Bryce did it for him. One of the first things he did was to put in a call to the Good-bye Boys and, after he’d reached Saad bin Saeed, advised him that D and D drop the Cindy Sella business, as it was a legal quagmire.
Saeed’s only comment was “Okay. Who is Cindy Sella?”
The second thing Bryce did was to make sure the fish were all right after their long and toxic exposure to Jackson Sprague. He had the professionals come in and reposition the aquarium on a wall that caught a little sunlight. He asked Bunny Fogg if they really had that weird disease and was happy when she said no.
The third thing he did was to install a small refrigerator with a little freezer, which he stocked with Eskimo pies.
It took him only half a day to do all of this (including the delivery of the fridge), which everybody agreed was a flat-out, all-time, NASCAR track record for a lawyer to take care of anything.
Everyone was happy, including the fish, whose colors brightened in the new sunlight.
62
In the seat beside Paul on the flight from JFK, Hess spent most of the time complaining. It was odd to Paul that such unscrupulous and unconscionable people could be so boring. One would think their lack of moral purchase might make them in some way fascinating. If Paul had to hear one more outcry from Hess that life was being beastly to him, Paul was willing to have Delta Flight #3701 go down in Graeme’s fiber-optic flames.
The plane landed without incident at Pittsburgh International Airport, and they headed for the Enterprise desk.
“Why don’t we just take a cab?” asked Bass.
“Too undependable. And would you want to stand on a corner hailing a cab after a séance?” Paul gave a dismissive laugh. “I sure wouldn’t. Also, there’s this four-star restaurant about three miles outside of Sewickley that everybody is raving about. Chef used to own Cecilia’s on the Upper East Side. You’ve been there?”
“No.”
Neither had Paul.
“Never heard of it.”
Neither had Cecilia.
They dug around in the Enterprise lot and found the car, a standard Toyota Camry, and melted into the early-afternoon traffic, very light, Paul was pleased to note.
He thought it would be wise to get some food into Hess. As they advanced onto Interstate 376, he said, “Tell you what, I’m hungry as hell. You?” He said this to an unreceptive Hess.
There would be no place along the interstate, so Paul took the Moon exit. Five minutes later, as if by magic, right up ahead was a diner rising in its own shimmer of silver and heat. Ah! Diner life! Paul loved diners. They were so wonderfully transitory. Here and gone. Paul pulled in and braked.
Inside, it was no disappointment: booths with dark red Naugahyde, chrome and red vinyl counter stools, a Formica counter curving at both ends.
They took a booth, and the waitress, pleasant and run-down-looking, was there tout suite with menus big enough to hold a Dickens novel.
Paul ordered a double cheeseburger and fries, relishing L. Bass’s look of displeasure.
“You’ll drown in carbohydrates.”
Paul added a side of onion rings.
Bass shivered. The menu held at least ten kinds of fish, all of it fried or otherwise cooked unsuitably. “I would like a piece of flounder, broiled.”
The waitress looked squinty. “Boiled?”
“B-R-oiled. If you can’t do that, then poached.”
“Like an egg, you mean?”
Paul enjoyed this exchange.
Bass ordered boiled potatoes and peas to accompany his fish.
Paul wondered why he didn’t carry those foods around with him—a few pounds of flounder, a bag of potatoes, unshucked peas and beans—and hand them over in eateries.
“Are you sure this woman is a bona fide psychic? A responsible medium?”
Responsible medium. Hell, anyone who could see those words in sequence could see the Red Sea parting along the ticker tape in Times Square.
“You bet she is,” said Paul. He had already talked about the several times that he himself had made use of this psychic. How, at a séance two years before, he got the entire idea for his novel Don’t Go There. This was a lie. Paul never got his ideas from anywhere but his own head.
When he told Hess once again what the venue was, the man once again was baffled. “Why would you hold a séance in the Andy Warhol Museum?”
“I wouldn’t. She would.”
With true diner speed, the waitress brought their orders. The fish had been broiled, and rather nicely.
