What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Frederick Barrandov Sr. is imprisoned for fixing clock faces without permission in his home country. He has an uncanny ability to fix things, but the government took his actions as a political statement. His wife helped him organize the whole thing, but Frederick took the blame himself. He spends three years in prison and then moves to Cheshire, where he gets a job as the chief maintenance officer at the Hotel Glissando.

Frederick’s son, Frederick Barrandov Jr. (“Freddy”), does not feel that he lives up to his father, but his family and the hotel expect him to follow in his father’s footsteps. Freddy works as a nursery-school teacher, which disappoints his mother, who handles all of his father’s assignments at the hotel. What his family offers at the hotel is more like a concierge service than just maintenance. They fulfill just about every request, with the only rejected request being one for an iguana-skin wallet. Unlike Freddy, his sister Odette is good at maintenance, and he believes that she should be the one to take over their father’s position. However, Freddy’s mother tells him that he has a week to begin working for Hotel Glissando.

Freddy’s girlfriend, Aisha, is a filmmaker and shows him a short film of hers called Deadly Beige; it features a brother and sister played by puppets, who are long-standing Party members in Cold War Moscow. They get assigned a series of tasks that essentially suggest that the Party wants them both dead. The siblings are voiced by Tyche and Chedorlaomer, who are friends with Aisha.

Freddy shows the film to Odette while she’s working at the hotel. At that moment, a man walks by and greets Freddy. He reveals himself to be Jean Claude, Freddy’s godfather, who was believed to have drowned while sailing the world years ago. He confesses that he faked his death to get away from his wife and child. Freddy learns that Chedorlaomer is Jean Claude’s son, and he tells Jean Claude that Ched is in Aisha’s film. Jean Claude tells Freddy that he doesn’t like Chedorlaomer’s girlfriend, Tyche, and offers to pay him to break them up. Freddy agrees after seeing how much Jean Claude is willing to pay, and he considers this his first Glissando job.

Freddy has Aisha introduce him to Chedorlaomer and enlists her help to break up Ched and Tyche. She suggests getting Tyche together with Freddy’s roommate Pierre, who she says gives “relationship-ruining head” (304). Freddy underestimates how much Chedorlaomer and Tyche are in love, and the Pierre plan fails. However, he takes the cups that they drank from and runs their DNA to see if they’re related. They aren’t, but Freddy tries to falsify the DNA results. He tries to lie to them that they are half-siblings, stammering even though he desperately wants them to believe the lie, knowing how inseparable they are.