The Way of All Fish: A Novel (17 page)

Monty said, “Cirque du Soleil.” He smothered a laugh in smoke.

Graeme sat up. “There was this magician—‘illusionist,’ he called himself.
Transfixed
is what he called his crappy show. It was in the moldy lower level of the Mirage. The Mirage, you remember, that’s where Roy’s pet tiger took a couple bites out of his face. You know how they did that, don’t you?”

Cindy frowned. “The tigers?”

“No, the show. With mirrors. Most of the stuff they did with the
tigers, it was illusion. Mirrors tilted up at the edge of the stage toward mirrors along the sides. It’s amazing what you can do with mirrors.” He took a long swig of beer and went on. “You think you’re watching something in front of you, but you’re not.”

“Las Vegas,” said Cindy wonderingly. The trouble with growing up in Kansas was that a person hardly ever got to Vegas. “What did you do in the act?”

“Set things on fire. Like Monty here. It’s all illusion, like I said. People would be really disappointed if they knew how these famous tricks worked. How they’re done isn’t even interesting; it’s boring.” Graeme took a little flashlight, or what looked like one, from his tool belt. He flicked it on and aimed for Monty’s foot, which was suddenly engulfed in flames, or looked it.

Monty jumped off the cot, stomping his foot, even though he knew there was no need to. “Christ, Graeme.”

“Thing is,” said Graeme, returning the torch to his tool belt, “people see what they’re told they see. Most things are tricks of the light.” He sat back and maneuvered a toke into a clip.

In her mind, Cindy saw the evening at the Clownfish Café. She saw the stubby candles lighting glasses brimming with water, in each a bright fish. It was the sort of thing Alice might have seen when she dropped into Wonderland. It should have been an illusion; it had
ILLUSION
written all over it.

Cindy started when Molloy handed her the clip they were passing around. “I never . . . I don’t—you know—do drugs.”

Molloy laughed. “I wouldn’t insult this product by classifying it as ‘drugs.’ This is your primo weed, your quantum mechanics of marijuana, the best. Believe me, the worst it could do to you is make you sleepy.”

She was researching drugs, wasn’t she? And she wanted a gang of her own, didn’t she? They were all looking at her encouragingly. “Okay.” She sucked in and held the smoke in her mouth, wondering what to do. It had a pleasant, minty taste, with a licorice undertone.

Molloy said, “Don’t drag it down deep, just a little at a time, slow.”

Cindy did so. It was much like drawing on a cigarette. Nothing happened for a few moments, and she was about to tell them it was without effect when she began to feel as if a very fine piece of chamois or cashmere
were buffing her skin. She was completely aware—hyper-aware—of everything going on around her, but smoothly. The slat-back rocking chair that had been pinching her before was now seamless wood.

“Really good stuff,” she said, as if she had some basis for comparison.

“You bet,” said Monty. “He gets it straight from the grower. None of your Mexican-cartel bullshit at all.”

Cindy, unfamiliar with sources of marijuana, especially Mexican sources, could say only “Wow.”

There was a chorus of “Wows” in response. Monty jumped up again as if his foot were on fire. “Wanna see your fish? I’ll get him.”

For the half minute Monty was gone, there was a silence like the shared toke.

The clown fish arrived like a baby bundled in water.

“It’s beautiful,” said Cindy. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Molloy,” said Monty, carrying the little fish carefully before him. “He’s the one gets ’em.”

Molloy raised two fingers to an invisible hat. “We got several of them at Aquaria.”

She did not want to ask if he’d purchased this particular fish for her and would take the hundred to the store. “You must know a lot about fish,” she said.

“I would have to say yes to that. We’ve got every kind imaginable.”

Cindy turned to the one they called Bub, who’d been silent, albeit blissfully, throughout this exchange. “Bub, what do you do?”

“Barter in used-car parts.” He smiled. “I live in wreckage.”

“He works in an auto salvage yard.” Monty snuffed a laugh. “Junk.”

“You mean the kind of place where they lift cars on some hydraulic thing and then dump them in a heap?”

Bub nodded. “Or they take apart the really bad ones for the parts.”

Cindy was wide-eyed. “Sounds like a horror movie.”

Bub thought about that, taking her analogy quite seriously. “More science fiction, I’d say. More Philip K. Dick. I can imagine Philip K. Dick in a junkyard.”

