The Mirror Thief (53 page)

Stanley, Synnøve calls, Adrian told me that you’ve come all the way from New York, and that you found his book of poems there. Is that true?

Yes, ma’am, Stanley says. I’m from Brooklyn. I picked it up in Manhattan.

Wonderful! I think it’s what every poet dreams of, in a way. It’s like putting notes into bottles and throwing them into the ocean. I am an artist—when I make something, I know where it goes—so I don’t really understand. Adrian says I don’t. But I must tell you this. Yesterday? When he came home from his office? He went upstairs to his study, and he closed the door. Now? Tonight? It is just the same. He has not written like this in years. Years! It is because of you. He will not tell you this, so
I’m
telling you. Would you like some milk in your tea? Or sugar?

No ma’am. Just plain. Thanks.

A pale light flickers in the next room—Stanley sees its reflection in the windowglass, and on the glazed curve of a lamp’s base—and he realizes that the quiet voices are coming not from a radio but a television set. He steps across the threshold for a closer look. It’s around the corner to the left: a Philco model, with a twentyone-inch tube in a mahogany console. Stanley’s been around TVs before, plenty of times, but it’s mostly been in shops, not people’s houses. This one’s playing newsreels—old ones, he’s guessing, unless the Nazis are back in power somewhere and Roosevelt’s risen from the grave. Just like always, Stanley has a hard time focusing on the picture: he keeps getting distracted by the texture of the screen, staring until the image disintegrates into a mosaic of tiny pulsing lights. He blinks hard, shakes his head, turns away in sudden revulsion.

When his vision settles again, it finds another pair of eyes staring back at him from near the floor. He jumps, makes a startled sound.

It’s the dirty-blond girl from the coffeehouse: the one he saw kissing Welles’s cheek. She’s seated on the thick patterned rug—her back pressed against a footstool, a multi-colored afghan draped over her shoulders—and she blends smoothly into the furnishings. Stanley can’t remember the last time he walked into a room and didn’t notice somebody. He thinks maybe he never has. The girl’s eyes track him; her body doesn’t move at all. Her expression is relaxed, alert, leonine. It says
you’re still alive because I’m not hungry
.

Synnøve comes up behind him, hands him a cup and saucer. Oh! she says. Cynthia! I thought you’d gone out.

Something in Synnøve’s voice is uneasy, like she’s as startled as Stanley to find the girl here, and not quite happy about it. The girl’s eyes shift from Stanley to Synnøve, then back to Stanley again. She blinks once, slowly, and says nothing.

Cynthia, Synnøve says, meet Stanley and Claudio. They’re friends of—

She breaks off abruptly, like she’s forgotten what she was saying, or thought better of it. They are our friends, she finishes. Would you like tea?

Yes please, the girl says.

Her voice is plummy: a fat girl’s voice, Stanley thinks, though she’s hardly fat. He makes her for seventeen, eighteen tops. She’s got nice curves for her age, but it’s a figure with a sell-by date: in ten years she’ll be fighting the weight off. Most guys won’t see that now, of course, or won’t care. If her outfit’s not the same one she wore two days ago—bulky black scoop-neck sweater over a black leotard, gossamer crimson kerchief knotted at her neck—then it’s identical. I saw you at the coffee joint, Stanley says.

Cwoffee
, huh? she says, copping his accent with a raised eyebrow. Solid, pops. I hear you cats knocked us some fish.

You heard right.

Groovy, the girl says. A slow smile creeps across her face like a dropped egg.

Synnøve reappears, bearing another teacup and saucer; Cynthia stands up slowly, stretches—twisting her arms above her head till her spine pops—and takes them. Stanley can’t decide if this girl is movie-star
gorgeous or slightly grotesque, which he guesses must mean she’s gorgeous. Stacked sugarcubes ring her cup; she spoons a few into the liquid, then eats the rest, crunching as she stirs. The milky tea is exactly the color of her eyes, and a whole lot warmer. Stanley can already tell that he and this skirt are not going to be pals.

Claudio shoulders past him into the room. Cynthia! he says.

Hey, gatemouth, the girl says. Slip me some skin.

I have some skin for you,
mija
, Claudio laughs, and gives her a warm careful hug. Their teacups rattle on their saucers. I did not expect to see you, he says. What are you doing here?

This is my lilypad, froggy. This is where I catch my cups.

Stanley looks rapidly between the two of them. You know this chick? he says.

