The Exquisite (16 page)

The Hat asked me if I was all right, if I needed to take a break and maybe watch some Steve McQueen first before I got the boxes down. I told him it had been a late night and that I was under some job-related stress, but that I was perfectly fine.

Well, I know it would make Lupe happy if you could get them for her. She won’t come out of the closet anymore.

I got the boxes down. There were three of them, good-sized, wedged hard onto the shelf above the coatrack. The Hat had me take them into the back bedroom, presumably Lupe’s, which looked so spotless that but for the slightly warped floor and walls it could have belonged to a hotel. I set the boxes next to each other on the bed.

The Hat looked at them and shook his head. The tassel shook with it. It’s just some of her old stuff. Stuff she picked up and had as a kid. She’s been in that closet for a week. You want to sit down?

We went back into the living room. As soon as we had gotten there Lupe seemed to come alive. She beamed at her brother, then went to the bedroom and shut the door. The Hat sighed.

You got family?

No. Not anymore.

My kid sister. Used to be a beauty. Or anyway, not too bad. Once upon a time I had to crack some heads. Guys came sniffing. You wouldn’t believe it to look at me now, but I used to be able to crack a head when I had to.

I told The Hat I needed to leave.

You don’t want to watch
The Great Escape?
We can skip to the fence-jumping scene. It’s got real tragedy, this one. I choke up every time.

I told him I was busy. I stifled a yawn, pressed my beer against the side of my face. My bed at The Fidelity was calling me. Fumes or no fumes. I told him maybe some other time.

Some other time
is like
soon,
I know what that means. You don’t get to be my age with a heart still beating without knowing some things. But, still, I’m grateful. Not everyone helps. I got a building full of yo-yos here. Won’t even stop to answer you in the hallways. Next door I got nuts.

I thought of the nuts next door. Then I thought of the couple leaving Two Boots with the stroller, wondered what they were like, wondered if, through some fluke, or some serious upgrade in my customers, I’d be paying them a visit soon. The woman had been good-looking, exceptional, even, like some Greek movie star. The guy had been tall and beefy. Not bad-looking, but nothing like the woman. Cute kid too. I let myself flash for exactly one ridiculous second on me and Tulip pushing a stroller, maybe stopping for pizza, buying diapers for the baby, laughing, heading home, unloading groceries, giving the baby a bath. I then gave the scenario a quick run-through with the knockout, handsomely stomping her way down the avenues, in place of Tulip, then the contortionists, pushing the stroller with their feet, and almost laughed out loud.

Come here, Henry, I want to show you something, The Hat said.

He was standing next to what looked a little like a medicine cabinet sunk into the side wall. I raised my eyebrow, went over, and he opened it. There was a peephole there that looked out—at his insistence I bent over and put my eye to it—on the hallway. The Hat left my side, went around the corner, and reappeared in my line of sight. He took off his fedora and did a bow. Then he came back in.

You can’t see it from the outside, he said. I got that from the old days. Some of us got them put in special. In the old days you didn’t want to be inspecting your visitors through the balsa wood they got for doors in these places.

I guess not, I said.

Now it’s just a convenience. Now if for example some guy, like you, Henry, comes and knocks at my neighbors’, then stands and has some words with my sister, who has seen better days and can’t answer right, I can see who it is.

Yeah? I said.

I don’t mean I care, he said, not one way or the other, but with this thing and with my old habits I can keep my eyes open. Then I can think about the sounds I heard coming out of my neighbors’ and put it together with things I’ve been hearing about jobs getting pulled in the neighborhood.

Jobs? I said.

You’re pulling jobs, he said.

They’re fake, it’s a service, I said.

Sure, he said. But fake is funny, don’t you think? Fake is like Steve McQueen and the movies—there’s always a little real there too. Fake is never 100 percent. And sometimes fake is real.

He looked up at me for what felt like a long time, then he said, Kindt’s working you good, huh?

I set my beer down on top of the peephole cabinet and told him it had been nice talking to him.

He’s tough, huh, Aris Kindt? I never met him, not even in the old days, but I’ve been hearing things for years. Independent. Ran funny jobs. Always an angle, that one. Always smart. He’ll fool you. He’ll take care of you. He took care of a guy not too long ago. Guy who kept his books. Some accountant. That’s what they say and that’s what I heard. I heard you don’t ever mess with him if you’re smart.

We’re friends, I said. It’s not really business. He’s retired. Someone else is running it. It’s all fake.

