One evening, she was washing dishes and her little brother was drying them. Michael hated drying dishes, which meant he did a lousy job of it. It also meant he looked for any excuse not to dry them. Even talking with his sister was better than doing what he was supposed to do—especially if he could annoy her. He did his best, saying, "You haven't heard from your boyfriend lately."
Lucy was washing a big serving platter. Mother would get upset if she smashed it over Michael's head. Too bad, she thought. She looked down her nose at him instead. "I haven't got a boyfriend," she said loftily.
"You know the one I mean—the guy from that place with the neat electronics." Michael was going to take over Father's shop one of these days (if I don't strangle him first, Lucy thought). He'd already learned a lot about the things Father repaired.
What he'd learned about people, on the other hand, would fit on a pinhead, and a little pinhead at that. Lucy sometimes thought he was a little pinhead. She said, "Paul's not my boyfriend. You'd better remember that. And you'd better remember he got Father out of jail, so you don't want to make rude remarks about him. You do want to dry that platter. Don't just stick it in the drainer."
Michael made a face at her. He dried the platter, but wanting to was a different story. Then he made another face, not the same one this time. "If he's not your boyfriend, what is he?"
"He's none of your business, that's what," Lucy snapped. Michael grinned. He'd made her angry, which won him a point. For a little while, Lucy was hotter than the water in the sink. Then she said, "He's just a friend. That's not the same as a boyfriend. You'll find out what the difference is when you get bigger."
Her brother made yet another face, one both disgusting and disgusted. At ten, he was sure girls were poisonous. He was sure he'd feel that way forever, too. He wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He wasn't smart enough to realize he wasn't as smart as he thought he was, either.
When he stopped making gagging and choking noises to go with the horrible face, he said, "If he's just a friend, how come he never comes over here?"
Because it might bring the Feldgendarmerie down on him. Because it might bring the Feldgendarmerie down on us, too. Lucy smiled sweetly. "Because then he might meet you, and he'd never want anything to do with me again after that."
"You're mean!" Michael could dish it out better than he could take it. He fired the big gun: "Mommy!"
"What's going on?" Mother called from the living room. A warning note rang in her voice.
Michael's explanation differed from Lucy's by about 180 degrees. They both got louder and louder, trying to shout each other down. Michael snapped the towel at Lucy. That could have hurt, but he missed. She splashed him with dishwater. He screeched so shrilly, even dogs would have had trouble hearing him.
"What's going on?" Mother said again, this time from the doorway. Again, the stories she heard might have happened on two different planets. She set her hands on her hips. "That will be enough from both of you. One more peep from this kitchen out of either one of you and you'll both be sorry."
Lucy finished washing the dishes. Michael finished drying them. They made faces and sent rude gestures at each other till they were done. Neither said a thing. They got their messages across just the same.
When Lucy came out of the kitchen, her father looked out from behind his newspaper. That was enough to make her stop in surprise. Once he started looking at the paper, he was usually gone till he got done. Then he surprised her again by saying her name.
"What is it, Father?" she asked.
"What do you know about Curious Notions?" Charlie Woo asked in turn. "Will they be opening up again? I want more of a chance to find out how they do what they do."
I know how they do what they do. They bring things in somehow from another world. No wonder you couldn't figure out how their gadgets work. But Lucy didn't think she could tell him that. He might believe it. He knew those gadgets weren't like any this world made. They hit him the same way Paul's claim to come from Thirty-third Avenue in the Sunset District hit her. They didn't fit. They didn't fit. But the reason they didn't fit was Paul's secret. And he'd made it very plain that he wished she didn't know it, let alone anyone else.
She might have told her father anyway, except for one other thing. Paul had also made it very plain that knowing his secret was dangerous. If he hadn't, what had happened to him and to his father and to Curious Notions would have. Lucy didn't want her father to know the secret because it might be dangerous to him. The Germans had already jailed him once just for being near the edges of it.
So all she said was, "I don't think they're going to be opening up again any time soon. The Feldgendarmerie let Mr. Gomes go, but they haven't let him get back to work."
"I wonder why not," her father said. "If they want to catch him doing something, they should give him the chance to do it. If they leave the place closed, they'll never find out what he was up to."
Lucy blinked. She hadn't thought of it like that. Most of the time, it would have made good sense. But one of the things Mr. Gomes could do—or she supposed he could—was disappear from this world and go back to his own. And if he did, how could the Feldgen-darmerie go after him?
"I didn't know you could think like a Feldgendarmerie man," she said.
Her father made a face nastier than any of the ones Michael had aimed at her. "You say the sweetest things," he muttered.
"I didn't mean it like that," Lucy told him.
That horrible face melted into a tired smile. "I know you didn't, sweetheart," he said. "But I've met the Germans up close, and you haven't. I don't want to think like them, believe you me I don't."
She started to say she'd met the Feldgendarmerie, too, when they let him out of jail and brought him back here. Something in his eyes told her that would be worse than just wasting her breath. It would be saying something not only stupid but naive. No one could know the German secret police who hadn't been in jail, who hadn't been grilled. Father had. She hadn't. It was as simple as that.
He went back to his newspaper. She went to her room. He hadn't rubbed her nose in the mistake she almost made. That wasn't his style. But he'd made sure she knew about it. And she did. She didn't think she'd ever be foolish that particular way again.
The next couple of days, Mrs. Cho was grumpy. She was worse than grumpy, in fact—she was downright mean. Lucy wondered if her supervisor was having a hard time at home and taking it out on her. If it wasn't something like that, then the Triads weren't happy with her. She hoped it was Mrs. Cho's problem.
But it turned out not to be. When she got back to her desk from lunch on the third day, she fond a note on it. Please see me this evening—S.H., it said in Stanley Hsu's elegant script. Lucy wondered who'd put it there. Mrs. Cho? Somebody from outside the shoe factory? She realized she'd probably never find out.
She tore the note into little pieces and threw it in the trash. She wished she could ignore it along with ripping it up. But she couldn't, and she knew it.
She did her best to look on the bright side of things. She usually did, even if it didn't always help. Maybe the jeweler or Mr. Gomes had learned what had happened to Paul. Maybe he'd even be there. She didn't really expect he would, but she could hope.
Mrs. Cho kept right on being nasty the rest of the day. Did that mean she wasn't the one who'd put the note on Lucy's desk? Or was she just trying to show Lucy that the Triads were still mad at her? Lucy gave up trying to figure it out. She'd get some answers—or she hoped she would—when she saw Stanley Hsu.