Open Water

by Maria Flook

  “These are big containers. The birds are sizable. The world’s largest—”

  “Ostrich?”

  Showalter’s eyes pinched shut then popped opened again; his face softened, as if he was suddenly reminded of a realm of innocence he had lost sight of. He told Willis, “Not ostrich. These are parrots. A proven pair. Together they’re worth more than twenty-four thousand. Hyacinth macaws. Incredible blue, like lapis.”

  Willis knew about lapis. Rennie had used lapis when she made jewelry. She had turned out a lot of souvenir junk, but once in a while she made something on order, something special with semiprecious stones.

  “Okay. Let’s say I hire you to get the birds extracted and delivered to an address in Jamaica Plain?”

  “Extracted? What do you mean, extracted?”

  “My ex-wife has the pair. She was in on this in the beginning, now she’s sold her half back to me.”

  “She sold it back, so what’s the problem?”

  “Let me say it this way. She is sometimes a problem.”

  “Just one thing. Are these her birds?”

  “They are no longer her property.”

  “If they aren’t hers, why does she have a hold of them?”

  “You can ask her that question yourself. Want to try it?”

  “I will for four hundred.”

  “Three.”

  “Shit, you’re going to chizz me for one bill? Four is my payout. I take even numbers.”

  Showalter lifted the pleated shade until the afternoon light fell in a sheet across the room. “How are you with women?” Showalter said.

  Willis thought it was a loaded question. It was pointing at him.

  “Are you good with women?” Showalter asked again. Willis tried to deflect it, but he didn’t know how, so he ended up saying just about anything. “I get along.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You asked me.”

  “Do you talk your way, or fuck your way?”

  Willis looked at Showalter. Was it a matter of personal curiosity or just business? “I can do both at the same time while drinking a glass of water,” Willis said.

  Showalter looked tickled.

  Willis didn’t actually wish to amuse this fellow.

  “Cash up front,” Willis said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How do I know you won’t walk the check?”

  “Is trust such a dirty word?” Showalter said.

  Willis didn’t visualize four hundred dollars. He wouldn’t subject himself to these cockeyed moments with Showalter unless he imagined a big deal. He saw a cornucopia of brilliant Amazons and maybe some four-eyed photography to cash in. Enough for Rennie’s deathbed cookie jar. Only some big cash could get rid of Munro. Maybe with twenty grand Munro could be banished from Easton Way. Willis stood up to leave.

  Showalter placed the heel of his hand on Willis, right at the small of his back. It couldn’t be confused for anything but what it was. He told Willis, “I don’t like to hear no.” He grinned at Willis as if he had wheels turning.

  The doorbell chimed and Fritz had walked inside. Fritz tagged up with the conversation. “I guess No is No.”

  Showalter told Fritz, “You should be downstairs in the studio.”

  “I should be downstairs? Right now?” Fritz said.

  “That’s right.”

  Fritz shrugged and looked at Willis. Fritz followed Showalter into the elevator. Willis didn’t like seeing Fritz hijacked and he walked after his friend, into the open cage.

  He shifted his legs. He felt the elevator rock side to side, an unsteady pendulum.

  When the elevator stopped, they were greeted by a young model, a girl around seventeen or eighteen. The girl had a hard look despite her young age. Her bleached hair was perfectly trimmed in a nice bowl cut, revealing her pale throat and the ashy nape of her neck. She was wearing swimwear from the 1950s, a two-piece sailor suit with a short pleated skirt.

  “These the guys?” she said.

  “We’re in negotiations,” Showalter said.

  “In what?” she said.

  “Shut up,” he told her. “Give us a second.”

  “Who’s she?” Willis said.

  “That’s Miss Ingersoll.”

  “Ingersoll? Sounds like something you put on an itch. Ingersoll. Sounds like an analgesic ointment.”

  “For a hemorrhoid flare-up,” Fritz said.

