The toast popped out of the toaster, startling her. Rose Noire arranged the slices on a plate, then placed the plate neatly on a small tray already loaded with a teacup and saucer, a spoon, a sugar bowl, a tray of lemons, a butter dish, a marmalade jar, a butter knife, and a lacy starched napkin. I wondered if the elegant tray was intended to improve Dr. Wright’s aura or her mood, or whether Rose Noire was simply incapable of being as rude as I would have been to our guest.
“I’d have showed her the way to the kitchen and let her make her own weak tea and pale toast,” I said.
“But then we’d all have to put up with her here,” Rose Noire said. “Her and her negative energy. I already need to do a cleansing in the house as soon as she leaves.”
“While you’re at it, have the place fumigated,” I said, blowing my nose. “That perfume of hers is driving me bonkers.”
“Some sort of ghastly artificial scent, no doubt,” Rose Noire said. “An essential oil would never do that to you. Where’s the teapot?”
It took a couple of minutes for her to locate the teapot—a student was cutting up onions on the counter where Rose Noire had left it, and another student was kneading dough in the place where the first student thought she’d put the teapot. It finally turned up on the floor near the basement door. Rose Noire hurried to whisk the tea infuser out.
“Do you think it’ll be too strong for her?” I asked.
“I only used about three tea leaves,” Rose Noire said with a sniff. “She’s more likely to mistake it for plain hot water.”
I noticed she’d used our black Wedgwood teapot and a matching cup and saucer—was that because they were among the few impressively expensive bits of china we owned, or because she thought they matched Dr. Wright’s poisonous aura?
She covered the pot with an incongruously cheerful quilted tea cozy and placed it on the tray. Dr. Wright would probably think Rose Noire was our housekeeper. In fact, I suspected she already thought that, which would account for her excessive rudeness.
Not a good idea to tell Rose Noire that. I just shook my head in sympathy and got a glass from the cabinet.
“Let me fix that,” Rose Noire said.
“You’ve got Dr. Wright to worry about,” I said.
“She can wait,” Rose Noire said. “Juice?”
“Some ginger ale,” I said. “My stomach’s a little unsettled. Probably just the excitement.”
“Damn, but that guy’s rude,” someone said behind me.
I turned to see a young woman bundled up like an arctic explorer coming in through the back door.
“You mean Dr. Blanco?” I asked.
She nodded. She pushed her hood back and I saw it was the young woman who’d arrived with Ramon and Señor Mendoza.
“What’s wrong, Bronwyn?” Rose Noire asked.
“Dr. Blanco came in and complained that it was too cold out there in your office,” Bronwyn said. “So I went out to show him where the space heater was,” she said. “As soon as I got it going, he demanded some hot tea and snapped at me that he was busy and needed privacy and wasn’t to be disturbed. So what am I supposed to do with the tea—slip it under the door?”
“Here.” Rose Noire handed me a glass of ginger ale—probably organic ginger ale made from free-range ginger roots, if there was such a thing, but it tasted fine. In fact, it tasted delicious. I had to force myself to sip rather than gulp. I’d have to visit the bathroom soon enough as it was.
“He probably won’t even notice if I don’t bring him any tea,” Bronwyn went on. “When I left, he was yelling into his cell phone. Something about the heating plant.”
“If he’s working on getting the heat back on, let’s do anything we can to help him,” I suggested. Blanco was probably the administrator Michael had mentioned earlier—the one running around with a roll of Tums in his pocket. And if he was the person in charge of solving the heating-plant problem, perhaps I should revise my already pessimistic estimate of how long the repairs would take.
Rose Noire finished fussing with the tea tray and carried it out. I glanced at the kitchen clock. Almost noon. We should probably offer some kind of lunch to Michael and the other professors. And by “we” I meant Rose Noire, who wouldn’t let me fix a meal even if I had the energy to do so.
I followed her out of the kitchen and plunked myself down in one of the dining room chairs that cluttered our hall, my glass of ginger ale in hand. Time for another nap. Past time, in fact. But I didn’t want to nod off while there was anything I could do to help Michael, and climbing the stairs wasn’t something I did any more often than I had to.