“Bub reads a lot,” said Monty.

“Yeah. I can wrap up a book a day as long as it’s not Proust. You’d be surprised how conducive my junkyard is to reading and writing.”

Said Monty, “He writes a lot, too.”

The others, Graeme and Molloy, just lounged and passed a fresh toke between them and listened or didn’t.

Bub unfolded himself from the brightly striped blanket and reached for his beer. “I wrote a novel about pieces of metal, you know, fenders, grilles, trunks—that stuff all flying off—”

The ceiling flew away
—

“—then coming together in a new shape. The title’s
Robot Redux,
but I’m thinking maybe I should change that. It’s, you know, too Updike.”

Continuing his editorializing, Monty said, “Bub got an MS from Crankton U.”

Cindy frowned. “Where’s that?”

“Online. It’s a great idea, lets you get your degree without leaving the junkyard.”

Cindy was intrigued. “What’s the MS in?”

Bub had pulled the blanket back around him. “Physics,” he said.

She blinked. “Physics?”

“Yeah. You have no idea how much quantum mechanics has to do with a junkyard. It’s where I got my idea for
Robot Redux
.”

“You actually wrote this book?”

“Yeah. Five hundred and twenty-three pages of it.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Long time. Over a year. I couldn’t do it full-time, seeing as how I had to take care of the junkyard.”

Monty was popping the last can of beer and handing it around. Everybody took a swig except Cindy. She had some of her first one left. The can went around again. Monty said, “See, Bub’s really into this bullshit string theory.”

Bub took umbrage, but not overmuch. “It ain’t bullshit, man. It’s the explanation of every fucking thing in the universe. It’s what Einstein was looking for and never found.”

“If this shit is as small as you say it is, how does it have anything to do with our lives?” said Molloy, ending with a loud belch.

“Strings, he means,” said Bub to Cindy. “They’re smaller than even neutrons. They’re small as hell. They explain the theory of many other dimensions. There’s more than three, you know. We just can’t see the
other ones. They vibrate. The strings, I mean. Vibrate all over the place.”

Cindy accepted the toke the next time it came around and filled up her lungs.

Molloy said, “So how would this affect me wrestling an alligator?”

Hearing the question, Cindy thought maybe she’d taken in too much smoke and was becoming delusional.

“It wouldn’t, would it? You’d just go on in your normal way.”

“That’s me. But what about the alligator?”

“Aren’t you taking this awful literal? As if strings were things you could take hold of. They’re invisible, man. The gator, he’d still be the same.”

“Then I don’t get it. If it doesn’t have any effect, and it’s invisible, why the hell bother with it as a theory?”

Cindy thought they were going around in circles, or she was. She said, “You’ve done that? Wrestled alligators?”

Molloy nodded as he sucked in some smoke. “Still do. It’s my winter job.”

“Florida.”

Cindy would have looked surprised if she’d been able to widen her eyes. They wanted to shut.

“It’s not as unusual as it sounds,” said Molloy. “One I usually work at, it’s a kind of roadside attraction. One of those mom-and-pop operations. They call it Gator Garden. It’s not far off the Tamiami Trail, near Everglades City. It’s real popular. The owners try and make it appear a kind of animal refuge and an educational experience for the youngsters.” He snickered. “You know the kind of shit. There’s a big tank of water and a gator. I get in. We pretend to wrestle. All we’re doing is having a little fun. Play-fighting.”

“How do you know play-fighting is what the alligator’s doing?”

Molloy laughed, threw his arms wide, stuck out his legs. “Still got all my limbs intact.”

“Maybe you’re a lot better alligator wrestler than you’re making out you are.”

Molloy looked pleased with himself but spoke modestly. “Nah. See, unlike this ugly couple that owns the place and their awful kids that tease them, toss things at them, I’m nice to the gators.”

“Is this operation legal?”

“Probably. Though it shouldn’t be, you ask me.”

Monty put in, “Molloy here just has a way with alligators. We go out in a kayak.”

“You, too?”

“Fight alligators? Hell, no. I just go down to visit. We go out on the river in a kayak or rowboat and row around. I’m deft with a boat.”

“Deft.” Molloy seemed to like that.

Monty went on. “Even the gators we see along the way seem to get on with Molloy.”

Cindy frowned and wondered how he could tell, but she didn’t ask.

