Cape Cod Noir

by David L. Ulin

  She’s standing right behind him, dressed in the black pants and shirt that will disappear beneath the Untoward Specter costume.

  “Are you some kind of witch?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  He can’t tell if she’s serious.

  “I’m working on a spell,” she says. “That’s the real reason I’m here. It’ll make me forget everyone and everything I never want to think about again.”

  “Well, I hope you’ll let me know if it works.”

  “Oh, you’ll know,” she says.

  14.

  “My husband died because he ate too much,” says the first of the three Widows of North Varnish. “Too much poison, that is.”

  “And my husband died because he hit his head,” says the second widow, “against the skillet I was holding.”

  “As for my husband,” says the third widow, “he died of natural causes.”

  “Is that so?” asks the first widow.

  “We were standing together on the edge of a very high cliff, just admiring nature, and then he fell right into it.”

  The three widows huddle close, giggling.

  Ted leaps from his seat and onto the stage. “Stop! Stop!”

  Carl lifts the skirt of the middle widow off his sweaty face. Final dress rehearsal, and he’s never seen Ted looking so distressed.

  “This isn’t working,” Ted says, rings clinking as he waves his hands. “We’ll have to strike this scene.”

  “But—” Carl starts to say, his voice cracking because it’s still half widow. He coughs. “But Ted, it’s the funniest bit in the whole damn piece.”

  “It is an incontestable disaster. We’ll have to go from the Devil Costume Mix-Up straight to the waltz of the Untoward Specter. Alexandra. Alexandra! Kiddo, can you manage this?”

  The wrinkled black figure shuffles out from behind the set. “Yes,” Alex says, fixing the folds of her costume. “Yes, sure, that’s fine.”

  “Carl,” Ted says, “do stay onstage, please. The specter can push the widows aside as it enters. That should get a laugh.”

  Carl blinks; the salt of his sweat is burning his eyes.

  “Here,” Alex says to him, “let me help you,” and she pulls the skirt down over his face.

  15.

  Aggie loads the finished cabinets onto the bed of her pickup and drives to Ted’s place in Yarmouth. The house is covered with vines on one side, and the other side is partially devoured by an overgrown rhododendron. She climbs the sunken porch steps and knocks on the door, which is sorely in need of paint.

  There’s some quiet shuffling within, and Aggie knows she’s being scrutinized from one window or another. Then the door opens, and Ted’s pale, bald, bearded face looms into view. His eyes are dark and unhappy—no trace there of the diligent whimsy she’s come to know at the theater.

  “Agatha, you’re early,” he says, and from the dimness beyond comes the quiet plunk of a cat landing on the floor.

  “Wrapped up sooner than I thought.”

  He lets her in, and even tries to help her carry the cabinets, though she manages fine on her own. Inside the house, piled on tables and shelves, and scattered over the floor, is all the outrageous clutter of a thousand odd pursuits. Old glass bottles, blue telephone pole insulators, dolls, clothing irons, ancient-looking cheese graters, piles of CDs, skulls, stuffed animals. A shriveled thing she knows to be a real mummy’s hand. Bowls of marbles. Stray amulets and rings. Marionettes, newspapers, books everywhere, and everywhere the cats, four or five or six of them, coming and going, dozing in high places. The couches and chairs are devastated by their attentions.

  Once she sets to work mounting the cabinets in his studio, Ted appears cheerier. He makes tea and brings two cups upstairs, talks to her about the play while she works. His drafting table is here, and it’s hard not to steal glances at the little book he’s working on. One illustration depicts three willowy figures, a man and two women. One of the women has just knocked the other over the head with what looks like a doorknob. On another page, a man in a fur coat is about to be crushed by an enormous urn.

  Ted sees her looking and says, “All those tiny murders we think about but never make happen. I don’t know where I’d be without them.”

  The cabinets are ready. “What will you keep in here?” she asks.

  “Oh, well, this and that.” He stands and runs a hand over the door. “Spiffy!” he says.

