The Order of Odd-Fish (2 page)

At this the tabloids swung into a twitter. Where was the baby from? How was she dangerous? What was she doing in Lily Larouche’s washing machine? But there were no answers. And the baby, disappointingly, turned out to be ordinary. The public’s interest eventually waned, and the incident was mostly forgotten.

It was now thirteen years later. Jo had grown up from the “dangerous” baby in the washing machine to the girl playing the organ. And she was still playing, watching the swinging crowd, when she saw something startling: Aunt Lily and Colonel Korsakov, dancing as though they’d known each other for years.

“But of course we’ve only met tonight,” laughed Aunt Lily. She wore long red velvet gloves and a red dress with a plunging neckline. A diamond choker dangled trails of glittering stones down her neck; her lips were painted deep red; her hair was a brilliant white; her skin was deeply tanned and as wrinkled as a raisin. She was eighty-two years old.

Jo, Aunt Lily, and Colonel Korsakov were outside, lounging near the heart-shaped pool. The party was winding down, and the last guests—a glittering silver dragon, a queasy-looking cowboy, an alligator in a bikini—milled about, reluctant to go home. An orange sunrise smoldered behind clouds, revealing a desert as empty and desolate as an alien planet.

Jo watched Aunt Lily flirt with Korsakov, her own eyes half closed.
But I’ve got to stay awake,
she yawned to herself. It was at this time of night that Aunt Lily was at her most reckless.

“So what brings you this far out in the desert?” asked Aunt Lily.

Korsakov looked around carefully. “A most secret and important business.” He sipped his Flaming Khrushchev and nodded crisply at Jo. “I have come to bring Jo a gift. And I have come to protect her.”

“
Protect
her?” snorted Aunt Lily.

“I didn’t know I needed protecting,” said Jo.

“What on earth from?” said Aunt Lily.

Korsakov gazed at Jo for a moment. “You
are
Jo Larouche, yes?” He rummaged in his pockets, extracted a sweaty wad of newspaper clippings, uncrumpled one, and looked at Jo again. “The…‘
dangerous
baby’?”

Jo opened her mouth, but Aunt Lily cut her off.

“Balderdash,” said Aunt Lily. “Whoever left that note was just having their little joke. The girl’s as dangerous as a glass of milk. Lived with her for thirteen years, so I should know. Not a peep, not a pop.”

Jo glared at Aunt Lily.

Colonel Korsakov looked disappointed—even the daffodil on his head seemed to droop a little—but then he rumbled, “Nonsense. I have it on excellent authority that Jo Larouche
is
dangerous—and that an
extremely
important item, an item that may even be unsafe in the wrong hands, will be delivered here tonight, to this very—”

But Korsakov never finished. A futuristic white sports car burst out of nowhere, skidded through the rosebushes, and spun to a stop in the sand. Its door flew open and the hedgehog leaped out, shouting, “All right, where is he? Let me at him!”

The boy, his hedgehog costume askew, spotted Korsakov and strode over to them.

Jo’s eyes went wide. The boy had something black, gleaming—a pistol.

“Get up!” shouted the hedgehog, waving his gun at the old Russian.

Colonel Korsakov slowly rose.

“I’m—I’m a violent guy!” stammered the hedgehog.

Korsakov said, “You are an ass.”

“What? Hey! What’s that supposed to mean? Huh?” said the hedgehog. “Listen—”

“If I were you, sir, I would move from that spot,” said Colonel Korsakov. And Jo saw that the hedgehog was standing exactly on the X Korsakov had drawn in the sand.

“Is that a challenge?” shouted the hedgehog.

Jo couldn’t move. She looked around—everyone else was frozen, too, even Aunt Lily. But Korsakov was silent, and seemingly calm.

This made the hedgehog even angrier. “You better apologize, old man, or I’ll shoot!”

Korsakov sighed. “Then shoot me, for God’s sake, or put your gun away. But please, move off that spot.”

“I’m standing right here until you apologize.”

“I strongly advise you to move from that spot.”

“Not until you take back—”

“Sir! For your own safety—move away from that spot!”

“I’ll give you three,” squeaked the boy, the gun shaking in his hands. “One…two…”

“Don’t shoot!” shouted Jo.

The hedgehog whirled, pointing his gun at Jo. “You again? Shut—”

And at that moment, several things happened.

