The Dead Fish Museum

by Charles D'Ambrosio

  Ramage pressed his eye to the peephole and saw Desiree naked on the bed. She was alone on the set and seemed not to know where to place her hands; she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

  “You look bored,” Greenfield was telling her. “You got a dick in your mouth but you got a face like a postal clerk.”

  “Scolding me doesn’t put me in much of a mood,” Desiree said.

  “You’re a professional,” Greenfield said. “You get paid to be in the mood.”

  “No monkeys,” Ramage said to RB. He looked out over the town. “I think I’ll head home.”

  “You said that.”

  Ramage stood, steadying himself with the handrail. The gray overcast sky tumbled and spun and his stomach heaved. He buckled and was seated again, throwing up between his legs. He propped his arms on his knees and spat chunks through the grated metal landing. RB closed his hand over Ramage’s, and Ramage slowly turned his palm up and clasped hold of RB, weaving their fingers together, holding on tighter as each new wave of nausea hit.

  “Spooky?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I could give a rat’s ass where you been. Crazy or whatever, locked up, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to me.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But you’re different. You changed.”

  “Different?”

  “You used to be somebody else.”

  He woke with a parched mouth and put his head under the faucet and desperately lapped at the water like a poisoned animal. He undressed and was asleep again when a knock on the door woke him. He wound a sheet over his shoulders and slipped the chain off and found Desiree standing under the walkway light. Night had fallen; he had to ask what time it was.

  “Ten-thirty,” she said.

  “Man alive,” Ramage said.

  Desiree wore jeans and a white T-shirt. She’d let her hair loose from its usual hard, lapidary style, and an archaeology of treatments showed, strata of blond and silver, a bedrock of dark brown at the roots.

  Ramage asked, “How was work?”

  “Greenfield’s got notions,” she said.

  “I heard him go off.”

  “There wasn’t any call for him to humiliate me in front of everybody.”

  She slipped off her sandals and walked barefoot across the gold carpet. She poured rum into a plastic cup and sipped from her drink, then tipped out a little more rum and sat on the bed beside Ramage, her legs raised. Their knees touched. Ramage felt the faint pressure and in silence he ran his finger back and forth along her pants seam, tracing the outline of her leg as it rose and fell from her hip to her ankle. She primped the flat airless pillows beneath her head; she ran her tongue over her lips and her mouth settled into a pout as she stared at the ceiling. Ramage wished for ice but he was too tired to dress and search for some. Desiree balanced the plastic cup on her stomach, over her belly button. Ramage kissed her woodenly and touched her breasts; he faked the kiss a moment longer and slipped his hand under her shirt. Beneath her breasts, two faint surgical scars, like the twin curved lines of a cartoon bust, were clearly visible. He traced his finger along the pink welted tissue. The cakey foundation she had applied to cover the scars for the shoot came off on Ramage’s finger in a kind of powdery dust the color of putty. He looked at his finger; he wiped it clean on the bedsheet. She reached for his crotch. His penis curled like a burnt match between his legs.

  “I knew a guy killed himself,” she said, sitting up. “I always wondered why.”

  “It’s not that interesting.”

  “Come on, if we hung out tonight, and then you were dead tomorrow, you wouldn’t want me to feel anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even weird? You wouldn’t want me to feel a little weird?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That guy used to come to our shows. I had this rock band. I was sixteen. He was a fan. He shot himself in the parking lot. He had some kind of drama. I wrote a song about it but the song stank.”

  The light that had been leaking into the room was briefly eclipsed and someone knocked on the door. Ramage pulled the sheet around his shoulders and answered. Rigo held a six-pack in one hand and Ramage’s tool sack in the other.

  “You are not at the bar,” he said. Without the past tense he could only protest pointlessly against the present; his eyes shifted, staring into the room. Nothing was happening but Ramage felt awkward and compelled to account for himself.

  “I see,” Rigo said. Red and black paint spotted his face and sand crystals flashed in his hair. He set Ramage’s tools inside. “You forget, I bring.” He opened one of the bottles from the sixpack and offered it to Desiree, who declined. Ramage turned down the offer, too, and Rigo drank the beer in one long hard swallow. When he was finished, he knocked the empty bottle against his knee, waiting. “I see,” he said again.

