Château Buckle
OSCAR AND HIS FATHER lovingly referred to their Alley apartment as Château Buckle,23 and as far as apartments went, it was warm and cozy and safe and clean and cluttered and, according to the two of them, absolutely perfect in every way.
It had two floors: On the first floor was the kitchen and living room, a small bathroom, and a curtained-off space where Bilius slept. The second floor was much smaller and consisted only of Oscar’s bedroom and another bathroom with a big bathtub and shower.
Château Buckle was located in Building 4 of the thirteen apartment buildings that made up the Alley, and colloquially, among its tenants, it was called Dove. All the buildings were named after birds. Saige, who lived just across the way with her mother, father, and baby brother, lived in Woodpecker.24
Oscar and his father usually arrived home around the same time. Bilius spent most of his days in the Buckle Umbrellas storefront and workshop, which was located in the middle of the thirteen apartment buildings, in a small arrangement of shops where the people of the Alley bought their clothes and their books and their shoes and, yes, their umbrellas.
If it was a good day, Bilius had managed to sell one umbrella.
If it was a very good day, he’d sold two.
If it was an extraordinary day, he’d sold three, to rich people who came down from Roan Piers to buy something fancy and expensive to impress their neighbors.
But if it was a bad day, he’d sold none at all.
Today was a bad day.
When Oscar got home, he found Bilius sitting on the floor in the living room, his shoes still on, his coat still on, his umbrella still open by the door. Bilius had his face in his hands, but when he heard the door open, he looked up quickly, trying to shake the darkness from his eyes, smiling for his son.
“Oscar,” he said. “I was just resting.”
“On the floor?”
“Long day.”
“Any sales?” Oscar asked, even though he already knew the answer. There hadn’t been a sale for nine days now.
“It’s a lull,” Bilius said. “It’s been wibbing for days. People only buy umbrellas when it’s really coming down.”
“Look what I got,” Oscar said, trying to improve the mood. He took the svins from his tote. “I’ll cook a svin casserole tonight, okay, Dad?”
“Oh, Oscar. That sounds lovely,” Bilius said. “That sounds like exactly what I need.”
“Why don’t you head upstairs and get showered and I’ll start cooking,” Oscar suggested. He held out his hand and helped Bilius to his feet.
“You’re too good to me,” Bilius said, ruffling Oscar’s hair.
He kicked off his shoes and headed upstairs.
Oscar went to the kitchen, dropping his tote on the round table and washing his hands in the sink. The kitchen window looked out to the east, and he could see Woodpecker and Saige’s kitchen window and, above that, Saige’s bedroom. It was dark now; Saige took piano lessons after school and her parents both worked late.
It was one of the things they’d bonded over, when they’d first become friends. Their bedroom windows faced each other. They did Morse code with flashlights and had once attempted a string-and-can telephone. It had worked for a few weeks, until a particularly bad tranklumpet25 had knocked the whole thing down.
Oscar washed the svins, then he got a cutting board and sliced them into thin, perfect ovals. He found a can of crushed tomatoes and lined a casserole dish with them, then added a layer of svins and a layer of cheese. He popped the casserole into the oven and set a timer for one hour. And then, because they had enough flour for it, he made two individually sized loaves of quickbread26 and slid them in next to the casserole.
Oscar looked out the window again. The Cleverers’ apartment was still dark, and the rain had increased from a wib to a plinker,27 falling just slightly more heavily now. Oscar was glad he was inside. If he had a least favorite type of rain, it was the creeping, tickly, skin-crawly drops of a plinker.
If he craned his neck and looked upward, Oscar could just about see a sliver of sky between the two apartment buildings. As usual, it was gray, smoky, cloudy, and generally miserable. Oscar couldn’t remember the last time he had seen the sun. Which feels like a good time to discuss—
Footnotes
23 Château is French for “castle.” There are indeed people in Oscar’s world who speak French, in a tiny country to the northeast of Roan called not France but Frunce (long story). They do have an Eiffel Tower there, and it’s pretty similar to our world’s Eiffel Tower, except it’s three feet shorter and bright blue.
24 Everyone just thought it was nicer to call the buildings names like Dove and Woodpecker, as opposed to Building 4 and Building 5.
25 A rain characterized by its sudden bursts of downpour lasting a few seconds at a time, creating a distinctive pulsating effect.
26 It is what it sounds like: quick bread.
27 A very ticklish kind of rain that slithers down the back of your collar and crawls into the cuffs of your socks.