Monty said, “I told him he’s a gator whisperer.”

They all laughed beery, smoky laughs.

P
aul Giverney knew when writing his mysteries how trumped up they were, how artificial, manipulative, and everything else Raymond Chandler said of the Golden Age of crime writing and all of the mysteries that followed from it.

Paul was adept at pulling down pieces of sky from different heavens and pressing them all together to form a new heaven. All it took was a little imagination.

In this case, a few pieces of sky had been supplied:

1) Fishing

2) Florida

3) Uncle/aunt

4) Cathedral

5) Joe Blight? Blythe?

He looked at number three. A tight-ass like L. Bass Hess would not want the uncle-aunt sex-change broadcast. But it would hardly be enough to drive him permanently from Manhattan.

Number five: Dark horse, since Paul didn’t know him. But he intuited bodily harm.

Paul rocked in his swivel chair. Fatal
accidents
were not ruled out. Push him off the 138th Street platform? That always went rather well in movies. A hand comes out of the crowd just at the moment the Pelham 123 bears down? Paul’s mind was steeped in cinema. He had really liked the original version of
The Taking of Pelham 123.
He made a note. Pushing L. Bass in front of a cab might involve the driver in criminal
negligence, reckless driving, something like that. Who was he kidding? As if yellow cabs ever drove any other way.

Besides, violent death would be momentarily unpleasant for Hess, but his legal team might simply carry on as before, or Hess’s wife might continue the lawsuit though probably not, as she didn’t sound like a big L. Bass supporter.

What Paul and the others wanted was restitution. L. Bass Hess had to make up for all the worry and strife he had caused, not to say all the money that Cindy had been forced to spend on lawyers. Just being ironed flat on the rails of the 138th Street station wouldn’t do it.

Number two: Fishing. Some infringement of a fish-and-game law? Hess doing jail time would be fun, but he wouldn’t get any. Probably the most he’d get would be a stiff fine and community work, or maybe confined to his house like Martha Stewart. So they wouldn’t be rid of him.

“What’re you doing?” He’d been studying number four, Cathedral, when Molly’s voice came from the doorway. She stood there in her apron, holding a wooden spoon. A patch of late-afternoon sunlight made her hair glow.

Paul shook his head, clearing it of celestial visitations. “Just making a list.”

“Oh, God, I hope not. Not after that last one.”

“One what?” He aped ignorance.

“List.”

He waved that away. “That was a list of publishers. I was trying to decide on my next one. What’s for dinner?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to decide between coq au vin and duck à l’orange.”

Two Dean and Deluca specialties. Molly hardly ever cooked except to make salads. Her salads were superb.

Another voice chimed in. “I want crepes Susan from the pancake house,” said Hannah.

“Suzette,” said Paul.

“No,” said Molly, “they actually are crepes Susan.”

“What’s the difference?”

“They don’t dump a quart of Cointreau on them and flame them.”

“What’s Cointreau?” said Hannah.

“Strong stuff that’ll knock your ears off.”

Hannah cupped her hands over her ears.

“What do you want, then?” asked Molly.

“Duck and crepes Susan with a quart of Cointreau,” Paul said.

“Okay.” Molly removed her apron and took Hannah’s coat from a hook in the hall. “Here. You can go with me.”

Hannah paused in the doorway to comment as she buttoned her coat, “Maybe that’s what happened to Vango.”

Paul frowned. “To what?”

“That man. Vango. You said he lost his ear.”

“Ah, yes, the artist. The great painter.”

“Whatever” said Hannah’s shrug. She wasn’t interested in his art, only in his ear.

They left for Dean and Deluca, and Paul went back to number four, Cathedral.

Interesting that Hess stopped by St. Patrick’s every Wednesday. He did nothing unusual, just sat in a pew. The performance of this ritual probably sprang from the same well as did eating lunch at the Gramercy Tavern at one o’clock and going home at exactly five. Take it a step further: This guy was a slave to compulsion. Rack it up to obsessive-compulsive behavior, and a lot would be explained. People like that were much more subject to cracking than the ones who spent their lives in free fall, buffeted by any passing breeze.

Paul stuck his pencil in his mouth and got up and paced around his twelve-by-twenty study. The pencil was pretty chewed up, for he spent a lot of time pacing when he was writing.