The Sleep Garden
Page 6
Now considered a precursor to “Reality Television,” and rumored to have been filmed using actual drugs, the show has the distinction of being the only network television production ever to have been cut off after the first four minutes and replaced by twenty-two minutes of public service announcements.
Anyway, it was only when the Captain was returning from his successful presentation and was just minutes from his house, seated in the limo, that the Myrmidon thing came back into his head. Weren’t Myrmidons in the story of the Argonauts? When Jason threw the boar’s teeth onto the ground, they popped up, fully armed, each one—God knows why—just looking around for somebody to slay. Oh, oh, here comes trouble, he remembers Jason thinking, but then the future husband of Medea took a stone and threw it, hitting one of them. And the Myrmidon he struck, without even stopping to reason where the stone had come from, attacked the Myrmidon standing next to him, and then another Myrmidon rushed in to help the second one, and somebody else rushed to help the first Myrmidon until there was a general free-for-all, which lasted about ten minutes, max, by which time they were all dead. Then after that Jason went on to get the Golden Fleece and marry Medea. The Captain knows how that turned out.
Or so he remembered it. But just before bed that night, when he is back inside his house, he looks up “Myrmidon” on his computer and realizes he was totally wrong. All those dead warriors in the Jason story didn’t have a name. They weren’t Myrmidons at all. The Myrmidons were from a whole different story. Myrmidons were the fighters who came along with Achilles to help him out in Troy. Myrmidons had nothing at all to do with holes in the ground, though plenty of them died at Troy as well. The ones who sprang from the earth and then died thanks to Jason were nameless.
“Mellow Valley reruns,” the no-longer-young executive leaving for a promotion will tell the younger one who is to take his place. “I wouldn’t open that can of worms if I were you.”
“So when do you think we’ll know if Louis is going to come back?” Viktor asks Jeffery. “I was thinking maybe I could take over his room.”
VI
DECOYS DUCKS
Look like ducks Look like ducks
Don’t eat Eat
Don’t fly Fly
Float Float
Can be worth a lot of money Inexpensive
Silent Very noisy
Take hours to make Relatively easy to make
Painted feathers Actual feathers
No feet Feet
Wood Flesh
No hands No hands
What Madeline said to Viktor the first time she saw him was, “I really like your hands,” even though she was secretly thinking that his hands were kind of grotesque and much much too large for an average human being, so maybe the only reason she said it was to make Viktor feel comfortable, him being a newcomer to the Burrow, or to diffuse her own discomfort, like saying, “That’s a really great boil on your neck that you’ve got going.” At any rate, she had been dating Raymond back when Viktor arrived and she was starting to get bored again, being long finished with that pretentious ass, Jeffery, and even though Raymond was—still is—sweet, decoys aside, he was a little lacking in—what?—hotness.
Viktor, on the other hand, is Mister Intense, but only, she now knows, in two areas, fucking and making money, and when he finishes fucking, he more or less forgets about her. And even though she knows she could go back to Jeffery (ugh) in a second, or to Raymond, who at least is an artist and, she knows, still has a thing for her, the fact is it would just be too embarrassing, too awful to have to retrace those particular steps. It would make it seem as if she hasn’t made any progress at all during her time here in the Burrow.
Obviously, the simple solution is for Madeline to just get out, to meet people, attend a few concerts, join a fan club or two, hit up the singles bars, et cetera. And so she gets dressed up. She puts on some makeup, fixes her hair, looks nice, and tells Viktor, who is hardly paying attention, that she’s going to go out to get some fresh air. There, that wasn’t hard, she thinks. But no sooner does she reach the front door and put her hand on the knob, is about to give it a twist and walk out to a new, or at least newer, life, than it occurs to her to worry about the wind, of all things. If a wind comes up suddenly, it will blow her hair around, move the bushes and knock over trees. And even if it doesn’t do that, it will certainly blow around pollen—not good for her allergies—and force the clouds to streak by overhead only to be replaced by other, and of course newer, clouds, none of them keeping the same shape, and so on and so forth, in a terrifying and meaningless progression, and that’s just in the short run.