This is Cynthia, Claudio says, looking at Stanley like he’s gone simple. My friend from the café. I told you.

Stanley furrows his brow. Maybe Claudio did tell him; he doesn’t listen to half of what the kid says. He watches the two of them chat—naming people he’s never heard of, who he never cares to meet—until he notices the large canvas hung on the wall behind them. Amid rough splashes of flung color and glued-on dried flowers and lumps of paint-soaked fabric, Stanley gradually discerns the shape of a tree. Sigils cut from silver foil scatter in its gnarled bare branches. Two shadowy human shapes huddle by its trunk.

From the kitchen comes Synnøve’s voice, calling over the sound of the running faucet. I just remembered, she says. The bakery closes early today, and I want a loaf of challah bread for dinner. Cynthia, will you entertain our guests while I’m out? I’m afraid I can’t guess when Adrian will emerge from his lair. Boys, if I give you my good knife, would you clean the fish you brought?

I’ll clean the fish, Cynthia says.

As Synnøve pulls the front door shut behind her, Stanley and Claudio carry the buckets to a sunny spot on the covered side porch. Cynthia gathers equipment—brown paper bag, vegetable scraper, eyelash-thin fillet
knife, beachtowels to sit on, old copies of the
Mirror-News
—and follows them outside. The porch is bordered by plank benches, and she spreads newspaper over these, then pours water from one of the buckets onto the lawn, crowding the fish down, making them easier to grab. The salt will probably kill the grass, but Stanley doesn’t say anything.

Cynthia hands the scraper to Claudio. You’re doing the scales, she says.

Then she dips her hand into the bucket, comes out with a squirming fish, slaps it on the paper, and opens its belly from its anus to its throat. Her small thumb slips inside to push out the little lump of guts. Then she chops off its head just behind its pectoral fins, and she hands the body to Claudio. The tiny downturned mouth is still gasping as she tosses it, trailing intestines, into the paper bag.

Claudio sets to work on the headless fish without asking Cynthia any questions, without even seeming to think, and soon the newspaper is showered with silver flecks. Cynthia has the head off another fish and is starting on a third. The one she just finished twitches a little on the paper. Her knife reminds Stanley of one he had for a while back home: he taped the handle of his, wore it on his calf. Then he used it and had to get rid of it. He begins to feel lightheaded from watching her work. He stands up, crosses the backyard to where a rambling rose pushes through the fence, and breathes deeply over its waxy white blossoms.

Soon a ragged calico cat is walking toward him across the toprail, sniffing the air; a second cat meows from somewhere below. Back on the porch, Claudio has fired up his customary jag, talking about movies, movie stars. The chick has no problem keeping up: she chimes in with her own material—foreign-sounding names that Stanley’s never heard in his life, strung together with obscure hepcat jive that he can’t make heads or tails of—as she slaughters her way through the twin buckets. Looking past them to the house, Stanley sees Synnøve in the kitchen, home from the bakery. He figures he probably ought to go in and talk to her about art or something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just moves back and forth along the fence, stopping sometimes to scratch the stray cats on their matted necks, sometimes
to catch them as they make beelines for the bag of heads and plop them back over the fence. Just once, he thinks, just one goddamn time, he’d like something to work out like he expects it to. That might be nice for a switch.

After a while the girl takes the cleaned fish into the kitchen, and Claudio crosses the yard. Stanley? he says. Are you okay?

Stanley keeps his eyes on the cats. Don’t come near me with that shit on your hands, he says.

In a moment I will wash them. Are you feeling sick? You seem strange.

I’m doing great, Stanley says. I just got a lot on my mind.

Claudio’s quiet for a second. He’s doing that nervous thing he does with his fingers: Stanley can hear soft smacks as their tips stick and un-stick from his slimy thumb. Cynthia is my friend, Claudio says. I like to make friends. I believe it is a natural thing to do. You left me in the café alone. You did not say you were going. Stanley, you don’t think—

The screen door slams: the girl is back. She does a ballet move off the porch, then pounces on Claudio, mussing his hair. Watching Stanley the whole time.

Stanley, Claudio says, Cynthia and I are going to see a film tonight after dinner. Will you come along with us?

Stanley gives them both a frosty look. Sorry, he says. I gotta have a word with your pops tonight, sweetheart. Man to man. But thanks for the ask-along.