“Look,” said Paul, “you don’t have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable.”
Quickly, Bass changed his tune. “No, no. I do want to. You’ve made it sound very compelling.”
No, he hadn’t, thought Paul as he dug in to his big cheeseburger. He had gotten L. Bass to go along on this harebrained little journey in the same way one often gets people to go along—by telling him he couldn’t.
“Sorry, Bass,” he had said, “but these séances are limited to the few people who regularly attend them.”
“Paul, you could talk her into accepting one more for just a single sitting. With your reputation? You must have influence.”
“Anyway, you don’t want to go to Pittsburgh—”
“For this I would. If this medium is as good as you say she is.”
Paul shook his head. After a little more pleading and cajoling, he gave in gracefully.
Now, sitting in the diner, Paul said, “The reason for the Warhol Museum is that this medium, Madame de Museé, she’s a huge believer in the power of Warhol to channel, you know, spirits. They channel.”
Bass put down his fork full of peas. “They channel? What channels?” He looked full of disbelief.
“The paintings. Madame de Museé’s connection to the other world—the spirit world—is channeled through Warhol’s paintings. Especially Double Elvis. The Double Elvis, that’s the real game changer.” Paul shrugged. “But that’s in MoMA. Now, the Eleven Elvises is in the Warhol, but for some reason she doesn’t find that as, uh, big a draw for the spirits.” He could have put it better, but never mind.
Bass flattened his palm against air like a crossing guard, as if rechanneling the two Elvises to another street corner. “You mean to say she holds all of her séances in the Warhol Museum?”
Paul dipped a fry in ketchup. “More or less.”
“How in God’s name did she get permission?” Bass moved his plate, and the peas rolled around.
Whoever asked for permission? “The museum had an extremely valuable painting stolen years ago. I can’t think of the name. Or the painter. Anyway, it was gone for two years. She found it.” Paul chomped down on an onion ring and wished he had a few more artery-hardening dishes to choose from. He was planning on apple pie à la mode for dessert.
Lena bint Musah had found it extremely funny and agreed to play the part. “A masterly stroke,” she said, and drank her espresso.
Said Candy, who knew Paul better, “It ain’t masterly, Lena. It’s motherfuckingly.”
They had gathered in Lena’s place a few hours after Paul’s return from his initial Pittsburgh trip. They were smoking her brown cigarettes and drinking her coffee, which was so strong it could have bowled them down at the end of an alley.
“It means,” said Paul, “that we can’t do the ectoplasm thing; the girl guards would look on strange rising mists as suspicious. We won’t be able to manifest in any way.” He took a drag of his cigarette.
Karl left off smoking long enough to object. “Manifest? Manifest what in shit? You don’t know what you’re talking about, Paulie.”
Lena smiled. “Oh, I think he does.”
Paul grinned. He hardly ever knew what he was talking about. Maybe that was why his books were popular. There was always that element of surprise.
“I still don’t see why you got a fuckin’ art gallery,” said Candy woozily.
“Because I couldn’t get PNC Field. The Pirates have a home game.”
The three of them laughed. “So when do we leave?” said Lena.
“Tomorrow,” said Paul. “I go with Hess. You go on another flight.”
So tomorrow was today.
For the second time, Paul checked in to the Renaissance Hotel. Bass could not stay at what he called the old manse, his childhood home, as it hadn’t been lived in for years except by a couple of families who had rented it. He said to Paul it was probably nothing but broken beams and cobwebs. Paul wished he had known before; he bet he could have turned the old manse into a playground for L. Bass’s already weakened mental state.
There was a bar on the other side of the lobby, and they headed for it.
It was dry-drunk Hess who did the heading. Paul followed happily along. He would have thought Bass to be just short of a teetotaler, given that the only thing he’d ever seen him drink was the cognac after the burning-bush incident and, yes, the chardonnay at the Gramercy Tavern. Paul was glad to see a limpness in the old Hess collar, but he needed to avoid a complete wilt-down, or even half a one. Paul didn’t want L. Bass blaming what was to come on booze, as in: “Oh, no wonder I thought I saw . . . !”
