I didn’t have to give Alice any instructions about my office because anything sensitive or valuable had already been locked up months ago, when I got too large to get near my anvil and had to put my blacksmithing business on hold for the balance of my pregnancy.
“And you might open the French doors to the sunporch and crack a few of the jalousies,” I called after Rose Noire. “A little ventilation would be nice. She’s wearing gallons of some ghastly perfume that makes me sneeze.”
“The library will be freezing if I do that!” Rose Noire protested.
“True,” I said.
“We’ll give it a good airing as soon as she leaves,” Michael said.
“Good idea,” I said as Rose Noire tripped away. “Michael, can we talk for a moment?”
I indicated the pantry and Michael followed me in.
Of course, so did the smell of the sardines, mingling with the remnants of the paella. In the small space of the pantry, the odors seemed more overwhelming.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” he said. And then he noticed my face and scrambled to find something on the shelves.
“Here.” He twisted open the top of a little jar of stick cinnamon and handed it to me.
“You’re a mind reader,” I said, holding the jar to my nose. “That helps.”
“The zarzuela’s a little overwhelming,” he said.
“Zarzuela? I thought that was a kind of theater?”
“It’s also a kind of Catalan fish stew—sort of like bouillabaisse.”
I wrinkled my nose at the thought.
“I thought he was fixing paella.”
“He’s fixing both.”
“Yuck.”
“Just inhale the cinnamon,” Michael said. He unfolded the stepping stool I kept in the pantry to reach the top shelves, and I perched on the seat. “It’s supposed to stimulate the brain.”
“Brain stimulation’s good,” I said. “Because we need to strategize.”
“Art and Abe are on their way,” he said. He had closed his eyes and was leaning against the door. “You realize that this could torpedo my bid for tenure.”
There. One of us had said it aloud. According to all the new age books Rose Noire kept giving me, naming a worry was supposed to help you realize that it wasn’t really as bad as you feared. But this was every bit that bad. It plopped down and brought our conversation to a dead stop as both of us thought about it.
“Yes,” I said finally. “But Dr. Wright’s probably already gunning for you. And anyway—can you live with yourself if you don’t at least try to fix things?”
“No,” he said, without hesitation. “We have to help Ramon. I just wanted to make sure you were okay with it.”
“I’m fine with it,” I said.
“And I think Groucho and Harpo would understand,” Michael said.
“Oh, God,” I said, clutching my belly. “Not Groucho and Harpo!”
“Why not? I thought you liked the Marx Brothers.”
“Yes, but there were three of them—don’t forget Chico. Haven’t there been rare cases where people thought they were having twins and ended up with triplets? Don’t jinx us!”
I began looking around for someplace to put my feet up.
“Actually, there were five of them—don’t forget Zeppo and Gummo. I’m pretty sure the doctors wouldn’t overlook an extra three.”
He pulled a twelve-pack of paper towels down from a top shelf and set it where I could use it as a footstool.
“Thanks,” I said. “And humor me—let’s stick to doubles only.”
“So Winken and Blinken would be out, too.”
“Since two of the hyenas at the zoo are already named that, I think not. But we’re wandering. Back to the problem at hand. What do we do?”
“We can’t just jump in without thinking. We need a plan.”
And he was probably expecting me to help him formulate the plan. Normally, that was the sort of thing I was good at. Why did this crisis have to hit when I felt as if my brain was full of sludge?
Just then P squirmed, as if expressing his impatience, and non-P predictably delivered several thumping blows.
“Settle down and take a nap, kiddies,” I said, patting them. “Mommy needs to think.”
“More premature labor pains?” Michael asked. I’d been having something called Braxton-Hicks contractions for weeks now. After one late-night visit to the emergency room and several anxious calls to Dad and my ob-gyn, we’d stopped panicking.
“No,” I said. “Just the kids doing their calisthenics. Just as well, since if I were getting contractions now, they might not be false.”