Float (12 page)

Duncan put his hood up and tried to disappear inside of it as he hurried through town, but he was stopped by every passing pedestrian to chat. He had a fresh appeal for the locals, as if being on YouTube had transformed him into a different person—familiar, yet totally strange. He found himself trying to avoid people he knew, but there was no place to hide, no alleys or streets where he would not bump into someone, so he just walked faster. He was practically running as he turned the corner to the post office. The collision with Syrie was sudden, loud, and dramatic. She dropped her armload of packages and squeaked in profound delight. Her dog, protected in a quilted shoulder bag, growled.

“Duncan!” she said, pushing back her golden sheet of hair. “I had so much in my arms I couldn’t see where I was going.”

“My bad,” he said, already scrambling to pick up the boxes. “I’ll get them.” As he stacked them in his arms, he wondered at their lightness.

Syrie dug around in her bag for her keys, and the dog made irritable noises. “Do you mind?” she asked, swaying to the music of her own voice. “My car is only right there.”

“Sure,” said Duncan. He stood up with the packages and dropped two of them, which she retrieved herself, bending over from the waist, and as she did, her white raincoat slid up her back, exposing purple form-fitting slacks.

“This way,” she said, standing up and gesturing with her bag of dog.

The fog was thick up on the hill, and the packages were piled so high in Duncan’s arms they blocked what little vision he may have had, so he stuck as close as a barnacle behind her. She rippled when she walked, as if waves were passing through her body. He almost bumped right into her again as she stopped abruptly in front of an older lilac Jaguar.

“I know this car,” he said. “It’s my mother’s. It’s the one she drove before she … before she didn’t.”

“I know,” Syrie said as she opened the trunk. “Last summer Nod told me he needed room in the garage and did I want to buy it. It’s been on blocks all these years, so it was in good shape for the years.” She ran her hands down her raincoat. “So I bought it and had it restored. I love the older models, don’t you? The cracked leather, the varnished wood. You know, when I was young, I always looked up to your mom. I wanted to be just like her.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I do. Or I did. She was so carefree, she didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her or what she did. It was too bad she sort of buried herself in that house after your dad died. They must have loved one another very much.”

“I suppose.” Duncan let the packages fall out of his arms and into the trunk. “What are all the boxes?”

“Promotional gifts. Velvet masks to put over your eyes when you sleep, with my ad printed on them.” She opened a box and removed a small plastic bag, through which Duncan could see the purple mask and the words
Wake up smiling, Dirty Talk Wake-up Service
and a telephone number. She handed it to him. “Take one, and let me give you a ride back to the office.” She slammed the trunk shut.

“Why not?” he said, and he slipped the mask into his pocket. The fog settled in sparkling drops on her face, and he saw her as through a white gauze—innocent, even angelic. She smiled at him as she unlocked her door, and he smiled back, but the moment he lowered himself in the soft leather he immediately regretted his decision. This was the car he’d learned to drive in. It was that very backseat where he’d lost his virginity. With Syrie. His shoulders stiffened to sharp points, and he began to feel a subliminal current pulling him to her side of the car.

“Buckle up,” said Syrie as she turned on the ignition. “I had to have seatbelts installed, of course. Your mom didn’t believe in them.” She pulled down the reflector and freshened her lipstick in the vanity mirror until her lips shimmered like the underside of a shell. The dog sat in her lap and showed Duncan his mean little teeth.

In an effort to make himself busy, he put his jacket hood down, and rivulets of condensed fog ran down his shoulders. “I’m getting your seat all wet.”

She gave him a sidelong smile. “I’ll turn the blower on, but it’ll take a couple of minutes for the windows to defog. The old girl needs to get up to speed.”

“Can I ask you a personal question?” asked Duncan.

She turned to face him. “If I can ask you one.”

“I’m curious. Why did you tell me your suspicions about Osbert, then turn around and start doing business with him yourself? And what did you need money from Osbert for, anyway? I thought business was booming.”

“That’s two questions,” she said.

“I know, but still.”

