“What other spooky characters?” said Falmouth.
“Nothing, I just mean let’s give the whole thing a rest. Try to enjoy the morning.”
“That’s what we were doing,” said Matthew.
“But not even mention the band, just pretend we’re our regular selves.”
“I think I just saw someone I think I know,” said Falmouth, rising from his seat.
it’s like I got into some kind of horrible chess match with Dr. Marian. All I wanted was for them to take Shelf back into the general population. They said she was gouging the other kangaroos but solitary confinement is a self-perpetuating thing, she wasn’t learning anything about proper socialization by being stuck in the pit.” Matthew had begun to confess his and the kangaroo’s dilemma the moment Falmouth had left him and Lucinda alone.
“They call it the pit?” asked Lucinda.
“Sure.”
“That’s what it looks like. I mean, that’s what a visitor would probably call it. But there’s something horrible about knowing that you people call it that too.”
“It just kept escalating between us. I was totally discredited because I tried to go around Dr. Marian, to the board. Everyone in the office kept freezing me out.”
“You appealed to the zoo’s board about a single kangaroo?”
“I wrote a letter.”
“Isn’t Dr. Marian the one who hired you?”
“The bad vibes up at the office aren’t really important anymore,” he said. “My problem is I can’t get anyone to pay attention now that I’ve, you know—taken Shelf away.” Matthew sagged in his chair as though only now relieved of some burden of denial, as if Lucinda and Denise hadn’t broken in and seen for themselves. Perhaps he’d persuaded himself that episode was truly a dream, a kangaroo piss-fever hallucination.
“You want attention for that?”
“My plan was to leak it and embarrass the zoo. I tried to get the Times and the Weekly to come and see Shelf. I said I was holding her hostage to protest her treatment. I even tried News Eleven. But they won’t return my calls.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dr. Marian outflanked me. When the paper or the television calls, she says the zoo’s not missing any kangaroos. They think I’m a crank. She won’t even confirm that I worked there, just says I’m familiar to them, a publicity hound, some kind of zoological stalker, and that attention only encourages me. At the same time, she won’t admit to anyone at the zoo that I’m fired. Actually, I’m not fired.”
“What?”
“The department secretary called and said they were holding my paychecks in the office, but they won’t forward them. They’re trying to get me to come in, so they can surround me and conduct some kind of brainwashing.”
“That sounds a little paranoid.”
“You get used to putting a gorilla in a straitjacket or shooting an ibex in the throat with a twelve-ounce dart you’d be surprised what you’d be willing to do to a human being, Luce. These people are like Nazi doctors, they’ve persuaded themselves they’re engaged with primal factors outside the ken of normal human beings.”
“Were you ever recruited to join some kind of vigilante faction? I suppose the gorillas themselves could be employed in death squads, after enough shock treatment.”
“Don’t make fun of me.” He shrank into the corner of his chair, his eyes revealing real fear, as if the restaurant might be surrounded at that moment by Dr. Marian’s operatives.
“It can’t be easy, just the two of you in that apartment,” Lucinda said, gently now, thinking of that dungeon of lettuce and urine.
“I’ve been telling myself it’s going to get better,” Matthew droned, ponderous in his guilt.
“You probably thought it would be different when you got her out of the pit.”
“I think she blames me. I used to be the one who cheered her up. We’d talk and she’d lift her head and I could tell she didn’t want me to leave. Now it’s like she associates me with the zoo. She won’t even look at me.”
“Moving in together might not have been the best idea.”
“She has a problem with high expectations,” Matthew said, his gaze on some middle distance, as if facing some unseen advocate for the kangaroo, a mediator or marriage counselor. “It began with her parents.”
“What about her parents?”
“Shelf was born right here, in Los Angeles. Her parents were sort of famous. They were sent here as a gift to Linda Ronstadt from an Australian fan. Linda Ronstadt didn’t know what to do with them, so she gave them to the zoo. There was a lot of publicity at the time, and I think it was confusing for the kangaroos. They got special treatment and then were expected to melt into the regular population. I suppose they imparted a certain lack of realistic perspective to Shelf.”