In the long run the leaves will barely have enough time to fall before their trees are back in bud again, full of squawking birds, which will race around, looking for things to make nests out of, and then, when they’ve finally stuck the nests together and their babies are born, they’ll be busy day in and day out stuffing the same regurgitated swill down the babies’ throats, and when they’re not doing that, they’ll be fighting over the same or similar territories, beneath the same or similar sky, next door to the same ocean, with the same or similar dogs barking at one thing or another that’s going by, and the same or similar people laughing or crying. Also there will be the same or similar guys who used to ask her out on dates using the same or similar tired pickup lines, the same meant-to-be-winning gestures, who took her out to the same or similar overspiced or underspiced meals (“Our special today is beef brochette”) in those same quaint cafés and similarly hip restaurants—the food not even close to being as good as the stuff that she makes—and then, when the guy, one guy or another, had sometimes paid the check at the end of the meal, him asking, as if this were an entirely new concept that had just then occurred to him, “So, what are you doing the rest of the night?” It reminds her of when she used to stand next to one of those automated traffic lights while waiting for it to change while it kept saying “Don’t walk,” out loud, as if she hadn’t heard it a million times already. She hates it when she starts thinking like this.
And then there is also the same or similar fucking, and the unfucking, and the planning-the-rest-of-our-lives-together sessions late into the night, and after them the breakups, and next analyzing the breakups, and starting over. And true, at first it was all sort of okay, all kind of a novelty, too, but now, with her hand on the knob, about to leave the Burrow, it suddenly occurs to her to ask: Are things that bad down here? Why go out when you know how it’s going to end anyway, which is exactly the same as it’s ending here? And the difference between her old life and this one, if she cares to measure it? Well, Madeline thinks, not much, with the advantage to the Burrow being that it is mostly quiet, mostly safe, smoke free, incredibly inexpensive, and mostly illusion free. And Viktor, when he remembers her, is actually decent in the sack.
So she takes her hand off the knob for the moment, goes back to her room, hangs that dress back up in the closet, and heads to the kitchen, where at least she’ll be able to whip up some new snack or another, depending on what’s in stock.
Maybe she should start small. That night, waiting for Viktor to leave the computer and join her between the sheets, she asks him, “If you were going to sign up for a fan club, whose would you pick?”
The better to touch you with, is what Viktor tells Madeline, but even so, he’d rather have a pair of normal hands. “You should play basketball with those palookas of yours,” the basketball coach had told him back when he was a kid, and so he did, Number 37, but the truth was that he was still short, so things evened out; he could hold the ball like a champ, but he never got a chance to shoot it because his opponents towered over him, and the only thing he got out of the experience was a new nickname—Los Manos.
“Ha, ha, Los Manos,” Viktor replied the first time someone called him that. “That’s funny.” And the following night he made sure to slash the tires of the bicycle of the kid who said it. But by then, Los Manos had stuck.
Not that anybody here i
n the Burrow ever calls him anything but his own name, Viktor, spelled with that K, and why it is a K, he does not know. Somebody, maybe a nun, once told him that his father-in-absentia was Scandinavian, or German, and possibly a sea captain, though how she would come to have this information he has no idea, so there’s plenty of room for doubt.
As a place to live the Burrow is okay enough—a guy can make a lot of money if he wants to, and Viktor does. In part it’s because the rent is cheap, but also it’s because there are no distractions other than Madeline, which, frankly, leaves plenty of time for a go-getting person to invest online. So he has to say that being here is good, and Madeline is a bonus, because even though when he first arrived she was with Raymond, anybody with eyes could see that she was too much for him to handle. Anyway Viktor knows her type: treat them bad, and they’ll come back for more, is his motto. Besides, the first time he ever saw the inside of Raymond’s apartment, which is basically wall-to-wall ducks for Christ’s sake, he knew it was only a matter of time before Madeline would be running screaming out of there. To him.
