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The Sleep Garden

Page 16

by Jim Krusoe


  Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life, she read somewhere. Now it’s pasted to her coffee table, and it is true; that’s what tomorrow is, she thinks, but if that’s true, what does that make today? But then, even without her trying, she can hear coming though the mostly instrumental music of the Easy Listening station she keeps on 24/7 another, harsher voice that says: “Heather, you’ve been saying that stupid line about tomorrow for a long, long time, and what has it ever done for you?”

  Nonetheless, the Good Heather keeps patiently putting out these notes for the Not-Good-Enough Heather to read, hoping she’ll learn from them, taping them onto the walls, pinning them to the cushions of the furniture, basically covering every flat surface, including the floor of the bathroom so the Not-Good-Enough Heather has something to read and inspire her while she is doing her business, but still, the Not-Good-Enough Heather doesn’t appear to be getting the message. That Not-Good-Enough Heather, well, she’s persistent. No can do is that Heather’s mantra. Does Not-Good-Enough Heather even know the word mantra? And it’s not as if that Heather-In-Between is getting any help from anyone else. Like once, when the Good Heather stuck a sign to the refrigerator in the kitchen of the Burrow—though of course she didn’t tell anyone that she put it there—two days later somebody had changed You can do it to You can’t do it, writing in the apostrophe and the t in purple Magic Marker. Then, after looking at it for a few days, waiting for someone to change it back or say “I’m sorry,” Heather-In-Between just took it down. But it was scary, as if some unseen hand knew better than she did what she’d suspected all along.

  Still, writing these notes, even if they are just to herself, feels good, like progress is being made. After all, it’s not impossible that one day the Not-Good-Enough Heather will read one, and suddenly a light will come on. “Oh,” the Not-Good-Enough Heather will say, “I get it,” and then she’ll just disappear forever. Poof. Which is the reason that even while Heather is on the phone with some sex client—practically always, by the way—she wears her headset so she can have a hand free to write yet more notes: That which doesn’t kill me, “Ooh, you know what I would like right now,” makes me, “it’s your big hard,” stronger, “dick, and I’m not wearing any” Slow and steady, “underwear,” wins the day, “so you can,” No, “give it” pain “to me,” without, “fast,” gain. “Oh my God, that was so wonderful.”

  When was the last time she was really happy? It scares Heather how long ago it was. Maybe that time in high school, at the end of the Drama Club’s production of Oklahoma!, in which she sang “I’m just a girl who can’t say no,” and everyone told her she had a big career ahead of her, and for about a half second, she thought she had. So from there to here, to this dark room full of scraps of paper—You deserve the best—how did that happen?

  Unfortunately, that’s not so hard to answer: practically straight from that production of Oklahoma! she went to the big city (well, a larger city), where she met Mr. Winkler, her agent, who promised he would protect her, and for a while, he did. She got a job at an auto show, and another at a county fair, and then, what was supposed to be her big break: a film shot on an island—the Island from Hell, she calls it now, and if only she had told them no when they kept refilling her glass of punch. But of course, she hadn’t, so now there is the video—the video—reproduced so many times she can never, ever get it off the web or out of certain stores, like a target on her chest for all those guys who walk up to her at parties and on the street to smirk, “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?” And needless to say—damn Winkler!—she gets zero in the way of royalties.

  A new start, Heather thinks, is what I need, but if she leaves the Burrow, how is she going to afford it?

  The sad thing is that she is demonstrably quite pretty, or at least, she used to be.

  Spilt milk, Heather, her mother used to say, can never be put back into the glass again. Except with a sponge.

  Also, Jeffery thinks, the story of Jack would be perfect for a kid’s cartoon show, maybe with endorsements for dog food and pet supplies, meaning a lot more in terms of the income stream it will generate.

  Going.

  Junior goes into the closet in his bedroom and pulls out the special case in which he keeps his crossbow. Old Stag Killer, he says out loud, under his breath. My old friend. My only friend.

  Going.

