Portia, what did you do?"
Portia reached into her pocket and dug out a bottle of liquid laxative. Félix laughed so hard he had to stop and lean on the wall.
"Portia, that's awful. I completely disapprove," he wheezed. "How could you do that to my friend?"
"Nobody's forcing her to drink the Cristal," Portia replied, and walked on.
***
If Berlin was dangerous, Japan was an absolute comedy of errors.
It was made all the more ironic by Félix, who, on the plane, had talked of nothing but the dignity and good sense of the Japanese people, which in its own way was a sort of stereotype. It was directly at odds with the ingrained American racism that Oscar and Portia had grown up with, watching Bugs Bunny reruns about yellow-faced Asians and Disney movies featuring lisping Siamese cats, but it still did not account for the ultimate stupidity of human beings. That in particular didn't change all that much from one country to the next.
Félix had studied art history, but only up until about the first world war, and he had little familiarity with the pop art of any country but his own. Portia was amazed to discover that he'd never seen any manga, and when she learned of his ignorance of anime, she sat him down in the airplane's little movie theatre, where they proceeded to watch a handful of Cowboy Bebop episodes and the really frightening parts of Akira from the DVD shelf in the corner. Félix was as baffled by them as Oscar had been when an ex-girlfriend tried to introduce him to the concept, but they both bore up well and agreed that at least if it was going to be incomprehensible, there was good art to make up for it.
The hotel they stayed in was designed for a certain class and type of tourist, and if he hadn't looked outside at the Tokyo skyline, Oscar wouldn't have known that he wasn't in an especially posh Holiday Inn somewhere in the midwest. Even the local housing agent that Félix's agent sent to show them around spoke excellent, unaccented English and wore an Armani suit. He pointedly did not ask about the healing scrapes and dirty yellow bruise on Félix's face.
He took them into the heart of downtown by taxi, Félix staring excitedly out the windows at the masses of people and the signs in Japanese; he looked like he'd come straight out of a film about a country boy who comes to the big city. It was difficult to even shepherd him off the street and into the doorman-guarded lobby of the apartment building. Brass and green enamel predominated, with large windows set into the walls and a glass elevator that rose up the side of the building like something out of a comic book.
"These apartments sell very well," the man said, as they rode up to the forty-third floor. "We used to keep a model flat on the second floor, but we had a woman who was afraid of heights make us an offer we simply couldn't refuse."
"But she wasn't afraid of living with forty-eight floors on top of her?" Oscar asked, out of terrified curiousity.
"I don't think she thought about it," the man replied with a smile. Félix was facing the glass, almost pressing his nose to it as the elevator rose and the horizon expanded. "If Mr. Carvell would be happier in a penthouse suite, we currently have one available. The rise in cost from the forties to the penthouse is negligible."
"Could we?" Félix asked excitedly. His reservations about the high-rises, back in France, seemed to have evaporated in the face of the glass-walled elevator. The agent smiled and punched a new code into the pad on the wall. The elevator picked up in speed slightly.
"Here we are," the agent announced, as the doors slid open directly into the flat. "The other penthouse is accessed from the northwest elevator," he explained, as he led them into the vast, expensively furnished living room.
There was a chrome bar in one corner, and a bar between the dining room and the living room in another. The walls were a deep matte silver, broken here and there in places by strange squares of black and white; the floor was thickly carpeted, and there were no doors between any of the rooms. The far side of the large, open living room was solid glass from floor to ceiling. Oscar felt as though he was seeing what Frank Lloyd Wright's hell must look like -- all his theories, vastly misapplied.
"Feel free to look around," the agent continued. "Mr Carvell, may I give you a tour?"
Oscar wandered over to the window as Portia began poking around in the bedrooms and Félix followed the agent on the official guided tour. Snatches of the conversation drifted back to him as he inched as close as he dared to the windows that looked out on a half-mile drop to the ground.
"...servants, of course, but it's so nice to have the industrial-grade kitchen..." "...close to Shibuya -- definitely the district for the young crowd, you'll love it..."