“Maybe Fancher Autumnbreast should take her to Morocco,” said Lucinda. “It worked for Marianne Faithfull.”
“Either you want to help me or you don’t, Lucinda.”
“I’m sorry. Tell me what I can do. I’m hardly a kangaroo person.”
“Go and collect my checks,” he said. “I’m totally broke.”
“They’d let me?”
“It’s worth a try. At least there’s nothing they can do to you.”
Lucinda reached across the table and nudged Matthew’s fingertips, offered a smile. An immense noontime melancholy had suffused their table. The lives at nearby tables, pairs of couples, families, the clank of silver and happy conversation, all evoked what they’d deserted. Their days were rich and strange, full of kangaroos and gigs, things other brunchers couldn’t know, but they were impoverished too, bereft of ordinary solidarities which had once seemed near at hand as the spoons and forks on the table between them, as their browsing fingertips.
The fugue dissolved and they noticed Falmouth. He sat at another table, deep in the porch’s shadow, legs crossed, scribbling on a pad propped across his knee. As they turned to him he lifted his pen from the page and squinted at the results.
“What’s that?” said Lucinda.
“I’m entering a new phase of radical openness to suggestion. It took you and Jules Harvey to make me understand. You’ve been taking an admirable risk with your horrible music. From this point on my only conceptual medium will be myself. My own behavior and choices, the way I respond to the opportunities to transform daily experience into art. I’m done trying to bully others into being my canvas and oils, in other words.”
“That’s nice, but what are you doing?”
“I borrowed this pen and pad from the waitress,” he said. “She’s one of my students. It’s only ballpoint and it skips but I think that’s good, a happy accident, the kind of thing I’ll be open to from now on.”
“Okay, but what are you drawing?”
“You.”
He turned the pad around. Matthew and Lucinda were depicted in feathery blue ballpoint strokes, seated with their heads leaned together at the table, under shelter of the deck. Another figure loomed between them, paws bridging their shoulders, pointy ears brushing the porch, feet crammed under their table. Long whiskers extended from the grinning cartoon mammal’s nose, past Lucinda’s and Matthew’s heads, radiating like beams of light in a child’s drawing of the sun.
“Is that a ten-foot rat?” said Lucinda. “Or your idea of a kangaroo?”
Falmouth shrugged. “It’s me, really. A spirit-representation of my love and concern for you on this beautiful morning.”
“You’re a strange person, Falmouth.”
“Thank you.”
“Were you listening to us talk?”
“Half listening.”
“So, any half thoughts?”
“On what?” Falmouth reversed his pad and resumed sketching, squinting at them like some alfresco painter. The morning had drifted to afternoon, a sweet languor investing in their bodies and words. Cars swooped on the 101, a long block away, but the sitters on Hugo’s porch went contentedly nowhere, weekending.
“You’re a master of provocation, Falmouth. What about taking on the Los Angeles Zoo?”
“I’ve never been one for causes.”
Matthew had eased into silence, disburdened of his secrets and fears. Anyone could speak of zoos and kangaroos now. These were public facts, not some private concern.
“Think of it as a performance piece,” said Lucinda.
“I’m out of that line, I told you. Sounds more like a job for Sniffles Harvey.”
“Screw Harvey. If you help with the zoo we’d let you manage our band. Like Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.” Lucinda pictured him as the giant mammal, his tender ghostly paws on their shoulders, guiding the band forward.
“I don’t want to manage anything, thank you.” Examining his work, Falmouth ran fingers spotty with ink over his sweaty dome and left a blue smudge high on his brow. He shrugged conclusively and tore the page from the waitress’s pad. “Here. I award you the first result, a token of my affection.”
“Thank you,” said Lucinda.
“It’s great,” said Matthew, barely looking.
“Are you hungry again?” said Falmouth. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I could eat.”
“I’m starved,” said Matthew inattentively. He stretched his legs under the table, his posture oblique and catlike. He’d shifted back into his body, recovered his vanity.
