Farewell Navigator (16 page)

What are you selling these for?

Only five mere dollars, she whispers.

No, I mean, what organization?

The morsel shrugs.

I’m not paying if I don’t know. You could be raising funds for the U.S. Army.

It’s for my dad and my mom, rasps the morsel.

They’re making you hawk baked goods for personal gain?

They’re not making me. I thought of it just myself. They need some money.

But you can’t—I mean, that’s just
not done
.

I’m doing it, points out the morsel.

Would you like to buy some delicious cookies?

She dangles the ziplock bag with its freight of charred lumps.

What flavor?

Oatmeal. Just five dollars only. You can try one for free.

The collector munches contemplatively. This is far from delicious, he says.

The morsel blinks.

In fact it tastes like crap.

He bends to feed the other half to Sophie.

The morsel stares at her thumb.

Did you follow the recipe? he asks, nearly kindly.

I’m pretty sure, whispers the morsel.

I suspect that
sugar
is an ingredient you overlooked.

No, I’m pretty sure.

I advise you to whip up a new batch before you go on peddling your wares.

Here it is. The moment. Please let it succeed, my stratagem, my dicey ploy! I don’t pray, because who to? but I concentrate my very hardest.

The old woman reaches into the ziplock, brings a black chunk to her mouth.
What will she say?

This is nastiness. I wouldn’t pay a dime, much less five dollars.

I’m sorry, croaks the morsel.

Never apologize, says Megrim briskly. Just make more.

I don’t have more ingredients.

Megrim crunches her mouth into an almost-smile. Well guess who does?

I am embarrassed to feel so wildly relieved. It hardly befits a creature of my station. But her swollen little almonds—and the steeple—and the bloody broth—it simply would not answer.

Mrs. Megrim hands the morsel a wedge of butter wrapped in paper towel. Grease away!

The assiduous child sets to her pans while Megrim beats the dough. The heating oven (seldom cleaned) fills the kitchen with ghosts of ancient suppers.

They sent a needle down his throat, explains Megrim, to find out what ailed his ticker. But while they were doing it, he died. Right on the goddamn table. The needle must’ve hit something else.

That’s so bad, whispers the morsel.

Yeah, it was. It was the worst thing of all.

I wish that didn’t happen.

Well, thank you, says Megrim.

Mature ladies showing nasty tricks, mutters the beloved.

Mrs. Megrim has donned her best dress, a blue silk her husband gave her. Too big for it now, she has slashed vents in the back and sides, through which surge rolls of petticoated flesh. In the bathroom mirror she dabs on lipstick. The morsel admires its color, the lit-up brown of raisins. She asks can she have some too and is told to dream on.

My nephew is a doctor in the Bronx, states Megrim, and we’re paying him a visit. He’ll tell us whether those tonsils need to come out. Here, put on your rag.

My pretty coat, corrects the morsel.

I’m sorry, but that hardly adds up to a coat. Wrap this around your neck.

What is it?

My people call it a scarf, says Megrim.

Do you think my mom is beautiful?

Well, ha, well, I—just look at you! Could a child so handsome have come from a nonbeautiful mother?

What is your favorite place on Earth you’ve been to in real life?

The Bering Strait. On my honeymoon.

What was your favorite thing to make your kids for dinner?

Hot dogs. They had low standards.

And what is the leopard’s name?

Henh?

Our leopard.

You mean that fellow above the door?

Yeah him.

My name is

Search me.

But my name is

Doesn’t have one, concludes the girl.

Are we done with this interrogation or what?

The morsel hesitates. The question she wants most to ask is not polite. But her worry that Mrs. Megrim is going to leave—a new black dot on her heart—eclipses all else.

Aren’t you scared, she blurts, of getting arrested for being not young and then have to move away?

Megrim cackles. No, hon, they won’t catch me. I know the tunnels.

I can smuggle food into a tunnel, says the morsel.

That’d be decent.

I’ll bring you eggs! And also sandwiches!

Quit shouting, or a rawhead will come for you in the night.

What does one look like?

So hideous, says Megrim, it can’t be described.

The crone may know the tunnels, but
I
know what the Evacuation Enforcement Inspectors look like. And upon them I shall invite amnesia, whenever they approach.

The bus is passing once again. I have the spiel, of course, by heart. But today the tour guide strays from his script—he points the microphone at me.

Me?

Has it dawned on them, perchance? Am I about to receive, for the first time, some credit for my work on humans’ behalves? I don’t need applause (we were trained to expect none) but I wouldn’t kick a bit of acknowledgment out of bed. The watcher, for instance, could have thanked me for whisking her out of Leopard Arms and thereby away from the most futile infatuation on record. All it took was a gentle prodding of the Enforcement Inspectors. She had never gone to the post office for her Appearance Assessment, and when they knocked on her door, they found that all was not garden-fresh in Denmark. The girl’s skin puts one in mind of stucco, and her hair hasn’t felt a grooming product since before the war.

While she waited for the moving van, clutching her stuffed great white, she might have raised her eyes and smiled. She did not.

The shame collector’s gratitude did not exactly runneth over, either, despite the lengths I went for him. I got word of the animal clinic, did I not, in one of my brothers’ buildings, wherein works a lovely deaf veterinarian? And I tempted the feline ague upon Sophie, did I not? And the collector now has an ice-cream date for next weekend. But there has been no appreciative
wink for me, only his jaw at his knees.

In that urine-colored building, announces the guide, is where Brosef Killick wrote the screenplay for
Mount Saint Helen
, which has recently been wowing special-interest audiences across the country. According to my sources, he still lives here, though one might reasonably ask: why not relocate to Tinseltown, Brosef?

You mean he’s in there right now? coo the passengers.

Quite possibly so.

Fuckin
’ell!
An evident fan stands up and waves frantically. Hey, Killy! Down ’ere! Show us some dingle!

Please take your seat, says the guide.

The voice, whose lost aitches spark in me a blurred nostalgia for home, gets worse. Look out yer window, you tosser!

A window opens and Mrs. Megrim’s enormous head pokes forth. Shut that pie-hole!

You
shut it, granny.

She withdraws, only to return with a rose-lidded bowl. I’ll show you shut it! she screams, hurling the bowl. She’s brawny for a woman of her years: the pottery soars all the way to the bus (narrowly missing the Killick enthusiast) and shatters on the upper deck. A little beach of sugar unfurls at their feet.

Nice throw, says the morsel. Elbows propped on the sill, she leans her head against the formidable bicep. Her cheeks are cherrier, thanks to the protein and vegetables she has been ingesting regularly at Megrim’s kitchen table.

The tour guide gawks up, shocked to see such an over-age human loose in the neighborhood. Jesus, he murmurs, I thought they got rid of them all.