Bubble in the Bathtub (22 page)

And with that, the party was in full swing again. People ran amok. They were crazed, frenzied, zany,
brazen, pizzazzy, and a bunch of other things with
Z
s in them. They didn't even notice the three people sneaking away behind the stage, around the corner of the dreaded Bastille prison building and disappearing. They just kept singing and dancing and splashing red wine on each other. The song was long forgotten by the next day when most of them woke up with throbbing heads, aching hips, and sore throats, but not by Bloodbath. Bloodbath would keep singing this song for the rest of his life and would later teach it to his children and grandchildren, who would eventually move around quite a bit, to England, to Germany—and some of them even to a small town in Minnesota, where they would form the heavy metal band Meat Ball, which would become famous after being featured in the mockumentary
There Will Be Life Here
.

“DID YOU BRING the time soap?” Proctor asked breathlessly. He and Lisa and Nilly had left the Bastille
behind and were now racing through the crooked streets of Paris. Lisa and Nilly had no idea where they were, but the professor seemed to know his way through the quiet Sunday alleys and lanes.

“I have a smidge,” Lisa said. “But I don't think it's enough for all three of us. I had to take a few detours to get here, you know.”

“I have a smidge,” Nilly said. “But I don't think it's enough for all three of us. I had to take a few detours to get here, you know.”

“Let's hope if we combine it, it'll be enough,” Doctor Proctor said as they came around a corner. “Have you guys seen Juliette? Is she waiting at the hotel?”

But before they were able to answer, Doctor Proctor stopped so suddenly that Lisa and Nilly ran right into him.

“Oh no!” the professor said. “Someone stole my bathtub. Look!”

But there wasn't much to see since what he was
pointing to was an empty square with just a few empty market stalls in it.

“Well, I guess someone got themselves a new bathtub,” Nilly mumbled. “What are we going to do now?”

“Where's your bathtub, Nilly?” Lisa asked.

“Where you said you were going on that message in the bottle,” Nilly said. “The Pastille. Weird destination, by the way. I wound up in the middle of a big chicken coop.”

“Sorry, I mixed up Pastille and Bastille,” Lisa said. “If we don't have enough time soap, we'll have to get there before the bubbles are gone. But how will we get there? We don't have any pigs.”

“Pigs?” the professor and Nilly cried in unison.

“Forget about it,” Lisa sighed, realizing that it would be too hard to explain. “What are we going to do now?”

“Yeah, what are we going to do?” the professor and Nilly cried in unison.

The three friends stared at each other, stymied.

And as they stood there staring at each other, stymied, in the sunshine filtering down between the tall Parisian buildings, they heard the lively clopping of horseshoes and the creaking of large wooden wheels. They turned around. A brown horse with large black blinders came prancing around the corner. And behind it, a carriage. A driver was sitting on the front of the carriage, swaying back and forth and looking like he was about to fall asleep. He had big bags under his eyes, a tattered coat, and a moth-eaten top hat, black and tall as a stovepipe.

“Need a lift?” he asked with a yawn.

“That's just what we needed!” the professor exclaimed. “Come on!”

They climbed in the door of the carriage, which started moving right away.

There was just exactly enough room for four people on the two benches, and that was also just what they needed, because there was already one person sitting in
there. The brim of the passenger's top hat had slipped down over his eyes, and he was obviously sound asleep, because his body was flopping back and forth as the carriage moved.

“Weird,” Lisa said.

“What is?” the professor asked.

“The driver didn't ask us where we were going.”

“Elementary.” Nilly smiled condescendingly. “Obviously he's going to drop this other passenger off first.”

“But we don't have time for that!” Lisa said. “Should we wake him up and ask if it's okay if we go to the Pastille first?”

The professor shook his head. “I'm afraid that won't help, Lisa. I'm sure the bubbles will already be long gone.”

They sat there for a while contemplating this, and the only thing that broke the silence was the sound of the horse's hooves, clopping against the cobblestones in a slow tap dance.

“Raspa was there,” Lisa said. “In the crowd. Did you see her?”

“No,” Doctor Proctor said. “But I'm not surprised.”

“Oh?” Lisa and Nilly said, looking at the professor, shocked.

“That was the idea—for her to follow you guys to Paris,” he sighed.

“The idea?” Nilly and Lisa yelled, you guessed it, in unison.

“Yeah. I sent you two down to her shop with that stamp so she would understand that I had succeeded in traveling through time, that I had gotten our invention to work. I knew that once she understood that, she would try to find out where I was and then come to steal the invention from me. Like she had tried to do when she was my assistant here in Paris.”

“Steal the invention from you!” Lisa exclaimed, agitated. “Why would you want her to come here, if that's what she was going to do?”

“Because I was out of time soap,” the professor said. “And because I knew there was enough in that jar in the cellar to bring you two here but not to bring all three of us back. Raspa is the only one in the world who can make more time soap. I needed her here, simple as that.”

“Why couldn't you just send Raspa a postcard and ask her to come?” Nilly asked.

The professor sighed again. “Raspa would never have voluntarily come to rescue me. She hates me.”

“Why?”

Doctor Proctor scratched his head. “I've wondered about that a lot, but I really don't know. I never tried to deprive her of the honor of having invented time soap.”