Friends, said The Hat, and grinned. Like my good friends across the hall and in this building and in this neighborhood. I got so many friends I’m going to have a heart attack. What I also got is my sister, in there, looking through some boxes of junk, and a peephole in my wall so I can see who comes around and who is getting up to what exactly in this fucking city. I can look through this hole and see straight through the building. I can see you hitting yo-yos with salad bowls and getting yourself tattooed without knowing what was getting put on you and sleeping on the street and getting hit by trucks and running into blonds you got no idea about and meeting friendly Mr. Kindt. I can see that when you say you’re busy, you mean you’re going to go back to a flop and take a nap. I can see you pulling jobs and saying some quiet bullshit to my sister who can’t answer you and I can see you looking at my hat now and saying, check out this old clown. Check out this old motherfucker who likes Steve McQueen. You want another beer? You want another beer, punk?

The Hat took a step toward me. I had the distinct feeling that he was going to produce a gun and put it in my face and pull the trigger and that there wouldn’t be anything fake about it.

I’ve really got to go now, I said. I’m sorry for the trouble.

So go, Henry. I’m going to watch a movie. I’m going to watch Steve rock it on his bike. You should see the look on your face. You should go show it to your “friend.” Go show it to Mr. Aris Kindt and see what he says. See what he says and leave this old clown with his hat and his sister in fucking peace.

A herring swims. A herring swims in a bucket. A herring swims in a blue bucket. A bright herring swims in a huge blue bucket. A herring moves forward. Why a herring and not some other fish? Because it’s exquisite. Because the adult common herring, more properly known as
Clupea harengus,
is found in temperate cold waters of the North Atlantic and is about one foot or thirty centimeters long with silvery sides and a blue back.

Blue.

Yes, can you picture it? The female of the species lays up to fifty thousand tiny eggs, which sink to the sea bottom and develop there, the young maturing in about three years.

And then?

And then they rise.

Elevate.

Propagate forward and vertically through the deep and the dark by the millions.

So many.

Yes. And other fish come to feed upon them.

Eat them all?

Not all.

Most?

Yes, most, and in dying, it’s quite lovely, they luminesce.

I’m not sure what you mean.

I mean they give off light as they die. As they drift off through the dark waters.

Do the immature fish luminesce?

I’m not sure. Probably.

And they’re blue?

With silvery sides.

Most of them, as you say, are killed by other fish.

By other fish, yes, Henry, which is an utterly acceptable form …

Form of what?

Of undoing. Of annihilation.

Having said this, Mr. Kindt leaned far back into his chair, lifted his cigar, and took a long, ruminative puff.

Think of the beauty of it, Henry, he said. It happens over and over, and will continue to happen long after we are gone, long after we have laid aside our skin and bones or whatever it is we have here and have shued off.

Or stepped forward.

Out of our skin and into our shadow.

What about the fishing industry?

Of course, the fishing industry. Yes, that’s true, the fishing industry complicates things, and has most certainly taken a hideous toll.

A hideous toll that puts that pickled herring into your mouth every day.

Mr. Kindt smiled. Oh, I’m simply full of contradictions, Henry, he said. Aren’t you?

I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what I was full of. A neat scalpel trench, some metal sutures, and a lot less morphine than usual, for starters. Besides Mr. Kindt, who had given me a little hit of Dilaudid so that I wouldn’t, he said, go completely to pieces, I had seen no one apart from Aunt Lulu since my assignation with Dr. Tulp. Since the surgery, the slight correction, the scraping-out of some renegade flecks of lead, the “lightly invasive procedure, Henry” she had performed. After they had held me down and ripped my suit off me. After they strapped me to a gurney and rolled me down the hall.

Thanks for asking, I feel wonderful, I said.

I’m so very glad to hear it, Henry, Mr. Kindt said.

How was your tour of the ward with my aunt?

I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it when she comes to see you, Henry.

I can’t wait.

Oh, I suspect you can.

Mr. Kindt smiled.

I shuddered.

Cold? Mr. Kindt said. Funny, I am too. Or not funny. No, I don’t think so. You see, not long after Lulu left, I had a visitor of my own. Someone I hadn’t seen in many years. Most curious. He came and sat at the foot of my bed, much the way I often sit at the foot of yours. He was dressed in a pair of bathing trunks and dripped much more than seemed reasonable onto my sheets.

Who was it?

A young man. He reminded me much of myself in my own distant youth, except of course for the bathing trunks. And in fact he told me we shared a name.

So there is more than one of you here now.

Yes, but I don’t get the feeling he will be visiting you.

Well that’s a relief.

Yes, I suppose it must be. I wonder if he will drop in again? I suspect I should set out a towel.

Did you unload the merchandise?

I wouldn’t be sitting here smiling so much and discussing the beauty and sadness of aquatic wonders if I hadn’t. Or perhaps I should say I probably wouldn’t. After all, it is my favorite subject.

Along with history.

Yes, along with history. The accumulation of remembered circumstance.

You mean the pile.

Do I?

Yes, the pile of dead fish. I don’t feel very well, Mr. Kindt.

I know you don’t, Henry.

