Someday I Will Have One

I stood on the sidewalk for a long time, looking up at the imposing house in front of me. Some people might not of thought Ramage Manor was such a big deal, but to me it was huge. I wasn’t sure I would be able to find my way around in there. I was worried that I might bump into the furniture, knock decorations over, and generally prove what a clod I was. Ah well, I thought, maybe if I keep my eyes open and stay light on my feet I won’t completely embarrass myself. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open and walked in.
The entryway was nothing to write home about, although the owner had been nice enough to include a rough map of the house. I gratefully moved on to the first room--the “Serious Room.” It was a very strange room indeed. I had never seen bars on the windows of a first-floor room before. Wondering what kind of view one got with those things, I went to take a look out.
“Ahem!” snorted someone behind me. Turning around fast, I saw an impeccably groomed butler looking down his impressive nose at me. “May I ask what you are doing by the windows?” he asked in a bored voice.
“I just wanted to see what was out there,” I replied.
“Why would you do that?” he asked, bustling over and snapping down all the shades. “Nothing you can see out there could possibly compare to what is in here. This is, I assure you, quite the loveliest room in the house.”
I looked around at the venerable old room, with its dark, heavy furniture and its cabinets full of china and other breakables. The dust lay thickly on the tabletops, and I asked the butler if the windows couldn’t be opened. “And let the breezes in here, stirring things up, knocking things askew? No, thank you,” he said with a shudder. “Honestly, if it were my decision, I would take those useless windows out, but the owner will insist on keeping them.” He gave a martyred sigh. “At least they stay shut and barred, so no one will accidentally fall out.”
“Well,” I said. “Nice as this room is, I think I’ll go have a look at the rest of the house, too.”
“Why?” he asked, seeming almost pained. “People keep believing the words of others, the ingratiating guides who tell them that here, or there, is where they should go. They’ll believe anybody.”
“I’m not sure about that,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Once everyone out there’s got through with them, they’ll believe anybody--and then they never believe me! It’s enough to drive one mad! This is obviously the only room worth seeing.”
“If it’s so obviously wonderful, why do you have to keep everyone from looking out?” I asked, gesturing at the shades. “Why not let them decide for themselves what they want to see?”
“I see,” he said. “You’re just like all the rest of them. You see a beautiful room and you’re not content to just sit in it, oh no. You want to tear it up and make it look like you think it should, just like all the rest of them, the unethical--”
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said, heading for the door, “but if you really detest them that much, why do you stay in this house?”
As he spluttered his fury, I quietly slipped out of the room, closing the door tightly behind me.
Another butler was standing there, smiling crookedly. “Just got an earful from Himself, did you?” he asked, jerking his head back where I had come.
“And how,” I said. “Is he like that with everybody? Why does he even stay here?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure,” the butler replied. “I guess he just really likes that one room. However, I take it you would rather explore?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. I was now getting a chance to see the rest of the house, and it looked much more open and inviting than that one rather close and stuffy room. The ceilings were higher, the windows were bigger, and I could see many wide doorways opening between rooms. “Can I go anywhere I want?” I asked.
“Well, not exactly,” said the butler in a cautioning tone of voice.
“No?” I was surprised; the rooms all looked pretty open to me.
“Oh, no. You see, you’re in this room now, so the only rooms you could really go to are the ones immediately adjacent. I mean, you could go to those all the way over there, but you’d have to go through all the ones in between first, so you’d really be getting to the way-over-there ones from the ones right next to them. And obviously, once you’ve gone upstairs you won’t be able to get into any of these first-floor rooms until you’ve come back down.”
“But I can go anywhere in the house?” I asked, wanting to be sure.
“Theoretically,” he said, and smiled.
“Quite the Willy Wonka type, aren’t you?”
“That’s been said before,” he said wryly, making a little shooing gesture at me with his hands. “Enjoy your time here!”
Rolling my eyes playfully at him, I wended my way through the house, looking here, looking there. I rounded a corner and almost bumped into an agitated-looking young man who was walking very fast. “Sorry about that!” I said.
“Oh, it wasn‘t your fault,” he said, looking relieved to stop. “I was too busy looking around to see where I was going.”
“Nice house, isn’t it?”
“I suppose,” he said. “I’m trying to find which room I like the most. It’s not any of these ones, though. Everyone always looooves these, and they all look too much alike. It’s boring!”
I looked around and noticed that these particular rooms were painted the same peach color, had the same white carpets, and the same sheer curtains on the windows. They were very pretty rooms, but I could see how one after another could get old. “Well, what about that one?” I asked, pointing to a room with diamond-shaped windows, multi-colored mobiles hanging from the ceiling, and a blue and orange tiled floor.
“Yeah, right,” he said with a shudder. “Like I’d go with that loony bin! Nobody likes rooms like that! What do you think I am, some kind of freak?”
I quickly reassured him that I thought he was just as normal as could be, and left him to his search.
I soon found myself in a large, circular room that had many doors leading off of it. As I walked around the edges, I glanced up at the sign over each door. The first sign said Rugged Individual Room. I opened the door to a room that was full of tall, muscular, rather stubbly men who were fist-fighting, firing off automatic weapons, or riding motorcycles and horses as fast as they could go in all directions. Fearing for my life, I quickly shut the door and moved on. The next door opened into the Vision of Perfection Room, populated with lovely young women and muscular young men who floated wherever they went in slow motion without a care in the world, seeming not to notice the euphoric background music that followed them everywhere. The Guy’s Guy Room smelled so strongly of beer that I didn’t even open the door. I just went on to the Sidekick, Bully, Hippie, Party Girl, Goth, Clown, Conservative, Precocious Rascal, Hipster, Comic Relief, Starlet, Bishi, and Patriot Rooms, none of which looked very interesting to me. The Blond and Brunette Rooms caught my attention for a few incredulous seconds, but I couldn’t bring myself to look in. By the time I got to the Brainy Scientist Without an Ounce of Sense Room, my patience was exhausted. “I don’t want to go into any of these rooms!” I said to no one in particular.
“Got you covered,” said a light voice behind my back. Whipping around, I saw the second butler opening another door, the door to the People Who Don’t Want to Go Into Any of the Other Rooms Room.
“Oh, aren’t you cute,” I said, folding my arms.
“Unashamedly,” he said, with another of his crooked smiles.
As I made my way back toward the front door, it occurred to me that parts of Ramage Manor had looked rather familiar. Where had I seen them before? Then I remembered: some of the rooms had looked very much like the rooms in a house I had designed earlier. I just hadn’t recognized them right away in the real world, with solid walls and neat furnishings. I decided I would definitely have to visit the place regularly. Yes, even the Serious Room. After all, it might not be the loveliest room in the house, but it was still worth a look.