by Jim Krusoe
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Meanwhile, in another place, leaves from a different tree that has no name are lying on the ground beneath it, stacked in order of size, ready to be tied back on.
Hurry up, they say. Get ready.
Sometimes, standing in front of a mirror in the Burrow, Madeline likes to practice for all the interviews she’ll have to give when she finally breaks into the celebrity chef business. “Madeline,” they will ask, “what is your favorite dish?”
“Signature or classic?”
“Let’s start with classic.”
Then she’ll shrug her shoulders modestly, as if she should know better but can’t help herself. “You may be surprised to hear this, Bruce, but the fact is I like nothing better than a simple omelet, perfectly prepared. The secret, if anyone cares to know, is only that you use the very best butter. I insist on butter that comes from Europe, where it is prepared using old-world methods, not the hurried modern ones that involve mixing in artificial color and other additives. And when people ask me, ‘Madeline, where can a person find such butter if they live here in the United States?’ I answer that fortunately they can find it for themselves in their own neighborhood supermarket, in the section called ‘Cooking with Madeline.’ And then I tell them if by any chance their supermarket doesn’t have such a section, they should talk to the manager and demand they install one, pronto.”
“Madeline, that is very helpful. Thank you so much. And now, out of all the fabulous recipes you have created, which would you consider to be your signature dish?”
Madeline laughs, glances at the lamp reflected in her mirror, and imagines it’s a television camera. “That’s a tough question to answer, but I suppose I would have to say the dish that has brought me most comment is my raspberry gumdrop tart, though I’m the first to admit that raspberry tarts and even gumdrops have been around for a long time. Until me, however, no one ever thought to put them together, and I find that the freshness of the fresh raspberries blends perfectly with the slightly sticky sweetness of the gumdrops (no mint, please!). The beauty of this recipe is that a person doesn’t even have to add sugar because it’s all in the gumdrops but, at the same time, be sure to cook the pastry portion of this dessert first (thirty minutes at three hundred fifty degrees), and then add the gumdrops and raspberries, because the raspberries should be nearly uncooked, and the gumdrops should be under the broiler only long enough to be glazed a little by the heat, not melted. If you aren’t sure whether you have the kind of gumdrops that resist melting you can find them in the ‘Cooking with Madeline’ section of your supermarket, where you can also find my frozen tart pastry dough. If you want to try this for yourself, you can find the recipe at cookingwithmadeline.com.”
Celebrity: a famous person. From the Latin celeber, meaning numerous, or much frequented.
“Do you have any regrets in your career as a successful chef? Is there anything you are still waiting to accomplish?”
Here a long silence follows. When Madeline finally comes back to the question it’s obvious from the mirror that her expression has changed. She is visibly sadder, almost weary.
“As a chef, no. But when I see all the hungry people in this world, people for whom a half bowl of cooked rice would be a feast, people who sit around all day gnawing on roots and bark, people who have to slaughter their family dog, or cat, or even their canary in order to get a little protein, people who comb through the dumpsters and trash cans outside of Madeline’s Gourmet Restaurants in search of some specks of crème brûlée, or for a smear of pâté someone has missed stuck to the bottom of a shred of lettuce, it makes me so unhappy.
“Also, Bruce, it may surprise you to learn there are people who are so hungry they consider themselves lucky if they come across a snake and beat it to death, or a toad, too, though with toads a person has to be careful, because there are several varieties that are extremely toxic, including the cane toad and the Asiatic toad, which, paradoxically, plays an important part in Eastern medicine, so if you get one of those and wolf it down without thinking just because you’re starving, without having first looked it up in a book about those things—and frankly most people won’t take the trouble to do this—you could be dead or at least seriously ill. Then there are also insects, naturally, which a person can roast after pulling off the wings and legs, and they don’t in fact taste too bad—sort of a nutty taste, it seems to me—although I suggest you avoid the ones with stingers—and unbelievably, there are also people so desperate that they actually eat fleas—yes, fleas!—which their womenfolk grind in a mortar until they’re dead and turn into a paste, and then the paste is mixed with just a little tree sap—I forget the name of the tree they use—to give it a little sweetness and to hold it together—not too much, because the resulting dish, called a “flea stick,” is meant to be crunchy, not chewy. And although it is true that because I am an artist I have no choice but to follow my art wherever it leads me, I still think it’s important for everyone to remember that in the world there are a lot of people who are destitute, miserable, and hungry as well, so even as an artist, I constantly try to think of innovative and delightful ways to please all palates, from the most sophisticated to the average, which is something I believe we all—and not just celebrities—need to do more of.”