Portia was pouring a drink from the functional, stocked minifridge under the bar. Oscar glared at her.
"What?" she asked. "It's perks."
"Forgot your flask at home?"
"I'd have brought one if I knew they stocked it with Grey Goose," she replied cheerfully.
"...remote access electronic control, lights, heat, air conditioning..."
"It's weird, isn't it?" she continued, looking around her. "I mean, where would Félix put all his stuff? You buy the place fully furnished, whether you like it or not, and the maid comes through once a week and makes sure it looks like you just bought it."
"...maid service, daily, scheduled around your privacy requirements..."
"Well, Félix is used to living with servants," Oscar said charitably. "And really, I mean, for him in particular it's sort of ideal, isn't it? Everything's automated, all the bills are paid -- "
"...out of the monthly building association fee..."
" -- and there aren't any, uh, sharp corners..." Oscar finished, with a slight grin.
"Félixproofing the flat?" Portia asked. "There's not much he can ask you to do on it though, is there?"
Oscar glanced around. "Well, he could ask me to paint the walls, get rid of all the furniture, and replace the lighting fixtures," he said.
"You're getting snide in your own age."
"I hate grey on walls and lamps should look like lamps, not spaceships."
"...website, just log in and tell it to start your oven or turn on the lights..."
"So what will you do? If he does pick this one?"
Oscar shrugged. "If he doesn't need me, I'll go back to New York. Or Paris."
They stood there at the bar for a minute or two, while Félix and the agent crashed around in the kitchen.
"Portia, if he stayed here, and I did go back to Paris..."
"Yes?"
"Would you stay with Félix? Or would you come with me?"
Portia leaned against the bar, turning to look at the wall of windows. "Oscar, you know the answer to that. You're my best friend in the world."
Oscar laughed. "Stupid of me to ask. But you'd be my Asian Textiles contact, wouldn't you?"
"Of course. And I'd send you a box of sushi every Christmas."
"...and if you'd like to take a look at the control panel, I can show you how this particular feature works," the agent finished, as he and Félix arrived again in the living room from the master bathroom. Portia slipped past them and into it, feeling around for a sliding door in the frame.
The agent was leaning over Félix, who had seated himself at a desk near the windows and was staring at a flatscreen computer monitor, manipulating a wireless mouse on the desktop. Suddenly the lights all went out, and Félix laughed, gleefully, before clicking them back on.
"Oscar, Oscar, come and try this," he called. "You can do anything you want to the house! Look, there," he said, as Oscar leaned over his other shoulder and took the mouse from his hand. There were several large icons on the screen, some with labels in Japanese and English, some with little arrows that indicated they led to other menus. Oscar, curious, clicked on an open door with an arrow, and was shown a floorplan of the apartment, vastly simplified to his architect's eye. Curious, he clicked on the bedroom, and heard a whirring noise behind him. A door was snicking shut.
"They open when someone presses the release on the inside of the room, or when you release it," the agent said helpfully.
"Oscar, close the bathroom door?" Portia called, and Oscar clicked on the master bathroom. Two lines, representing doors, slid across the doorways of the master bath.
"They're all individually controllable too, of course, but right now we've set them to default to this computer's control," the agent said, taking over the mouse from Oscar. "Now you can see -- "
There was a beep.
Anyone familiar with computers, in even a basic sense, would have known that beep. It was the beep of a dissatisfied servant who has decided to rebel. The beep not only of anger, but of suicidal resolve. The beep of lost wordprocessing files, failed and fatal compiler errors, time lost, words lost, art lost.
Oscar had a moment of philosophical revelation in which he saw how temporary and insubstantial anything is until it is created in more than pixels, but the revelation fell by the wayside in a second when the basic human urge to throw a beeping computer out a window had to be suppressed.
"It's a temporary processing pause," the agent said confidently. They waited, Félix with his arms crossed, Oscar doing the dance of Maybe If I Move The Mouse It'll Unfreeze. Finally there was a polite knock on the bathroom door.
