House turned the postcard over in his hands and looked at the front again. A cheery legend in the upper left corner -- "Greetings from Capetown!" -- superimposed over a vibrant color photo of Table Mountain. He flipped it back over and looked at the scrawled message again, at the familiar signature. "House, South Africa is beautiful. Told you you should've come with. Love, Wilson." A pair of stamps; kingfishers, gazing out at him with bright black eyes. A smudged postmark. House squinted to read the date. Four weeks ago.

The postcard had been delivered with the morning mail, and he briefly imagined Cameron reading it, her eyes widening at the signoff. It explained the odd look she'd given him when she had dumped the mail on his desk.

He tried to remember where Wilson had been four weeks ago ... had the man been gone and he'd not even noticed? He didn't think such a thing was possible, but he did get distracted sometimes. There was one way to find out. He levered himself out of his office chair and hobbled next door.

"Jimmy!" He pushed the door open and had the satisfaction of seeing his friend jump.

Wilson rolled his eyes. "House. You are aware that some people do knock before entering?"

"Not 'some people', Jimmy. Where were you four weeks ago?"

Wilson regarded him steadily for a moment, then sighed as he leaned forward and snagged his appointment book. Sometimes it was just easier to answer House's questions and ignore whatever mad inspiration lurked behind them.

"Any particular date, or is this a random search?" he asked, paging backwards through the thick book.

"Last week of August."

"Busy week," Wilson mumbled, settling on the correct schedule. The pages were lined and divided into squares, with carefully precise blue writing marking his meetings, consults, and patient notes. House smiled inwardly -- the buttoned-down Wilson, controlled and composed, inhabited those pages.

Wilson squinted at his own handwriting. "August 28th. Budget meeting, planning committee, budget meeting, patient, you, patient --"

"You write me into your daily schedule?" House filed that away as ammunition for future torment.

Wilson shifted uncomfortably in his desk chair. "Well, sometimes." He looked back down at his schedule book. "August 29th. Patient, board meeting --"

"Okay, enough," House interrupted. This was boring. He tossed the postcard on Wilson's desk and took a seat in the chair in front of it. He watched as Wilson picked the card up gingerly and read the front and back.

Wilson's brows furrowed; he looked up at House with questioning eyes.

"I've never been to South Africa," he said. "The last foreign conference I went to was in London, last year."

Sliding open the top desk drawer, he fished a small key from the paper clip compartment of the organizer tray and used it to unlock a separate, smaller drawer. He pulled out a sturdy blue booklet and pushed it across to House. "See for yourself, Holmes."

The letters on the front of the booklet were stamped in gold: PASSPORT United States of America. The eagle in the center gazed stoically at the olive branch clasped in its right talons. House believed Wilson but flipped through the booklet anyway, pausing to smirk at the typically awful passport photo. Montreal, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Rome ... and in the middle, the last stamp for London in dark blue ink. The rest of the pages were blank.

"So what's this?" House asked, gesturing towards the South African postcard.

Wilson shrugged. "A joke? An elaborate one, to be sure, but a joke. It looks like my handwriting, but it can't be." He turned the card over so the written side was up. "Besides, it says ... uh ..."

"I saw what it said."

"So this is the end of this conversation?"

"Yeah."

And it was, until the next week when the next postcard came.

tbc