Bobby’s answer was a push between the shoulder blades, and it was either scramble down the steps or fall.
I reached the servants’ dining room without falling, and voices from the kitchen told me I wasn’t the only one caught on the horns of this dilemma.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Fox was saying.“It’s that I’m too busy.”
“Really?”Indira said crisply.“Because you told me yesterday that you were looking forward to a long weekend of bothering Dash because the world of art was a world of chicanery and nonsense, and you hereby declared yourself free from it, etcetera, etcetera.”
The best word for Fox’s silence was staggered.
Indira emerged from the kitchen a moment later.She gave me and Bobby an appraising look.
“We’re almost ready,” Bobby said.
She didn’t say anything.Sometimes, Indira has this witchy energy.It’s like she looks at you, and she looks through you, and she knows everything you’re going to say and everything you’ve ever done wrong, and if you step out of line so much as an inch—ZAP.
And then she strode toward the front of the house.
Bobby and I let out breaths of relief at the same time.
“I’m going to pull the Pilot around,” Bobby said.He started toward the door.Looked back.“Please don’t make me look for you.”
“Bobby!”
“Please, my love.”
“I’m an adult man.I’m independent and responsible and—and anadult.”
“And don’t try the attic, babe, because Iwillfind you, and you hate spiders.”
I gaped.
I was still gaping when he left.
Fox poked their head out of the kitchen.“Good God.Are they gone?”
“Not for long.And don’t even think about trying the attic because Bobby already guessed that one.”
“I shouldn’t have said I was busy,” Fox said morosely.“Panic.Pure panic.”
“I tried the busy angle too,” I said.“No joy.”
“Does it say something about us that we’re so quick to try to avoid doing a simple act of service?”Fox wondered aloud.“Are we morally bankrupt?”
“Bobby wants us to give up a whole Saturday,” I said.“And where are Keme and Millie?”
“Good point.”Fox tilted their head.“You should have said you were tutoring some poor fool at the college.”
“Oh my God.Why didn’t I—”
“Some benighted sap, some scholarship student, some hapless imp of fate who had the misfortune to go to you, seeking help.”
“Okay, well, it was less insulting the first way you said it.Oh, you should say you have a bad back!”
Fox brightened for a moment, and then glumness settled in again.“A bad back is too pedestrian.”
“Ready?”Bobby called from the front of the house.
“We’re leaving,” Indira announced in a voice that suggested thunderbolts.
