Cobble Hill

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  Shy nudged him with her elbow. “It’s okay, Dad. There’s no one else here.”

  The film opened with a scene in which one of the boys was babysitting his little brother. They were watching a strange old film called The Red Balloon on TV. The balloon danced and flew over a sagging residential neighborhood of Paris. Its string became snagged in a tree, the balloon so red against the blue Parisian sky.

  Red, Roy thought. Not Gold but Red.

  Chapter 3

  Cue music. Cue talking cat. Cue voice for cat. Cat sits in chair and slurps spaghetti from owner’s bowl. Sated, cat burps politely into his paw. And cut. There was a fraction of time for an ending, some sort of sound better than the burp. He had to get the audience out of the burp and to another, less-gross place. But where?

  Stuart liked his job, and he was good at it. Plus, it paid ridiculously well, considering how easy it was. Touring was way harder, but he missed it. He missed the band.

  “Wazzup?” Robbie always answered the phone the same way.

  “What time is it in Australia? Sorry if I’m calling at a bad time. I just never know,” Stuart apologized. He called Robbie and JoJo all the time, like a lonely ex-girlfriend, checking in. He lived vicariously through their adventures in bachelorhood or felt smug about how comfortable his life was now, depending on what state they were in when he called them.

  “Fuck if I know. I’m not in Australia. I’m in fucking Indonesia, man. Some island I can’t even fucking pronounce. The surf is outrageous and the food is too. I love it here. I’m like, growing tentacles, the water is so warm. It’s like a bath, like surfing in the fucking bath.” Robbie had an Australian accent now, which was sort of annoying since he was from Park Slope. Stuart kept waiting for him to break into his normal voice, but it had been years now, and he never did. He’d even cut an EP with a song called “G’day, Kanga” on it, featuring an Aboriginal musician playing the didgeridoo. It never made it to the American charts.

  “If this is about us getting back together and playing Coachella, sorry dude, but I’ve got surfin’ to do.”

  Stuart laughed. “You wish. Nope, just checking in. It’s my lunchtime and I’m not hungry, so I called you instead.” He twirled his chair around a few times. “Any news besides the waves?”

  “Dude, that’s the thing. I am the wave.”

  Stuart waited for Robbie to say something normal.

  “How’s the wife?”

  “Mandy is… worse, actually.” Stuart was never completely sure whether Robbie and JoJo liked Mandy or if they resented her. At some point he’d decided not to care either way. “She’s pretty bad.”

  Dead silence.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here, mate, I’m here. Christ,” Robbie swore. “I am truly sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I just feel bad for her. And Ted.” This wasn’t completely true. He liked being the able parent, the caregiver, going out for ice cream cones together and teaching Ted how to skateboard. Ted seemed to like it too. Mommy time had been reduced to first thing in the morning or at the end of the day, when Ted was only partially awake—the way Mandy was all the time—on the big bed in the kitchen.

  “Hey, has she tried medical marijuana? It’s supposed to really help. Not that I’d have any idea, having never touched the stuff myself.”

  Stuart laughed. Robbie was a huge pothead in high school. He’d carried Visine and mint gum at all times and subsisted on Oreos and Doritos.

  “She’d have to get a prescription.” Stuart did not enjoy Mandy when she was high. Annoying didn’t even begin to describe it. She liked to wedge herself into tight spaces where she felt safe and give orders from there: “Are there any lemons? Can someone make me some fresh-squeezed lemonade? In a bowl. Please?” But it was worth a try.

  “New York State is impossible for that sort of shit though. Red tape like crazy. People die of cancer and AIDS before they get their prescriptions. I know someone who can fix you up. Doctor to the stars, or so I’m told. Music connection. He makes house calls and everything. Just tell him what you need and he’ll hook you up. Dr. Mellow. That’s not his name, but it’s something like that. And I don’t think he’s an actual doctor, more like a nurse.”

  “A nurse? I know a nurse.” Stuart’s mind so easily diverted to Peaches. Maybe she could actually help. How perfect that he’d just been in to see her about the lice. And he’d told her about Mandy. Going in to ask her about this wouldn’t seem too random. He just had to loosen up his balls and do it.

