Odditorium: A Novel (21 page)

Pierce inserted a piece of drinking straw into first one nostril and then the other, snorting one line into each. “We have lift off. Passing through the stratosphere … ionosphere … Past gravity pull, beyond the orbit track and into deep space.” With a moistened fingertip he gathered adherent crumbs from knife blade and mirror edge, massaged them into his gums.

Christo leaped forward to fill his own nose barrels. “That’s a serious freeze,” he said, backfiring his sinuses. “Off a few pounds of this I could go fishing in the Bahamas for four or five years.”

“Right. So what’re you going to do, a little Rumpelstiltskin magic? Sit down in the basement all night spinning straw into high quality blow? This business is like any other—office machines, aluminum siding—you got to push and push and push. There are no shortcuts, jazzbo. Anybody starts to tell you about one, get a firm grip on your wallet.”

“Right, coach.” Christo served himself another couple of lines.

“I’ll pass,” Tildy said when Pierce beckoned to her, his face wreathed in bright hokum like a schoolyard perv trying to lure her into his car with a bag of jawbreakers.

“Listen, sugar, you’re not going to come any closer to the unadulterated product. This hasn’t been stepped on with procaine or lactose or talcum powder or any of that shit. This is the goddamn sacred bestowal of the Inca sun god right here.”

Without looking up: “Have you got some beer in the icebox? Or a bottle of Cold Duck?”

Pierce was not a romantic. His relations with women had always been capricious, diversionary. These recreational contacts (sometimes nearly grudging) were wholly separate from the deadly serious system of male competition that had begun long ago at the core of his life and grown outward, adding layer upon layer until exterior guise and interior pith were indistinguishable. But Tildy was anomalous, that rare species who could thrive outside those boundaries, well beyond the reach of his manipulations. Pierce felt like he was looking at diamonds through the wrong end of a telescope, and did not like it at all. He wanted to impress this woman he barely knew, to draw her in. He wanted a charm to reach her with, a magnet, but he had only the parlor trick of spilling the white flakes into a glass of bleach and water, explaining to her that the speed with which they dissolved demonstrated their purity.

“I believe you. I believe that you’re a man with refined tastes and the equipment to back them up. But I would still like a bottle of beer.”

Pierce looked to Christo for help, gained no more than a shrug, and left the room in a poorly concealed sulk.

“I think you hurt his feelings,” Christo said. “I’m proud of you.”

“I thought you said I was going to like him.”

“Did I? You’re sure I didn’t just say you’d like his weed?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Well, maybe it’s just a city mouse versus country mouse thing.”

Tildy came and straddled his knees, put her arms around him. “Do you have to be partners with him? Absolutely have to?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. Going into business with him doesn’t mean I have to convert.”

The gentle breath soothing his temples, the slow lips that touched him were like dry little explosions to his coked-up nerves. He stiffened under her, shifting, turning his head to one side.

“You’ve come all this way on your own, making your own game. What is it you want to grab so bad you’d change now?”

“That’s the kind of thinking keeps people driving tractors all their lives and buying on time.”

“What’s the matter with that?”

“Plenty. Let’s not get sentimental about it.” He nudged her off his lap and refilled his nose at the mirror.

“You’ll be giving something away if you go in with him and we all know it,” Tildy said. And to herself: Why why why do I care?

Pierce stepped in with Canadian ale, a mug chilled in the freezer and renewed aplomb.

“Here we are. A simple brew from the North Woods.”

Pierce opened a desk drawer, removed writing materials and a pocket calculator. “I think it’s time, jazzbo, that you and I sat down and hacked out some specifics. The kind of move you’re looking to do, that ad-lib style of yours just won’t cut it.”

“Absolutely. I’ve been itching to get at this all night.” Christo’s eyes were a shotgun; he fired both barrels at Tildy, but she was watching bubbles burst in the beer foam.

“Itching is just low-level pain,” Pierce said. “That’s what my grandma taught me the summer she had shingles. All right then, let’s say we capitalize this thing for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Hold on.”

“Take it easy. This is only for practice, a nice round figure. Now, you’ve got two cuts to make out of that before you clear this end—” Punching numbers on the calculator.

“Two cuts?”

“Right. The Swede I told you about and then your transshipping back. That’s going to be your second cut.”

