chapter nine

Orville wandered. It was all that he wanted to do, transfixed by the garish displays of colours that were making him vaguely nauseous. He turned right, stepping through a stucco finished alleyway that led down a short flight of steps covered in sunshine and shade. From somewhere overhead a parrot squawked noisily and he could smell frying bananas. From behind him, a voice that sounded like a boy’s at first cleared its throat. He paused. What did that mean? He was preparing himself to lure this hitchhiker down a deep and dark alleyway and either disembowl him and throw his body in the nearest garbage can or just lose him when he started to run in those big galloping steps that he took when he made up his mind (and dignity) to run. But now the stranger was summoning him from behind a clenched fist held over mouth.
Ahuuurrm, ahem. Orville turned, slowly.
Standing behind him with a hand clenched in a fist against his lips, was a tiny man dressed in an equally tiny black suit and tie. The tiny man’s fist came down when he had finished his last throat clearer and found its companion now joined agreeably with the other in a tightly knit bundle over his crotch.
“Yes?” Orville asked. His hand made a quick, but determined dash for a pencil in the loose flapping pocket of his coat. ‘Possibly could use it in a pinch,’ he thought.
The sight of the little man in front of him was a little ridiculous, as if this were Gulliver’s room service attendant. The little man was dressed neatly. The passageway was comfortably cool. Was this a dream? Or had the little man come as an assassin?
“Can... I... help you?” Orville asked him, not knowing what else to say at this juncture. It was either kill or give directions time.
“Oh no,” the little man began, “ but it is more than about how I can help you.” He stopped.
Orville looked at him, waiting for him to go on and the silence became, well... more silent. Orville wanted to begin to turn, but didn’t trust himself to walk away just yet.
“So... what can you help...” he trailed off. Orville was not sure if what he was seeing in front of him were truly there. He heard a peal of a single bell from far away.
“With many a thing.” The little man had a fine and wispery French accent. It reminded Orville of lace curtains hanging in a southeastern Asian bedroom, slightly stale and unused, just dangling there.
“You have to remember... Monsieur...” and the little man looked up at him with those big blue eyes again that made Orville wince slightly enough to want to sneeze, “Monsieur... Orville (the short man made it sound like Hor-veel, which made him think uncomfortably that he had said ‘horrible...’) Newton (his middle name came out with that peculiar to the French accent tone of forced air clipped through the nose...interesting thought, maybe I should use that as an affectation) Leone (and his last name with impeccable precision...), you must remember this.” The little man rose a tiny pink finger into the air and drew a circle of air, “when the parrot flies upside down, you know that the rose is ready to be planted.”
“What rose?” Orville sat himself upon a cement stairway banner that went up to one of many tiny apartment doors on the second floor. He heard another bell. Bells began to ring in his head, some Xmas tune. First one bell and then a few more. They all chimed in to begin a lilting symphony of bells.
The tiny man wrinkled his nose. “The rose that you seek.”
Now Orville was entirely not sure of what he was hearing. He had been on this trail for so long.
“The rose?” He wanted the little man to explain it to him. If I cannot be sure of what I am looking for...? Then let this man, this boy? Was he even sure that it was a man and not some little mourner from a fugitive cemetery.
“Yes, the rose...” The little man stopped and looked at his wristwatch. He drew up the sleeve and pointed his hand to the right of Orville. Orville knew that he must be careful. So many gadgets hidden inside of a shirtsleeve or in a watch, oh yes. Hadn’t there been that one in Sydney where the silent (to human ears...) chime had summoned the pack of wild wombats, alighting on his arms and legs, all of their tiny but stout marsupial paws trying to climb the length of him and the heiress had nearly escaped back into the outback? So many things hid in tiny crevesses and behind the familiar.
When he had finished checking his watch the little man sighed heavily. “The rose that you seek is the secret...” he paused looking around him at the empty courtyard, Orville thought mainly for effect. He could have told him that there was nothing hiding in the shadows.
“The secret of immortality...” The little man looked at him as if to check that he understood.
Orville did not understand, but nodded anyways. “I see.”
“Do you?”
The little man sighed. “I myself have never understood it. Would you believe that?”
“No.”