“That’s just your speed, Crope, the wild beasts of the untamed Vinkus,” said Glinda. “I think the fashion possibilities, all those leather thongs and fringe and such, they might interest you, but I can’t see you as Mister Mountain Boy.”
“No, probably not,” agreed Crope. “Unless it affords fabulous cafés every four or five blocks, I don’t think a landscape quite developed enough for human habitation.”
Fiyero shook hands with Crope and then, remembering the rumors about poor Tibbett’s deterioration, kissed him; he threw his arms around Glinda and hugged her hard. She laced her arm through his and walked him to the door.
“Do let me shake off Crope and have you back, all to myself,” she said in a low voice, her patter evaporating into seriousness. “I can’t tell you, dear Fiyero. The past seems both more mysterious and more understandable with you right here before me. I feel there are things I could yet learn. I don’t want to wallow, dear boy, never that! But we go way back.” She held his hand between hers. “Something’s going on in your life. I’m not as dumb as I act. Something good and bad at the same time. Maybe I can help.”
“You were always sweet,” he said, and motioned to the doorman to hail a hansom cab. “How I regret that I won’t meet Sir Chuffrey.”
He moved out the doorway, across the marble entrance pavement, and turned to tip his hat at her. In the doors (the doormen held them open to enhance his parting view) she was a calm, resigned woman, neither transparent nor ineffectual—even, it might have been said, a woman full of grace. “If you should see her,” said Glinda lightly, “tell her I miss her still.”
He didn’t see Glinda again. He didn’t call at the Florinthwaite Club. He didn’t stroll past the Thropp family house in Lower Mennipin Street (though he was sorely tempted). He didn’t stop a scalper to try to get one of the tickets to Sillipede’s triumphant fourth annual comeback tour. He found himself in the Chapel of Saint Glinda in Saint Glinda Square, from which he could sometimes hear the cloistered maunts next door chanting and susurrating like a swarm of bees.
When the two weeks had passed at last, and the city was worked up to a froth over Lurlinemas, he went to see Elphaba, half-expecting she would have vanished.
But there she was, stern and loving and in the midst of making a vegetable pie for him. Her precious Malky was putting his feet in the flour and making paw prints all over the room. They talked awkwardly until Malky upset the bowl of vegetable stock, and that made them both laugh.
He didn’t tell her about Glinda. How could he? Elphaba had worked so hard to keep them all at bay, and now she was engaged in the major campaign of her life, the thing she had been working toward for five years. He did not approve of anarchy (well, he knew he was in lazy doubt about everything; doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction). But even after seeing the Bear cub struck down, he had to keep an even, cautious relationship with the Power on the throne—for the sake of his tribe.
Also, Fiyero didn’t want to make Elphie’s life harder than it was. And his selfish need to be comfortable with her surmounted his need to gossip. So he didn’t tell her Nessarose and Nanny were in town either, or had been. (For all he knew, he rationalized silently, they had already moved on.)
“I wonder,” she said that night, as the stars peered through the crazy frost pattern on the skylight, “I wonder if you should get out of town before Lurlinemas Eve.”
“Is all hell going to break loose?”
“I told y
ou, I don’t know the whole picture; I can’t know; I shouldn’t know. But maybe some hell will break loose. Maybe it would be best for you to go.”
“I’m not going and you can’t make me.”
“I’ve been taking correspondence courses in sorcery on the side, I’ll go puff and turn you into stone.”
“You mean you’ll make me hard? I’m already hard.”
“Stop. Stop.”
“Oh you wicked woman, you have bewitched me again, look, it has a mind of its own—”
“Fiyero stop. Stop. Now look, I mean it. I want to know where you’re going to be on Lurlinemas Eve. Just so I can be sure you’re not going to get hurt. Tell me.”
“You mean we won’t be together?”
“It’s a work night for me,” she said grimly. “I’ll see you the next day.”
“I’ll wait here for you.”
“No you won’t. I think we’ve covered our tracks pretty well, but there’s still a chance even at this late date that somebody could come here to intercept me. No—you stay in your club and take a bath. Take a nice long cold bath. Got it? Don’t even go out. They say it might be snowy by then anyway.”
“It’s Lurlinemas Eve! I’m not going to spend the holiday in a bathtub all alone.”
“Well, hire some company, see if I care.”
“As if you don’t.”
“Just stay away from anything social, I mean theatre or crowds, or even restaurants, please, will you promise me that?”
“If you could be more specific I could be more careful.”