  Miss Ingersoll didn’t seem jostled by Willis’s attack on her name. Showalter went over to a table and he jimmied a magazine from a tall stack. He handed the magazine to Willis. “Read this one-page summary. It will only take a minute of your time. It tells you all about the 3-D industry. It’s got the specifications. All you need is one camera and a slide bar, or you can use two cameras set up just a little bit apart. All an audience needs is a handheld viewer, or if you want to project slides, like we have here, you have to have a silver lenticular screen and some polarized glasses. Not too big an initial investment. This tells you how easy. It has some nice stories about the history. Did you know that the movie star Harold Lloyd was into it?”

  “Harold Lloyd?”

  “He took shots of Marilyn Monroe and Bogart, Dick Powell. He’s got one of Roy Rogers and Trigger. Real as life.”

  Fritz said, “Was Trigger live or stuffed?”

  “What are you asking me?” Showalter said.

  “Was Trigger live? Because you can’t tell in a still photograph if the horse is stuffed or not.”

  Willis took the magazine and leafed through it. It was a mail-order catalogue. He picked up another magazine from the table called Infrared Nudes in 3-D.

  “Is this why you’re here?” Willis said to the girl. “You want to be an infrared nude?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing to me,” Willis said.

  “So why did you ask me? You don’t like looking at 3-D hot pix?”

  “Never tried it.”

  “It makes people dizzy. It’s not for pussies.”

  Willis said, “The mouth on you.”

  “I’ve never had any complaints.”

  “Really? No one offered his advice until now? Shit, can I submit a clue?” Willis said. “You look like you need a lesson.”

  “A riding lesson,” Fritz said.

  “Ever have a saddle sore?” Willis said, testing her resilience.

  She whispered to him, “You think I like to hang with Showalter? He has a tube up his prick so piss can flow. He has to fill up his piss bag. It’s taped to his ankle. He has to pull out the tube to have a fuck.”

  Willis looked back at the little chorine with a wave of queasy fascination. He didn’t know whether to believe her.

  She registered his disbelief. “I’m telling the truth. I’ve seen everything now,” she said. “Just about everything.”

  Showalter was moving around the room setting things up. The slight hobble in his gait might have been explained. Showalter was trying to make the studio set look like a boardwalk. He had a blue sheet suspended from the ceiling, the Atlantic shore, and some big cardboard cutouts of Atlantic City and Merv Griffin’s gambling resort. The cutouts were promo items he picked up from somewhere. He was draping the blue fabric the way he wanted, so the swirls in the material didn’t overtake the foreground subjects. He left the room for a minute and went to a freezer in a corner of the cellar. He came back with a cherry Popsicle and handed it to Miss Ingersoll.

  She peeled the wrapper off the treat and waited in front of the camera. “Go ahead,” she said. “Let’s start. I’m only eating just one of these Popsicles. These bother my fillings.”

  Willis told Fritz, “I’m saying my goodbyes, are you ready?”

  Fritz looked back at the girl. He shrugged.

  She saw there was going to be another delay and she went to sit in an office chair, slapping her knees open and closed in noisy swipes. Her Popsicle had started to sweat, but she didn’t suck it.

  “We can’t do the shot,�
� Fritz told her.

  “What’s this now?” the girl said. “I’ve been waiting here for an hour.”

  “There’s been a mix-up,” Fritz announced to the room.

  Showalter wasn’t listening to Fritz. “This is not a mix-up,” Showalter said. “It’s a red-letter day. You’ll leave here with a wad of cash. Call it what you want. Afternoon delight. It’s a natural exploration—”

  Willis turned around, bumping into a coffee table. A stack of CDs clattered over. He was leaving the room.

  “Hold on, beautiful,” Showalter said with a great deal of style. His words sparkled.

  Willis said, “Hey, dreamboat, why don’t you accept the facts? I’m not changing my socks.” Willis looked back at the man.

  Showalter was holding a gun on Willis.

  Willis didn’t expect to see a gun.

  Showalter looked refreshed by the little wave of peril he had released upon the room.

  Willis pulled himself together and faced off with the man. He watched the oversized pistol, its muzzle, a small dark circle attractive as a keyhole.

