The Siren House

by Andrew Post

  “Trust me,” she said, “you don’t have to worry about no one looking down their nose at you for ordering something harder than water around here. It’s early, but we don’t judge.” She noticed the crutches leaning against the stool next to me. Her gaze flicked back to me, fast, as if she was afraid to be caught staring. Her face softened more. And there it was: pity. But was I seriously getting this from her—a fellow cripple?

  I remembered my last words to my sister. We were on the helipad, Alan waiting in his boat below.

  “Are you going to be okay?” The way she asked, it was clear she didn’t mean just emotionally. She was also referring to my swimming lessons, the pumping motion exercises she helped me with to keep my legs from atrophying. With Mom being gone and Dad gone as well, but in a different way, who would help me “swim”?

  “Don’t pity me,” I said to her. It was something new I’d adopted in that last year. Inspired by, I think, finding that album with the naked woman in the hammock on the cover, those perfect legs I’d never have. (Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds, in case you were curious.) From that day forward, and after tinkering with the machine with Dad and deconstructing Mosaic Face’s plea for help, I’d begun to refuse help with my leg exercises. I didn’t want anyone to carry me anywhere, help me bathe. I wanted to be useful, to be something other than just a burden.

  So when Darya asked without asking if I wanted to come along—not because I should or she wanted me around but because it’d help her ease her conscience—I repeated it. Just in case she didn’t hear it the first time . . . looking her right in the goddamn eye . . . “Do not pity me. Do not.”

  “All right, all right,” the bartender said, holding up her hands like I’d just pulled my gun on her. “Water it is. Jeez.”

  When she brought the glass to me, she set it down with unnecessary force, some of it sloshing out.

  “Hey,” I said before she could scoot off again. “Sorry.”

  She eyed me, still upset. “It’s fine.”

  “No, seriously. I’m . . . not normally like that. I just—”

  “You new to town?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “You probably should register if you haven’t already.”

  “Register?”

  “With the Smocks. Er, Regolatore, I mean.”

  “Smocks?”

  She held the armrests of her wheelchair, as if to anchor herself before her impatience sent her flying over the bar at me. “You a little dense, honey? Because I can talk slower if you like. If you say you’re a radiation baby, I promise I won’t think any less of you. It’s not your fault.”

  “Radiation baby?” I asked before I could stop myself. I shook my head. “No, I’m not. I just . . . water.” Above the bar, it appeared payment for anything in this place was done with animal skins, meat, produce . . .

  “How about something harder, on the house? You look like you could use it. My treat.”

  “No, that’s all right. The water’s fine. Thank you.” I’d never had a drink in my life outside of a sip of wine Darya and I swiped one Thanksgiving. Blech.

  “Look. It’s okay.” She reached out and patted my hand, and as much as my instinct was to pull it away, I didn’t. “It’s okay now. The A’s over. Duluth is happy to have you. Staying for the show?”

  “Actually, I—”

  “Don’t have any money? That’s all right. I could sneak you in the back if you want.”

  “Thanks?” I said, a question purely by accident.

  “Sorry about before.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was raised better than to talk to people like that.”

  “You’re sweet. Hold on to that.” She smiled. “I’m Beth.” Then the lobby bar went quiet.

  The auditorium double doors slammed apart and the cast and crew spilled in with a riot of talking and laughter. The barflies woke long enough to squint and applaud. The actors bowed and jotted autographs onto drink napkins. Their colorful clothes looked like something from another planet. It had been a long time since I’d seen any garment that wasn’t faded or patched, but theirs looked new and tailored for them alone.

  A man and a woman read from tablets, going over lines. She wore a tie-dyed dress and a hemp tiara. He wore a fine black suit and tie, hair parted neatly.

  It was hard not to stare.

  The actors crowded in around me to order drinks, paying for everything with red and green plastic objects. Hard to see, changing hands so fast, and it took me a moment to recognize them. Monopoly pieces? Ah, okay. Greens and reds.

  Beth made drinks, depositing the handfuls of little green houses and red hotels into a crank-operated register.

