Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  The fish guy is back in shorts and flops and a Hawaiian shirt with flying fish, and he’s walking on in the middle of an interview with that hot new starlet with the cleavage to die for, but the halitosis to die from, but nobody knows that except the crews backstage who make foul jokes about its source, speculating on blowjobs instead of bulimia, what’s her name…

  “Hey! Looka this. The fish guy!” Ravi waves to the world, as the audience follows the lights with APPLAUSE. “What? You’re in the neighborhood?”

  “Yeah. You said stop by. Anytime.”

  “Yeah, uh… Rave…”

  “Ravi. Rockulz. The fish guy.”

  It’s disappointing to see a seasoned host get nervous. This has to be quick, or it’ll cut to commercial and die in security.

  “Okay, fish guy. Uh, you know Marci…”

  “Hi, Marci. It’s a pleasure. I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I have an urgent request for the fish.”

  Well, that was a lucky phrase, a clever turn to open things up so a seasoned host can move in. Twisting quizzically, he falls into step. “Okay. I’m game. What do the fish need?”

  “They’ve been kidnapped and are being held prisoner.”

  Not such a good line—over the top. The host grabs the laugh for himself. “Do we need to come up with a ransom?”

  “No. You need to empty your aquarium and smash it.”

  This could get ugly—you can’t follow a laugh line with a call for violence. Changing pace with alacrity—which is how he made his mark as a younger host—the host asks: “What do I do with the fish? In my aquarium. I mean my aquarium is smashed, and I got fish flopping all over the rug, which won’t stay wet forever, I might add.” LAUGHTER.

  “Smash the fish tank outside. Come on. You give the fish away. Take them back to the pet store or give them away.”

  “Okay. Wait a minute. I had fish for dinner…”

  “Not those fish. You should think about not eating those fish. But now I mean aquarium fish.” The host nods, fishing for another laugh. “Many thousands are in warehouses near here. Many warehouses stacked with glass tanks full of colorful fish that should be on reefs. But they’re not. And the reefs are going away…”

  “Hey. Stick around. We gotta take a break, but we’ll be right back with the fish guy, who just dropped in.” Host turns, profile left. “Hey. Are the fishnappers in a Ford Bronco?” LAUGHTER and APPLAUSE and…

  Cut to commercial.

  Here comes security, stopping short for the host’s raised hand. He leans near like he did a long time ago. “Hey, fish guy. You stopped in to tell people to empty their aquariums?” Ravi nods. “You got a new book? A movie? A toy? You had toys, yeah? Anything?”

  Ravi shakes his head. “I’m here to sell an idea.”

  “Yeah. That’s tough. Look. Sit down here by Marci. You know Marci?” She holds her breath to assess him sexually. “Other side. Okay? Marci has a movie. We got a young comic in the green room we’ll bump to next week. We’ll have a minute or so with you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?” The host asks the producer, who throws his hands in the air and walks away. The security guys step back.

  And three, two, one…

  “Hey! Marci Marceau opens Tuesday at the Blue Tooth. And the new movie is The Deadbeat Goddess. It looks fantastic, and so do you.” She writhes to advantage, to profiles left, then right. “Give it up for Marci Marceau!”

  APPLAUSE!

  Marci exploits the short shrift with a slow rise, profile left easing to frontal with a leer, some sizzle, and a slink. The host gazes with the rest of the late-night world at her luscious ass in retreat…

  Cut to Camera Two and reset to personal confidence. “Okay, we got broken glass out in the yard. We got nothing for dinner because we had to hurry up and get the fish off the rug and back to the pet shop…”

  “Not necessarily back. Many were bought on-line. Just find them a home. Don’t worry about the money. Smash the tanks.”

  “You know, I gotta say, I never saw this side of you. You’re Mr. Azure Blue. Mr. Cool, Calm, and Deep. You got yourself worked up here. What happened?”

  What happened? A man found himself on a reef, where he made close, personal friends and got lucky with a camera and a few contacts and made it, not huge but big, maybe even very big for a while there… Then he stumbled onto what he already knew but couldn’t finger, till it went toe-to-toe. The old neighborhood is dying because the garish innocents are being sold for money. “I woke up.”

  The host shares his famous clownish incredulity. LAUGHTER. “Fish guy. Work with me here. You woke up, what, from a nap?” Mild laughter.