  Though Raymond has ceased to mention it to Jeffery, that nightmare of him being a duck and dropping down in search of a pond has been returning—three times last week, and so far in this one it’s up to four.

  And going even farther.

  XV

  These days, when the Captain thinks about that incident on the set of Mellow Valley, he wonders if things were as verifiable as they appeared at the time or if they were part of a gigantic plot conceived and carried out by his enemies, members of some vengeful intelligence service from across the world, or possibly even one from his own country. He can think of several candidates who might have created that particular scenario, and the evidence is plentiful: sure, there was the business with the women taking showers and all, but someone must have moved the signs to get him lost. It only made sense that no one would admit to it. So that was one clue. And after all, he had made a bundle of enemies during those years of sailing in and out of ports. Because in point of fact, it would have been strange if a representative from one intelligence agency or another had not contacted him to ask if he would lend a hand in tipping the balance of the Cold War this way or that. Well, they had asked, with gifts included, and naturally he had agreed to help them all.

  Thus it was during those years the Captain sailed here and there, gathering intelligence like a patient honeybee, selling a little here, a little more there, until one day he stumbled across a piece of information (many important pieces, actually) that numerous people in several different governments would be most unhappy to have revealed. So of course it was necessary to discredit him. And, now that the Captain thinks about it, why had those producers of Mellow Valley contacted him in the first place, out of the blue like that? Sure, he was a celebrity, but there were plenty of other captains who could have done that job for less. Also, come to think of it, once he arrived at the set, his work was fairly minimal—a couple of questions about tying knots, something about a ship’s log—but really his duties seemed only afterthoughts, a sort of cover to keep him busy and not too curious (all this, of course, in hindsight). In other words, the whole scenario leading up to the business with those women in the shower had been a deliberate setup to put him on the sidelines and keep him quiet just in case he ever decided to have a little chat with the reporters for the St. Nils Eagle.

  Well, their scheme didn’t work, did it? Or maybe it did, the Captain thinks, because he has kept quiet—until now, anyway, settled down as he is, far from the corridors of power, though still making a living, and a good one, as a celebrity in his own right. No threat, they probably think; their mission has been accomplished. But has it? He still knows plenty of people who would be very interested to hear what he has to say about certain things.

  And then the hole suddenly appeared in his front lawn. Was it another warning, just to let him know they know where to find him? That he is vulnerable? Was it a reminder to keep quiet? How naïve do they think he is? First there was the incident in the shower, and now, not only is that being brought up again, but also there is the hole. Is he supposed to think it’s only a coincidence? For that matter, could the hole in his lawn have been used for spying? Wasn’t, come to think of it, a Myrmidon just another name for an inhabitant of Murmansk? Did his subconscious give him the clue he needed on the very first morning the hole appeared and he was too slow to process it? All this time he has assumed he was dealing with the CIA, but what if he is wrong? What if it was the work of the damned Ruskies? And if it was, what is their agenda?

  Once the Captain settled on land he’d hoped never to have to use the Walther again, but who was it who said that in order to m
ake a decent omelet first a person has to break a few eggs? The Ruskie, Lenin, that’s who. And right now, depending on who or what is excavating his lawn, it is just possible that an Easter Egg Hunt is around the corner.

  He can feel his Death Quotient going straight up, along with his blood pressure.

  Episode One, The Burrow, Scene Five

  JEFFERY is up late at night, standing alone in a corner of the kitchen.

