Float (14 page)

He used his hand to swoosh away a slick of pogy oil on the surface so that he would not reek of fish for the rest of the day. “On we go.” He took off his glasses and inhaled deeply before sticking his head in the water. The cold shocked him right back up again, and he gasped. Salt water dripped down the back of his neck to his spine, sending an alarm through his entire nervous system. He wiped his eyes and saw Bear Petersen at the open door of the marina shed. He had a cigarette cupped in his hand and held close to his thigh. They waved at each other. No questions. Apparently satisfied that Duncan wasn’t going to do himself in on his property, Bear disappeared into the darkness of his office, and Duncan watched until the little flicker of light was gone.

“Okay then.” He took another deep breath and plunged his head in again, but this time he fought the urge to come right back up. He just held his breath and waited. The float moved up and down with the gentle movement of the harbor, and the water pressing against his face became a calming, enfolding presence, sharpening all his senses. He felt his heart slowing. It seemed as if he could hear salt settling to the bottom of the sea. Brine seeped in at the edges of his mouth, and he opened his eyes. The tide was so low he could see through the muddy transparency of the water to the bottom a few feet away, where teeny clouds kicked up as crawly creatures dashed into hiding, and crabs inched sideways over silt-coated debris. Life was becoming suddenly clear.

Just when he felt he could reach out and touch all the answers, he ran out of breath and popped back up for air. He exhaled and wiped his face on his sleeve. As he adjusted his lungs to oxygen again, he sensed a shadow fall upon him.

“Must you?” Annuncia said as she handed him a towel. “Must you go running off just at the moment you’re needed? You were supposed to speak at the rally.”

Duncan rubbed his face and put his glasses back on, making the world sharp-edged and mean again. “I was there long enough to hear you bully our clients. Why do you always have to be so extreme?”

“You have to know the extremes before you can find the middle,” she said. “Besides, I consider myself fairly moderate.” She looked in the water. “Did you just dunk your head in that mess of pogy oil?”

“I cleared it away first.” He rubbed his hands on the towel.

“Hmm,” she said but did not comment. “Anyways, if you want to see extreme, you should get a load of what Marney did when she got to work this morning. Slocum was sleeping in, so she emptied his tanks of lobsters and eels and released them into the harbor.”

“You’re kidding. Did he fire her?”

“No. She’d called a reporter to cover the story, and then she had Densch film it for YouTube. Slocum figures it’ll be good for business. Besides, he respects her right to free speech. Why can’t you respect mine?”

“Free speech doesn’t apply at work, not when it hurts business.”

“You have to think of the future,” she said. She used two hands to slam a mosquito midair.

He tasted salt on his lips, like blood. “It was all that thinking about the future when we revamped the factory at great expense and debt that’s gotten me in all this trouble in the first place.”

She raised a hand and waved his words away. “It’s to your benefit to have a cleaner ocean and cleaner fish frames to process. I’ve been thinking how Seacrest’s products could be contaminated with all sorts of crap in the fish bodies, and here we are, sending it all over the country to enter distant water supplies. It’s time to insure the safety of the powder.”

“We can’t do everything.”

“No, but we can do something. Come on now, we can’t laze all day on the docks. We’ve got work to do, even if you’ve got a hangover.”

“How do you know I have a hangover?” he said, refusing the hand she offered to help him stand up.

“Funny YouTube video going around of you at Ten Bells on a pool table flapping your wings like a gull. Posted by Slocum. I figured your anchor chains must be pretty rusty this morning.”

Duncan groaned. It was all coming back to him. He’d been playing pool all night, badly, and at last call owed Slocum $100. But Slocum said he would wipe the slate clean in exchange for a reenactment of the rescue of Kelp, and Duncan was so drunk he thought that was a good idea, what with money being so tight. Who would have thought that Slocum would stoop so low as to film it?

“What a pal,” he said, following Annuncia back up the ramp, which swayed like a ship’s gangway from their combined weight. “We were out celebrating. I’m guessing you heard about the jellyfish grant. It could be our long-term salvation.”
“I heard, and I’ve been thinking. If we end up processing the jellyfish, I want it to be green.” She pointed at the factory. “Instead of generators powered by oil, we use the water. Osbert thinks wave energy is the wave of the future.
We tap into the ocean with buoys that generate energy with a souped-up rubber band. The buoys could be anchored just beneath the water where they won’t obstruct
the ocean
view.”