Hess laid claim to a barstool as if it were a parcel of land in the old Cimarron Territory land rush. He ordered a double Hennessy and ate half the nuts in the dish.
Paul asked the bartender for what was on tap and came away with a Blackstrap stout. The wow factor was once again evident. Black as sin and with a head a good two inches thick. “You should try this, Bass.”
“I hate beer.”
He would.
63
Lena bint Musah was waiting for them in the lobby of the Warhol Museum.
She was wearing a dark gray pin-striped suit that so exactly fit the museum’s pale walls and dark leather that the curator might have chosen it. That was the business end of her getup. Beyond that, it was all brass, from the curly wig to enough chunky jewelry to fill one of Ali Baba’s urns. Hammered-gold hoop earrings, a couple of necklaces, several bracelets. She also wore large sunglasses. She was a completely different person. Paul wanted to applaud.
There were to be no introductions, Paul pointed out to L. Bass Hess. Madame de Museé had asked expressly that no names be mentioned at the outset. That was usually the case, wasn’t it? As if he knew what was usually the case. And he’d forgotten to ask Lena exactly what the case was with séances. Then he remembered that this wasn’t a séance and she wasn’t a psychic. He glanced at her. She was taking it all with perfect equanimity.
So were Toby and Rebecca, he was pleased to see. They entered the lobby and walked up calmly to the other three and nodded as if silence were their business. Toby had heightened the Brando effect by wearing a worn leather jacket over his white T-shirt. Rebecca was her see-through self in her ethereal dress of scarves that seemed to be moving in different drafts across the lobby.
There were few patrons on the museum’s first floor. The five of them filled the small slickly running elevator to the second floor, where there were even fewer people.
Lena bint Musah, or, rather, Madame de Museé, the name chosen by Lena (leading Paul to wonder, wasn’t that French for “museum”?), had said nothing so far beyond a murmur to acknowledge the others’ presence.
She paused outside the skull room (as Paul had fondly named it) and said to the gathering: “This is my choice for a venue, whenever I can arrange it.” The accent was foreign but vaguely so. From a soft leather bag, she withdrew a small bronze sculpture of a pig. Its surface was as worn as Toby’s jacket. “If you would be so kind as to hold this for a moment in your hands, each of you.”
L. Bass was first. Half closing his eyes, he felt the pig, then passed it along. Oh, this was rich, thought Paul as Rebecca passed the little sculpture to him.
Then Lena nodded toward the white-parachute-silk-covered sofa with a familiarity that implied the odd piece might once have been situated in her own living room. “We will sit there, the five of us. We will not join hands, as it is unnecessary and would be exceedingly awkward.” A slightly condescending smile played on her lips.
They trooped into the room. Hess seemed a little overcome by the surround of skulls. The two actors took it in with actorly calm.
“Do not be disturbed by the skulls, please. The art has nothing to do with death. If you know Warhol . . .”
You could’ve fooled me, Paul thought, looking at Lena with fresh amazement. Just tossing out whatever she felt like. Nor did she complete the “if you know” idea.
Lena had taken in the details of his plan in one long swallow. It was as if she’d been here before, done this before. He began to wonder if she did have psychic powers utterly unknown to the Frobishes and Gumms of the world.
She told each of them to have a seat on the big cloth-covered sponge, which Paul thought was large enough in notion if not in actuality to contain multitudes.
Whoooosh. Everyone sat down, Lena seeing to it that Hess sat near her. In low tones, she directed each of them to try to focus on the skull before him.
That was winging it, Paul thought delightedly. He hadn’t specified that as a direction, but he followed it. He thoroughly enjoyed his minutes with the skull on the wall before him. It was a blend of seaweed green, a sort of van Gogh yellow, and a selection of faded reds. He thought at one point that its nonlips moved, but that might have come from spending too much time in the Gumm household.