There was a shrieking blast of wind that sent sand flying, paper lanterns swaying. A plane roared far above—and something fell from the sky, down into the garden, and down onto the hedgehog’s head.

The hedgehog collapsed. His gun accidentally fired.

Something like a mountain threw itself in front of Jo. Her ears exploded, the world reeled, and then everything was silent except for a faint ringing in her ears.

Colonel Korsakov staggered backward, clutching his shoulder, about to topple. He had been shot.

But he managed to glance at his watch.

“Precisely on time.”

Then he fell.

Jo scrambled back, just barely avoiding Korsakov as he thudded into the sand, and tripped over the thing that had fallen from the sky—a brown cardboard package, with these words written across the top:

TO: JO LAROUCHE

FROM: THE ORDER OF ODD-FISH

After that, everyone had the leisure to start screaming.

T
HERE
was something ridiculous about the ruby palace by day. It looked tired, not exuberant; its concrete walls were cracked, its paint faded and stained. The debris of last night’s party lay strewn about in the harsh daylight—ripped streamers, broken champagne glasses, burnt-out torches, and some guy’s underwear floating in the pool.

It was a blisteringly hot Christmas. When Jo woke up she was already sweating. The palace’s ancient air conditioner was churning at full blast, but Jo still felt uncomfortably hot—and nervous, what with a wounded Russian upstairs, groaning and rolling about on his creaky bed.

Jo opened her eyes and looked around her bedroom. The walls swooped away all around her, blanketed with fake gems, arching upward and drawing back together in the gloomy, cobwebby ceiling far above her head. Her little bed, plastic table, and scattered clothes were dwarfed inside the vast sparkling gaudiness, as if lost in a giant jeweled egg.

Who
was
Colonel Korsakov? Jo went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on her face, and squinted at herself in the mirror. In the morning light, she found it hard to believe Korsakov really existed. Still, she could hear him grunting and shifting upstairs; it made her uneasy, as if there were a wild rhinoceros in the house.

Jo padded out of the bathroom, glanced dully at the party-wrecked halls, and thought about the package that had fallen from the sky. The package with her name on it. And…the Order of Odd-Fish?

She hadn’t opened it. She had left the package in Korsakov’s room, almost wishing it would be gone the next day. But she couldn’t help feeling the package was waiting. She almost felt like it was daring her.

In the meantime there was Christmas morning, and Aunt Lily’s hangover, to deal with. Jo dragged the moaning, woozy Aunt Lily out of bed, got some coffee into her, and helped her hobble downstairs to the darkened ballroom.

As usual on Christmas morning, Jo and Aunt Lily opened their gifts in front of their battered aluminum Christmas tree, listened to carols crackling on the AM radio, and had a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs, and pancakes. They couldn’t buy proper presents for each other this far out in the desert, so every year they rummaged through Aunt Lily’s storage rooms for forgotten trinkets and exchanged those instead. This year Aunt Lily gave Jo a fake gold sarcophagus, a prop from a mummy movie she’d once starred in. Jo gave Aunt Lily a giant stuffed octopus she’d found rotting away in the attic, origin unknown.

Ordinarily Aunt Lily would’ve been delighted by the octopus, but this morning she was a wreck.

“Oh, why do I do the things I do?” she groaned, holding an ice pack to her head and fumbling with an antique shoebox-sized remote control. “Jo, could you—Jo?”

“What?”

“You mind if I turn on the Belgian Prankster?”

Jo grimaced. “Do we
have
to watch the Belgian Prankster?”

“Please, Jo—ooh, I feel like somebody turned on a blender inside me. You know? I think the Belgian Prankster’s in Denmark this week. Do you think, could I just…?”

“Okay, okay!” Jo could never resist Aunt Lily’s wheedling.

Aunt Lily clicked the remote and the television slowly came to life. A goggled man in furs was rampaging around the streets of Copenhagen on a dogsled, chasing screaming Danes. “The Belgian Prankster!” said Aunt Lily, and her eyes glazed.

Jo lay in the sarcophagus, her eyes closed, and tried to block out the yammering of the Belgian Prankster. She was expected at work in an hour, but there was still some time to relax after her exhausting late night. The inside of the mummy’s coffin, lined with black velvet cushions, was surprisingly comfortable. Lying in it, she felt pleasantly dead.