A funny expression crosses the girl’s face—irritated and embarrassed, a little panicked too, like Stanley just interrupted her graduation speech to tell her her slip is showing—but then that’s whisked aside by a wiseacre grin. Wow, she says. It’s a little early to be asking for my hand, don’t you think? We haven’t even had our first date.

Yeah, Stanley says. Well, I move pretty quick. Hope that trousseau’s coming along okay.

She throws her head back with a showy, throaty laugh. Then she smacks Claudio on the side of his head. Go inside and rinse your dukes, you savages, she says. We’ll see if Mommy needs any help with the chow.

They start toward the porch. So, Stanley asks, what’s the movie?

Bonjour Tristesse
, Claudio says.

Buh-huh buh what?

Bonjour Tristesse
. The new film of Otto Preminger, starring David Niven, and the young actress Jean Seberg. In
Saint Joan
she was not so good, I think. But maybe for her this role will be better.

Is this some kinda frog flick?

Ribbet-ribbet, Cynthia says.

The door swings open, and Adrian Welles is standing in the kitchen, resting an affectionate hand on Synnøve’s back. He turns to them with an impish grin.

He’s an inch or two shorter than his wife. Not quite as thick around the middle as Stanley had thought: broad, sure, but more brawny than soft. He must’ve been wearing a bunch of layers the other night. The snuffling dog is with him; it charges the open door, yapping its monstrous little head off. Cynthia catches it by the collar and hauls it inside, its white-rimmed popeyes rolling.

The air in the kitchen is thick with the smells of hot oil and celery and garlic and fish. Welles’s powder-blue eyes have taken on a bright sheen beneath his spectacles, like pebbles of quartz washed by unaccustomed rain. He calls to Stanley and Claudio over the skillet’s hiss. Greetings, my young friends! he says. Such unexpected pleasure you have brought us!

The fish get plated alongside scoops of greenbean casserole and hunks of fresh bread. Synnøve pulls an extra folding chair from a hallway closet, passes some cucumber salad around. Stanley watches carefully before he takes a bite of anything.

Everyone eats the fish whole—bones and all, like sardines—but they don’t taste like sardines. Stanley remembers small fish that his Italian neighbors cooked around Christmastime, in those years when his father
was away and his mother wasn’t speaking and he had to take meals wherever he could find them: these taste a little like those did. As he chews he thinks of the seething silver carpet on the moonlit sand, and also of the bag of heads by the backdoor—the tangle of guts, the little mouths working, the cloudy unblinking eyes—
making
himself think these things. But they don’t really bother him. The fish taste good. He’s hungry. He hasn’t had a proper kitchen-table meal in months.

Welles keeps standing up and sitting down, splashing pale gold wine into half-empty glasses.
Soave classico
, he says. I’ve had these bottles for more than a year. It’s lucky I saved them! For this meal it’s just right. Fish on Friday! My god, are you angling to re-Catholicize me? Well, it may be working, damn it all, it may be working.

The guy is keyed up, on a roll; nobody makes much effort to share the stage. Synnøve and Cynthia each get in some good licks, and Claudio slow-pitches a few earnest questions, but mostly they just let Welles wind himself down. Stanley feels like he’s watching a swordfight in an old movie where the hero—Errol Flynn, maybe, or Tyrone Power—holds off a dozen guys at once, only none of them seem to be trying very hard to scratch him. Cynthia keeps raising her eyebrows, smirking. Welles talks with his hands, barely touches his food. Stanley finds it all sort of depressing.

Speaking of Catholicism, Welles says, and then recites part of a poem, something he just wrote. Stanley clenches his jaw, stares at his plate, pushes a french-cut greenbean around with a tightly gripped fork.
Thus does faith fold distance!
Welles says.
So bend the Ptolemaic rays! And Poor Clare perceives, ether-borne, the priest’s vestmented image on the wall
. Please stop, Stanley thinks. Stop spoiling it. Stop talking.

I suppose you’ve heard, Welles says, that the pope just named Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television. Two or three weeks ago, I think. Rather more inventive than declaring the Archangel Gabriel to be the patron of radio, wouldn’t you say? But then the church has always been quite comfortable with the concept of the discarnate word propagated through space. Less so with the discarnate image. The pope had to work a little harder to locate divine precedent. Lately, as I write, I’m finding myself
drawn to stories such as these. It seems that this is what the new work will be
about
. The power of the image. The image of power.