“Let’s go to San Pedro and get crabs,” said Lucinda. “It seems like nobody ever goes to San Pedro anymore.”
“That’s a long way,” said Falmouth.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d had these crabs. Also the Mexican garlic bread they’ve got on the wharf. When’s the last time you saw the Pacific Ocean, Falmouth?”
“Oh, I’ve seen the ocean. It’s you pale starving musicians who never go west of La Cienega.”
“And the beer,” said Lucinda. “The beer tastes good by the water.”
“I’d have to get gas,” mused Matthew.
“Do they have bibs?” said Falmouth, glancing at his spotless white shirt. He flagged the waitress, motioning with her own pen for the check. They’d go to San Pedro, it was unmistakable, but there was pleasure in protracting the debate, letting their craving grow. Hugo’s kitchen was still pumping out frittatas heaped with curds for late brunchers, while sparrows crept at their feet pilfering crumbs and the indolent hours unfurled. Maybe elsewhere Lucinda’s phone rang off the hook. Maybe a disgruntled Shelf shredded Matthew’s shower curtain or was pillaging his kitchen, maybe Falmouth’s gallery had been set on fire by irate complainers, it didn’t matter. Today, the day after the Aparty, they were escape artists, had dissolved their grievances in the coffee and sunlight, and now nothing could touch them. They’d become that rarest version of themselves, uncomplainers.
he did not call. He had not called. There was no call. Not, anyway, on Saturday. By the time Matthew dropped Lucinda at her doorstep it was nearly dark again and, happily polluted with beer and lemon butter–drenched crabs and just one margarita, fingernails still grainy with pepper and salt, she’d not troubled to think of Carl, her complainer, for hours, since the moment on Hugo’s deck when, long having decided not to speak of him to Falmouth or Matthew she’d also realized she could free herself of any thought of him, for at least the day. If she were in love with him he’d return to her mind, just as if he were in love with her he’d surely ring her phone. Not that it meant the opposite if he hadn’t. He never had, she realized, never at that number, only on the complaint line. Not that she’d rushed home to check. Blotted with beer and sunshine, she’d thought of anything else, or nothing, at her doorstep. Instead embraced her friend-exes, each of whom had stepped from the car to make farewells. Or perhaps Falmouth only moved from the backseat to the passenger seat she’d vacated. Anyway, they embraced. She kissed them both with tongue, for sport. Falmouth, then Matthew. Both met her with surprised but willing mouths, as if caught forming a word to remain unspoken. They tasted of garlic and beer. Falmouth of cigarettes too. If neither utterly swooned to her kiss neither rebuffed her. Besides, she gave them barely a chance. Just tongue and a smudge of her hips and goodbye. She checked the machine with her keys still in her hand, the light switch unreached, not so much thinking of the complainer in particular, just drunken automatism. He hadn’t called. He didn’t call Sunday, either.
four
the receptionist wore a lab coat and black-frame glasses, and perhaps wasn’t a receptionist at all but a zoological veterinarian who’d taken a seat at the receptionist’s desk. She was too young, though, to be Dr. Marian. The girl sat alone paging through the newspaper and eating a drippy egg-salad sandwich and Lucinda had to speak to get her attention, feeling more like an intruder than she’d expected, Matthew’s paranoia rubbed off on her. She was within her public citizen’s rights to stroll into the zoo’s offices, she reminded herself.
“Excuse me for bothering you. I, ah, need to pick up some checks.”
“Checks?”
“For, um—” Lucinda mimed questing for a name on her tongue’s tip, then glanced at a scrap of paper yanked from her pocket: “Matthew, yes, Matthew Plangent.”
“I think he’s sick.”
“Sorry?”
“He’s out sick.”
“Oh, right, that’s why I’m picking up his—materials.”
“What kind of materials?”
“Paychecks and any other materials that would be waiting here for him.”
The girl shrugged and tipped her chin in the direction of a grid of twenty or thirty cubbyholes on the wall at Lucinda’s left. These were labeled with last names, alphabetically. Lucinda scooped the bundle of envelopes and circulars that filled Matthew’s cubby and tucked them into her bag, trusting the checks to be among them.