"Oscar?" Portia called. "Can you let me out? The switch in here isn't working."
"The computer's down," Oscar called back.
"Processing!" the agent insisted.
"We'll get you out soon, Portia," Félix said, crossing to lean against the wall next to the bathroom door. "At least you won't die of thirst!"
"That's very reassuring," came Portia's muffled grumble.
"How long does this processing generally take?" Oscar inquired innocently. Something began to whir in the kitchen.
"Not long," the agent said casually. Félix poked his head into the kitchen.
"The sink disposal is going off," he announced. "And it looks like the oven's switched itself on."
"Routine maintenance, I'm sure..."
"Uh, Oscar?" Portia said, through the door.
"Yes, Portia?"
"The toilet is flushing itself. Repeatedly."
Oscar glanced up at the agent, who was pointedly looking out the window at the skyline view.
"I'd really like to leave the haunted mansion, if it's all the same to you..." she continued.
"We're trying, Portia," Oscar answered, reaching around behind the computer and jiggling wires.
"What are you doing?" the agent shouted, but Oscar had already pulled the power plug out of the back of the CPU.
"Rebooting the building," Oscar said calmly, plugging it back in. A boot-up screen appeared.
"It's like a Twilight Zone episode," Portia said through the door. "Home of the Future Eats Future Residents."
"Nobody is getting eaten," the agent said tensely. Finally, Oscar clicked through the menu and the door to the bathroom slid open. Portia burst out.
"Thank god," she said, as Félix came back from the kitchen. Oscar beamed and turned off the oven and sink disposal. "I was getting a little claustrophobic in there."
"With proper instruction, I am sure Mr Shelley will learn how to prevent the computer from crashing," the agent said.
"Oh, I don't think that will be necessary," Félix said. Portia poured herself a shot of vodka, downed it, winced, and sat down. "I think we'll be going now. I don't want to live somewhere the doors don't do as I say."
"And we're taking the vodka," Portia said. Her glare dared the agent to say anything.
"Now, where are the stairs?" Félix inquired.
***
Oscar woke, the night after the disastrous visit to the high-rise apartment, to the sound of Félix talking in the next room; the hotel suite was large, but they could only build the walls so thick, and Félix's door out into the atrium was open. Rising, Oscar pulled a sweatshirt on over his pyjamas and crossed to his own door, pushing it open a crack. Félix was on the telephone, having a clearly calm-but-furious argument. It took Oscar a moment to clear his head enough to understand the rapid-fire French, and any guilt he might have had evaporated in the effort.
"Listen to me, we're going in circles because you won't listen. I don't want to see any more prefabricated houses. I don't want to see any more luxury apartments unless you want to sell me the entire building. Because I want a home, not a display case! Well, I am not your other clients. No. No. I've told you."
As he spoke, Félix wandered out into the atrium and poured himself a glass of cranberry juice from the bar. Oscar grinned.
"I have an architect -- yes, he is perfectly competent, at least you know that much. Because I've had him on retainer, that's why. There's been no way to put him to use for the corporation, he's not some hack you put to building model homes and strip malls."
There was a long pause, and Oscar wished Félix's back wasn't turned to him. Finally, in a voice like ice, Félix said, "Perhaps I will. No, you don't understand, I see that now. Your service are not required further. Consider yourself terminated. My assistant in Paris will contact you with the severance fees and paperwork."
He hung up the mobile phone and bent over the bar, fishing for the ice bucket and dropping a few small cubes into the juice.
"Joudeau?" Oscar asked, quietly. Félix turned to look at him, one hand rubbing the back of his head, and gestured Oscar forward.
"Seabreeze?" he asked, holding up his glass.
"I think I'll just have juice," Oscar answered, and Félix gave him a rare sheepish look as he poured.
"You heard all that, then," he said.
"Most of it," Oscar agreed. Félix made a vague gesture in the air.