  Jeffery: What is it with this constant grinding, 24/7, day and night, but particularly at night, when there are no other distractions to keep me from hearing it, forcing me to make it the virtual center of my brain? And, what’s worse, although the noise may only be in my imagination, it seems that, like those annoying television commercials that appear at double the volume in the middle of whatever PBS special or wildlife program I might be watching, the noise of drilling—if that’s what it is— actually increases during the night, almost as if, during the daytime, the noise-dampers, or mufflers, whatever things they use to quiet the machinery, are all in use, but at night, when the federal or state or local inspectors—whoever—go back home to cozy evenings around their flat-screen televisions with their families, all hell breaks loose and the giant teeth chew through the earth like so many enormous worms, creating their tunnels to who-knows-where—maybe Hades itself for all I know—louder, louder, louder—so whenever I try to write another scene for the very screenplay that, ironically, is supposed make me rich and free me from the tyranny of the din of such distractions, I can’t think of the actual words I’m supposed to be using. I can’t think about my characters; I can’t think about anything remotely resembling a plot line; all I can think of is that noise, and there’s nothing I can do about it: I stuff my ears with cotton, with wax, with waxed cotton, rubber plugs, lumps of silicone—nothing works—and meanwhile here I am, a nervous wreck, unable to form a single thought that is not centered around the maw of that infernal machinery, not a single idea, not the slightest bit of whimsy or touch of heartbreak that does not include the grinding of those awful teeth, the howl of metal against rock, the crunch of metal pulverizing rock and everything else that stands in its way. Oh Christ, Christ, if it would only end.

  Enter MADELINE.

  Madeline: Oh, hello Jeffery. What are you doing up at this hour?

  Jeffery: Don’t ask.

  Madeline: I was just about to make myself a toasted cheese sandwich with a little paprika sprinkled on the top. Would you like me to make one for you? I’m using the good cheddar, of course.

  Jeffery: Yes, thank you.

  JEFFERY watches as MADELINE slices the bread, lays the cheese on top, and sprinkles the whole surface with paprika.

  Madeline: The secret is to use a toaster oven, like this one. I know a lot of people who make their toasted cheese in a pan, with butter, and believe me, a sandwich made that way does not deserve to be called toasted, but only a sodden, greasy mess.

  Jeffery: Say, Madeline . . .

  Madeline: What?

  Jeffery: I was just wondering how things are going with you and Viktor these days.

  Madeline: Things are okay, Jeffery. Listen, you’re not a bad person, but you and I are over. We had a time, and that’s done. People move on. You can’t stop progress any more than you can stop . . .

  Jeffery: Those sounds outside the Burrow late at night?

  Madeline: Actually that’s not what I had in mind. I was going to say something like, well, the process of digestion—you know—once it’s gotten started. Although those sounds you talk about . . . I do hear them, but really, they don’t bother me all that much.

  Jeffery: I see.

  Madeline: Yes, Jeffery, I mean it’s over between the two of us, and the sooner you accept it, the better.

  Jeffery: Still, I don’t understand you. First it was me, then Raymond, then Viktor. Don’t you care about how many hearts you break along the way?

  Madeline: That heart business is entirely up to you. Here’s your toasted cheese. I’m taking mine back to my room. Nothing personal, Jeffery. I just feel like being alone right now.

  Trisha Reed is having one of those days. To start with, immediately after her pre-newscast shower, while she is still at home, there is no way she can find the brand-new stick of antiperspirant she bought just the day before, and by the time she quits looking and leaves for the station it’s too late to stop at the store for a new one—not that she’s worried about smelling bad—this is television, after all—but television also means it’s hot beneath the lights, and all she needs is a couple of dark circles starting to spread under her arms in the course of the show, and people will start to talk about medical problems and addictions and so forth. Besides, is it entirely too much to ask that the highly paid supposed professionals in charge of doing makeup might keep an extra stick of roll-on in their bags for times such as this? Apparently it is. The result being that she’s stuffed a couple of wads of Kleenex in her armpits and is about to go on air in ten. It’s humiliating.

  That’s Number One. Number Two, the yellow highlighter she likes to use to mark the words of phrases in the script she’ll need to punch up when she reads them is missing. The pink one is gone too, and so she’s forced to use a plain old ballpoint pen that has the name of a dry cleaner on it, and the result is her script looks like one of those books you check out from the library where some lunatic has gotten there ahead of you and has underlined various words or phrases—never the ones she would underline herself—the result being that her script looks like it was marked up by a psycho.

