Bubble in the Bathtub (11 page)

“Yeah, maybe a little,” Lisa said. “Hurry up, Nilly. That hippo in the lobby saw us. They'll be here soon.”

“Yeah, yeah. Let me just concentrate,” Nilly said as he stared down at the clothes lying on the bed. “Let's see. First the pants, then the shoes. FIRST the pants, THEN the shoes. Yes, that's right.”

Then he pulled on his pants. And then his shoes.

“Um, what about the socks?” Lisa asked.

“Darn it,” Nilly said, kicking off his shoes again and putting on his socks.

“What have you been doing, anyway?” Lisa asked.

“I took a bath,” Nilly said. “And danced the cancan
at the Moulin Rouge. One of the dancing girls thought I was cute.”

“Yeah, right,” Lisa said.

“It's true,” Nilly said. “I just ducked down into the bathwater and when I came up again, I was at the Moulin Rouge. And it seemed like it was a long time ago, because everyone was wearing old-fashioned clothes.”

“Dude, don't you ever get tired of making things up?” Lisa asked, slapping shut the top flap of her knapsack. She was ready to go.

“And there I was,” Nilly said. “Just as naked as the day I was born, in front of a huge audience and eight super-attractive cancan dancers. Boy, was
that
embarrassing.”

Lisa noticed that Juliette was laughing so hard she was shaking as she stood over by the window, keeping her eye on the street below.

“So I jumped back into the bathtub and submersed myself. I held my breath and wished I was back in the hotel room, here and now. And guess what happened?
When I came up again, I
was
back here, as if nothing had happened!”

“That's because nothing
had
happened,” Lisa said. “Aside from inside that weird brain of yours. And meanwhile a lot of stuff has been happening in the real world, so get a move on, would you?”

Before Nilly put the few things he'd unpacked back into his knapsack, he took out a small jar with a lid with several air holes in it. He carefully placed the jar in the side pocket.

“What's that?” Lisa asked sternly.

“A seven-legged Peruvian sucking spider.”

“A what? You didn't bring the …?”

Nilly shrugged his shoulders. “He seemed so lonely down there in Doctor Proctor's cellar. No professor and so far away from all his buddies in Peru, huh? I decided to call him Perry. So sue me. But we did agree that we were allowed to bring small things that start with
P
, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Lisa groaned. “But hurry up now. And no more making up stories.”

“I haven't made up any—”

“Oh, you haven't, have you? How did you understand that that dancing girl said you were cute? You don't happen to speak French, do you?”

They were interrupted by Juliette's calm voice from over by the window. “Hey guys. I have some good news and some bad news.”

Nilly and Lisa turned toward her.

“The good news is that Nilly doesn't need to hurry after all. The bad news is that the hippos have surrounded the hotel, so we're not going to be going anywhere.”

“Uh-oh,” Lisa said softly.

“Uh-oh,” Nilly said softly.

“Now what are we going to do?” Lisa said. “The hippos are going to fill our pockets with small change and dump us in the Seine.”

“What?!” Nilly protested. “Small change? Those cheapskates. I want big change. I want bills!”

“Shh, kids,” Juliette said. “There might be a way for us to get out. But it would mean that you have to listen to me very carefully. All right?”

It seemed like that was fine with them. At any rate, both Nilly and Lisa shut their mouths and looked at Juliette while their ears sort of seemed to curl out from their heads a little bit so they could hear extra well. And a good thing, too, because Juliette was about to tell them something that would explain Nilly's strange experience in the bathtub, how he was suddenly able to both understand and speak French, how Doctor Proctor had disappeared, and how Lisa and Nilly might—just might—be able to escape from the hippos and the watery depths of the River Seine.

But you won't be finding out any of that until the next chapter.

JULIETTE FLUNG OPEN the door to the bathroom and pointed dramatically to the bathtub. It was filled to the rim with water and soap bubbles, even though the bubble layer had diminished quite a bit since Nilly had done his cannonball into it.

“This,” said Juliette, her voice quivering, “is a time-traveling bathtub. You can go anywhere you want in terms of time or space in this bathtub. All you have to do is fill it with water, get the soap to make bubbles, and then submerse yourself. You concentrate on where and when—the date and the time—you want to go. After seven seconds, you can come up again and, voilà, you're there! You can go anywhere you want, but you can't go to the same place more than once. In other words, you get only one chance to change the past at that specific location.”

“Cool!” Nilly exclaimed. “When did Proctor invent this doohickey?”

“While he was living here in Paris, just before he met me. Which is to say: Victor—”

“Victor?”

“Doctor Proctor,” Lisa said. “Doctor Victor Proctor, that is.”

“
Victor
Proctor?” Nilly spluttered in disbelief.

“Well he has to have a first name, doesn't he? Just like everyone else,” Lisa said.

“Sure,” Nilly said. “Doctor, for example. That's a great first name.”

“Anyway,” Juliette said patiently. “Victor was the one who invented the actual time-traveling bathtub and his assistant invented the time soap.”

“Remarkable,” Lisa whispered.

“Ha!” Nilly said, folding his arms across his chest. “Now do you believe me? I was lying there on the bottom of the bathtub thinking about the Moulin Rouge in around 1909, wasn't I? And voilà—”

“You were there,” Lisa said. “Wow, I'm sorry I doubted you, Nilly. You always do tell the truth.”