Still, the dim quiet of the house by day, after last night’s wild noise and glittering lights, made her gloomy. She had a headache. The television was shrill, frantic, too loud. And the Belgian Prankster…

“Hey, Jo?”

Jo opened her eyes.

“That package—why haven’t you opened it?” said Aunt Lily.

Jo turned over. “I don’t know. I don’t feel like it’s mine.”

“Of course it’s yours,” said Aunt Lily. “Had your name on it, anyway, huh?”

Jo frowned. “It also said something about fish…have you ever heard of that? The Order of Odd-Fish?”

Aunt Lily didn’t answer at first. After a moment Jo twisted up out of the sarcophagus and looked at her. Aunt Lily seemed to be concentrating very hard, puzzled and frustrated.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I think I
have
heard of an Order of Odd-Fish, somewhere. But I can’t…it must’ve been a long time ago.”

Something about the words
Order of Odd-Fish
disturbed Aunt Lily; Jo could tell. Her eyes darkened, and her usual liveliness faltered. Jo and Aunt Lily sat silently in the crumbling ballroom’s gloom, and even though Jo was sweating in the heat, she shivered.

“I do want to open that package,” said Jo. “But didn’t Colonel Korsakov say it would be unsafe in the wrong hands?”

Aunt Lily perked up. “Korsakov? What does he know about safe? The fool threw himself in front of a flying bullet. He’s lucky it just nicked him.”

“You could say he saved my life.”

“It was his fault there was any shooting in the first place. I’d kick him out of the house if he weren’t so darned cute.” Aunt Lily turned back to the TV. The Belgian Prankster was pouring tons of cottage cheese down the streets of Copenhagen, burying his fleeing victims; the audience roared with delight. Aunt Lily started to get distracted. “Well, if you do open it, let me know.”

“I won’t open it until he wakes up,” said Jo.

“Suit yourself.”

“Maybe I’ll take a bath,” said Jo.

“Whatever.”

Jo’s bathroom, like everything else at Lily Larouche’s palace, was a gilded wreck of red and gold marble, kaleidoscopic mirrors, and frenzied geometric mosaics, dimly lit by dozens of spicy smoking candles sprouting from a brass chandelier so mammoth and ornate it seemed like a fiery flying city. Jo lay soaking in the ivory bathtub, the silence broken only by the distant chatter of the television, and thought about Aunt Lily.

When Jo was small, she had believed Aunt Lily was the most fascinating woman in the world. But nowadays Aunt Lily was just exasperating. The more Aunt Lily aged, the more childlike she became; soon Jo found that
she
had become the real parent of their little family.

Jo loved Aunt Lily, but it was hard taking care of her. And she had little help. There was Dust Creek, where Jo worked as a waitress, but everyone who lived there was old, almost dead. Every Christmas Aunt Lily threw a costume ball for her old Hollywood friends, but otherwise the ruby palace had few visitors apart from Hoagland Shanks, the local handyman. He showed up once a week to shuffle around the palace, supposedly repairing this or that, but mostly he just stared off into the distance and mumbled about different kinds of pie he liked.

There’s got to be more to life than this,
thought Jo, sliding deeper into the warm pink foam.
I can’t spend the rest of my life squirreled away in this old house. But where can I go?

She went nowhere. Jo spent her days prowling the red dusty hallways, looking for new ways to kill time—practicing the antique organ, riding her bicycle awkwardly around the blazing golden ballroom, or just lying on the roof, staring out into the desert night sky.

More than anything, that note from the washing machine—that word,
dangerous
—teased her, pricked her curiosity. She still had the note. She was secretly proud of it; she liked the idea of being “dangerous.” Sometimes Jo thought that if she was
really
dangerous, she would run away—just steal one of Aunt Lily’s cars, drive to the city, and see what the world was really like. The idea excited her. It sounded like the kind of stunt Aunt Lily might’ve pulled when she was young.

So why don’t I do it?
thought Jo, frustrated.
What’s holding me back?

It was almost time for Jo to go to work. She got out of her bath, dried off, and changed into her waitress uniform—a pink, itchy polyester dress that didn’t really fit—and went to check on Colonel Korsakov.

She knocked on his door. No answer. Jo hesitated, then cautiously tiptoed into the darkened room.