  On her way out, while they’re saying goodnight, Aggie feels the urge to tell him about Otto, about Carl, about the fact that she’s been sneaking the puppets home with her every night. She touches his arm, and a shocked look appears on his face, then quickly stows itself behind a strained smile.

  Ted looks very tired again. “See you at the theater,” he says.

  16.

  Carl has invited everyone out to his place on the Vineyard. In the morning, Aggie drives to Jared’s house to pick up Otto. Jared starts to say something about how he’ll be at the play, but she hurries off, telling him that she has to catch the ferry.

  The entire cast and crew (except for Ted, who declined the invitation with an embarrassed fluttering of his hands) meet at the Steamship Authority. On board, Alex sits across the table from Aggie and says, “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve … you know?”

  The Hands of the Orphans are hidden on Aggie’s lap. She squeezes their fingers.

  “Two and a half years!” says Alex.

  Aggie doesn’t know whether or not she’s supposed to believe her.

  “Do you believe me?” Alex asks.

  “I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”

  Alex takes a white marble from her pocket and sets it on the table. The marble rolls slowly one way, then the other. It goes right to the edge of the table and stops there. Aggie holds her breath, waiting for it to fall, but Alex grabs it just before it drops.

  “What does your tattoo mean?” Aggie asks.

  Alex keeps her arms extended, turning it over so the script is in the light. It runs from her wrist to the crook of her arm, all angles, swoops, and dots. “It’s Tibetan for one of the four immeasurables,” she says. “But I forget which.”

  17.

  Around his property, among the trees and on the grassy slope down to the beach, Carl has erected dozens of wood and metal sculptures. Some have faces, some are just hands. “Derelict things,” he calls them. “I make them in my spare time.”

  One has spinning windmill sails on top of its large, Buddha-like body. Perry reaches out to touch it.

  “Don’t touch that,” Carl says.

  He puts on an old jazz record. Everyone sits on blankets and opens picnic baskets. Otto scampers among them while they eat, begging bits of meat from their sandwiches. Then one of the stagehands leans back and bellows, “I wish I knew how to play a game of pies!”

  “This is supposed to be a break,” says Carl.

  Alex stands up and bunches the front of her skirt into her hands, as though preparing to run. “I should like very much to teach you how to play.”

  Perry, stammering a bit, says, “Right here, upon the greensward?”

  “Right here,” Alex answers, staring straight at Carl. “Right here upon the greensward, and to hell with what old Lord Lumpish thinks.”

  18.

  The baker is hard at work, and the kitchen is hot, hot! He’s rolling out a fresh batch of dough when he hears a knocking at the door. Who could it be? A customer?

  The baker goes to the door, opens it just a little, and peers outside. “Who’s there?” he asks, though the baker can see who’s there. It’s the devil with the dirty face and hands.

  “The devil with the dirty face and hands,” says the devil.

  “Go wash your dirty face and hands!” the baker says.

  The devil sighs and goes to the well. He draws up a bucket of water, kneels over it, and washes his dirty face and hands. Then he returns to the baker’s door and knocks again.

  “Who’s there?
” the baker asks.

  “The devil with the clean face and hands.”

  “Well, come right in!” the baker says.

  Now the devil is feeling fine. He likes it here in the hot, hot kitchen. He can smell good things cooking. “Do you have any pies today?” asks the devil.

  “Of course I have pies,” the baker says. “Can’t you hear them clapping in the oven?”

  19.

  They go for a walk on the beach together. Otto weaves among their legs, grabbing pieces of driftwood and barking at the ones he can’t get his jaws around.

  Alex picks up a stick and throws it for the dog to fetch. Watching him run, she says, “He doesn’t look like he’s dying.”

  “I know,” says Aggie. “But Jared tells me he cries all night. It’s some kind of cancer.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, absolutely,” says Carl.

  “Because you’re the death expert,” says Alex.

  “Ted’s the death expert,” says Carl.