“How much is
that
going to cost?”

“Osbert will take care of it.”

“It’s not his company to take care of. It’s mine. In fact, why is our logo on the new garbage bags? I didn’t say Seacrest’s would pay for them. We don’t have the money.”

“Osbert does. And what do we care who pays for it? It’s a win-win for all of us.”

“What’s in it for him?”

Annuncia paused. “Let’s call it his long-term business plan.”

“Where do I fit into this plan?”

Annuncia smiled. She never smiled, and it made him think the world was turning upside down.

“The tide is still out on that one,” she said as she began walking back up the dock, unsettling seagulls with every step.

Duncan followed, and not for the first time wondered whose side she was on. If she was actively working to get the factory from his hands and into Osbert’s, he would have to do something about it. Could he fire her?

She stopped suddenly to let him catch up and touched his jacket. “You ripped the back, Dun’n.”

“I know. But there’s plenty more where it came from.”

“Don’t be so sure,” she said and continued walking. “It’s that sort of attitude that’s gotten us in trouble in the first place. There’s not plenty more of anything anymore.”

Duncan was back in his Brooks Brothers suit again, and it wasn’t, as he had predicted, for his funeral. Josefa had asked him to appear in a live TV morning news segment, with whatever gull was posing as Kelp at the moment, to help the local station promote their coverage of Kelp Day in a couple of weeks. She wanted a full-scale reenactment, with him cornering the bird using fancy footwork and his jacket as a net, but he drew the line in the sand. “If I have to play the fool for your cause, I’ll do it, but I’m not doing the dance again.”

“Don’t see why not,” said Josefa. “Annuncia tells me that the Ten Bells video has drummed up all sorts of good will and orders.”

Duncan was reluctant to admit this was true. After Nod had linked Slocum’s video to Seacrest’s website, they got a flush of orders for spring delivery of Go Kelp! If he wanted to make a career out of the Kelp dance, he might be able to return Osbert’s money in no time, but his pride was still worth something. Not much, but something. In the end, he agreed to wear the original outfit for the television interview while he held the gull under his arm. His pants were tucked into his black boots, just as they’d been before, but this time he could feel October’s early chill seeping through the rubber soles. As the TV crew was setting up, he stared at the dozens of seagulls standing in conference at the low-tide line, eyeing him and waiting to reclaim their beach. He turned to make sure he had Seacrest’s name directly behind him and that the lettering was clearly visible to viewers. Unfortunately, the cameraman had asked him to take off his glasses because they were reflecting too much sunlight, so the words on the building were out of focus. He had to squint to make out the cluster of humans gathering in the parking lot, lured there by the sight of the TV truck. Many of them probably didn’t even know why they were there, only that it must be something if TV was interested.

It was definitely something. For one thing, it was windy, so it took a while for Josefa to transfer “Kelp” from her arms to Duncan’s without its wings hitting his face or without losing the bird entirely. In the meantime, a station assistant was drawing
Go Kelp!
in the sand in front of them. When the gull was set to rights, Josefa left. At the end of the shot they were going to pan from Duncan to her as she pulled into the parking lot with a shiny new white van fitted out for rescue, with Kelp’s picture painted on the side, the rich spoils of YouTube fame.

The camera light went on, and the interview began. It was at this moment that Annuncia and Wade lowered banners down from the factory—
Save family boats
and
Eat green fish
—effectively covering the
Seacrest’s Ocean Products, Ltd
.
sign. The blonde newscaster asked him to confirm that he had saved Kelp right there in front of his office.

“When did you first notice there was something wrong with the seagull?” she asked.

“I guess when his buddies flew off and he was left behind. He had a six-pack holder stuck in his beak, and his wing was dragging. They get hurt trying to free themselves.”

“You’d never know it from looking at Kelp now, would you?”

“Now you wouldn’t know it.” Duncan smiled. “I was happy I could help.”

“What do you have to say about that, Kelp?” She put the microphone to the seagull’s beak, and the gull turned its head to Duncan, which made the interviewer laugh because it seemed as if the bird was looking to him for guidance. Duncan knew the look for what it was: a mute indictment of his part in this charade. The bird in his arms was not even Kelp the Second. That one, too, had met its maker. This one was Kelp the Third, a perfect seagull in robust health that Josefa had trapped for the very purpose of releasing on Kelp Day. The gull was so recently captured that it still had sea salt running out of its nostrils and down its bill, like tears. The interviewer turned back to the camera to tell the listeners about the station’s full coverage of the release in two weeks’ time. As previously instructed, Duncan picked up the “healed” wing and waved it in the direction of the camera. Then Josefa pulled up into the parking lot and honked her horn, and the shot was over.