  And speaking of psycho, Number Three comes when she has just finished underlining her script with the ballpoint and Jessica, the intern, hands her a fan letter that is supposed to cheer her up because Jessica is always doing extra things like this, having apparently misread her job description on the Intern’s Code, or whatever they make them sign, which is just to do what the fuck you are told to, and now, instead of cheering her up, the letter turns out to be from some guy who claims he is a fellow television personality (underlined in ballpoint!), somebody who says that once upon a time he starred in some obscure sitcom in the ancient past and is now saying that she, Trisha Reed, reminds him of somebody or another he once worked with—the man is practically incoherent—but the upshot is that he says he wants to take her out and teach her how to “string his bow.” Ugh, ugh, ugh.

  “If you ever ever see another letter like this, destroy it,” she tells Jessica. Then, Number Four, finally there’s her cameraman, Fred, or Ned, or Jed, or Ted—that’s how well she knows him—a large and balding individual who has just whispered seconds before she’s going on air that he’d like to take her out for coffee, nothing more, he claims. “Just a chance to know you better”—in a pig’s eye, she thinks—but on the other hand it’s not as simple as that because anyone at all who is familiar with the basics of television production understands that camera angles can make or break your career, particularly on live TV, where there are no edits. And so now she has to figure out a way to tell whatever-his-name-is that this is not going to happen, but somehow do it in such a way that he doesn’t take it personally. Men are such sick fucks.

  “Good evening, this is Trisha Reed. On this evening’s news we’ll be talking about new sightings of people seen wandering around town who can’t or won’t respond to even the simplest of questions about what they are doing or why they are here.”

  There are two times Raymond misses Madeline the most. One is when he’s looking at a newly arrived block of wood (wherever they come from), lost in thought trying to decide whether he should carve a teal, or a canvasback, or redhead, or mallard, or merganser, or even a wood duck, because back when they were together Madeline would come up quietly behind him at those very moments, run a hand through his hair, back to front, and ask, “What’s it going to be, Big Boy?” and then, as if by magic, he would know exactly what it would be. The other is when he’s up late at night, tired, just finishing the feathers on one wing or applying a coat of protective va
rnish to a completed decoy, because in those days Madeline was with him she would be lying there in bed waiting for him to finish, and then, after he’d finally washed his brushes, closed the last can of paint, and crawled in next to her, she’d say, “My God. The smell of polyurethane turns me on.”

  And Raymond has to admit he also misses how Madeline used to worry about whether he was getting enough to eat, or was eating the right foods, because now, if she cared to ask—which obviously she does not—he scarcely has an appetite. Still, because she is responsible for practically all the meals in the Burrow, he forces himself to eat although his heart breaks with every chew. He also misses the way she used to make him wear shoes around the apartment instead of just his socks, and he still wears them in her memory. But most of all Raymond misses the afternoons or evenings they’d be lying together in bed watching a nature special about ducks, and he would point out something the so-called experts had gotten wrong, or bring up something they had forgotten, and Madeline would rub his chest and say, “Oh Raymond, you certainly are an idiot savant.” Then she’d explain, though she’d told him a million times before, that was French for genius.

  And it has occurred to Raymond that, even taking into account his recent weight loss, he could easily beat Viktor to a pulp and reclaim Madeline, because Viktor must be seriously out of shape, with the possible exception of what Madeline used to call the “love muscle,” after being in front of a computer all hours of the day and night. Also, Raymond outweighs the man by at least fifty pounds, but anyway, except for causing Viktor pain, he’s not sure what else violence would accomplish. In the first place, he knows those days of claiming a woman as your own are long gone. In the second place, Viktor was Madeline’s idea, so if anyone claimed anything, she had claimed Viktor. In the third place, if he did something like that, he’d have to leave the Burrow. Not only does he not want that, but he doesn’t even want to think about finding a new apartment, what with security deposits and first and last month’s rent, and then having to move the decoys. In the fourth place, if he left he probably never would see Madeline again, and in the fifth place, after all, what kind of person would that show he is? Madeline left Jeffery to be with him, and afterward Jeffery was never anything but nice.

 

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