  “And what’ll the boss man be having this time?” Beth asked, executing an elegant handoff to a waitress who sk-skikked by her skates.

  “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” one actress wearing the Rachel suggested.

  Emerging last from the auditorium, I could catch him only in glimpses as he disappeared into the crowd at the bar. “Whiskey ginger, darlin’, no ice.” He pinched his handlebar moustache, which, along with his beard, was dyed so dark it threw back a blue tint.

  I’d later learn the colorful garb Thadius wore that evening wasn’t just a costume for his role as emcee of the show. As a rule, he didn’t just wear clothes; he festooned himself in them. His only fashion rule: if it wasn’t in plaid or at least parti-colored stripes, he didn’t let it touch him. High collars, sometimes tails, coupled with spectator shoes one day, then moldering flip-flops the next. The man was a walking rummage sale carnival.

  Seeing him there that first time surrounded by all those performers of his, I could tell he wasn’t one of them but lightly lorded over them, a patriarchal mallard to his flock of odd ducks. With smiling brown eyes, small and set far apart in a deeply lined face, Thadius looked over his assorted actors, writers, and crew members. “One more round and then all of you’ve got to get back in there and give it one last pass.” His voice had a rolling cadence to it, stage-taught projection with a sweet-tea stain of Mississippi, a little incongruously high for a man of such Rubenesque build. He checked a pocket watch, which he produced from a chartreuse-and-oxblood-striped waistcoat. “I think we’ve got time to go through the whole thing one more time before we’re set to get all of you loons in makeup.”

  Those kindly eyes passed right over me, addressing me as well. I guessed he had so many people working for him that he forgot who was who sometimes.

  “We’ll run through the Namaste & Jeff piece again, maybe go through the prebreak musical number once more.” As he continued to go over the list, he patted a few of his actors on the back lovingly.

  It was then I noticed his hands, bejeweled with stuff gaudy and fake as all get-out, reminding me of the junk jewelry Darya and I used to blow our allowances on at the mall: chrome-painted plastic with glued-in plastic gems of unlikely colors. He wore one on each finger except the thumb of his left hand. There, the digit was gone after the second knuckle, a shiny pink nub in its stead. I wondered if that was why he went by Thadius Thumb, not Thadius Thumbs. Whatever accident caused it must’ve hurt—the thought of it made my scalp tingle.

  “We got ourselves a plan?” he asked the troupe and took a sip of the caramel-brown liquid in his glass.

  “Sounds good” and “You got it, boss” came the wholehearted replies.

  After all of the show’s staff had their drinks and were talking amongst themselves, I got up from the wheezing clamshell-shaped bar stool, got my crutches under me, and went down to Thadius’s end of the bar.

  It was like he had eyes in the back of his head. “You had best slow that down there, because I’m afraid this is not a place where handouts can be expected.” He looked older close up. Was that a toupee?

  “I’m not looking for a handout.” I glanced at his group at the bar. All of them were too wrapped up in their own conversations to notice anything. I moved my crutches closer, lowered my voice. “I came here to tell you I’m selling
some asparagus.”

  At that, he promptly turned around fully and studied me. He noticed how I was getting about, my legs wrapped in old belts and my dented crutches, and his face ticked through expressions but quickly recovered, serious. “Asparagus, you say?” He drew closer, ducking. He pinched his pointy beard’s tip. “Please, tell me more about this asparagus.”

  “Uh, yeah . . . this asparagus of mine is of the highest quality.”

  “And how long are the stalks? High as if Jack himself had grown ’em from a magical bean?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “Pray tell, is it the greenest asparagus I’ve ever seen?”

  “So green you will hardly believe.”

  “Then, my lady, I must ask the most important question one must when inquirin’ about asparagus, you see.” He paused, head angled back. He was really getting into this, like this was Macbeth or something. “Ahem. Then, my lady, I must ask the most important question . . .”

  “Oh. Uh. Yeah, my line. And I know already what this important question will be and answer to thee: No, good sir, my asparagus will not at all affect the aroma of your pee.”