The interviewer dropped her smile and hobbled back to the camera in her heels, anxious to see how she looked in the playback, what with the wind blowing her hair around. Duncan already knew how he looked: squinty and guilty. He put on his glasses and carried the gull back to its crate—not the banged-up dog carrier Josefa had always used but a clean, airy cage built specifically for large birds. Before putting the gull back in he held it close to his body. Birds were not by nature cuddly creatures, especially ones so recently abducted from the wild, but this one did not put up a fuss. Duncan bent his head and smelled the sea upon him, then gave it a squeeze.

“I’m sorry,” he said, kneeling down to open the door. “Maybe you have to do a little prison time before you can appreciate your freedom again.” The bird did not look convinced as Duncan eased him back in. “Soon, very soon,” Duncan said as he stood up and brushed some feathers off his clothes.

He walked to the office along an unnaturally clean sweep of beach. The TV crew had tidied it up before the shot, so there were no bleach bottles, no plastic bags, no seaweed tangled with fishing line and gull feathers. It was all raked off to the side in a pile, waiting for nature’s garbage collector—the outgoing tide—to take it away. He stepped onto the words
Go Kelp!
and stopped. Marketing had still not come up with a label. Maybe they could just photograph the letters in the sand. He stood pondering, then sensed someone standing next to him.

“Hello, Mr. Leland,” said Beaky Harrow. Beaky’s tie had come unmoored from his jacket and was fluttering in the wind. On his shoulder sat Fingers. “You’ve become quite the seagull celebrity, haven’t you?”

Duncan shrugged. He hadn’t seen or heard from Beaky since the day he delivered the contract from Osbert, weeks ago. It was not a good sign that he was circling Seacrest’s again. “It’s good for business, I guess.”

“That’s important, isn’t it?” Beaky smiled, exposing a gap-toothed grin as he tucked his tie back into his jacket. “Keeping things good for business. Especially now that Osbert is so concerned about yours. What’s good for Seacrest’s is good for him.”

Duncan pointed to the factory. “Speaking of which, I should go back there and get some work done.”

“Yes, they rely on you, don’t they?”

Duncan felt he was being made fun of, and he turned to go.

Beaky touched him on the elbow. “‘Kites rise highest against the wind—not with it,’ as our friend Osbert would say.”

“Osbert didn’t say that. Churchill did. What’s with you two and Churchill?”

Beaky grabbed Fingers, who’d run down his arm, and put him back on his shoulder. “Churchill, Osbert, whoever. Identity is such a fragile construct.” Then he turned and tromped up the beach like a Breugel peasant. At the edge of the parking lot he stopped and twisted his body back toward Duncan. “Check your pocket, Leland.” He smiled before disappearing into the crowd.

Duncan put his hand in his jacket pocket and felt an envelope, cold to the touch. When he brought it close to his face, it smelled vaguely musky. He was afraid to open it, but the envelope was unsealed, so he let the contents fall into his hand.

It was a picture of him emptying the garbage bag of two dead gulls into the chute.

“No.” He’d been so careful. It had been dark, and there’d been no one around. He studied the angle of the photo, and it seemed to have been taken with a night-vision camera from a distant corner of the parking lot. Who would have a camera like that but a criminal? A criminal like Osbert. Duncan emptied the envelope, but there was no letter with demands. Osbert would have no interest in letting Duncan bail himself out of this compromising photo with money—as if he had any. Osbert was out to destroy him with it, ruining his name and making it impossible for him to pay back the loan. When Duncan defaulted, Seacrest’s would fall into Osbert’s hands.

Duncan looked over at the parking lot, where Josefa was showing off the van. Poor Josefa. Her plans were doomed. The general public would never understand that rescue did not always mean to protect from death. They would never get how very few actually got saved. Her contribution was in giving them a quiet, dignified death, with maybe just a smidgen of hope.

He should have trusted his instincts and refused the birds. Josefa did not experience the world as he did, how unforgiving it was. He wrinkled the photo up in his hand and crammed it into his jacket pocket. He stood like that for an empty length of time, not moving, not thinking, not feeling. With a start, he felt his phone vibrate under his hand, which shook off the silence in his head. He wondered if there would come a day when he would be unable to shake reveries off so easily. The silent interludes were happening more frequently, perhaps the first sign of impending insanity.