“If you paid more attention to Club gossip, you’d know all about it.” She ran her palms over the dark, hand-whipped leather of the steering wheel and gazed at its center as she spoke. “When Lance and I were married, I was that oblivious, too. I didn’t have anything to do with the bills. He took care of all that. Then one day I opened a phone bill looking for a number and found one—nine thousand four hundred dollars. You can imagine my surprise. It wasn’t long before I found out we were in serious debt because of his phone-sex addiction. After the divorce, we were both broke. And I thought, if phone sex is that good, maybe I can get my money back from it. I called some of the nine-hundred numbers and learned a few tricks. But I didn’t want to work nights, and I didn’t want to actually talk to those perverts. That’s when I came up with Dirty Talk Wake-Up and started advertising on Craigslist. I record a new message every day, but recently I’ve had to start hiring other voices. Men like variety.” She gave Duncan a wry smile before continuing. “The business just grew and grew, and I needed to update the system, but none of the banks would listen to me. When I heard you and Osbert on the Club porch that day, I realized he was the answer to my prayers. You and I were in the same boat, Duncan. The banks wouldn’t give us any more money and Osbert would. But unlike you, I rather like the danger involved in dealing with him. But you—you’re so easily frightened.”

“I am not,” Duncan said. “Of Osbert or anything.”

Syrie looked down at her teeny dog and scratched its head. “I remember when you were a kid, and you’d stand on the rocks as storms came in, letting the waves hit you, and you wouldn’t budge. You were absolutely fearless. Now you’re even afraid of me, and I’m rather a mild danger compared to Osbert.” She raised her hand to the top button of her blouse and peeked over at him.

Duncan smiled and looked down at his hands. “I remember standing in the waves. When my father caught me, he said I was thicker than a sea slug. And he was right. It was a stupid thing to do. I’d never let a kid of mine … ” He trailed off into an awkward silence.

“You were so fearless, you actually left Port Ellery.”

He felt his face get warm. “Are you still mad at me for going?”

“That’s three questions. No, I’m mad at you for coming back with someone else.”

He shrugged. “I fell in love.”

“I thought we were in love.”

“No, we were just young and … ”

“And horny?”

“I was going to say hormonal.”

“Hormonal? You make it sound as if we were in the grips of PMS. I think it’s time I asked my question before you have a mood swing.” She stared at Duncan until he was looking right at her. “Would you still be in New York if your father hadn’t gotten lost at sea?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes turned sharp. “You might have taken me with you.”

He shook his head. “Once I got away, I felt I needed to be with someone from ‘not here.’ And then, when I had to come back, I wanted to bring some ‘out there’ with me. Cora loved it from the beginning. She let me see Port Ellery in a whole new light. It wasn’t the dismal brick town of my childhood anymore. It was full of character and depth and natural wonders. She said it was the perfect place to raise … ” He was unable to finish the sentence.

“Raise what? Chickens?” She laughed as she clicked off the blower, being protective of her long nails.

They sat quietly for a minute, listening to a freighter groan out in the harbor. The fog seemed to wrap them up in a distant land and time, and his thoughts wandered out past the harbor and onto the cold dark sea. He was awash in emotions he could not name, and when he spoke his voice was cracked.

“At any rate, we’re just going through a little rough water right now.”

“Over a month of rough water. Tell me what’s going on.”

He focused his eyes on the intermittent wipers. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Duncan, in every marriage there’s one who’s anchored and one who floats. Not only have you been cut loose, but you’re in serious danger of washing out to sea.” She turned off the wipers. “Now, you got two questions, so do I. Tit for tat.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“Not to put too fine a point on it, Duncan, what I want to know is, are you two getting back together?”

He looked outside. “I think the fog is breaking up,” he said, with some false amazement.

She smiled at his conventional evasion, then she trotted her fingers along his leg.

“Syrie.” He looked at her and wondered whether this was what Cora would call a “pseudo-sexual invitation,” done to reaffirm Syrie’s femininity for him, or something else. He felt his insides flop, and yet … and yet he was intrigued by the promise of some wilder shore of sexuality, especially when he could see no shore at all anymore.

He offered the most feeble of protests. “I’m a married man.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not a jealous woman.” She leaned toward him and tapped his headrest with the tips of her fingers. “We used to have a lot of good times in this car.”

He felt her closing in on him and moved her hand from behind his head. “Syrie, we’re in the middle of town.”

She sat up straight. “We can go to my place.”

“No. That isn’t what I mean.”

“What do you mean, Duncan? What do you
ever
mean?”

He leaned back in his seat, feeling as if he just might faint. He was sweating. He unzipped the top few inches of his jacket and felt something stiff. He pulled out the envelope to Cora and looked at it in horror.