“Isn’t there a simpler way to go?”

“Come on, where’s your sense of artistry? I mean, shit, we’re not in this for the money are we? We’re in this to keep from dropping dead with boredom.”

“Sure, sure. I’ve really been looking forward to a trip abroad. But what are we talking about? Maybe twelve and a half percent each way?”

“That seems like a solid figure. So you’re at seventy-five thou, and from there we go to your expenses, which are travel, and the car…. And some emergency fix-it money—we’ve got to allow for that.”

Tildy, with no appetite for shop talk, slipped out and went looking for a telephone. Incense aromas followed her through the thin, dank air outside the room. She stopped in the dim hallway, noticing the photograph of Pierce, his blond bowl cut melting into the pale background of snow and trees; he had on tinted glasses, the kind state troopers wore. Reminded her of Sparn, a youthful picture of him she’d once seen, all slick and slender, outside some Palm Beach movie house with straw hat tipped low and coat draped over his shoulders in the customary impresario pose.

She supposed there were other similarities between the two, both tacticians with unswerving faith in trappings of every kind, but she was already sufficiently depressed—no need to contemplate them further. Dipping her thumb in beer dregs she drew a large X on the frame’s glass.

Next to a ceramic crucifix in the next room Tildy found a wall phone. She pressed a button to activate one of the four lines and punched up a long-distance number; then she wound the cord in her fingers and counted the rings.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Your wife.”

“No shit. Where you at?”

“Still New York.”

“So how’s it goin’ up there, baby? That dude findin’ any work for you?”

“Finding work? I don’t …” Some line Christo must’ve given him the night they left; she couldn’t remember. “No, it’s been mostly window shopping and bar hopping, Karl. Not much news to tell. It’s only, I don’t know, I wanted to hear your voice and make sure you were getting by all right is all.”

“Well, ain’t you some sweetness. Tell ya, I been shaky some, but then I just sit still and talk to you out loud like you was right here and it calms me down. You always say the right things. And I know you would too if you was really here. See, while you been bar hoppin’, ole Karl’s been all sober. Ain’t had even one drop since you left. How ’bout that?”

“You’re serious, aren’t you.”

“Yes indeed. Like to drown in sweat the first couple days. But ain’t I makin’ that effort? I’m tryin’ to be a good boy for you, so why can’t you come back home?”

“I will, you know I will. Just not right now.”

“But I need some reward. Even a trained seal when he does his stuff right, they give him a fish. I can’t be doin’ like you want me to all on my own. You got to throw me a few fish about now.”

“I love you Karl and I’m glad I called. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Well, I’d sure like to know what it is up there that’s keepin’ you.”

“So would I.”

“Then why don’t you cut loose and come on down for the weekend. We’ll go up to Tampa and eat crabs and get rowdy.”

“Sounds good, and we’ll do it. Just not right now.”

“It’s just I been missin’ you so hard.”

“I know. Let me tell you where I’m at in case you need to call.”

Karl couldn’t find paper, so he wrote on his hand in ink. “I been thinkin’ all about you. See, it’s like that old song, baby. You’re the queen of my heart … Baby?”

He was talking to an empty line.

Tildy looked all around, everything so neat and squared off, like a dentist’s waiting room. There was a draft and the surfaces of furniture were cold. She cried without moving her face.

Down at the other end of the hall, ice motes oozed through septums and blood pumped thick from triphammer hearts.

W
ARM RAYS FILTERING THROUGH
pine boughs fell at the edge of the marl pit where Ondray Keyes sat holding the last half inch of a cigarette between fingernails, trying to catch a last puff or two without burning himself. His shirt was buttoned to the throat, the collar turned up. It had been chilly all morning, icy dew on his bare feet as he ran to the outhouse, fog on the pop bottles.

A brown bird fluttered out of the scrubwood behind him. It hovered a moment, dive-bombed the pit, skimming over weed-choked water, then floated up into high branches across the way. Ondray kept his eye on the small shape, knowing that if he looked away for only a second he’d lose it in the leaf shadows. He slapped one eye shut and aimed through the clear, soft air. Hook that finger round the trigger, take a breath and hold it steady, then squeeze. Pop. Ondray was saving up to get a BB rifle.