  “Death expert!” says Perry, and does a flying jump kick.

  Aggie kneels as Otto comes back. He drops the stick at her feet, and she rubs his round head with both hands, flopping his ears. Then she sees that it isn’t a stick he brought back. It’s an old umbrella, just a few strips of fabric still clinging to its broken ribs.

  20.

  “Can’t you hear them clapping in the oven?” the baker asks.

  The oven door opens a little, and the Hands of the Orphans emerge. They all begin to clap, and the sound is like rain, or like radio static.

  “I do hear them clapping!” the devil says. “Do you have any strawberry pie?”

  The baker glances at the Hands of the Orphans, and the hands recoil. “I’m sorry,” he says, “no strawberry today.”

  “What about peach?”

  The Hands of the Orphans turn and turn.

  “No,” says the baker, “no peach.”

  The devil is getting impatient now. He taps one hoof against the floor. “How about cream pie?” he asks. “Surely you have some cream pie?”

  “Cream pie,” the baker says. “Well, let me see.”

  The Hands of the Orphans all are trembling.

  21.

  Aggie wakes to the sound of Otto whimpering next to her bed. She switches on the light and sees him lying on his side on the blue carpet, his open eyes rolled back into his head. His legs are twitching, as though from a dream of running.

  She gets down next to him and strokes his head, whispers his name. Then she sees, next to him on the carpet, one of the Hands of the Orphans. The other is a few feet away, near the nightstand. She had left them both on a chair at the other end of the room.

  She picks up the nearer puppet and finds it damp with slobber. The fabric is shredded, and the hands themselves have been chewed to pieces. Fragments of fingers and thumbs are scattered over the floor, and Aggie remembers, now, that she had heard a crunching sound in her sleep.

  “Bad dog!” she screams at Otto. “Bad, bad dog!” and hits him in the ribs with her fists.

  Otto is still whimpering, still moving his legs. Her blows turn to soft thumps, and then she stops hitting him and buries her face in his fur. She listens to Otto’s heartbeat. “Just die if you need to,” she says, but she hopes he can’t hear her.

  22.

  Neglected Guests

  A Worrisome Diversion by E____ G____

  Thursday–Saturday, 8 p.m.

  A dreary sight upon the shore has made a horror of their tour.

  23.

  Wearing her costume over her jeans, Alex takes the path down to the beach. No one knows she brought the Untoward Specter home with her. It seemed right for the occasion, so she had to have it. Her pockets are full of paper, and on each torn scrap is written the name of somebody or something she would like to forget.

  With the waves lapping at her bare feet, she removes the scraps one at a time, reads aloud what’s on them, and tosses them into the wind.

  When she’s finished, she walks for a while along the beach, then sits between two rocks shaped like big thumbs. There’s supposed to be a full moon tonight, and that, she realizes, is the only thing she’s sure about.

  Alex shivers, takes a deep breath. “It worked,” she says.

  24.

  Carl calls Perry and says, “Hey, you’re giving Alex a ride to the big show tonight?”

  “Sure am,” Perry says.

  “Listen, I’m going to be in P-town today—have to pick up some things for a piece I’m working on. So I’ll just grab her on my way back.”

  “Oh, well—”

  “So what’s the address?” Carl asks.

  “Maybe I should give her a call first,” says Perry, and that’s all Carl needs to hear to know that, Yes, these two are definitely sleeping together.

  “In a hurry here, my man. Just give me the address, all right?”

  Perry agrees, of course—would probably give you his own pants if you asked for them—and Carl heads out to Truro early. It feels good to drive for more than ten minutes, and he takes Route 6 a little faster than he needs to.

  He finds the place without much trouble, though it’s secluded, at the end of a long dirt road. No answer at the door, so he wanders around the house. Would Perry have given him the wrong address? He peers through a window, sees nothing but modern furniture and a nice stereo system. But there’s a path down the hill, and if Carl has his directions right, it must lead right to the beach.