  Thadius Thumb grinned. “Delivery needs a little work, but you got the script down, more or less.” He glanced at his group, who were by now draining the last of their drinks and settling up with more Monopoly pieces. “A little late, ain’t you? By about a year, be my guess. Figgered you for dead.”

  “Eight months,” I said. “I got held up.”

  “Actually, it was more like a year.”

  I wanted to be adamant that it had been only eight months I’d been delayed, but he probably had a point. I thought the calendars on my tablet had somehow gotten screwy. It was December but hot as July. The days had been getting away from me in the last few weeks as I’d prepared for my trip to Duluth, so I’d started making checkmarks at each sunset on the kitchen wall with a grease pencil. But even after doing that for a while, I still felt off seasonally. I gave up when I ran out of room on the wall and just started guesstimating the day, as well as the month, then I didn’t care at all what day it was, or even what time. Time didn’t matter much, I learned, being alone and completely rudderless.

  “Either way,” I said, “I’m here now and—”

  “Listen, as dear as you are on your crutches—truly, God, you’re breakin’ my heart with this whole Tiny-Tim-in-the-wasteland thing—but you couldn’t have picked a worse day. I’ve got three people out sick, no understudies, and one of my capturer operators had to leave town. And, naturally, this is when we’re tryin’ to lasso new advertisin’, and we need this episode to be a real winner, so . . . let’s just say this: tonight, you hereby have Thadius Thumb’s permission to take a seat—in the nosebleeds—for free.” He waved over to the man in the saggy usher’s uniform, pointed at me, and mouthed, “Free, okay?”

  The usher gave the thumbs-up.

  Thadius turned back to me. “There. You’re all set. You know Michael, and Michael knows you. After the show, we’ll get together and have a chat about how you can help out.” He looked me over again. “Maybe you can dust or somethin’. Sound good? Good. All right, sweetness, we’ll talk later.”

  “I have a cauldron,” I blurted before he moved too far away. It was what Mosaic Face had told me to call my Flashcraft machine, the scratchers’ supposed code word. I expected Thadius to look pleasantly surprised by this news, but he looked struck.

  His hand latched onto my arm.

  “Hey. Ow.”

  “I know you do. But you can’t go throwin’ that word around so carelessly. They burn people for even talking about usin’ . . . those. I was tryin’ to explain we’ll talk later. We both know the score. Just, till then, keep it down, okay?”

  “Who burns peop—?”

  “Them. The Smocks. And they got ears everywhere, dearie, let me assure you. Probably even here, so let’s not get into all that now.”

  “But why? It’s just a machine.”

  “They don’t think so. Just know they do it. And boy, do they ever.” He chuckled without humor, the soft huh-huh seemingly weighted by bad things he’d seen. “So keep it down, okay? We’ll talk after my intro. Go on in, and I’ll find you after the show’s under way. Got it?”

  “All right, yeah, got it.”

  He let go of my arm and straightened up. He adjusted his tie and adopted his patriarchal air again—all smiles but very much in charge—and shepherded his chuckling, semidrunk gaggle back in. I kept my distance but followed.

  Inside, the theater had its original ornate gold walls, red carpet, and glowing dotted lines of lights set into the floor marking the aisles. The ceiling had a beautifully detailed mural depicting a fiery-eyed manta battling Poseidon or Neptune or some other fish king, all flecked with blue scales and wielding a trident. Cool.

  The front ten rows of seats had been removed, and in their stead were more mismatched tables and chairs, a tea light at the center of each indigo tablecloth. The movie screen had been removed, a stage fitted in. The current set was a shabby room complete with a frumpy couch, hanging macramé flower pots, a beaded curtain featuring Mona Lisa, and wallpaper meant to look like brick. Familiar.

  Thadius, at the head of his group, went backstage. I and several others headed toward the seats at the tables down front for a preview of the show.

  “I’m okay.” I waved off their help and struggled to sit down without pole vaulting to the floor. “I got it.”

  A moment later, Thadius emerged onstage. He surveyed the set, comparing it to a picture on a tablet he cradled in his hand. He adjusted a lampshade here, a doily there, then walked back up so his heels were right on the lip of the stage and took in the whole thing again.