“But …,” Nilly said. “How did you know that we would spill the beans so she would find out we were going to Paris?”

The professor smiled wryly. “First of all, there was the stamp and the postcard, which I knew would make
her understand the situation. Second of all, you're a whiz at a lot of things, Nilly, but keeping secrets isn't exactly your specialty, is it?”

Lisa cleared her throat.

“Eh heh heh,” Nilly chuckled with a zigzag smile.

“But what do we do?” Lisa said. “How do we find Raspa and get her to make more time soap?”

“Well,” the professor said. “Finding her won't be that hard.”

“Oh?”

“You think horse-drawn carriages just show up out of thin air right when you need them?”

Doctor Proctor nodded toward the sleeping passenger, and then looked down. Nilly and Lisa followed his gaze down to the floor. And there—jutting out from under the edge of the trench coat—was a wooden leg that ended in a roller skate.

THE HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE jostled back and forth over the streets of Paris. Lisa, Nilly, and Doctor Proctor sat inside it, staring at their strange traveling companion.

“So that's it?” a hoarse voice grumbled from under the rim of the top hat. “So that's why you wanted me
back, Victor? To make more time soap for you and these brats?”

As the top hat was pushed up onto the top of the passenger's head, Raspa's searing eyes emerged to glare at Doctor Proctor.

“Yes, of course,” Doctor Proctor said.

“Yes, of course!” hissed Raspa, throwing her top hat to the floor. “Because that's all I ever was to you, isn't it, Victor? A lousy soap maker!”

“Quite the contrary,” the professor said, taken aback. “You were a brilliant soap maker. The best, actually.”

“But a soap maker all the same. Never … never …” Raspa's voice quivered a little. “Never anything more.”

“What do you mean, Raspa?”

She stared at Doctor Proctor, her chest rising and falling.

“Nothing,” she said, suddenly sounding as if she had a cold. “And now, Victor, now you think she's there at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille waiting for you, that …
that …” She waved her hand dismissively and spat out the name, “Juliette Margarine!”

Nilly looked from Raspa to Doctor Proctor. He didn't understand what was going on and it looked like the professor—who usually understood so much—was also clueless.

Only Lisa appeared to be keeping up with the situation. At any rate, she leaned over toward Raspa and asked, “Where's Juliette?”

The woman with all the black eye makeup laughed like a croaking crow, “And why should I tell you that?”

“Now you listen here, Raspa—,” Doctor Proctor started threateningly, but was interrupted.

“Don't worry, Victor. Let's just say that she's getting what she deserves. Forget about that woman. She was never the one for you anyway, that witch.”

“Witch …? Ouch!” The professor had stood up in the carriage, smacking his head on the roof. “No one calls the woman I love a witch!”

“Victor, please,” Raspa laughed. “A man of your age shouldn't be getting worked up like this. Think about your heart.”

“At least I have a heart,” the professor snarled. “While you … you …” Big professor tears welled up in his eyes. “You just have a big, cold brain!”

“Raspa,
where
is Juliette?” Lisa repeated. “She traveled somewhere in time, didn't she? You tracked her using the soap residue, didn't you?”

Raspa sighed deeply. “I don't know how much time soap you have left, but if you have any I suggest you use it to get back to your own time. That's where I'm planning on going anyway.” She leaned back in her seat, crossing her foot over her wooden leg.

“Raspa …,” whispered a tearful Doctor Proctor as a humongous, gigantic professor tear rolled down his cheek. “Please! Just tell me what you want in exchange for telling me where Juliette is and I'll give it to you.”

Raspa raised an eyebrow. “Anything?”

“Anything! Don't you understand? If I can't have Juliette, I might as well be dead.”

Raspa shivered at his words, as if they'd stung her like peas from a slingshot.

“Oh really?” she said sharply, lifting her chin. “Well then draw out the plans for the time-traveling bathtub and give them to me. Ha!”

“Sure thing!” cried Doctor Proctor, smiling. “You can have the whole invention to yourself. And all the other inventions I've come up with, actually. They're all yours!”

Raspa's mouth opened, but at first nothing came out. She closed it again, opened it and tried again. “Do you mean …,” she whispered. “Do you mean that you would give me everything just for … that woman?”

“Yes, I do,” Doctor Proctor said quickly. “You have my word. No matter what you think of me otherwise, you know I always keep my word.”

Raspa stared at him, her mouth gaping.

“Well?” the professor said.

“It's a deal,” Raspa said, barely audibly. “So …”

She took a breath, and the only thing you could hear in the carriage was the clopping of horse feet, cows mooing in the distance, and a sound that almost sounded like snoring. “When I managed to bust open the door to the room you guys were staying in at the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille, the little girl and boy had already left via the bathtub. But Juliette was still there. I threatened her with my old, but completely functional, pistol. I ordered her into the tub, then grabbed hold of her hair, submerged my own head, concentrated, and sent her to where she is now. The same way you sent your postcard, Victor.”

“Hm,” the professor concurred. “And where did you send her?”

“Someplace where she couldn't run away or be found, of course. After all, she was all I had … how should I put this … to negotiate with.”