The blankets she had left stacked on the end of the couch were draped unevenly over it, the tail of one of the quilts trailing on the floor. In the middle of them, sound asleep, lay Bets, her golden curls spread out endearingly against the pillow and her thumb in her mouth. She was hugging a teddy bear and a frayed pink blanket. Chris glanced at Hutchins, wondering if this was what all the throat-clearing had been about, but he was bending over Bets, shaking his head. “I was wrong about the kid’s acting ability. She’s doing an amazing imitation of an innocent child asleep.”
“Bets,” Chris said sternly. “Wake up. What are you doing in here?”
Bets sighed, a sweet, babyish sigh, and turned over.
“I know you’re awake, Bets,” Chris said. She knelt down and snatched the teddy bear away from her. “Tell me what you’re doing in here, or I’ll call your agent and tell him both your front teeth fell out.”
“You better not,” Bets said. She sat up, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright with sleep. “You better give me back my teddy bear.”
Chris stuck the teddy bear behind her back. “Not until you tell me what you’re doing in here.”
“The door was open and I came in here just for a minute and your bed looked so soft I guess I just fell asleep.” She shrugged daintily.
“She ate my porridge all up, too,” Hutchins said. “Where’s your phone, Chris?”
Bets stood up in the middle of the couch. Her pink nightgown had a ruffle around the bottom that almost covered her bare toes. “My mother says we’re first on the list and you can’t just sublet your room to some boyfriend of yours. She says…”
“I did not sublet my room to anybody. Mr. Okeefenokee sublet his room to Mr. Hutchins.”
“Oh, yeah?” Bets said. “Then what’s that doing in here?” She pointed up at the ceiling.
“What is that?” Chris said, looking up at the hammocklike arrangement of straps and white padding hanging from the ceiling. There was an aluminum ladder hooked onto the wall above the couch.
“It’s an astronaut’s sleep restraint,” Hutchins said. “Okee bought it at the NASA Surplus Store. It was used on the space station, but don’t worry. It’s been reinforced for seventy percent gravity. It won’t fall down.”
“It won’t fall down because you’re taking it down. I agreed to let you stay in Mr. Okeefenokee’s room, not in here.”
“I know, but Okee has trouble understanding more than one meaning of a word. That’s what I was trying to tell you at Luigi’s. You told him there wasn’t any more room in your apartment, so he thinks ‘room’ means ‘available storage space.’ ” He pointed at the ceiling. “He apparently decided this space was available.”
Chris didn’t wait for him to finish. She marched down the hall and pounded on the door of Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. “Mr. Okeefenokee!” she shouted. “I have to talk to you.”
“Shh,” Hutchins said. “You’ll wake up that DeMille crowd scene outside.”
“I don’t care if I wake the orbiting dead. You’re not sleeping in my room.”
“You’d better give me back my teddy bear,” Bets said.
Okee pushed open his shoji screen an inch and a half and peeked out.
“Mr. Okeefenokee, there’s been a misunderstanding. Mr. Hutchins can’t sleep in my room. I said you could sublet your room.” She could see the smile coming.
“Remember ‘role’?” Hutchins said. “Remember ‘cups’? Remember ‘neck’? I spent fifteen minutes trying to explain the difference to him this afternoon.”
“And then you suggested that we go out for dinner so we wouldn’t get back here until it was too late for me to do anything about it,” she said furiously. “You probably timed it so it was raining, too.”
“Look, I’m too tired to argue with you, and in about five minutes I’m going to be too lagged to even make it up that ladder and into bed. So if we could please talk about it in the morning…”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m calling Stewart.”
“What for? He told you to do whatever Okee wants. Okee wants me to stay.”
“Stewart was not talking about a man sleeping in my room.
“I’m not sleeping in your room. I’m sleeping in Okee’s room, which happens to be above your room.” He shuffled off down the hall. “I’m going to bed. G’night.” Bets padded barefoot after him. They disappeared into the living room.
Chris punched in Stewart’s number and let it ring. After the first ring, she hit the time key on the screen. It flashed twenty-three o’clock. Stewart’s mother went to bed at twenty-one-thirty. Chris hit the hang-up button.
Okee was still peeking at her through the tiny space in the sliding door. “All right,” she said, “he can stay tonight, but tomorrow…”
“Tomorrow you and Hutchins get married,” he said, and slid the screen shut with a bang.
Hutchins was already in the sleep restraint, one arm dangling limply over the side. Bets and Molly were in Molly’s sleeping bag, which they had dragged over next to the couch. Their eyes were squeezed shut and their hands were tucked up under their cheeks.
“I said Mr. Hutchins could stay,” Chris said. “I didn’t say anything about you two. Out.”
Molly sat up and rubbed her eyes with her chubby little fists. “We have to thtay to thyaperone you,” she said, “tho people won’t think you’re a thlut.”
Chris was suddenly too tired to argue with them. It’s the sake, she thought irrationally. He tried to get me drunk so I’d let him stay. He had the whole thing planned.
She undressed in the bathroom and put on her nightshirt, even though there wasn’t enough room in there to raise her arms over her head. Molly and Bets had kicked their covers off. She put Bets’s pink blanket over them, turned off the lights, and got into bed.
She could hear Hutchins breathing above her in the darkness, a heavy, even breathing that meant he was already asleep. Poor guy, she thought in spite of herself.
When she had emigrated to Sony, she’d barely made it through customs and into the Hilton before collapsing. There was no way she could have made it through a dinner and a sutorippu. Half a sutorippu, she thought, feeling pleased all over again at the way he’d fallen asleep during Omiko’s act.
Bets turned over and murmured something that sounded like “I’m going to be a star!” A sound like the shuttle taking off roared from Mr. Okeefenokee’s room. It went on for a full minute, subsided, and then started up again.
“What in the hell’s that?” Hutchins said. She could hear the sleep restraint creak as if he had sat up.
“It’s Mr. Okeefenokee,” Chris whispered.
“What’s he doing?”
“Snoring, I think. He does it every night.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, and she could hear his head flop back against the pillow. “No wonder you wanted to get rid of him.”
“I didn’t want to get rid of him. I like him. It’s just that it’s such a little apartment, and he keeps bringing things home with him, like the piano, and I’m running out of room for .… where’s the piano? It wasn’t in the hall.”
“I helped him shove it into his room this afternoon,” Hutchins said. “It sounds like he’s got a spaceship in there, too. You don’t suppose he bought one at NASA Surplus when I wasn’t looking?”