Surprisingly, though I guess it made sense, Reedy Wetwagon didn’t resist her selection. If she had, it might have caused an argument, and she also figured she really ought to pay for the cruise somehow, and it might as well be with her life. Chance had raised her high, so she owed it the favor of going when it sent her home. All she requested was that Easel do a sketch of her before she was thrown overboard. Even harmless types dream of immortality, and in her mind she may have thought its monetary value would help her somehow. He hadn’t brought any materials with him, unfortunately, and even though the captain had pencils and chalk on the bridge, Easel didn’t like them. The old lady herself had an Instamatic camera, however, and the famous artist offered to take her picture with it, since the fact that he had pressed the button would make people look at it. He took her picture, and she started to weep—over the attention, I guess, and the fact that she was to be thrown overboard.
The storm had continued to rage all this time, and the other guests got hysterical and shouted for the old woman to be thrown to the shark. They got violent about it, which I guess you should expect if you just pick twelve names at random out of the phone book to share times of crisis with. I admit I started screaming, but it wasn’t anything about her. I never screamed anything about throwing her overboard. I just sort of screamed so no one would notice me.
Then the littlest of the caterers—who looked like an orphan with his bangs, and someone had said he was—slammed two serving trays together to get everyone’s attention. He offered to carve a likeness of the old lady out of ice and throw it to the shark instead. He had already carved ice centerpieces for the buffet tables, mostly of eagles, swans ridden by figures of the Whom, and what was either a flat-topped dollar sign or a letter S, for Super, I guess. Anyway, Easel said that he could do a more memorable job than the caterer, even though ice wasn’t his medium, but he pointed out that this shark was no fool, and if it could speak to make ultimatums, not to mention control the sea and the elements, then it probably knew ice from flesh and blood.
Suddenly the caterer grabbed a crate of after-dinner mints and threw them overboard, hoping to convince the shark that it had already eaten. You have to admire him, since he was small and everyone wanted to throw him to the shark if the old lady didn’t work out. Maybe that’s why he did it, but I’d like to think he was the baby she might have had and given up for adoption and she was the mother he never knew. She was way too old, I suppose, but I’m sentimental, and if they weren’t related it’s unclear why he was so persistent. He was crying, too, but to be fair his buffet had been overturned and he was soaking wet.
The shark swallowed the crate, all right, but the sugar rush from the mints only made it intensify its cries for a sacrifice, and it began to chant the old lady’s name. It’s funny, because everyone else on board certainly had more meat on them than she did, and the Whom is enormous, but the shark seemed to be looking forward to eating her, since she had been selected by fate, and sharks aren’t necessarily above superstition themselves. It wanted what it had become convinced it had coming to it.
Then the little caterer threw the shark a tan-colored deck chair, hoping it would mistake it for a scrawny human sacrifice, but the shark knew better the moment it swallowed it. At last there was nothing to do but throw the old woman overboard, because the caterer had passed out after hurling the chair. One of the guests was an accountant and said Reedy had the least life to lose, so it was the best thing. I averted my eyes.
No sooner had she been tossed to the shark and swallowed than the mood on board became remorseful and more rational, a sort of postcoital enlightenment. The Whom finally emerged from his cabin and said he had just had to take an important phone call, but it was a secret and he couldn’t tell us who had called. It reminded me that despite all their money, the people of Kaboom always depend on us to defend them. Everyone below realized that we had capitulated to the shark’s demands too quickly, and since it was a talking shark, we wished we had tried to reason with it, to offer it money or other alternative booty mere dumb unspeaking fish would turn up their noselessness at. I had felt that way all along, but no one had asked me.
We all noticed that the storm still continued to rock the yacht. That was something else we hadn’t considered. The shark had been bluffing. This got the Whom furious. He was angrier about the blow to his entrepreneurial pride than out of love for the old woman, who, with all respect, was a total stranger to him and too insipid for anyone to love deeply. The bad weather put him out of sorts, too. He shouted curses at the shark again, and spat into the water in challenge. Then he sent his bodyguards into the roiling icy waters to punish the shark for its misrepresentations and fraud. The little caterer regained consciousness and volunteered to go into the brine himself, but although no one discouraged him, the urge just sort of passed. There’s still the possibility he was the old lady’s lost son, or grandchild, anyway, even if they never realized it, and life does have magical near-misses as well as magical reunions.
Lightning writhed overhead like a dragon wracked by nightmares of monsters worse than itself, and thunder cracked like a nervous breakdown of the skies, offering a horrified accompaniment to the struggle. The bodyguards eventually hurled the falsifying shark onto the deck with us, where it thrashed and expired, despite the rain. Then they cut it open with a big knife from the Whom’s own attaché case, and there was Reedy Wetwagon, among the license plates, anchors, and lost penknives. She was sitting in the tan-colored deck chair, which the shark’s stomach acids had given a sort of tie-dyed look, and she herself was soggy but her hat was still on. She smiled and offered everyone after-dinner mints, which were only partially digested thanks to their plastic wrappers. Someone said she looked like an angel, but I think we were all edgy and eager for grace.
It would be nice to report at this point that the storm stopped, but in fact it continued for several hours, though it let up for a while and then got bad again for a few minutes. The shark really had been faking, and we all wondered how we ever could have believed a talking shark could do impossible things. The weather had calmed down, though, when the peaked horns of the city appeared like those of a clumsily concealed savage on the horizon. We all prepared to go our separate and even skewed ways.
Before we disembarked, though, one of the other passengers you wouldn’t want to meet pointed out that this story had a happy ending and would make a good Movie of the Week called “A Woman Named Jonah.” We all grinned, but in my heart I knew we were all guilty and that there was moral complexity in what had happened, so it wouldn’t have been such a good Movie of the Week, even if it had the old lady slip overboard by accident. Besides, we had all signed releases promising not to speak to the press about the cruise or sell rights to our experience, because it was Easel’s conceptual art idea and no one should make money on it but him. The caterers had already sworn to silence, since loose-lipped employees don’t get asked back. I’m only telling you because I know no one listens to you. Also, there’s some rule that the censors won’t allow the Whom to be depicted by an actor. My wife says she would have liked to see me as played by a handsome man, but that might just have stirred up trouble at home.
So, it was back to my workaday grind at the Marine Prosthetics dock. As for the old woman, you remember her. She didn’t want to be a bother, and the fact that she had survived loomed larger than that she had been nearly killed, so in a sense she did know something like nostalgia in her lifetime. I haven’t heard from any of the others since then, except I sometimes read about Easel’s coma and wonder whether that’s a joke, too. The Whom certainly never came back, or built any skyscraper here, and I didn’t even get to eat my fill on his cruise. That’s my story, and I promise it’s true, as sure as you and I are bound for Heaven. If you’re no wiser for it, then either you or I must be to blame.
Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales Page 10