  There was nothing Ramage could do, and his guilt gave way to anger. “Thanks for the tools,” he said. He abruptly said goodbye and shut the door. Turning back to face the room, he was conscious of the tableau from Rigo’s vantage, the poisoned scene, tawdry and familiar: the twisted sheets, the tangle of clothes, the uncapped bottle of rum on the table.

  “He gives me the creeps,” Desiree said. “You know the way you can look at somebody just for a second, and that’s one thing, but if you look longer, that’s something else? That’s him—he just keeps staring. He doesn’t know when’s enough.”

  She reached for Ramage again, but gave up quickly.

  “I’m getting this feeling of familiarity around you,” Desiree said. “I don’t mean cozy. I mean like a past life, like we’ve been here before. Not way back in history or anything. We weren’t Roman emperors together. I mean a past life like maybe a couple weeks ago.”

  After the second day of shooting, Greenfield told Ramage to stay late and dismantle the sets, all except the black room. The weather had turned cooler; a light rain tapped against the plywood windows. Space heaters had been spread around the warehouse after some of the actors complained of cold. Ramage sent Rigo to the store for beer; he waited with RB, the warm air blowing over them.

  RB looked out from the set to the tangle of equipment.

  “All these people watching,” he said. “You forget there’s all these people looking on.”

  “This is some job,” Ramage said.

  “We’ve had lots worse.”

  “That we have, my friend.”

  Knocking down what they had only recently built hollowed their desire and didn’t make either man inclined to work. When Rigo returned with the beer, they loafed on the bed and drank.

  RB said, “What side were you on, Rigo?”

  “Side?”

  “A good guy? A bad guy?”

  “He was in the military,” Ramage said.

  “No side,” Rigo said.

  “I seen you looking through my peephole,” RB said. “I should charge admission. I’d make some money off you, boy. You like these bitches.”

  “I am married,” Rigo said.

  “You can look, Harvard,” RB said. “It’s okay. Looking don’t hurt nobody.”

  Rigo flipped a bottle cap at RB, hitting him in the face.

  “Lighten up,” Ramage said.

  “Spooky, he just threw a bottle cap at me.”

  “Wah wah, let’s get back to work.”

  “Back to work, you niggers!” RB laughed, his dark lips rolling back, exposing a gate of white teeth. “That includes you, Rigoberto.”

  “Go get my claw hammer, RB.”

  “You know about black men, right, Rigo?” RB said, as he rose from the bed. He lifted a two-by-four off the floor and duckwalked the length of the warehouse with the stud crotched and angled up between his legs. “You’re definitely some kind a nignog,” he said. He stuffed the board in one of the galvanized cans they were using to haul refuse. He laughed to himself as he searched in Ramage’s tool sack. He found the hammer and beneath it the gun. “Hey Spooky, man, what the hell?�
�� He held the gun delicately like a small wounded bird in the palm of his hand.

  “Put it back,” Ramage said.

  “Is it loaded?”

  “No,” Ramage said. “Are my smokes in there?”

  The kerosene heaters burned orange and warmed the hue of Rigo’s olive skin. His cheeks flared up and Ramage watched his wide black silent eyes track RB’s movement across the room.

  “You want a world where you have to choose sides?” RB said. “Go to prison, man.”

  He offered Ramage the handle end of the hammer.

  “It’s prison now, is it?” Ramage said.

  “What?”

  “First it was reform school, now it’s prison. Which is it?”

  “It’s all the same,” RB said. “You’d know that if you’d been where I’ve been.”

  “Let’s strike these rooms.”

  Rigo walked over to the lockbox and grabbed a small sledge and began pounding away the supports that held the room together. Gypsum shook loose as the Sheetrock buckled and white dust sifted into the air. The back wall caved in and the others folded over like shuffled cards. A stud broke free and whacked against RB’s leg. Ramage turned and calmly waited for things to surface. RB closed his hand around Rigo’s neck and shoved his face to the floor.

  RB said, “You got to be very careful. People get fucked up on jobs.”