“Hey, it’s the TV star.”

“Cora?” Duncan’s voice caught in his throat. He had not talked to her since the drunken phone call at the beginning of the week, which must have negated any positive effects he might have gained from the love letter the week before. The letter itself hadn’t turned out as well as he’d planned either, and not just because he got waylaid by Syrie. After his close call in the car with her, he’d run back to the post office, and when he pulled the envelope out from under his shirt, it was damp with sweat. The address was smeared and barely legible. He’d had to borrow a pen from a stranger and write over the words on the envelope, making it look like the deranged script of a lost explorer. “You were watching the news?”

“Annuncia called to make sure I was.”

Duncan looked up at the plant and saw his staff at the windows, rolling up the banners that had obstructed his free advertising. They waved and gave him a thumbs-up, including Annuncia. If only they knew how thin a thread their jobs were hanging on at that moment. He had to talk to Annuncia about her relationship to Osbert. If they were not too enmeshed by now with all their plans, maybe he could play on her sympathies to get her to help him instead of Osbert. She would be shocked to hear about the blackmail. He hoped.

“I did it as a favor for Josefa,” said Duncan. “And I thought I’d get free advertising, but then Annuncia draped the building with banners.”

“The banners were a nice touch. They showed how much Seacrest’s cares about the environment.”

“It would have been nicer if my employees could have shown how much they care about Seacrest’s. But I don’t want to talk about the company. I want to talk about us. Did you get my letter?”

“I got it. It was wrinkled and oddly rank, but I loved it in spite of its faults.”

Duncan ran his fingers through his hair. He hadn’t wanted her to dwell on faults. Josefa came up behind him to get the crate.

“Hello, Cora!” she shouted.

He held the phone away from his mouth. “How did you know that was Cora?”

“The look on your face,” she said, and she walked away, lugging the cage with two hands. The crowd in the parking lot clapped as she approached with Kelp the Pretender.

“Did she say ‘the look on your face’?” asked Cora. “Do you look that tense?”

“Maybe the look she saw on my face was love. Have you ever thought of that?”

“I guess I’ll have a chance to see that look on Sunday, at the party.”

“Party?”

“At your house? Your mother invited me to a party Slocum is throwing there. I thought you knew all about it.”

“I knew Slocum wanted to throw a party. I didn’t know it was at the house.”

“I guess he was expecting your mom to tell you. She insisted on having it at home, seeing as how she is unable to leave it. I guess she thought you’d find out one way or another, since you live there.”

She said the last three words with such pain in her voice he could barely respond.

“I don’t have to live there,” he said at last.

“Maybe you do, for a while at least.”

“I’m not sure what the rules are. Can I call you?”

“Sure, during normal hours.”

He cringed. “I’m sorry about the call in the middle of the night last week. That was pretty thoughtless of me.”

“It was. I need my sleep.” She stopped. “I think we can just both agree you were drunk and try to move on from there. But it did seem to me you wanted to ask me something important, in between the rather lucid descriptions of your sexual fantasies.”

“Yes. There is something important.” He was afraid to say it, but he might as well get it out in the open while he had her. “It’s silly. I have no reason for even thinking it, but I have to ask.”

“Go ahead,” she said, sounding a little giggly.

“Cora, I have to know if there’s someone else in your life.”

She made a little gasp. “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m coming over right now.”

“No, you can’t. I’m in Portland. I watched you on a reception area TV.” The wind came in off the water, making it hard to hear her. It was as if his head was in a shell and the only sound was the ocean.

“Reception area? Like in a hotel?”

“I’ll come early on Sunday,” she said. “We’ll thrash it out then.”

A blast of wind scudded in off the water and whistled into the phone, and in that moment he lost her. She was gone. He clicked the phone closed and put it in his pocket.

His felt himself growing numb from the feet up, but he was not ready to go inside. He looked at the water, and he noticed a small sand castle sitting right on the waterline, built by some restless child while his parents had been mesmerized by the filming. He watched as the wind pushed a strong tide up the beach, undermining the foundation. Two more waves followed, taking first one wall, then another, until there was nothing left standing.

He studied the words
Go Kelp!
at his feet, then picked up a gaffing hook left by an earlier tide and, with careful lettering, returned them to their original intention.
God Help Us.