  “Federico,” Showalter said. “You’re the dresser.”

  Fritz said, “I’m the what? The dresser? Shit, I didn’t sign on for this. I don’t think so—”

  “Shut up. Walk over there and unbutton your friend. Nice and easy. We don’t want to pinch anything.”

  Fritz didn’t move.

  Willis started to walk toward Showalter.

  Showalter said, “Now just wait there, Willis. Think. I’m making a formal invitation—”

  Willis kept coming.

  “Freeze,” Showalter said. He laughed. A patient, schoolmaster chuckle.

  Willis looked at the man holding the gun. He was sizing him up one final time; it wasn’t an easy appraisal. Willis was making hairline adjustments in his calculations when the gun went off.

  Willis hollered. Showalter shrieked with amusement. Miss Ingersoll sat where she was, cupping one hand under her dripping Popsicle. Willis rubbed his waist where a paintball had exploded in a messy red circle, his abdominal muscles stinging. The gelatinous red dye felt greasy in the palm of his hand. He rubbed his hand on his jeans.

  Willis went after Showalter and knocked him against the table. A stack of mailing labels fanned across the floor. Willis took the paintball gun from Showalter’s hand.

  “I can’t believe it,” he told Fritz, “this double-breasted scumbag paintballed me.” He pulled the gun up to his face to read the grip. “With a Splatmaster.” Willis aimed the gun at the end of the room and pulled the trigger three times. The paint cartridges hit the silver screen and burst into bloody chrysanthemums.

  Showalter groaned about the cost of his equipment.

  “Tough shit,” Willis told him. Willis tossed the gun on the table and whacked Showalter halfheartedly with his cast.

  Fritz called out, “Don’t use your sore arm—”

  “Use the other arm,” Miss Ingersoll instructed.

  He had the popular vote. Willis switched arms and struck Showalter again with the side of his fist. He stood back. “You marked me.” Willis started laughing.

  The others took their cue. Their laughter came in peaks and valleys, a sinister choir of edgy, mistrusting relief. Showalter tried to laugh loudest, over their trio, until Willis pushed him away and the older man fell to his knees and curled into the duck-and-cover position.

  The girl followed Fritz and Willis into the elevator. They rode upstairs. Willis felt his pulse grinding into his fingertips. His broken wrist was throbbing. Miss Ingersoll sat down on the big leather sofa and dialed a telephone number. No one exchanged pleasantries. They heard the elevator cable whine and the cage sank. He didn’t want another round with Showalter so Willis took Fritz out to the street.

  Fritz stepped onto the rocker plate of the InstyPrint Econoline and slid behind the wheel. Willis got in beside him and unfolded a piece of paper with the address in Fairfield. Fritz followed the urban streets and rolled it onto the freeway.

  The truck was stenciled all over, front and back, with the InstyPrint logo and local telephone numbers. Willis sat in the passenger seat thumbing through a booklet of business-card samples he had found on the seat. He told Fritz, “Maybe you can duck out of the porn biz, my friend.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “Federico, I hardly knew ye.”

  “Green, green is my valley.”

  “You’re set for life as long as it rises.”

  “Look, this was brainy stuff. It was 3-D. Like he said, they shoot it twice. They move the camera on a slide bar. They get two exposures sixty-five millimeters apart. It’s all scientific. Showalter’s got state-of-the-art equipment. That paint gun, that’s one of those survival-game weapons. Looked pretty real.”

  “It was real, all right. It was a real mess. Are you happy with yourself?”

  “Shit. The hours are good.”

  “What about Miss Ingersoll. What is she like?”

  “She would have been good. We’ll never know.”

  “Tell me, you could do it in front of the camera, come home, and still look it in the eye?” Willis had a straight face.

  “Money makes it numb and happy.”

  “Tell the truth. You don’t mind that guy?”

  Fritz told him, “Gene is all right. He’s not mental or anything. Some of these porn kings are criminal. Like last week, we saw a film where they had this big roll of flypaper.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. That stuff could rip your skin off. That stuff could tear the lace curtain right off its rod. It was some kind of torture textile. They had these boys right on a big sheet of it.”