Korsakov lay on the sagging bed, snoring and snorting, his stomach heaving under his pajamas like an unsteady mountain of jelly. Jo stared in a kind of awe. Korsakov was somehow even more colossal than she remembered—like an exuberantly portly walrus.

On his bedside table sat the package from the sky.

The back of Jo’s neck tingled. She reached out, touched the package…no, she couldn’t open it. She would wait for him to wake up. All his talk about “unsafe in the wrong hands”—Jo had never thought of her hands as wrong, but she had never thought of them as particularly right, either. And yet…

She took the package.

The room was silent. Even the snoring Korsakov was momentarily still. And before Jo knew it, she had broken open the lid, sifted through wadded-up newspapers, and grasped the thing inside.

Jo stared at it. It was a black box, made of intricately carved wood and decorated with silver designs. A faint jingling came from within. She put her ear on it and heard something like a tiny alien orchestra: gurgling chimes, the cry and echo of horns, murmuring beeps and bloops…

Jo turned the box over. A silver crank stuck out the side. What would happen if…? She touched it and her hand trembled; she felt fluttery, as though she were on a roller coaster that was right at the top, just about to take the first plunge.

An angry voice broke Jo’s trance.

“It’s unbelievable! The dirty rag!
Shameless!
”

Jo dropped the box in shock.

A giant cockroach had walked into the room, three feet tall, wearing a purple velvet suit with a silk shirt, cravat, and bowler hat. A green carnation was fixed in its buttonhole. The cockroach clutched a newspaper with four arms, reading it through a monocle. Jo backed away, but the insect barely acknowledged her.

“Libel! Scandal! Outrage!” said the cockroach. “I suppose
you,
too, would like to hear the latest slander about me?”

“What?” said Jo weakly.

“Oh, listen to this!” said the insect, flourishing the newspaper and reading aloud: “
Intoxicating evening at Christmas costume ball…Shootings, canings, and bludgeonings from the sky enlivened the evening, as well as the irrepressible SEFINO…Sefino, who dresses with that desperately flamboyant chic depraved cockroaches so effortlessly achieve! Nor did it take long for the enterprising gentleman to find someone to bind him palp to thorax, and subject him to delicious humiliations in the cellar.
” He hurled the newspaper across the room. “What on earth!
Really!
”

Jo managed to stammer, “Who…what are you doing here?”

“A youthful indiscretion,” continued the insect, waggling his finger. “A dreadful nightclub in Cairo—an excess of gin—a frightful glass chandelier that, I maintain,
was improperly installed—
it could’ve happened to anyone, don’t you think? Or do you?”

“Um…it could’ve happened to anyone?”

“You have good sense. I can tell. We’ll get along smashingly,” said the cockroach. “You
are
Jo Larouche, aren’t you? I’m Sefino, of course. And it’s all very well for
you. You
aren’t hounded night and day by these…these
jackals
! Chatterbox indeed. Will I never be rid of these rumor-mongering muckrakers?”

Jo gawked at the insect. She had no idea what to do. Shout for Aunt Lily? But what help would she be?

Sefino ambled over to Colonel Korsakov and poked him. “Korsakov got himself shot again, eh? Not surprised. The man’s hobby is getting shot. He has a positive talent for it.”

“You know Korsakov?” said Jo hopefully.

“Know him? He’s my partner! Have mercy on us all,” said Sefino. “Thirteen years of working with a man who has philosophical debates with his digestion! Often I’ll be talking with him and then I realize he isn’t responding to me at all, but chattering away with his precious intestines. Oh, Korsakov is
off his nut
—don’t believe a word he says.”

“No, I’ll believe the giant talking cockroach instead.”

“That’s too sweet of you. Maybe you can talk some sense into that damnable Chatterbox, the howling cad, what?
I shall write a letter to the editor,
” he exclaimed, rummaging through his numerous pockets with all six legs at once (quite a sight). “You wouldn’t have any stationery, would you? You do take dictation? There’s a girl.” Sefino cleared his throat. “Dear Chatterbox…no, strike that…Dear
Eldritch Snitch.
I slap you with the satin glove of righteous wrath! From what noxious nest of nattering nincompoopery do you release your rancorous roosters of rumor…”

Just then Jo heard Aunt Lily creaking up the stairs. She had an alarming thought—if Aunt Lily saw a three-foot-tall talking cockroach in her house, could she handle the shock? Jo looked around wildly. Maybe she should hide the insect, or—