“Thank you so much, Madeline.”
“Any time, Bruce. Ready and waiting.”
But waiting for what?
And waiting for how long?
Jeffery watches Trisha Reed, the television news reporter who is a celebrity in her own right, speak about the sudden influx of strangers who have been seen wandering about St. Nils. Trisha Reed has a friendly but businesslike demeanor, as if at one time she was, or had thought about being, a real estate agent. “People report sightings of a mix of men and women,” she says and looks concerned, “but they are always described as ‘dirty,’ and many at times are covered with what witnesses call ‘actual soil.’” Then Reed displays some grainy photographs as evidence, holding them away from her as if the dirt displayed on the pictures might somehow be transferred to her fashionable scarlet dress and well-coifed golden hair. The photos are hard to make out; they are blurred and grainy, and could be people, gophers, or anything, truly. “Even worse,” Reed adds, “these strangers do nothing in particular, have nowhere they need to go, but walk the streets without an apparent destination.” She gives her head a smallish, outraged, attractive shake.
Jeffery scratches his own head. How could anyone possibly know someone else’s destination?
“Authorities conjecture these people may be part of a drug smuggling operation that went wrong,” Trisha Reed continues, giving her hair a flip to indicate that she is not responsible, even though this is a matter for public concern. “No one can say for certain,” she reads from the prompter, “but on the other hand,” (another flip), “the males appear not to be dangerous.” She cautions, however, that citizens should not approach them, even to offer small gifts of food or bottles of water or moist towelettes, as has been reported happening in certain liberal neighborhoods. “Some of the females”—and here she manages to convey a sort of sneering tone without an actual sneer—“have been reported being seen in fancy restaurants dining with wealthy men.” Then she reverts to her original expression of confused concern. It is also possible, she adds, that such individuals are not criminals at all, but victims of an illegal smuggling operation. However, while all our fellow humans in general should be treated with compassion, we should keep in mind that any victim can be dangerous if provoked, and the best thing a person can do is report any further sightings of these people as soon as possible to the authorities.
“We live in dangerous times,” Trisha Reed says and looks hard into the lens of the television camera. “We all need to be vigilant.”
Heather looks in her mirror. Her hair is okay, but not much more than that. In other words, nothing special, a mousey brown, a little limp, but not horrible by any means. Cut it off, the voice in the mirror sa
ys. You need to cut it off.
The voice in the mirror?
But right now her hair is just long enough that sometimes—frequently, in fact, while she’s listening to guys on the phone tell her what they want to do to her—she can take one end and put it in her mouth to suck on while she passes the time until they’ve finished with wherever their wishes take them (often, nowhere good).
Would Raymond like her better with short hair?
Is Viktor making as much money from his numerous investments in the stock market as he claims? Jeffery wonders. If so, he’s some kind of genius, and possibly the most successful investor in all of history. But if that is the case, why is he still living in the Burrow? Or, could it be, as someone—Raymond? Madeline?—once suggested as a joke, that Viktor is no investor at all, but a drug lord lying low inside the Burrow until the gangland war going on aboveground dies out. Also, could Viktor’s presence here be somehow related to those so-called wandering strangers on the news? Is it possible they are not strangers at all, but hired assassins looking to put “a hit” on Viktor? Did the strangers exist before Viktor’s arrival?