“I’ve got to go,” he said, and with a sudden burst of air, he was out of the car, leaving the door open in his rush to get back to the post office. His errand of love had almost turned into a quickie divorce. Cora would point to this as an example of his ambivalence about their marriage. And then she would leave him. As he ran, hard slashes of rain started to fall, as if the air were being wrung out like a towel. He heard Syrie give a little three-note song of good-bye, then slam the door shut.

A few days later, Duncan bounced up the stairs to Slocum’s apartment to share some good news from the lab: Trevor had wrangled money from the university for further study of the soup. The jellyfish concoction, which had nearly killed Osbert, was continuing to show promise as plastic. Boiling water, brine, acid rain, and dozens of other likely elements had failed to change its shape, making it commercially viable, and yet, because it was made of jellyfish, environmentally sound. Most so-called biodegradable plastic was still made from petroleum that lurked in the environment forever, making it questionable at best, and true biodegradables, made from corn, were fertilized with petroleum products and used up valuable farming land. Jellyfish, however, were the cockroaches of the sea, plentiful and free for the taking.

“I knew it,” said Slocum, slapping his hands together, his body still wrapped in a white linen apron from work. “My jellyfish might have failed at soup, but they’ll rule the world as bags.” The kitchen walls, the color of lard, were tinted orange by the oblique light of the setting sun coming in through the window and cast Slocum in a Renaissance glow. Ancient utensils hung from the rafters, along with bundles of herbs, various scales, and a smoked ham. For someone who espoused a modern, molecular approach to cooking, Slocum’s kitchen was practically medieval.

“You can’t patent a jellyfish,” said Duncan as he took his windbreaker off. “But you can patent the process. And if it turns out you’re the one responsible for creating the plastic, and not nature, you’ll be a wealthy man. Now we wait and see what it does in time-simulated experiments. A lot depends on how and when it finally breaks down into its molecules.”

Slocum leaned against the kitchen sink to take this news in, and a faraway look crossed his face. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, molecule to molecule,” he mused. “We’re all from the same basic material, aren’t we?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Duncan, grabbing a beer from the refrigerator. “I’d like to think I’m different from a jellyfish.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Slocum, giving his mustache a little twist. “All living things—us, the eel, the bird on the wing—we live and die at the cellular level.”

“Well, your soup had better not break up into its cells too soon, or else we won’t have a product. Besides, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Most research ends at a dead end.”

“The Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones, my friend, it ended because something better came along. We’re standing on the edge of the Petroleum Age and the beginning of the Jellyfish Era. One day, they’ll put a plaque on the restaurant door.”

“Trevor has to first determine if it’s really a workable plastic substance, and that’s a big if. But if it is, you’ll be first in line for a slice of the pie.”

“If that’s the case,” Slocum said, wrapping the crook of his arm around Duncan’s head and drawing him near, “I’ll make sure you’re awarded the exclusive contract to process the jellyfish and you’ll never have to borrow from shady characters again. Let’s celebrate. We’ll throw a big bash next weekend. I’ve been mulling over a new high-concept lobster dish, and I can use the party to launch it. As for tonight, I’ll whip up a special dinner here for just the two of us. Then off to Ten Bells to share our joy!”

“Here?” Duncan said, untangling himself from Slocum’s hug. “How about I grab a calzone from downstairs and then we go to Ten Bells after you’ve finished work?”

“Rheya’s cooking tonight. She needed money so I gave her a few shifts a week. Poor kid. Here she’s got a baby coming in a few months and a husband who keeps drifting up on shore. At least now she can gather up the pieces of that bastard and hold the funeral so she can go on with her life.” Slocum opened the refrigerator, which washed him in a white light.

Duncan wanted to suggest they eat downstairs for Rheya’s cooking, but that would hurt Slocum’s culinary pride. There were some lines that couldn’t be crossed in friendship.

“Have the police figured out why he’s in pieces yet?”

Slocum couldn’t hear with his head deep in the refrigerator. “A diver brought in a box of europeans this morning to pay his tab, and I’ve got a bag of bait lying around. Wade has been pushing all this whiting on me lately. He wants me to make something of them and put them on the regular menu.”

Duncan smiled the smile of the damned and sat slumped at the counter to watch Slocum work his peculiar magic. Harley, Clover’s kid, was in the apartment, too, but he had locked himself in the bathroom to work on a school project, and whatever that involved was scenting the air with sulfur. They heard him laughing.