  “Yes. A long nap. A deep sleep. Now we wake up. You know a dream can feel like underwater. Have you tried running through a dream? You can’t do it. So you slow down. You drift through a dream. I dream of a reef with thousands of fish—have you ever seen a reef in abundance? Have you ever seen a reef?” Mild laughter.

  “This is the fish guy I know. So why the smashed glass?”

  “The glass is our confinement. Look—why would a man want a job as a prison guard? He gets to go home every night, but he’s tired. He spends his days in jail, like another prisoner.”

  “He probably showers at home.” LAUGHTER.

  “Yes. I’m sure. But I’m making a point. If you have an aquarium, you put yourself inside it. You die there like the fish do, first in spirit. You shut yourself off…”

  “That’s interesting—life in a fish bowl. Why does that sound familiar?” LAUGHTER. “Hey, it’s always great to see the fish guy again. We gotta run. See you tomorrow when it’ll be Anna Indiana and Bones Morrow…”

  “I’m not done.”

  “Come back. Can you come back?”

  “Yes, but…”

  And so it would end—the dreams, stories, and endings, wishes, free will, and consequence. So the average home aquarist, a thirty to fifty-something hobbyist focused on personal amusement, would remain oblivious to reef decimation. Ravi must think and act rather than react. Rising slowly as his slowest bubbles, out of the small talk and into the credits, he steps up to the little red light on Camera One and calls out, “Mr. Gorbachev! Tear down that aquarium!” LAUGHTER! APPLAUSE! Pull back. Finish credits. Sustained APPLAUSE! The fish guy stands firm, eye-to-eye with the late-night crowd.

  He goes home to Hawaii in a wake of goodwill, apology, and friendship forever with the TV crowd. He pledges to return with more wonderful stuff and bids farewell to the last fan waving at LAX because the Wheel of Life spins inexorably, with its changes, rewards, and disappointments, but fans are forever.

  Any ripple on the late-night pond will reach the far banks on a single turn of Earth. Thirty million people evolve by virtue of thought and statistically measurable behavior, however small or brief.

  Just so, a lonely boy in Utah wonders what life could hold with no aquarium? But he lost six hundred dollars in fish to an imported disease, and now the on-line seller wants to sell him a backup system for quarantine, to safeguard his current reef wildlife against new reef wildlife coming from sick oceans. But he has no current reef wildlife because they all died. But two aquarium systems should be twice the fun as one. But near midnight the boy empties and disconnects his tank. He leaves it in the yard to sleep on the idea. But after a snack, before bed, he heads back out to smash it so he can’t change his mind in the morning, so he can get a fresh start tomorrow on his new hobby, photography, which should cost less, not more. He fantasizes giant zoom and mysteries revealed.

  A forty-something woman in a wheelchair in Fresno would prefer selling her tank or giving it to charity rather than smashing it. The fish guy wants it all to stop, but what a waste. What a nut, like one of those crackpots in the park, preaching the end… Giving it away could lead to somebody else setting it up, so she cuts the silicone seams in each corner, so it can still be a terrarium, but a little seed has sprouted. So she puts it the garage and fills it with garden utensils. Glass
cracks, but she doesn’t care.

  A seasoned aquarist in Newark thinks it makes no sense, but by morning he’s still thinking, and so on into the evening news, where thoughts would melt into the next news cycle, though tonight they accelerate because…

  Turner Hultquist was only fourteen when Sumner Redstone hung onto a burning hotel balcony waiting to be rescued. Sumner Redstone got saved and went on to acquire billions and become an idol to Turner Hultquist. On Redstone’s lead, Hultquist developed a distribution company and became wealthy.

  Six hundred million dollars are nothing to sneeze at, but Sumner Redstone did just that, adding 8-Arms Distribution to his list of majority holdings, under CBS, Viacom, MTV, Black Entertainment Television (That’s funny; he doesn’t look black.), Paramount, and DreamWorks. Nominal reorganization following the takeover left Turner Hultquist out in the anonymous cold with nothing but money. That is, Redstone fired him because a new broom sweeps clean. Get out. So Hultquist got discarded blithely as debris—out with nary a nod or a word.