"I don't want houses," he said. "He doesn't understand. He's paid a fee to advertise certain houses and such. I can't blame him too much. He's a businessman, not an artist."
"Where were we going next?"
"San Francisco. We may still. I'll call Eugenia soon."
"You'll probably like it there. I hear it's a fun town."
"Fun," Félix mused.
"Now you're down on the idea of fun? Are you sure that thump upside the head didn't permanently damage you?"
"No, no...I like, oh, lots of fun things, and I'm not a bad businessman. When my parents give me tasks, I succeed -- even when Danielle gives me the dead-ends, I at least make them break even. I like some business. Meeting people, buying things..."
Oscar sat silently, drinking the juice in measured sips.
"I just wonder why," Félix finished.
"Why you like business?"
"Why the family is so obsessed with business. Why I go along with it, why I'm fairly useless as anything else. I like art and music you know, honestly, and I understand them, I think. But I couldn't do them, not for the pleasure of others, not in any way that would support me. Why I can't be satisfied with business. I..." he paused. "I hoped you would know that the hotel wasn't business, ever. The money never mattered to me. I think sometimes that's why she burned down, why I lost. Some sort of divine judgement for not caring enough. Danielle should run the company. She cares about it."
"I knew," Oscar said. "Anyone who heard you talk about the hotel knew. I loved it too."
"And if I care too much about anything other than the business, now -- I'm still a Carvell, one doesn't escape that -- perhaps what I care about will be taken from me, too. Which means I shoul apologise to Joudeau, and begin looking at homes in Paris. I don't really want to live in Berlin or Madrid anyway. I did like Rome, but there are too many people in Tokyo..."
"Do you want to live in America?"
Félix considered his juice.
"America is not America," he said finally. "To a modern European, the idea of a country so large, it boggles the mind. We picture it as little countries banded together into an empire, I think. So...I would live in San Francisco, but not in Omaha. Chicago, Boston, Miami...but not Seattle..."
"Why not Seattle?" Oscar asked, distracted for the moment.
"The Space Needle frightens me," Félix confided. "But do you see? I would live in New York City, but I would hate to live in America. Why did you come back to France?" he asked, abruptly.
"Returning to the scene of the crime," Oscar joked.
"Let's go to New York," Félix said suddenly. "I liked it there, and you and Portia must miss it."
"Well, my family calls me a little more often than I'd like, actually -- "
"Yes! Your family. Will you visit them?" Félix asked, interestedly.
"My dad'd probably kill me if I didn't," Oscar said reluctantly.
"I can't look at that brownstone now -- breach of contract or something," Félix mused. "Well, I'll ask Eugenia -- certainly that can't be the only brownstone for sale in New York, eh?"
"I could ask around, I've got a cousin who's a realtor -- "
"Oh yes?" Félix's eyes lit up. "He could help?"
"He couldn't hurt, and my parents are going to insist on meeting you anyway..." Oscar said. "We can make it really quick, though."
"Nonsense, clearly you are the son of extraordinary people," Félix proclaimed.
"Not really. My mom's an accountant and my dad, uh..." Oscar's brow wrinkled. "I'm still not sure what he does. He does something for some business that makes...things."
Félix grinned. "Your father and mine would clearly have something in common."
"Oh, I don't think my -- " Oscar stopped himself, horrified. I don't think my father would like yours very much....
Félix looked at him with eyes that were, despite their usual innocence, suddenly very keen.
"Anyway," Oscar continued, nervously, "I could call them -- I could call them right now, in fact, I think. It's, what....we're....uh....say...twelve hours ahead."
"Nice round number," Félix agreed.
"So it's two pm there? Somewhere thereabouts?"
"Use my telephone, it's international," Félix said, unfolding his mobile.
Oscar nodded and dialed the country code for America, one of the NYC area codes, and his family's telephone number. It was amazing the numbers you could memorize when you had to.
"Hi ma? It's Oscar," he said. "Hey, can you tell me what time it is there?"