  “Gotta pick up the kid. I’ll let you know if I need that guy’s info,” he told Robbie distractedly, already standing up and shoving his MetroCard, wallet, and keys back into his pockets. He could surprise Ted by meeting him in the schoolyard when school let out. Ted could play four square with his classmates while Stuart asked Peaches about pot. He’d much rather buy it from Peaches than from some sketchy fake doctor. Not that she was selling it, but she probably knew where to get it.

  * * *

  Roy’s mobile phone bleated as soon as he and Shy got home from the movie and she’d retreated to her room. Shy had put his phone on “goat” for when he received texts. Roy meant to ask her how to personalize the noises for each contact. He wanted the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” to play whenever this particular person texted or rang, because of all the lonely people Roy had ever encountered, Tupper Paulsen was the loneliest.

  Thanks for feeding the cat. He seems happy.

  Well, at least the cat was alive. Roy had only fed it the one time, two days ago. He was supposed to go back again yesterday and today, but he couldn’t face it.

  Tupper had approached him on the street. He seemed a bit desperate.

  “Look, I see you all the time, and I know you must be very busy with your writing, but you work from home, right?” he’d said. “I’m Tupper Paulsen. We’re the Paulsens.” He’d hesitated, as if waiting for Roy to recognize his name. “Elizabeth and Tupper Paulsen. We’re on Kane Street, directly around the corner from you.” It was a bit creepy that he knew where Roy lived, but then again, so did everyone.

  “So, what I was wondering,” Tupper had continued nervously, desperately. “Would you mind feeding our cat this weekend? We’re going upstate and our cat sitter isn’t returning our calls and it would really be so easy for you since we’re just around the corner.”

  Roy’s response had been slow. This Tupper fellow was asking him to feed his cat. Not Shy or Wendy, but him. He didn’t even like cats. All the same, he appreciated being asked a normal, neighborly thing instead of being stared at, fawned over, or written about in the newspapers.

  “Of course, we’d reciprocate when the time comes,” Tupper Paulsen added. “Whatever you need. Elizabeth loves cats.”

  “Yes, of course,” Roy agreed, even though he and Wendy and Shy didn’t have a cat, or any pets for that matter. “Happy to help.” Why not?

  Thus, Tupper had given him a key and a few neatly handwritten instructions, including the cat’s name. He seemed to be in a hurry, and within a few minutes he started up the pewter-colored vintage Saab parked in front of his house and drove off.

  “Catsy?” Roy called when he’d arrived at the Paulsens’ the next morning. Nothing. He went about his business, pouring dry cat food into the bowl and refilling the water dish.

  “I have to scoop yer shit,” Roy called out again. “Nobody likes to scoop shit, but you’re obviously used to living in a nice clean house.”

  Litter box is upstairs in the bathroom outside the twins’ bedroom, the note on the counter told him. He mounted the stairs, noting how little they creaked, the absence of dust. The Paulsens ran a tight ship. He followed the instructions on the note, looking for the bathroom on the left at the end of the hall. It occurred to him as he made his way across the sunlit parquet floor that he had no idea how many children Tupper and Elizabeth Paulsen had spawned. Just the twins? More? He thought he might have seen Tupper with a tall girl with white-blond hair, pushing a pram.

>   The house was orderly and spare. The door to the all-white bathroom stood open and the pungent odor of freshly dropped cat shit emanated from within. It was so strong it almost made him hungry. Not for cat shit—Roy wasn’t insane—but for something rich and chocolaty. When he was done here he might head over to the Chocolate Room and have a slice of cake. One ought to eat more cake, he thought, and then giggled to himself because he was pretty sure Winnie the Pooh had said that.

  He glanced across the hall into the twins’ bedroom, expecting to see two cribs or two tiny little beds and a whole host of cute little things in duplicate. Instead there was just a single white bed pushed up against a pale yellow wall. Above the bed was a picture of two little newborn babies swaddled in hospital blankets, nestled side by side in a white wicker Moses basket.