  The woman flower child and suited man stepped out. They went through lines, Thadius drawing in marks for them to hit with a GlowSquiggle, just like Darya’s.

  Namaste & Jeff, I remembered, was the name of the play. I had to smile to myself. It suddenly clicked.

  On the rig, along with that hard drive of trendoid stuff, we also found a forsaken storage bin full of CDs and DVDs. Down at the bottom, we found they’d brought along several box sets of Friends, Will & Grace, Wings, and Dharma & Greg.

  As I watched the actors perform a rejiggered version of an episode I had recently watched, I wondered if Thadius had seen Dharma & Greg on DVD or pirated over the Internet. He seemed somewhere in the ballpark of late forties, early fifties, far too young to have seen the show in its initial run. The thing ran in syndication for years, I remember Dad saying. Especially when the trendoid thing took off in a big way and all things ’90s found themselves back in circulation.

  They ran through the scene a few times, tweaked sections to tighten the dialogue and adjust marks. Once through, Thadius watched over the next act: an elderly husband-and-wife team of knife jugglers who went by the stage names Gherkin and the Orangutan. After limbering up with countless squats and arm windmills, the two octogenarians clad in colorful leotards threw daggers at each other with effortless accuracy. Each knife thrown was caught and passed back with fluidity, the blades flashing past too fast to follow. But they, even both wearing bifocals, seemed to go about this as automatically and casually as could be. Thankfully, even after ten minutes of continuous knife lobbing, neither one stabbed the other. If their goal was to make the audience hold their breath for the duration, then bravo. Seriously.

  Next came a three-piece band that went through a sped-up cover of “Sex and Candy” several times, coordinating with someone unseen above the balcony. Turning around in my seat, I saw the black-glassed cubicle that used to be the projectionist’s box. It sounded good on the first go, but by the fifth it sounded amazing.

  The stage went still, and I figured it was probably getting close to time for the show to start.

  Thadius noticed where I was sitting, up close, and motioned—not unkindly—to the balcony behind me.

  I got to my feet—easier than sitting down—and headed to the rapidly filling lobby
so I could go up to the balcony. The stairs were narrow and gave me trouble. People behind me asked if I needed help, but I kept on taking one step at a time, not answering. It would’ve been easier for everyone if I could’ve stayed downstairs, but I suppose balcony seating was far cheaper than those tables down right in front of the stage. Thadius could spare a nosebleed. As long as he didn’t vanish after his intro, I was fine sitting up here.

  I’d been expecting to be the worst dressed among guests in formal wear, but everyone looked like they’d just come in from a day at work in the fields. Large-billed hats, ball caps, jeans, bib overalls, boots, work gloves dangling from back pockets. The place soon took on an earthy aroma, not unpleasant at all, musty and rich.

  Everyone was in high spirits. The general topic was what tonight’s installment of Namaste & Jeff held in store. I knew, since I’d seen it not only performed in rehearsal but on a laptop monitor back home when it went by Dharma & Greg, but I kept it to myself.

  A few men stomped up the balcony stairs once everyone had found their seats and settled in. They stepped onto platforms affixed to the brass railing of the balcony, stood behind a tripod, and eyed through the viewfinders of their hologram-capturing cameras. With their array of lenses, they looked like robotic bugs and produced a holo in a compressed HV9 file. Fancy stuff. They were nothing new, but I knew they were terribly expensive.

  I watched in fascination as the holocap operator—who was dressed like a chef in clogs and checks—performed a few tests. After clicking on the device, he waved his hand in front of the lenses, rewound the tape, and played it back for himself on a miniature projector fastened to his wrist. The same hand that had passed in front of the capturer’s eyes popped up in the air, with convincing color, depth, and density. No one else seemed to be amazed by this.

  The lights dimmed. The theater hushed.

  A spotlight thumped on, buzzing just a few feet above me. It swiveled about the stage, seeking its target. The bloodred curtain shifted. From stage left, a man emerged, and the spotlight snapped onto him. A blast of sudden applause made me flinch.