Plus, soon, if he can pull it off, he’ll have a larger room—Louis’s old one—so Madeline can live with him there if she wants to, and give him the money she saves in rent to invest for her. Is she that practical? He has his doubts. For example, just the other day she asked him what kind of fan club he would join, of all things. He told her, “I don’t know. Maybe one for that old Captain you see on TV selling fish.”
And what does Heather do when she is not servicing (an unfortunate choice of words, but there you have it) her clients in the sex trade? Well, oddly enough, she’s writing a book. It’s for children and it’s called Ballerina Mouse, about a mouse who, more than anything else in the world, wants to be a ballerina, and this little mouse really, really tries, she does. She practices day and night, hardly taking any time to eat or sleep, but the bad thing is that one of her hind feet—feet being the most important thing to a good ballerina—is deformed, twisted around so badly that Ballerina Mouse can barely walk, let alone jeté or entrechat. So the sad part, the genuinely fucked-up part (and Heather is sorry to use such a word as “fucked-up,” but her work vocabulary keeps intruding into the rest of her life, which is why she needs to quit this job) is that Ballerina Mouse will never, ever, be the dancer she wants to be, no matter how hard she tries. And of course, everybody who meets her knows this instantly, but none of them can bring themselves to speak the truth.
And it’s exactly because this, or something similar, happens to a lot of people that Heather thinks it would be a good thing for children to read about while they are still young—so they can get used to disappointment—because, truly, hardly anyone gets to be what he or she wants to be. They also should learn that sometimes people lie.
So how’s the writing coming?
Well, it’s practically writing itself, she thinks, except for the ending, which she’s having a hard time with because of what she needs to do, which is to make sure the kids 1) don’t miss the message that life is kind of disappointing, but 2) still make the ending happy enough that those kids who finish won’t slit their tiny wrists, and that’s the hard part. Nonetheless, she’s getting close; she’s sure of it, and then, when she finds just the right conclusion, maybe she’ll get lucky and sell Ballerina Mouse for a lot of money, and become a famous author, or at least a famous children’s author. Then she’ll be able to give up this phone sex business, unless, for some reason, she starts to miss it, which she honestly does not think will happen. Though if it does, then she’ll only do it when she feels like it.
Not that Viktor has anything against Raymond personally. Sometimes, true, when Raymond passes him in the hall Viktor will let out a little quack, but it’s just a small one and it’s only a joke, and most of the time Raymond will even quack back at him, like it’s their private language. Duck Man may be (well, he is) screwed up, Viktor thinks, but he’s basically all right. At least he’s got a sense of humor. And Viktor doesn’t begrudge Raymond his former fling with Madeline at all. If something’s being offered to you, why not take it?
He does.
In Raymond’s dream, Madeline and Viktor are dressed in black and seated on two giant chairs made out of gray concrete blocks stacked (without mortar) one on top of another. Though there are red pillows on the seats, the chairs don’t look very comfortable and when, in his dream, Raymond enters the room, Madeline and Viktor remain seated, but raise their arms in the same gesture made by aliens in old sci-fi movies to acknowledge the presence of an earthling. Something like, “Hail, Earthling,” or “Welcome to Thoz.”
Then Madeline nods once, as if she’s saying that Raymond should approach the matching thrones, but at the same moment Viktor shakes his head, as if he’s saying, “Raymond, don’t listen to her. You stay right where you are and don’t move.”
So should Raymond approach or not? It’s a hard question, and for the rest of the night he just lies in bed, tossing, looking at the dark spectral shapes of ducks along his wall, trying to make up his mind.
Tammy, Junior’s therapist, fingers her ankh-shaped pendant as she speaks in what Junior regards as her low, sexy voice. “It’s been a long, hard process for you, Junior, but I think the worst of it is over.”