  RB let go and picked up a pry bar and began to rip nails loose from the discarded studs. Each nail screeched like a gull. Rigo was still lying on the floor.

  “Get up,” Ramage said.

  “Just act right,” RB said. He slapped the pry bar in his palm. “Act right, you know what that means?”

  “Enough,” Ramage said.

  “Fuck enough,” RB said. “Little half-nigger almost fucked me up just being stupid.”

  “He’s sorry,” Ramage said.

  “I didn’t hear him say so,” RB said.

  For the rest of the night, Ramage worked with Rigo close by his side. His silence got on Ramage’s nerves. After they’d hauled the last load of broken drywall outside, Ramage offered Rigo a cigarette.

  “Don’t get all quiet inside yourself,” Ramage said. “It’s a pain in the ass to everyone else.”

  Rigo said, “I quit.”

  “It’s stupid to quit now. Hang in there, okay? Get paid.” Rain swept through the blue light of a street lamp. Ramage squeezed Rigo’s shoulder, giving it a pat. “The job’s done,” he said. “Gather up my tools and let’s get out of here.”

  ____

  No one had arrived at the warehouse for the last day of shooting, and Ramage, after making coffee, sat alone in the black room; it was the only box still standing. The walls shone with the rich luster of ebony and his reflection floated as if submerged in dark water. Other than a bed, the room was empty of furniture. The floor was carpeted in orange shag and a pine box stood against one wall. Ramage opened the lid and found the day’s drama: a braided bullwhip, handcuffs, black leather chokers studded with chrome spikes. He lifted the bullwhip and gave it a crack in the air.

  When Greenfield showed up, he stood in the middle of the warehouse, silently taking in the scene. He scuffed his cowboy boots on the floor. A long blue cigarette hung from his lips.

  “Don’t put RB in the movie,” Ramage said.

  “Why not?” Greenfield said. He looked at Ramage, and then up at the skylight, washed with gray.

  “I just prefer it.”

  “I was never going to anyway.”

  “He’ll say you promised.”

  “I can’t get caught up in all that,” Greenfield said. “You’re the foreman, you’re in charge of the cheap seats. You tell him.” Greenfield looked up at the skylight. “I still haven’t quoted Citizen Kane,” he said. “You know Rosebud was Hearst’s pet name for his mistress’s clit? You know that? Orson Welles knew that. Rosebud, Rosebud. It was an inside joke. It drove Hearst crazy.” He shaded his eyes against the gray light. “I’d like to get at least one shot of all this from above.”

  RB was in back of the warehouse, dressed in slacks and a rayon shirt. The smell of pomade hung in the air around him, and he stood alone, rocking back and forth on the heels of his work boots, apparently the only shoes he’d brought with him. Ramage stepped next to RB, and for a full minute went unacknowledged.

  Finally Ramage said, “I talked to Greenfield. There might not be time to get you in.”

  RB hesitated, then resumed his rocking.

  “It’s an orgy,” he said. “Everybody climbing all over everybody else, can’t tell one person from the next. I get in there, who cares? It’s all equal.”

  “You can’t just walk on.”

  “Won’t nobody know the difference.”

  Four strands of rope were anchored to the corners of the room, and Desiree waited, shackled at the ankles and wrists, crouched quietly in the convergent center. Enough slack played in the rope for her to crawl a few feet in any direction. Her sunken reflection swam below the surface of the polished wall, surrounded by a vague wash of white faces. The wall did not reflect the crews’ eyes or mouths; black hollows bloomed in their heads like the holes in a skull. An assistant took a powder puff and dabbed away the glare from Desiree’s forehead. The chalky cloud caused her to sneeze.

  The set was cleared, and Ramage left RB, who insisted on staying there on the sidelines until Greenfield called him in. Ramage went to sit on the fire escape. Rigo was planted in front of the peephole, peering through it as if it were a telescope, subdued and quiet, his open mouth pressed against the plywood. With RB out of the way, this was his chance, his opportunity. Then Ramage looked, too. Through a tangle of cameras and booms, he watched Desiree tug at one of the ropes binding her ankle. A hooded man cracked the bullwhip and the tasseled tip snapped against the back of her thigh. The contact was accidental, outside the choreography, and she lurched forward, trying with her bound wrist to protect herself. She howled, and then someone in the crew moved, standing in Ramage’s line of sight.