  Roy stared down at the lonely bed with its faded daisy quilt and gray stuffed bear. He examined the photograph of the babies again and then began to cough and cough, as if his esophagus were trying to dispel the shocking sadness of Tupper and Elizabeth Paulsen’s tremendous loss. One of the twins had died, but they still called it “the twins’ room,” which meant the child who was left had to live with the hole in the basket that was her sister’s little body for the rest of her life.

  “I’m clearing out your box and then it’s cheery-bye, m’lad,” Roy told the invisible cat. Sad things made him nervous.

  By now the litter box was probably overflowing with poo.

  Can I buy you a drink to thank you?

  Roy stared at the texts. Poor bloke. Maybe he’d only asked Roy to feed his cat because he wanted to be friends. He wasn’t fame-stalking him, it didn’t seem like. He hadn’t even mentioned Roy’s books or the TV show. He was just a neighbor, being neighborly.

  All the lonely people, where do they all belong?

  I’m actually headed out to a bar right now if you’d like to join me. Monte on Henry St.

  Tupper didn’t text back right away. Roy put his coat back on, grabbed his laptop, and called up to Shy.

  “Going out again!”

  “Okay!” she shouted back.

  His screen lit up as he walked down Henry.

  Great! See you in 10.

  There was no correlation between Tupper’s cheerful texts and his dead-infant haunted house. As he walked, Roy googled him. A bio appeared with his neighbor’s picture. Tupper Paulsen was an industrial designer, creator of the Macaw—a decorative hollow bird sculpture that could either neatly store all your wires and cables or secretly stash a spare cell phone for surveillance purposes. The most ingenious thing about the Macaw was that it was white, not red like the actual bird, and blended in with the décor of absolutely any room. Stores couldn’t keep them on the shelves. Amazon was always sold out. Tupper Paulsen was a genius inventor and his wife, Elizabeth, was a well-known artist. No wonder they lived in the prettiest carriage house in all of Cobble Hill. They also definitely could have afforded to pay a professional cat sitter.

  The bar was unlocked and the lights were on, but there was no one inside. It was just as Roy had left it that morning. He poured himself a Guinness, settled onto a barstool, and opened up his laptop. After all these years, he’d mastered the affect of “writing” to perfection.

  The word Gold glared menacingly from the screen. He deleted it, typed the word Red in its place, and stared at it.

  Red was bold. Leaves turned red in autumn. Apples were red. Fast cars were red. Red wine was red. But so was blood. He didn’t do horror or murders or gore.

  “Hello?”

  “Hiya.” Roy slammed his laptop shut.

  Tupper Paulsen slid onto the barstool next to him and held out his hand. It was cold and thin.

  “Trying to write in a bar these days. Never done it before.”

  Tupper nodded. His white shirt was open at the collar, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. It was a very relaxed look for him. “Is it working?”

  “Nah. I don’t know. Too early to tell,” Roy admitted.

  “Well, at least it’s quiet, this bar. You couldn’t find a quieter one,” Tupper said without looking around. He seemed to know the place.

  “Odd spot, but I like it.” Roy got up and went around the bar. “Here, I’ll pour you a beer. What would you like?”

  “Gin please. Nothing in it, just gin. It’s down to the right, below the dish—”

  “Got it,” Roy said. It occurred to him that they were in the same business, creating something where nothing had existed before. And they’d both had some success at it.

  “So, the Macaw, that was brilliant. Made anything good since?” he asked boldly.

  Tupper shook his head. His wavy auburn hair was cut in a way that accentuated his high cheekbones, steely blue eyes, and red lips. If he had been born a girl, he would have been astonishingly beautiful. On a man it was simply off-putting.

  “Nothing? Well, that makes me feel better.” Roy rapped his knuckles on the bar. He poured Tupper a tall glass of Tanqueray and pushed it toward him.

  Tupper picked up the glass and took a small, neat sip.

  Roy winced. Nobody drank straight gin except drunk grannies and the children who finished their drunk grannies’ drinks after they fell asleep in front of the six o’clock news. But Tupper Paulsen’s little child was dead. He deserved a glass or two of gin.