Or, taking a different approach, could Viktor have been placed in the Burrow as a part of the Federal Witness Protection Program? Is the Burrow actually what they call in espionage parlance a “safe house”? If so, is Jeffery the only one who doesn’t feel particularly safe?
And by the way, what is going on with all those sounds of grinding coming from the earth? Why doesn’t everyone think this is a problem? Could this new activity be related to the sudden influx of strangers? Is it possible, as sometimes happens in science fiction movies, that these noises have disturbed some long-buried race of monsters who are now coming up to the surface? As interesting as this thought may be, Jeffery doubts it’s true.
In Raymond’s most recent dream Viktor and Madeline are standing next to a float left over from the Founding of St. Nils Day, a day celebrated every year with a parade that features several floats in the form of ducks (Could that be why Raymond chose St. Nils to settle in?), because, indeed, the city was founded after its first settlers followed a flight of waterfowl to a quiet marsh at the edge of the sea.
In his dream, however, the parade has long since been over, and Madeline and Viktor, dressed in black, are wielding axes as they hack apart one of the larger floats, a fairly accurate representation of a blue-winged teal. It’s a male, with the usual slate-colored head, white crescent band behind its bill, blue-gray inner wings, light-brown flight feathers, and brown speckles on its body, only it’s about eighteen feet tall. As they work, they turn to Raymond.
“Look,” Viktor shouts, “we have an extra axe,” and sure enough, there is an extra axe lying against the bumper of the vehicle the float was built on top of, now exposed by their hacking.
“Yes,” Madeline adds, “and when we’re done, I’ll cook it all up into a nice stew for us to eat.”
Raymond starts to explain that it goes against his innermost nature to take up arms against a duck and, besides, because the float is made of wood and wire, plus other materials, he’s pretty sure it won’t be good to eat, but before he gets a chance to say anything, Madeline walks up to him and puts an axe in his hands.
“Raymond,” she says, “if you love me you must do this.”
Against his better judgment, Raymond takes it, shuts his eyes, and swings.
“So, Junior,” Tammy is saying, “why don’t you tell me something positive that happened this last week?”
Tammy’s favorite word is positive and Junior hates it. Today she is wearing a charcoal turtleneck and a dark skirt that makes her look smaller than she is, although she is pretty small. The ankh is gone, and in its place is a shiny gold necklace where the links are in the shape of jumping fish, kind of like he’s seen on the backs of old guys’ RVs, but these are a lot more elegant, at least when Tammy’s wearing them, and if she’s angry about the fact that he was late to his appointment, she’s not showing it, except maybe by the way she is clamping down on her pen.
“Well,” Junior says, and stops to think, because this being positive is truly a burden, “as I was driving here a cat ran out in front of my car, but I managed to swerve just in time, which was good because it was a momma cat, and she was carrying a kitten in her mouth.” He’s taking a wild guess that Tammy is a cat lover.
“And yet you still missed the time for your appointment by a whole ten minutes,” Tammy says with a cute, ironic smile.
Or course, Junior has made up the story about the cat. There wasn’t any cat or any other animal, and the day he’ll stop for one, that will be the day, all right, so now he’s glad he told a lie because it proved Tammy had been angry about his being late and, when you think about it, ten minutes is nothing in the course of a lifetime. He can feel a twinge inside his stomach—a sure sign that what he likes to call his Rage Meter is on its way up.
“But let’s not dwell on that,” Tammy says. She crosses, then uncrosses her legs, and her stockings make the tiniest scritch. “Remember your homework for the week—to imagine a happy moment you might have had with your father, the one you told me was a sea captain, if he had stayed around to raise you.”
“Well, I’m not one hundred percent sure he was a captain,” Junior says. “I mostly just think that. I don’t know why but I do.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Tammy says. “I was asking you about your homework.”