  Ramage left Rigo and climbed the fire escape, making his way up a ladder that curled over the parapet and onto the roof. The skylight was made of green tinted glass and reinforced with chicken wire. Ramage shaded his eyes against the dull glare. Twenty feet below, the full cast was assembled, the orgy well under way, a swarm of white bodies that gradually came apart as men and women, pairing up, crawled across the orange carpet. They moved silently, dividing like cells and then joining again, their skin pale and colorless under the burning lights. The hooded man loomed over Desiree from behind, holding on to her hair like it was the reins of a horse. It was hard to imagine what exhaustion, what wasting away of power, would bring the orgy to an end. Everything was eternally available, everything equal. Ramage sat up and looked out over the town. Nothing moved, not a car, not a pedestrian. It felt as if some vast Sunday had devoured the day. The sea was flat and the waves rolled evenly along the shore.

  After an hour, a raucous cheer rose from the set, and Ramage went downstairs, entering the warehouse ahead of Rigo. Greenfield bowed first toward the cast and then toward the crew, sweeping his hand along the floor. “Thank you one and all.”

  Women wiped themselves off with towels. A few naked men stood nonchalantly in a huddle, asking one another about their itineraries, where they’d go next. Desiree’s skin had a stung, hectic appearance, and one of her ankles was still bound, the rope trailing after her as she moved about the set, saying her goodbyes.

  RB was partly undressed, standing foolishly in his stocking feet and boxers and rayon shirt. He said to Ramage, “Greenwad fucked me.”

  Ramage didn’t say anything.

  “You get a bone on?” RB said, looking at Rigo. “You know what a bone is, right?” With a fist he feinted in the direction of Rigo’s crotch. “Huh, Harvard? A bone? A woody? Huh? You like seeing women tied up? That what you do in your country?”

  Rigo reached for RB’s mouth as if to stop the flow of words, smashing it shut. An instant passed and then
RB smiled, the gate of white teeth washed pink with blood. His lip was torn. RB slammed the butt of his palm against Rigo’s chin, shoving back on his jaw as though pounding open a door. It was a moment before anyone noticed, but then a circle gathered, and the onlookers, by their steady gazes, seemed to freeze the fight in tableau: Rigo fallen on the floor, RB smiling down on him. Rigo rose once more and rushed RB, and again RB knocked him to the ground. This time Ramage bent over Rigo and told him to stay down. RB’s hand filled with blood. He showed it to Ramage as if the substance puzzled him. “Fucking Harvard,” he said, and then he slowly wiped the blood off his hand, painting Rigo’s face with it.

  After Greenfield paid him off, Ramage walked down to the pier, looking for Rigo. His encampment was on the lee side of a restroom; a picnic table tipped on its side formed a second wall of his shelter and he’d made a roof of the door he’d scrounged from the ocean. A small pit in the sand was filled with sticks of driftwood and wet ashes. Rigo was gone.

  Desiree came by the motel later that evening, carrying her suitcase.

  “Where to?” Ramage asked.

  “Los Angeles,” she said. “Another job. You?”

  “RB’s coming by,” Ramage said. “I’ve got to pay him. Then it’s over.”

  “I had a dream about me and you last night. Somebody was taking us somewhere, they wanted to show us something. We were riding in the back seat of a limousine. There was a baby in it, this dead baby.”

  Ramage waited. “And?”

  “That’s it,” she said. “The baby was dead, but it wasn’t ugly and rotten or anything. It was just still.”

  There was a hard rap on the door and Ramage answered.

  “Oh boy, what do we have here?” RB said. He pointed to the bottle of rum. “Don’t mind if I do.”

  Ramage found another plastic cup in the bathroom. He removed the safety seal and poured out a small measure of the rum and then watered it down. RB sat in the chair beside Desiree.

  “I’ve got your money,” Ramage said.

  “There’s no rush,” RB said.