“Is there a Dr. Marian or someone with that name here?”
“Down the hall to your right.”
The brass nameplate beside the pebbled-glass door read MARIAN RORSCHACH, B.V.SC., M.R.C.V.S., PH.D., DIRECTOR. The door was ajar, but Lucinda paused to rap on the glass. Classical music seeped from the room.
“Yes?”
“Dr. Marian?” Lucinda parsed a silhouette moving against a daylit window, fragmented to pixels by the door’s glass. She felt her heart lurch, regretting her gambit at the last moment, too late.
“Come in.”
Marian Rorschach wore a white coat too, over a black turtleneck that reminded Lucinda of Matthew’s own frequent costume, though Dr. Rorschach’s had been stretched around gallon-size breasts where Matthew’s was draped on a skeleton. Her heavy-fleshed face was deeply handsome, dark eyes glittering in pouchy seats. Her full black hair, bound Japanese-style in a sagging bun, bore a skunklike streak of white. She gnawed a paper clip while she studied a sheaf of papers open on her computerless desk as Lucinda entered. Now she removed the clip from the corner of her mouth and twisted a dial on a small transistor radio at her desk’s corner, lowering the volume.
“Can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”
“Concerning?”
“I write for the Echo Park Annoyance,” said Lucinda. “I’m here concerning an alleged marsupial that may have been expropriated from your premises.”
“Expropriated.”
“In so many words, yes.”
Dr. Marian raised one eyebrow and gestured at a leather chair to one side of the desk. “Sit down.”
“Thank you, I’ll stand.” The chair was low and soft, a possible bid for advantage on the part of Dr. Marian.
“What’s your name?”
“My name isn’t important.”
“I see, I see.” Dr. Marian tapped her pen against her desk and studied Lucinda. “You talk like a cop,” she said suddenly, her tone heavy.
“Thank you,” blurted Lucinda.
“But I don’t think that’s where you got this wrong impression of yours,” Dr. Marian continued. “In fact, I don’t think you really know anything about any alleged marsupial
s at all, not from the sound of things.”
“You might think that and be wrong,” said Lucinda. This sport of insinuation recalled a game she’d played as a child, of pulling her fingers from underneath another child’s hands and slapping them on top, an escapade which inevitably turned frantic, then painful. “For all you know this rookie reporter might have stumbled into a very close encounter with the alleged aforementioned.”
“I’m glad you say rookie,” said Dr. Marian. “It saves me saying it.”
“I meant eager and tireless, not gullible.”
“Gullible is another excellent word I thank you for supplying.”
Lucinda opted for bluntness. “Your establishment is missing a kangaroo, sir.”
“Don’t call me sir. We’re missing nothing.”
“One of your protégés has gone guerrilla.”
“The person in question is a malingerer who takes too many sick days, nothing more.”
Lucinda found herself trembling under Dr. Marian’s imperious command. She understood Matthew better now, seeing the regime he’d been negotiating. It aroused her sympathy, and a kind of jealousy as well.
“The person in question liberated a martyr kangaroo,” said Lucinda, working to keep any sulkiness from her voice.
“A foolish legend that I’ve heard circulating.”
“I’ve seen the captive, living anonymously among apartment dwellers, like Patty Hearst.”
“As I told the police, no sane person, let alone a zoo employee, would keep a kangaroo in an urban apartment. For one thing an adult kangaroo defecates three or four times a day with results approximately the size of a baseball glove, a catcher’s mitt specifically.”
“No sane person,” Lucinda echoed.
“That’s what I said.”
“There’s sense in that.” Lucinda felt herself bent helplessly, like light in a prism, into service to Dr. Marian’s interests.
“I’m glad you see the sense in what I say.”
“Of course certain persons might in certain local situations have acted less sane than other certain persons might have hoped. And would now therefore be facing more or less exactly a three-to-four-catcher’s-mitts-per-day type of situation.”
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