  Call it a follow-up for balance: interviewed at home in front of his thirty foot, floor-to-ceiling aquarium with thousands of fish, including adult eels and brood tangs, Redstone brags: “I got more fish here than they do over there in Hawaii.” That is, the man who swept Turner Hultquist out with the trash takes pride in his aquarium, demonstrating his dominance of land and oceans.

  Turner Hultquist responds with an unfriendly takeover in kind. His camera crew arrives at his home posthaste—arrives as a local pet shop delivers a three-hundred-gallon tank. Hultquist can’t decide whether to swing away with his Louisville slugger right in the living room for drama. Or he could set the tank on sawhorses in the yard and fill it for the big splash of three hundred gallons and a shitload of glass—wait a minute. Get another tank. “We’ll smash it dry, with glass flying all over the fucking place. We’ll smash the dry tank with the slugger and the full tank with a blasting cap—make it two blasting caps. Then we segue artfully, you know, stitch the two for a special fucking effect with Redstone on a short loop repetition of more fish than they do over there in Hawaii more fish than they do over there in Hawaii more fish than they do over there in Hawaii…”

  The crew concurs on drama, art, and nuance—okay, no nuance, but with so much glass and water flying into space on double slo-mo, the point should come across. If it doesn’t, they can get a third tank and just blow it the fuck up. “And we won’t need blasting caps. My kid sells fireworks on the side. He’s like, you know, working his way through junior high. He’s got those M-80s. Cherry bombs. He says it’ll be cake with cigarette fuses. There’s the push—where the hell we ever gonna find some fucking smokes? Wait. The kid says he can get some. And he’ll work for scale. Little prick.”

  A producer calls, “Grip! We’ll need some goggles and body cover for Mr. Hultquist.” Because it only stands to reason that Mr. H will swing for the bleachers.

  So Turner Hultquist makes the news with backstory and peripheral interviews. To aquarium or not to aquarium? That is the question. Turner Hultquist says it’s the fish who make the point and the fish guy who speaks on their behalf.

  The fish guy calls from Hawaii to the young diver with the aquarium shots in LA. Wait a minute—you can’t call a guy in from a dream! Relax, numb nuts; you know this guy. He’s an Oybek recruit who was on his way up the evil path but get this: no longer Oybekian! He’s clean! Come to Neptune! Yes, the showbiz card sailing his way across the poker table of life is an ace! He’s back from the dark side and in the studio in mere fucking minutes, speaking out, denouncing evil and embracing reform: “Mr. Gorbachev…!”

  By day three a billboard is up on La Cienega Boulevard not too far from the hub of your better LA traffic. Bigger than life, Turner Hultquist is smashing bejeezus out of a huge fucking aquarium, the water and glass exploding with such viral virtual veracity as to generate a traffic hazard in your face, with a message as concise and potent as a smart bomb aimed at your heart: Mr. Gorbachev…!

  It’s all the talk in a twelve-block radius, with growing speculation on whose body Hultquist’s head got morphed onto—he’s so pumped! Can the glass/water explosion combo actually carry a plotline or at least nominally connect scenes through a hundred and ten pages of screenplay? Juiciest of all: Guess what studio is actually test-marketing the concept this minute? The radius goes eighteen miles on four hundred more billboards in a blink and then, of course, another twelve-thousand-mile radius on global news pick-ups—take over this, Sumner! You reef-killing fucker!

  All the rage erupting in La La motivates tankists in thirty-nine states to chew on the idea like it’s broken glass, spitting it out till next week when Ravi and Minna Rockulz and their two children Leihua and Justin and Skinny the cat and Little Dog pack up for a move to a new home that’s not so crowded.

  The phone rings.

  Hawaii State Senator Kevin Kaneshiro is on the line, asking if Mr. Rockulz will support a bill to limit aquarium extraction from Hawaii reefs. “We’ve been embarrassed in the eyes of the world.”

  “No. I will not support regulation. I will support a ban. You want to fuck around? Or you want healthy reefs?”

  “Please. Mr. Rockulz. Let me do my job. Okay?”

  •

  Alas and again, The End.

  What About the Kids and Another Move so Soon?

  For starters, they’re not moving to a brand new place. It’ll be old home week for Little Dog, with familiar scents and old haunts. Skinny had a couple months there and did fine. She’ll do better on a slower regimen, now that she’s pushing sixteen.