  There’s a solid-looking walking stick in a bucket by the back porch. He takes that and heads for the trail.

  25.

  “What’s this?” says Lord Lumpish, kneeling on the shore. Dozens of scraps of paper litter the beach. He takes one of them in his gloved hand.

  “There’s something written on it,” say the widows, leaning close.

  “My father,” Lord Lumpish reads aloud. “That’s all it says.”

  The Hands of the Orphans gather more scraps and hold them up for Lord Lumpish to read.

  “The neighbor’s son. The lake. The year I turned thirteen.”

  “Is it a story?” say the widows. “Someone’s fortune?”

  “What happened in the kitchen,” reads Lord Lumpish. “All my lines. The way home.”

  “Well, that’s enough of that,” say the widows.

  Just then a black dog comes running toward them along the strand. It leaps excitedly on its short legs, gesturing with its snout in the direction from which it came.

  The widows are wringing their hands. “I do believe there’s something it wants us to see,” they say.

  Only when they prepare to set out do they realize that the Untoward Specter has vanished.

  26.

  The devil must have pie. But the devil must guess what kind of pie before he can have it. Those are the rules.

  “How about rutabaga?” the devil asks.

  “Sorry,” says the baker. “There is no rutabaga pie.”

  “Melancholy meringue? Please tell me you have some of that.”

  “No, nothing in the way of melancholy meringue.”

  “Umbrella pie?” the devil asks, leaning close. “You do have umbrella pie, don’t you?”

  “Well,” says the baker, “let’s take a look.”

  27.

  Just an hour before curtain, and the production is in complete disarray. Ted stalks back and forth behind the stage, trying to direct the men in charge of the lighting. It’s as though none of them have even seen a lightbulb before.

  Carl jogs up to him, out of breath.

  “There you are,” Ted says. “Why aren’t you in costume?”

  “Nobody can find Alex,” Carl answers. “I went out to her place myself; no sign of her. I think she might have packed up and gone.”

  “Maybe she’s with—”

  But there’s Perry, looking shaken. “I drove up there too,” he says. “When I didn’t hear from her.”

  The two men stare at one another. Ted thinks: I should hav
e stayed home, I should have just stayed home. He walks slowly to the front of the stage and collapses on the chaise lounge. The cast and crew gather around him. “Where is Alexandra from?” he asks, but no one says anything. “Doesn’t anybody know where she’s from?” His hands are moving, his rings clacking. “This is the worst thing that has ever happened. I’ll have to play the Untoward Specter myself. But I can’t perform the waltz!”

  “We’ll put the bit about the widows’ dead husbands back in,” says Carl. “That’ll patch it up.”

  Perry looks lost, is walking in circles under the uneven lights, and then the theater door bursts open. Aggie comes down the aisle, face pale, eyes red, hair a mess. She’s carrying something bundled in her hands.

  Ted sits up. “What is it?” he says. “What’s happened?”

  Aggie holds out the bundle. It’s a mass of torn fabric and broken fingers and thumbs. It shakes because Aggie is shaking. She holds it up, as though to make an offering, and several digits fall to the floor.

  28.

  A black dog walks alone on the beach. He has been walking a long time. Sometimes he wanders close to the water, fleeing when a wave advances upon him, barking as the wave retreats. When the tide goes out, the dog discovers things that feel good to carry and chew. A tattered black glove. The hooked wooden handle of an umbrella. A fragment of some sea animal’s tusk.

  Often the dog catches on the air the scent of people, a few of them at least, just upwind. He runs in their direction but doesn’t catch them. They must be very quick.

  But that’s fine, because there’s plenty here to keep a dog busy: scurrying creatures to chase, birds that pop into the air when you run at them, things to find and bury in the sand. And the dog is possessed by the sense, urgent and profound and brimming with the promise of love and praise, that soon, very soon now, he will discover something important. That he has only to wait until the sun goes down before a great mystery is solved.

  And then maybe someone will give him something to eat.

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