  Roy poked around beneath the bar until he located the small fridge with a tray of ice cubes in the freezer. He popped some out and plopped them into Tupper’s glass. It wasn’t an actual known fact that Tupper’s child was dead; Roy had made it up. But the house felt like a shrine to a life that was no more—the invisible cat, the Moses basket, the prettily decorated twin room. And where was his wife? The living child?

  Was there something here he could use for Gold or Red or whatever this new book would be called? Ideas thrashed around in the muddy waters of his head. The family had lost its riches. The parents were hiding out from the debt collectors on their sailboat in the Bahamas. The girl remained stubbornly ashore, burying the only thing she had left—seventeen gold Krugerrands, gifts from her grandmother. Then maybe there was a hurricane or a tsunami or some other kind of natural disaster. The sailboat would be swept away. After the storm the night sky would be so bright with stars it looked like daylight, and that’s when his girl—Isabel, he’d always liked the name Isabel—makes her escape. She takes the gold and… Mars was red, the planet Mars. Red.

  Immediately his mind shifted to space. Battlestar Galactica was his favorite TV show as a teenager. He and his best mate, Rupert Warwick, watched it religiously. There was even a Marvel comic book series—based on the show, but much darker and creepier—that they bought every month and read in one sitting. The show was hilarious and strange and exciting and seductive. Each episode began and ended with a godlike voice-over that was part cultish philosophy, part nonsensical gibberish. Captain Apollo and Lieutenants Starbuck and Boomer—three strapping space warriors on the last remaining battleship—one impossibly perfect and good, another reckless and wild, the last loyal and brave. Their home planet, Caprica, had been destroyed by the Cylons and now the battleship led a “ragtag fleet” of survivors, in search of a distant planet inhabited by other humans, a place called Earth. All the men smoked and drank and played cards, and the women were beautiful, especially Jane Seymour as Serina—at least, Roy and Captain Apollo thought so.

  “I’m not a very good drinker.” Tupper spun the sweating glass of gin round and round on the shiny wooden bar top. “I’ve always been so thin. I get very drunk. And then I vomit.”

  Roy jolted out of his reverie. He slid the gin away and grabbed a pint glass. “Why don’t you drink Guinness then?” He found the tap and filled the glass. “It’s got a lot less alcohol than other beers and it’s filling, like eating a slice of cake.”

  Tupper took a sip from the dark, foamy pint. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s possible this won’t make me sick.”

  Roy topped off his own pint. Tupper Paulsen was already be
ginning to wear on him. He was like an insane person who’d only just been let out. “Working on anything new?”

  Tupper got out his phone. Roy sat down on the stool next to him and peered over his shoulder.

  “This is the Flounder. It’s a very thin mattress that feels very thick. This one’s the Artichoke Heart. It’s a fancy artichoke-shaped bowl with a tiny heart-shaped bowl inside it. Oh, and here’s the Hedgehog. It started out as a vibrating tool to itch your itches and remove dead skin and blackheads, but it’s waterproof, so it can also be used in the bath or as a sex toy.”

  “Naughty,” Roy said, shocked.

  None of Tupper Paulsen’s ideas sounded very good. But then again, neither did a book about a teenage girl in a hurricane in the Bahamas with a backpack full of gold who… Could she somehow wind up on Mars? There were meant to be people there eventually. Newscasters were always banging on about it on the BBC. Maybe his book could be set in the future. The first Martian settlement, with volunteers of all ages. People on Earth were watching, feeling hopeful and skeptical. And the absurd thing—the Roy Clarke does Battlestar Galactica of it—could be that life on Mars wasn’t much different from life on Earth. Basically all anyone ever thought about was food, sex, and going to the toilet.

  Roy put down his pint. “Let me ask you this. How far do you take an idea before you decide it’s utter shit, or too difficult, or just plain not going to pan out or whatever?”

  Tupper took several gulps of Guinness. “I finish everything. You should see my warehouse sometime. I have at least one version of every idea I’ve ever had.”

  Roy imagined an airplane hangar full of rubber cows that shot wine out of their udders and battery-operated kittens with massaging paws. “Fantastic. I’d love to have a look.”