“My budding scientist,” Slocum said as he placed a waxy box on the counter and opened it to reveal a dozen or more rubber-banded Belon oysters—the europeans—carefully laid out on a bed of seaweed, like jewels. He turned back to the refrigerator and produced a dripping plastic bag of small dark fish and dumped the whiting in the sink to drain. “When he graduates from high school in a few years, I want him to move here and work by my side in the restaurant. Who knows what we could do with his knowledge and my daring?” He rooted through the freezer. “I know I have a bottle of lemon vodka here somewhere.”

“You’re such a good dad,” Duncan said, and surprised himself with a twinge of jealousy. “And he’s not even your kid.”

“It’s not all about the genes,” said Slocum, holding the frosty blue bottle over his head like a trophy. “It’s the connection between two souls. Nature, nurture, fuck it. Clover loves Harley, but it’s just not in her nature to mother anyone. In spite of that, she still figured it out by finding me for her boy to shelter by. If she can do it—somehow manage to produce a normal kid—by God, man, you can, too.”

From the bathroom came the sound of breaking glass and an “oops,” after which floor-hugging vapors came creeping down the hall. Slocum didn’t even look up as he studied the lineup of condiment jars stored inside the refrigerator door. “Here she is,” he said, tossing a small jar of black caviar into the air and catching it.

“I don’t think Cora wants me around to nature
or
nurture,” said Duncan. “I have a feeling she heard about Syrie kissing me on the lips at Manavilins. For all I know, someone sent her a video.” He thought chillingly of the scene of the two of them in the car the week before. What had possessed him?

“Syrie’s a spicy number,” said Slocum. “But Cora doesn’t care about her; she cares about you. Your feelings are no thicker than a pudding skin. Toughen up and forge ahead. Call Cora and go home. She needs you.”

Duncan ran both hands through his hair and took off his glasses. “She doesn’t want me back. I think she wants me to sort the kid thing out in my head, but I haven’t and I can’t. I can’t justify a kid when I can’t even justify me. I mean, what am I doing here? What am I even
supposed
to be doing here?”

Slocum took an oyster out of the box. “What is the meaning of this oyster? It just is, you just is, we just is. You worry too much about irrelevant things. You’ve got to face the world fresh off the half shell every morning!”

“Cora said that, too. Not about the half shell, but she said I was avoiding myself with worry.” He put his glasses back on. “I just don’t see how self-knowledge serves any purpose.”

“Worry has made a hash of your life, my friend. You’ve scrambled your nest egg and gotten yourself involved in unsavory business practices. Worse, you continue to live in your childhood home, where you go to bed at night hugging your misery instead of your wife.” He picked up a rusty oyster knife and pried the shell apart, holding it expertly with his three fingers and a thumb as he recited Lewis Carroll:

“O Oysters,” said the Carpenter,

“You’ve had a pleasant run!

Shall we be trotting home again?”

But answer came there none—

And this was scarcely odd, because

They’d eaten every one.

With this, Slocum lifted the shell to his lips and swallowed its contents. “Like drinking a mermaid.” He was still humming with pleasure as he opened the next oyster. When he pried the top off, he brought it close to his eyes, using the blade to lift the meat and inspect the grayish-pink underbelly. “Annuncia says that plastics have been messing with the gonads of the oyster, turning them into hermaphrodites. That can’t be good.” He placed the oyster in front of Duncan. “Here, eat while I make us some cocktails.”

Duncan picked it up. “Oysters are born hermaphrodites, switching from male to female and back at whim.”

“Yes, but now they’re getting stalled in the middle. Can’t decide! Don’t have enough
push
one way or another from their hormones.”

Duncan inspected the oyster more closely, not for gonads but for hidden ingredients. Satisfied that it was an oyster as nature intended, he tilted his head and let the contents spend a brief but enjoyable moment in his mouth before sliding down his throat. The little bivalve was so fresh and full of the sea that it tasted like tears, which brought on a new wave of sadness. It was Cora’s favorite food, one they had shared so often it had become a bond between them. To celebrate their first morning in their new home—so long ago, it seemed—they had made oyster stew, opening the shells directly over heated cream on the stove. He remembered thinking: How perfect. How perfect the stew, the morning, the marriage, and their life together. But that life was fading into something vague and watery, until now, the oyster, once an emblem of their joy, was just a couple of empty shells.