Very early that morning, I had put on the robe with the fake card, limped through the halls of the ward, which, incidentally, had gone dim, not to say dark, again, and picked up the speed.

Mr. Kindt had come into my room four times before I had relented. Each time he had gotten angrier, less eloquent, more insistent. Each time he had brought up Aunt Lulu.

She’s not at all like you described her to me, he said.

No comment, I said.

You need a little less juice in your system, Henry, it’s clouding your judgment, he said.

So no one came around with my meds. Not even after I had pressed the button that was supposed to bring them, not after I had called out, not after I had walked down the hallways of the ward and out into the little garden and yelled. Deserted. All the terminal, critical, serious, and mild cases were gone, the machines in their rooms strangely mute, no longer pumping and blinking. Even Mr. Kindt’s room was empty. I found a couple of loose cigars and a box of crackers. I lit one of the cigars and pressed the glowing end against the cracker box and burned a hole. Then I took a few crackers out and ate them. Or tried to eat them. It didn’t work—I couldn’t swallow, not even close. I spit what I had chewed into Mr. Kindt’s toilet, flushed, and, still holding the cigar, walked out.

I went to Dr. Tulp’s office and banged on the door for a while. Then sat on the floor, slumping considerably, my wound hurting hideously, expecting Aunt Lulu or who knows what to show up at any minute, and smoked.

Then I put on the robe and went to get the speed.

So maybe now …I said.

Oh, not quite yet, Henry, Mr. Kindt said. You made things quite difficult for me, you see. You made my position less certain, and even if it was only briefly, dear Henry, you will have to continue to pay for a time.

For how long?

Mr. Kindt shrugged. For a time. But you must think of it as an exchange—a simple transaction. Difficulty for difficulty. I would call it quite fair.

Like wampum and some hatchet heads for an island.

It’s much less problematic a transaction than that one was, Mr. Kindt said.

I’ll leave, I said. I’ll get the fuck out of here.

Leave? Mr. Kindt said. Leave here? None of us get to leave. Don’t be outrageous. That’s just silly, Henry.

It was. I didn’t completely know that yet, but that is certainly how it has turned out.

O.K., fine, I’ll talk to Dr. Tulp.

Do so. Yes,
please
do.

Dr. Tulp, who was back in her office, barely looked up at me over her papers.

I’m very busy, Henry, she said.

Like last night.

Yes, she said, like last night, like today, like tomorrow. This is a hospital in a city where hospitals are much needed, perhaps now more than ever. A hospital is a center of learning and healing. Here we are in the business of casting light into the shadows, of banishing trauma, of soothing hurts. How is the incision?

It’s great. I’m just fantastic. I really appreciate your concern.

It was necessary, Henry. It will help. You were drifting. I suspect it will lead you back on track.

Dr. Tulp’s eyes, which had flipped up for a moment, went back to her papers. I stood up. Dr. Tulp’s hand moved toward the buzzer that would bring the attendants. I sat back down.

My aunt, I said.

Dr. Tulp raised an eyebrow.

Never mind. Forget that. I don’t want to talk about her. Mr. Kindt.

Dr. Tulp straightened her papers and put them down.

My friend. He’s changed. I offended him. He’s getting out of control. He says he’s got his own visitor now. A guy in swim trunks. Is there a pool here? I think it’s supposed to mean something.

Sorry, Henry, I don’t follow you.

It’s me. I’m the one who’s been ripping this place off. Mr. Kindt took over for Job. I pissed him off.

Slow down, Henry.

He’s withholding my meds.

No one is withholding your medication, Henry.

Yes, someone definitely the fuck is.

No, Henry, Dr. Tulp said.

See, my boy, said Mr. Kindt when I returned. There is unfortunately absolutely nothing your beautiful young Dr. Tulp will do.

No, I don’t think there is.

I looked at him.

Well, I said.

Yes, dear boy? he asked.

I shut my eyes. I counted to fifty then opened them. He was still there. I took a deep breath. I sighed.

You could at least apologize for calling me a little shit earlier, I said.

Did I call you a little shit? After all it doesn’t quite sound like me, does it? Not quite the variety of vocabulary I would elect to employ.

I shook my head. It didn’t. It sounded like Aunt Lulu. Mr. Kindt took a step toward me and took my hands in his.

I am not the one who needs to apologize to you for anything, Henry, am I? he said. Not for anything, relatively speaking, too serious?

No, I suppose not, I said.

I think my apologies, if there are to be any, will be directed elsewhere—toward my poor wet young man. In fact perhaps I should slip off for a time and see if I can’t make myself more available to him.

Mr. Kindt gave a nervous little laugh, like a lightbulb breaking, like a tiny frozen fist shattering against a wall.

I nodded and squeezed his soft, near-translucent hands.

Ah, my dear Henry, my dear, dear Henry, I sense we are starting to understand each other, he said.