He flipped the cigarette end, hardly more than a coal by now, into the water and walked back to the culvert by the road where he’d hidden his bicycle. He brushed dirt off the seat and adjusted the playing cards clothes-pinned to the rear spokes (they made a bad motor-buzzing sound when the wheel spun). Once he’d climbed on, Ondray unwrapped three sticks of bubblegum and wadded them together before filling his cheek. The flavor went so fast. Then he put his small weight on the pedals and took off down the crown of the road, alert for any gleam in the weeds.

Maybe ride all the way to the big highway. Maybe see what’s doing over at that Mr. Gables’ house.

Karl answered the door holding a blue towel around his waist. “Ondray, my little pal. What you doin’, son?”

“What
you
doin’?”

“Standin’ here gettin’ my butt cold. Come on in here so’s I can close the door.”

Ondray moved slowly, sucking on his pink wad. “You sleep all day, man,” he said. It was not a question.

“I was up late. Wife called me again from New York last night. Had to sit down and make some plans, you know, stuff I gotta be doin’. A few deals I want to be on top of when she gets back.” Karl grinned woozily and padded toward the bedroom. “Put some clothes on and I’ll be right out. Should be a Coke in the fridge if you’re thirsty.”

“Can I keep the bottle?”

“Sure, go ahead. Collectin’ ’em are you?”

“That’s what we be doin’ most every mornin’, me and my brother. And splittin’ the money half and half.”

“So that was Earvin I seen the other day snoopin’ along by here with a gunnysack?”

“Coulda been.” Ondray pulled open the big white door and found the Coke next to a bowl of something that had fur growing on it. “Coulda been,” he said, parking his gum by the sink before drinking.

“That’s real good. You boys got some enterprise.” Karl emerged in pants and a Louisiana Tech sweatshirt, sat at the kitchen table with socks and sneakers in hand. “If you’d told me before, I woulda been savin’ all my empties for you. That’s some enterprise all right.”

“No, uh-uh. We just be findin’ ’em, that’s all.” Draining the bottle, he jammed it neck first in the back pocket of his dungarees.

“So it’s all in the huntin’. Right. All in the huntin’.” Karl hummed experimentally while preparing his morning meal: instant coffee and crushed aspirin mixed with hot water from the tap. “You know those ads in the magazines that say ‘your song poems wanted.’ I was thinkin’ I might take a swing at it. Whatta you think, Ondray, you think I could get a hit record?”

Ondray shrugged, replaced his wad.

“Okay, but you might hear my words comin’ out a juke box sometime. They’re lookin’ for new blood, you know. New ideas.”

“You gonna eat this banana?”

Ignoring him, Karl peered out the window. “Guess it’s a nice day out there,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe you and me could do some huntin’ on a day like this.”

“We finished that up already and Earvin done went home to eat. He like that fish head soup.”

“No, see what I had in mind … Lizard huntin’. Remember a couple years ago how we went lizard huntin’ right out back here in the slough. Caught some big ones, too, and my wife tied pieces of thread on ’em so you could walk ’em up and back like on a leash. Remember? We got awful muddy, both of us. And you were just a little scrap back then, looked like a piece of devil’s-food cake with the frosting all mussed. But we sure had a time of it. Nice kinda day to do it again. We could go right now if you want.”

Ondray’s mouth was filled with banana so he answered by angling his head and wandering toward the door. Nothing much else to do that he could think of.

Karl walked in front. He wore his painter’s cap and carried a shoe box and a couple of glass jars. Ondray scuffed along after him, eating a jelly sandwich. As they reached the trees, Karl cautioned him about making noise. A hunter, he said, had to move as softly as a breeze. They walked several minutes through thick woods with clouds of gnats hanging over their heads. A bread crust slipped from Ondray’s fingers and tiny brown ants instantly swarmed on it. He bent down to watch them.

Karl, who’d gone ahead, came thrashing back through stalks and saplings. “Come on, we got to stay together out here,” he said urgently. “You can’t tell what might be lurkin’ around.”

“Sure, man.”

The trees thinned out and the ground became uneven, exposed roots and grassy little hummocks. A smell of warm rot reached them.

“Couldn’t get me out here by night at the wrong end of a gun,” Karl said. “That’s when the swamp cats come out and big bears’d tear your head clean off with one swipe.”