“Sorry,” Junior says. “It’s gone. I guess the cat ate it. I mean, just kidding. I’ve been kind of busy.”
“With what?”
“Oh, sports. The archery thing,” says Junior.
Safe or not, the truth is that Jeffery sees the Burrow as only temporary, a stopping place, or maybe more accurately, a pausing place, on the road to where he wants to go. So if Viktor is a drug lord, or even if he makes as much money as he claims to, well, let him, Jeffery thinks. It’s only temporary.
But where does Jeffery want to go from the Burrow? That’s the question. At what point on the axis of his life will the Present Jeffery finally intersect with the Future Jeffery, the one he’s certain he’s on his way to meet? And needless to say, when he does join him, the Future Jeffery will be 1) sexually magnetic but not obsessed; 2) well-read but not a nerd; 3) moderately good at all sorts of sports and board games, too, but not too much of a fan—he’ll be much too busy with his own career to waste time that way. The Future Jeffery also will be 4) well-groomed but not a fop; 5) kind to animals (which reminds him that down here in the Burrow it’s been ages since he’s seen an actual animal, even a bug); 6) will have an appreciation for the arts and finer things, including dining, in part thanks to Madeline; 7) be an excellent judge of wine but never drink to excess; 8) will always be happy to lend a hand if he has the time; 9) will believe in socialism; and 10) will have a job . . . well, not a job, exactly, but an inclination to do things that bring him the approval of others, especially beautiful women, which, coincidentally, will also happen to make him a lot of money. But how will the Future Jeffery be born out of the present, Present Jeffery? How are all these things going to be achieved? Actually, it’s not so obvious. Because it’s way too late for medical school, and even if he wanted it—which he doesn’t—to prepare himself for such a life of wealth and compassion would mean Jeffery would have to go back, maybe as far as the third or fourth grade, and retrain himself to direct his thoughts along more scientific lines. Business doesn’t interest him at all—or investing—that he’ll leave to Viktor. Being a rock star is out of the question. Jeffery has no musical aptitude whatsoever.
Architecture? No. Geography? No. Then what about being a writer? Hmm. But what kind of a writer? Books are hard and take too much time; poetry is fast enough, and easy, but not exactly an income stream. He thinks more. How about a screenplay, maybe for some blockbuster movie? Good, but movies tend to be a one-time thing; there’s a big payoff, and then nothing; you’re back taking lunches and pitching projects along with every amateur in the neighb
orhood. How about a long-term project, say, like a television dramatic series—or better, a sitcom. Now, that’s a thought, he thinks. That way he can sell the first season, make a little money, and then keep writing, churning them out for the next five or six years, and even while he is writing the next season’s shows, can dream up new projects and pitch them, because, hey, nothing lasts forever. Except for the deep pockets of reruns.
But a sitcom about what? Crime? Too crowded. Lawyers? Ditto. Doctors, spies? Ditto. A doctor who is a spy and steals secrets while his patients are babbling under anesthesia? Is that against medical ethics? Maybe not, but where would he start? Wait a minute. Something is coming to him, an obscure sitcom he used to watch when he was a kid, called something like Pleasant Valley, or Happy Valley—something—about a bunch of hippies living on a farm somewhere in bumfuck nowhere. You could do that, he thinks. But wait! What if any of that show’s creators are alive? Could they sue him for plagiarism? Does plagiarism even exist on television? It can’t possibly, but what if it does?
So how about this? How about a bunch of people, Jeffery thinks, like Viktor, who are all in the Federal Witness Protection Program, and who, unknown to each other, all wind up living in a sort of an underground commune they call the Burrow. Why not? Write what you know. And if it works, it will make him enough money to get him out of here once and for all. Maybe enough to buy a house with a big front lawn and a gardener. He’s always liked the idea of having a gardener. Clip this. Trim that. Once a month he’ll get a bill and then, when he does, he’ll be able to pay it, too. He can sense the Future Jeffery just on the other side of the door, waiting to be let in.