He turned his head a fraction, enough to see that Hess was collapsed in an ungainly position, though it was hard to sit with dignity on the sponge.
Ten or fifteen seemingly uneventful minutes passed, after which Madame de Museé turned her head and said softly, “That will be all.”
There was a general air of bewilderment as they extricated themselves from the sponge, Hess looking more irritated and agitated than bewildered. “That’s all? But there was no communication, no message, nothing.”
She ignored this comment and said, “One of you feels a grave injustice has been done.”
Was she kidding? There were two actors present. Three hands shot up—no, four, when Paul raised his own.
“One of you is a fisherman,” she went on, leaving grave injustice behind.
Here, L. Bass’s was the single raised hand.
Lena drew him aside and, in a soft yet strangely carrying voice, said, “He sympathizes. What you seek is in the cage.” She adjusted her dark glasses and turned away.
Leaving them there openmouthed, including the instigator of the deal, Paul.
“Well, there is a story by Henry James,” Paul offered, but had to stop on the way out of the museum because Bass had stopped.
“Henry James? Henry James? What are you talking about?”
“A short story. ‘In the Cage.’ It’s about—”
Blustering, Bass interrupted. “For God’s sake, man, if it was my father she was talking about, he didn’t read. What did she mean? What?”
“Dunno. Let’s walk across the bridge, okay?” Paul hummed. He wished he could just push Hess in the river and take Lena bint Musah to dinner. That had been brilliant, brilliant!
“What could it mean?” Bass struck his balled-up fist into his other hand.
Don’t ask me, bud. I’ve never been to Everglades City. Paul hummed and walked.
64
The five-star restaurant toward which L. Bass thought they were headed was as mythical as Camelot. Paul chewed his lip, wondering why he hadn’t thought of working a little of that—King Arthur, Excalibur, the lake, whatever—into the mix.
They were driving along the part of the road where Montagne Cassino sat above them, bathed in moonlit benevolence. Paul wondered how much this effect was owing to expensive exterior lighting.
“Over there,” said Paul casually, “is the monastery I told you about. Friend of mine is the abbot.” He laughed softly. “Hard to believe, knowing him back in high school.”
“The life of an oblat,” said Bass Hess, craning his neck to look back at the a
bbey, “has something going for it. How did this friend of yours happen to wind up doing this?”
“Spiritual awakening. Very sudden. An epiphany, say, like Saint Paul . . . oh, sorry, didn’t mean to go there again.”
Hess did not respond.
It was country out here, tree-filled, with hills like hammocks. Not another soul, no other cars. The car ticked along with high beams unchallenged, with the occasional lurch over a pothole.
Paul’s phone jerked around in his jacket pocket; that would be Molloy calling. This was the signal that the four of them were in place. A hundred feet on, he saw the WORK AHEAD sign beside the road. Paul had asked that a marker be put up in case he didn’t recognize the turn before the hill.
In a hazy and uncertain illumination (uncertain because it had been made by Graeme, not God), Paul saw the four horses and four riders in a line atop the craggy hill. Three of the horses were dark, either black or brown; the fourth was dead white, a ghost of a horse.
The four riders wore dark capes with hoods. It was astonishingly dramatic.
“Stop!” yelled Bass.
Paul had all but crawled around the turn and now braked hard, pitching both of them forward. “Something wrong?”
Beside him, Bass Hess nearly went through the top of the car. “What’s that?”
The thrust of his pointing finger almost gouged out Paul’s eyeball. Paul turned to peer out his window and off to the hill. “What’s what?”
Bass grabbed Paul’s arm and looked at him in horror. “Horses, four of them. And four horsemen! You must see them!”
Paul squinted toward the hill and shook his head. “Maybe if I get out.”
When he opened the door of the car, Bass pulled at him. “No! Don’t get out!” The voice was near a shriek. “Don’t you see them?”
“Okay, Bass, take it easy.” Paul put his hand on the man’s shoulder, gently pushing it down. “Head down, deep breaths, come on, now.”
The Way of All Fish Page 29