Nilly closed his eyes halfway and gave Lisa a gracious look. “I'm not the kind of person to hold a grudge, my dear Lisa. If you tie my shoelaces for the next week, we'll call it even.”

Lisa gave him a warning look.

“Well, well, get into the tub, kids,” Juliette said. “Cliché is on his way.”

“Are you sure it will work now that there's more than one of us in the tub?” Lisa asked skeptically, climbing cautiously into the water after Nilly.

“Yes,” Juliette said. “Victor and his assistant tested it thoroughly.”

“How weird,” Lisa said. “If he's had this amazing invention for all these years, why hasn't the rest of the world ever found out about it?”

“Exactly!” Nilly said. “He could have been rich and famous.”

“Because the time-traveling bathtub only works with the time soap,” Juliette said. “And his assistant was the only person who knew how to make that. They had a falling out, and without the time soap Victor didn't have a patentable invention. All Victor had left of the time soap was that little jar he brought
back to Norway with him when he was expelled from France.”

“The jar that was in his basement on Cannon Avenue,” Lisa said.

Juliette nodded and held up the mason jar containing the strawberry-red powder. “He brought a little of the time soap from this jar with him when he came back to Paris two months ago, and that's what he used three weeks ago when he stood exactly where you are standing now, said good-bye to me, and traveled back to July 3, 1969, to the village of Innebrède in the Provence mountains to change history.”

“To change history?” Nilly and Lisa gasped in unison.

“Nothing less,” said Juliette. “The plan was to travel back to Innebrède and be standing there waiting at the gas station when we pulled in on the motorcycle. He'd hold up a big sign written in Norwegian so that only we could read it, warning us not to stop so we would keep driving all the way to Italy and get gas there.
Even if gas costs six cents more per gallon in Italy.”

“Of course!” Lisa said. “Because that would keep all the stuff that happened from happening.”

“Exactly,” Juliette said. “The hippos would never have noticed us, Victor and I would have gotten married in Rome, Cliché would have given up trying to become a barometer, and Victor and his assistant would have made up again and patented the time-traveling bathtub and the time soap together and become world famous and so rich that Victor could pay off the mortgage on my folks' castle.”

“But if everything had gone the way it was supposed to with his time traveling, Proctor would have been back by now, wouldn't he?” Lisa asked. “So what could have happened?”

“Elementary,” Nilly said. “Doctor Proctor ran out of time soap and couldn't get back. That's why he sent us that message on that postcard. Although how he managed to send that …”

“I was the one who sent it,” Juliette said, pouring a little of the soap powder into the tub.

“You?” Nilly said.

“Well, actually, I forwarded it. I snuck into the hotel room every day to see if Victor was back yet. I sat in the bathtub and waited, but nothing happened. Until one day suddenly a postcard floated up to the surface. It was addressed to Lisa, whom I'd heard so much about.”

“And Nilly,” Nilly said.

“And Nilly,” Juliette agreed.

“So that's how the postcard got wet! Some of the writing was washed off and there were traces of soap on the stamp,” Lisa said.

“Hm, if you ask me,” Nilly said, “that's how the postcard got wet. Some of the writing was washed off and there were traces of soap on the stamp.”

Juliette poured a little more soap powder into the water. “Stir it up and make some bubbles. Quick, the hippos will be here any minute.”

Nilly churned his arms like an eggbeater in the water.

“Why couldn't Proctor just get in touch with that assistant and get more time soap?” he asked.

Juliette sighed. “Victor's assistant was a very peculiar person. Right after Victor and I started seeing each other, they had a falling out. I'm not sure why, but after Victor disappeared, his assistant tried to steal the whole time-traveling bathtub invention. Luckily Victor hadn't left any sketches behind. He kept everything in his head, and Victor himself was the only one who knew how to configure the bathtub so it would work. And—”

Juliette suddenly stopped talking because they all heard a definite creaking sound from the hallway outside.

“Wha-what's that sound?” Nilly asked.

Juliette held out her hand. It held the two blue nose clips. “Quick, put these on and dive.”

“Don't need to,” Lisa said, demonstrating how she
could pinch her nose shut with her thumb and index finger.

Juliette opened one of the blue nose clips and released it so that it clipped over Lisa's nostrils with a little
pop!

“Ouch!” Lisa protested.

Juliette gave Nilly the other nose clip. “Keep them on and a lot will become clear to you.”

There was a loud knock on the door.

“Under the water, now!” Juliette whispered, screwing the lid of the soap jar back on and passing it to Lisa.

“But you have to come too,” Lisa urged.

“No, I have to stay here.”

“What?” Lisa whispered. “Cliché is just going to lock you up again! And we'll never find Doctor Proctor without your help!”

There was another knock on the door, louder this time.

Juliette bent down and kissed first Lisa and then Nilly on the forehead. “Victor said you were two smart
kids. And I can already see that he's right. Hurry up. Find him and come back.”

They heard an angry shout from the hallway and rapid footsteps, and the next second the door bulged into the room as if someone had just flung themselves against it. The door quit bulging, and they heard the creaking of the floorboards again, as if someone were taking another running start.