The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson Page B

so dark, that she had a good excuse for clutching at the door frame. Ginny took a series of deep breaths to steady herself and followed him out, through the beaded curtain that revealed the miniscule kitchen, the bar, and the room with the four tables. The front of the restaurant was mainly made up of two large windows covered heavy purple velvet drapes. These were wide-open. Keith pointed at them. He pulled them closed on one side, and Ginny crossed around to pull them on the other. They were very effective light-blockers. Now it was pitch-black.
    “Let’s get the lights on and do this as quick as we can,” he said.
    This required a lot of fumbling around, feeling the walls. Les Petits Chiens was not a large place. Though they worked separate walls, they bumped together several times—a slightly unusual number of times, really. Finally, one of them hit the right spot on the wall and the tiny chandelier turned on. Suddenly she could see her aunt’s artwork, which covered every surface. There were her collages, the pictures and the pieces of broken dishes that were mounted, mosaic-style on the wall—the hundreds of pictures of dogs, all eyes and tails and random fuzzy bodies. “All right,” Keith said, surveying the four garishly colored tables. “Which one do you think it is?”
    One was orange, one was plum, one was yellow, and one was blue. All were variously spattered with designs and dots of paint. She stood at the end of the room and passed her eye from one to the next, over and over.
    “She wants a sky, right?” Keith said, pointing at the blue table. “This looks like a sky.”
    Her eye lingered on the blue table for a moment. It was covered in splatters that could have been stars. They were yellow and vaguely starlike. But Aunt Peg wouldn’t paint a blue sky with yellow stars. She might paint the opposite, though. She turned to the yellow table. It had almost no other paint on it, aside from a few tiny flecks of red, which almost looked accidental.
    “It won’t be that one,” Keith said. “That’s just a plain one.”
    Ginny kept looking at the yellow one. It was deeply marked by stains from the bottom of glasses, orbs of red wine, scars from moisture. This was the table with the lightest color, the least protection. This was the one that would mark the most. She put her hand on its surface and reached for the plum-colored table at the same time. The plum-colored table had a cold, slick surface. The paint felt protective. This yellow paint was different.
    “It’s this one,” Ginny said.
    “The yellow one? You sure?”
    “Look,” she said, pointing at the rings and marks. “This is exactly the one she would want. She talked about people drinking wine, meeting over a table. And these marks—they’re like the sun, or the moon, or . . .”
    Well, that was it really. But she still knew it was the best choice. Keith got down on the ground and looked at the table from underneath. He produced a multipurpose tool in a case, with various-size heads for different jobs.
    “Where did you get that?” Ginny asked in amazement.
    “From my car. I had it in there from when I moved the set.”
    Since his head was under the table, Ginny could stare at the rest of Keith as he worked. This was a calming and pleasant sight, interrupted only by the unmistakable sound of a siren in the distance—one of those keening European ones that sounded like they were going nee-neer-nee-neer-nee-neer , and she could see the echo of a flashing light from somewhere down the street. Ginny drew back the curtain a little and found herself facing Oliver, who frantically waved for her to drop it.
    “Oh my god . . . ,” Ginny said. “Oh my god . . . stop. Stop!” Keith froze in place, taking in this sensory information.
    “Is that for us?” he inquired.
    “We have to go!”
    “Right. Perhaps I was wrong about the alarm system. Oh well. You never know until you try. I’ve almost got this thing off, anyway.”
    He said it