“It’s not a problem,” said Spider.
“What do you mean, not a problem?”
“Well,” said Spider, “I called Rosie this morning already, and I’m taking her out to dinner tonight. So you wouldn’t have needed the steak anyway.”
Fat Charlie opened his mouth. He closed it again. “I want you out,” he said.
“It’s a good thing for man’s desire to outstrip his something or other—grasp or reach or something—or what else is Heaven for?” said Spider, cheerfully, between mouthfuls of Fat Charlie’s steak.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I’m not going anywhere. I like it here.” He hacked off another lump of steak, shoveled it down.
“Out,” said Fat Charlie, and then the hall telephone rang. Fat Charlie sighed, walked into the hall, and answered it. “What?”
“Ah. Charles. Good to hear your voice. I know you’re currently enjoying your well-earned, but do you think it might be within the bounds of possibility for you to swing by for, oh, half an hour or so, tomorrow morning? Say, around ten-ish?”
“Yeah. Course,” said Fat Charlie. “Not a problem.”
“Delighted to hear it. I’ll need your signature on some papers. Well, until then.”
“Who was that?” asked Spider. He had cleaned his plate and was blotting his mouth with a paper towel.
“Grahame Coats. He wants me to pop in tomorrow.”
Spider said, “He’s a bastard.”
“So? You’re a bastard.”
“Different kind of bastard. He’s not good news. You should find another job.”
“I love my job!” Fat Charlie meant it when he said it. He had managed entirely to forget how much he disliked his job, and the Grahame Coats Agency, and the ghastly, lurking-behind-every-door presence of Grahame Coats.
Spider stood up. “Nice piece of steak,” he said. “I’ve set my stuff up in your spare room.”
“You’ve what?”
Fat Charlie hurried down to the end of the hall, where there was a room that technically qualified his residence as a two-bedroom flat. The room contained several cartons of books, a box containing an elderly Scalextric Racing set, a tin box filled with Hot Wheels cars (most of them missing tires), and various other battered remnants of Fat Charlie’s childhood. It might have been a good-sized bedroom for a normal-sized garden gnome or an undersized dwarf, but for anyone else it was a closet with a window.
Or rather, it used to be, but it wasn’t. Not anymore.
Fat Charlie pulled the door open and stood in the hallway, blinking.
There was a room, yes; that much was still true, but it was an enormous room. A magnificent room. There were windows at the far end, huge picture windows, looking out over what appeared to be a waterfall. Beyond the waterfall, the tropical sun was low on the horizon, and it burnished everything in its golden light. There was a fireplace large enough to roast a pair of oxen, upon which three burning logs crackled and spat. There was a hammock in one corner, along with a perfectly white sofa and a four-poster bed. Near the fireplace was something that Fat Charlie, who had only ever seen them in magazines, suspected was probably some kind of Jacuzzi. There was a zebra-skin rug, and a bear pelt hanging on one wall, and there was the kind of advanced audio equipment that mostly consists of a black piece of polished plastic that you wave at. On one wall hung a flat television screen that was the width of the room that should have been there. And there was more….
“What have you done?” asked Fat Charlie. He did not go in.
“Well,” said Spider from behind him, “seeing as I’m going to be here for a few days, I thought I’d bring my stuff over.”
“Bring your stuff? Bringing your stuff is a couple of carrier bags filled with laundry, some PlayStation games and a spider plant. This is…this is….” He was out of words.
Spider patted Fat Charlie’s shoulder as he pushed past. “If you need me,” he said to his brother, “I’ll be in my room.” And he shut the door behind him.
Fat Charlie shook the doorknob. The door was now locked.
He went into the TV room, got the phone from the hall, and dialed Mrs. Higgler’s number.
“Who the hell is this at this time of the morning?” she said.
“It’s me. Fat Charlie. I’m sorry.”
“Well? What you callin’ about?”
“Well, I was calling to ask your advice. You see, my brother came out here.”
“Your brother.”
“Spider. You told me about him. You said to ask a spider if I wanted to see him, and I did, and he’s here.”
“Well,” she said, noncommittally, “that’s good.”
“It’s not.”
“Why not? He’s family, isn’t he?”
“Look, I can’t go into it now. I just want him to go away.”
“Have you tried asking him nicely?”
“We just got through with all that. He says he isn’t going. He’s set up something that looks like the pleasure dome of Kublai Khan in my box room and, I mean, round here you need the council’s permission just to put in double glazing. He’s got some kind of waterfall in there. Not in there, it’s on the other side of the window. And he’s after my fiancée.”
“How do you know?”
“He said so.”
Mrs. Higgler said, “I’m not at my best before I have my coffee.”
“I just need to know how to make him go away.”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Higgler. “I will talk to Mrs. Dunwiddy about it.” She hung up.
Fat Charlie went back down to the end of the corridor and knocked on the door.
“What is it now?”
“I want to talk.”
The door clicked and swung open. Fat Charlie went inside. Spider was reclining, naked, in the hot tub. He was drinking something more or less the color of electricity from a long, frosted glass. The huge picture windows were now wide open, and the roar of the waterfall contrasted with the low, liquid jazz that emanated from hidden speakers somewhere in the room.
“Look,” said Fat Charlie, “you have to understand, this is my house.”
Spider blinked. “This?” he asked. “This is your house?”
“Well, not exactly. But the principle’s the same. I mean, we’re in my spare room, and you’re a guest. Um.”
Spider sipped his drink and luxuriated deeper in the hot water. “They say,” he said, “that houseguests are like fish. They both stink after three days.”
“Good point,” said Fat Charlie.
“But it’s hard,” said Spider. “Hard when you’ve gone a lifetime not seeing your brother. Hard when he didn’t even know you existed. Harder still when you finally see him and learn that, as far as he’s concerned, you’re no better than a dead fish.”
“But,” said Fat Charlie.
Spider stretched in the tub. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “I can’t stay here forever. Chill. I’ll be gone before you know it. And, for my part, I will never think of you as a dead fish. And I appreciate that we’re both under a lot of stress. So let’s say no more about it. Why don’t you go and get yourself some lunch—leave your front-door key behind—and then go and see a movie.”