Junior likes Tammy. She’s positive thinking, for one thing, and pretty, for another. She has short brown hair and wears flower-patterned skirts that show off her legs. She smells good, too—something like vanilla mixed with fresh-cut grass, and when he comes in for a session the first thing she does is make him a cup of chamomile tea—to calm him down, she says. Only after he’s had a couple of sips will she let him talk.
Because it has been one motherfucking hard journey for Junior ever since Mellow Valley went down in flames and he went from being a star (well, a rising star) right back to being nothing at all, as some (many) people had said he was in the first place. True, he was only a kid when he did the show, but needless to say that just made it worse because he didn’t have any examples of what things were supposed to be like, information that kids who have fathers would be taught. So instead of knowing that life is all about disappointments and overcoming them, Junior thought the good times would keep going on even though, come to think of it, Mellow Valley wasn’t all that good of a time. In many ways, in fact, it was a nightmare. So by this point in his therapy Junior has told Tammy everything: how he hates his stupid name left to him by his Scandinavian sea captain father, the foster homes, and then the series of arrests and being institutionalized, as Tammy calls it, at least four times. But now he’s out (obviously) and with a little help from the government, Junior lives quietly in his furnished room with not much else besides the stuff the place came with—only a few books, paperbacks, a change or two of clothing, a hot plate, a plate, a sink to rinse his plate, and Old Stag Killer.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but I think you are on the road to health at last,” Tammy tells him, giving him a tiny hug in the form of her two small hands, grasping each of his upper arms and giving them a single squeeze. “Just keep taking your medication and remember to keep active. What was that sport you said you were doing . . . archery?”
It’s afternoon in the Burrow, and Madeline and Viktor are lying around his apartment. They have just finished making love and Viktor, unusually for him, is taking a break from the stock market. What the hell, Viktor figures, he may as well ask. “What was it about Raymond?” he says. “What did you ever see in him?”
Madeline looks at him for a minute—a long one. “Oh,” she says, “Raymond has his ways.” And suddenly Viktor is sorry he asked.
“Do you hear that noise?” Jeffery says to Heather as they pass in the hall late one night. Heather looks a little jumpy, as usual, but Jeffery thinks maybe it might be a good time to start a conversation, maybe get to know her better.
“What noise?” asks Heather.
“I don’t know. A grinding sound, maybe. It’s not that loud, but I can hear it.”
�
��No,” Heather says, “I haven’t heard it, but then for my job I’m on the phone quite a bit, so I might not notice.”
“What kind of job do you have?” asks Jeffery.
“Oh,” she says, “just a job.” And she darts back inside her apartment, quiet as a mouse.
Madeline has left Viktor’s apartment to go back to her own, while Viktor is just getting angrier.
The Duck Man has his ways. What kind of crap is that? Who does she think she is? Doesn’t she know who I am?
He should just pick up and leave, but on the other hand, if he stays in this stupid apartment building, he’ll keep making money, and it will be he, Viktor, who will have the last laugh. So far, he figures, since he came to the Burrow and started buying and selling stocks on-line, his investments have averaged about ten percent per month, a rate most professionals would envy, and in fact, it’s the very solitude of the Burrow that makes such a return possible. Down here there are no distractions as there surely are for his competitors—those stockbrokers on Wall Street busy with their champagne breakfasts, three-martini lunches, their coked-out weekends, their fashion shows in the Hamptons and gambling trips to Vegas, or maybe Atlantic City. In the Burrow there’s nothing at all—unless he counts Madeline—to interfere with his fearsome concentration on making money. Duck Man—he has to laugh. How much can he be getting for those pathetic wooden ducks of his? Not much, Viktor thinks, as, meanwhile, his own earnings continue to spiral upward, and then, when he factors in the impossibly cheap rent at the Burrow and the virtually free meals, this place is too good a deal to pass up.