Slocum set up two pony glasses and shucked an oyster into each one, then spooned a dab of caviar over both. When he poured the vodka over the combination, the caviar ran like squid ink and turned the drink the color of bilge water. He put his hands on his hips and studied the herbs hanging from the rafters. “Just what we need,” he said and pinched a desiccated leaf from a branch. “Sassafras.” He rubbed it between his large hands until it was dust, then sprinkled it on the drinks, which began to turn even cloudier, then thicken. “Cora’s counting on you to pull yourself out of your funk soon, buddy.” He pushed the oyster shooter in front of Duncan and raised his glass. “To jellyfish!”

Slocum took a loud sip, savoring the dark, alcoholic brine, but Duncan drank too much of it on the first swallow and felt a little knocked back. But it didn’t taste as bad as it looked.

Slocum pointed out the window, where the sun teetered on the edge of night, toward the golden water. “Consider the tides, my friend. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow! The same old, twice a day? No! Each tide leaves the new behind and takes the old with it when it goes, and, if we’re lucky, it exposes something miraculous like an oyster. And if we look deep into that, maybe even a pearl.”

“Life is not feeling like gentle, regular tides these days—it feels more like waves. Big, relentless, monster waves.”

Slocum nodded. “True. Monsters are part of the cycle, but even they recede in time. They’re not going to change, but you can. You just have to tweak your attitude until they pass.”

Duncan stared at his shooter. “If change was that easy I’d have done it long ago.”

“You know what the French say,” said Slocum, turning back to the refrigerator. “Only idiots don’t change.”

Duncan did not rise to the bait; instead he drank and watched Slocum, who removed bag after bag from the produce bin, then, in a flurry of chopping and ripping, filled a wooden bowl with vegetation and dressed it. At the stove, he lifted a lid and brought his nose so close to the action that his mustache grazed the surface of the parsley sauce. He wet his finger with his tongue and dabbed at the bubbling liquid. After a moment’s consideration, he added a dollop of blueberry jam, more cream, and a pat of butter. “You can’t have too much fat.”

“You can have too much fat,” said Duncan. “It’ll kill you.”

“Rubbish. Species with bigger brains need to sup on richer food.”

“You just said I was an idiot,” said Duncan. “I can’t have that big a brain.”

“You have missed my point entirely. You’re not an idiot, hence, you
can
change.” He pushed the bowl toward Duncan as he sat down. “Here, serve yourself some salad.”

Duncan put a small helping on his plate and picked at the soggy lettuce leaves, which tasted as if they were dressed from a crankcase.

“What did you use in this?” asked Duncan.

“Flax oil,” said Slocum, taking a mouthful, “for the bowels.”

Slocum finished his greens in a few bites, then turned his attention to the main course. As pans sizzled and pots boiled, Duncan held his drink up to the light and through the murky liquid considered the frilly oyster at the bottom of the glass. It was beginning to pickle and tighten up in a fetal position, the sight of which made him so depressed he downed the glass so he wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. The metallic bite of caviar and its sudden release of brine in his mouth was surprising but not unpleasant. Only the color was truly unpleasant. “Nice crunch,” he said, and this encouraged Slocum to make them both another, accompanied by more beer.

Slocum emptied his shooter in a single gulp this time, then sucked on the oyster like an ice cube, rolling it around in his mouth. “It’ll cure what ails you.”

Duncan sipped his more slowly this time. “I didn’t know I needed curing.”

“Neither did this pig,” Slocum said as he patted the ham over his head. “But I cured him myself in the smoker right out back.”

Duncan had no answer to this, and Slocum was laughing as he returned to his stove. In no time, pots were spilling over and dark smoke began to billow out from the oven, causing Slocum to release a steady string of swear words like magic incantations. Duncan kept his head down as hot oil spattered across the room. Finally, flush with sweat and glowing with high blood pressure, Slocum turned back to face Duncan, holding aloft a platter of fried whiting.

“Ta da!” The little fish were served upright, pretending to leap out of the sea, held in place with an ocean of Tater Tots and a drizzle of the blue-green sauce. Their eyes were open in fright, as if they were being pursued by a school of snappers. “All ye fishes in the sea, all ye children of men,” Slocum said as he placed the platter on the counter. He pressed his hands together and put his fingers to his lips in admiration of his creation.