  Not only that, she got the Waikiki hooker treatment leaving LA, not exactly an anal reaming, but every groupie in LA sure as hell wanted to kiss her tuchas. Okay, not every groupie—that could chap a cat’s ass—but everyone in wishing distance.

  Packing up one more time is a challenge. It’s more than a couple duffels and some snacks. Now it’s boxes, crates, and kid stuff. Then again, most of it is still packed. The reasons for not fully moving into and absorbing the new home are many. The Hawaii place and the old place in upper LA are the same marble, granite, glass, and steel, and so is the context. LA sounds like traffic. Hawaii sounds like surf. Surf sounds like traffic. And shallow friendliness in LA was easier than growing pains in Hawaii.

  Minna’s family tried to connect as ohana should, talking nicely to the kids, teaching them da kine, playing with the dog and admiring the cat. It went well enough, which wasn’t enough, leaving a guy recently from LA to ask his wife, “Okay. Now what?” It’s a tough question for a modern woman who loves culture, pace, and stimulation, a woman willing to adapt to the needs of her family, a woman recently burdened by a major move, lock, stock, and barrel—a woman left with no better answer than a question of her own.

  “You think Tahiti would be better?”

  “Yes. It’s French.”

  “Why didn’t you go to France in the first place?”

  He didn’t go to France because it’s not tropical. “And because. I wouldn’t have met you.”

  With minimal loss on a quick resale because he bought it right, the beachfront monolith goes quick. It doesn’t feel like home. For hardly over a million they get a much smaller place on the island of their convergence, a high-ceilinged fare of native stock, lashed in primitive beauty, with two boudoirs, two salles de bains et un bureau pour Ravi. Calling it pas mal feels French and safe.

  Ravi watches neighbors cooling in the shallows. He picks up trash, but they leave more, so he tells them to stop—to love their sea as if they would… swim in it. They laugh and seem to get it.

  A month or so in, on a shallow bluff next door, he sees elderly Tahitians greeting men who carry clipboards and blueprints. He walks over as the elders invite the men to a feast there, later, for ia orana. The men offer opportunity in money, jobs, and security. The elders offer regrets: No, you cannot build here.

  Ravi wants to offer money for legal defense or any expense but on second thought in
troduces himself with a pledge of support.

  He stops shaving. He sets buoys to block the reef from anchoring boats and gets no complaints. He watches the coral recover as his babies turn into children, as his dog trades fear of separation for the confidence of a stable home. The cat sleeps more, plays less, and watches her man.

  Old friends come again for company and comfort into next phases. Monique and Cosima are an item but live separately, to better keep the peace. Moeava works his boat and takes counsel on occasion from both women, or sometimes with Monique alone when she’s feeling uncertain, experimental, nostalgic, or lonely. Who can tell?

  Hereata becomes tutu, or auntie, to share her love and balance her solitude. She cares for the children as she cared for her own. She does not pine for her chevalier to arrive but seems happy. Minna is grateful again for a babysitter and doesn’t worry if Ravi sees the sitter home.

  Ravi sees more and reacts less; no vehicle proclaims Born & Raised, and nobody asks, how long have you been here? With no development or social resentment to taint the natural beauty, he wonders: now what? Now comes the more perfect shot, for starters. Minna shows him what else for finishers, with natural aptitude for intensive care. She works four shifts a week in Papeete, and they cap most weeks with a lively distraction, an outing to Taverua reef or the motus—or to the Tuamotus or Papeete for shopping and late lunch, where Ravi will go whole frog on pomme frites, une petite salade, et une bouteille du vin blanc. He’ll savor the flavors after confirming no sardines or anchovies in the salad, to spare the ocean food chain any further affront. He’ll smother the fries in ketchup and watch the kids scream among the vendor stalls, their frites and sammies half-eaten. He’ll wonder who they’ll become, and when.

  He’ll catch his wife watching him, and he’ll wonder why and how and what if. She’ll rest her fingers on his arm and whisper playfully, “This is what became of us.”

  He’ll lie on a bench on the ferry ride home and dream of milestones: surely he’ll dive at fifty-five and sixty and should still be fit at seventy, barring illness or weight gain. Neither seems likely.