  “You’re kidding? Flypaper?”

  “There are some weird people on the planet,” Fritz said, calming down.

  “Showalter wanted you to recline naked on a sheet of flypaper?”

  “Never. I’m telling you, Gene isn’t so bad. Only once, he had a piece of rawhide. A long stick of rawhide like you would feed to a dog. Rawhide has flex, it snaps. Gene started smacking my ass. He wanted my ass to look bright and rosy.”

  “Shit. Well, did it get rosy?”

  Fritz braked hard for a car that was just creeping. They were going fifty and the truck skated in tight swerves side to side until they twirled a half donut on the gravel shoulder. Fritz pushed it back into gear and merged again with the traffic. He didn’t miss a beat.

  Willis took another breath. He said, “You’re crazy to model in the first place. Next it might be that noose business. You’ve heard of that?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “What if they forget to loosen the rope in time. That could step right over the line into manslaughter. That would be a nice snapshot.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. It’s in the papers. Their shorts around their ankles.”

  “How about this idea? We collect these birds and see what we can do with them.”

  “Interesting revision,” Fritz told Willis.

  “Why should we be the middleman?”

  “We don’t have to negotiate with Fall River?”

  “Every time we go in there it’s Let’s Make a Deal. Curtain number one, curtain number two. Fuck that.”

  “All right. We’ll face that bridge another time.”

  “Look, you aren’t listening. We burned that bridge. Fritz? It’s torched, you get it?”

  “What happened to you?” the woman asked Willis. One side of his shirt was blood red where the stain had expanded above his breast pocket.

  “Your ex shot me with one of his expensive squirt guns.”

  “An accident?” she said.

  “He sighted the shot.”

  “From him, that’s a compliment,” she said.

  “I figured it was,” he told her.

  She was dressed in white leather jeans, like a go-go ghost from Shindig. She showed them through the first floor of her big half-furnished ranch and into a chilly pool house in the back. Vapor lif
ted from the heated lanes, giving the space a forlorn mist.

  “I keep them out here by the pool. Maybe you could just drown them.”

  Willis studied the large cage. It was empty except for a huge whiskey barrel.

  “That’s their next box,” she told him. Her words alarmed the occupants and one bird emerged from the barrel. The bird faced Willis, a creature so vibrant and showy it couldn’t possibly exist outside of dreams. A dazzling blue parrot, over three feet in length. Its ultramarine feathers were the intense color of bridesmaid chiffon; its long azure tail extended below its perch like crisp first-place ribbons. Willis had never seen anything like it. The bird’s feathers were not an earthly tone, and when the second bird emerged from the barrel, the blue aura was multiplied, creating a small expanse of heaven.

  But when Willis reached into the cage to transfer the birds to a carton, one of the macaws bit his hand. The bite drew blood.

  “Shit. It’s wild. Showalter didn’t say these were carnivorous.”

  Fritz looked at Willis’s hand. In the fleshy web between his thumb and forefinger there was a peculiar incomplete triangle, a beak imprint, bleeding. Willis sucked the wound clean.

  “She has three hundred pounds of biting pressure per square inch,” the woman said.

  Willis looked at the woman.

  “That’s more than I have,” she said. She grinned at Willis.

  He smiled in return, his dimple fat as a rosehip.

  Willis could see that the divorcée might be walking some kind of high wire between the past and present. She left the room and came back with a plate of tuna salad sandwiches. “My guests didn’t show up,” she said. “There’s a ton of these.”

  Fritz looked at the plate and chose a fat square.

  Willis declined, rubbing the blood from his lips with the cuff of his jacket. He picked up a plush velour towel from a pool chair and wrapped it around his right hand. Then he put his plastered arm into the cage and started batting the birds with his cast until one of them was subdued and he pulled it through the door and slammed it into a box. He went after the mean one three times again. The macaw pecked at his plaster cast, leaving powdery gouges. Willis decided it wasn’t worth it.

  “Don’t give up,” she said.

  Willis reached into the cage again.