Animal Appetite

by Susan Conant

  “I’m double-parked,” I told Estelle.

  She handed me reams of would-be blockbuster. As if to confirm my supposition about the deal she’d offered me, she said sweetly, “We’ll talk after you’ve read it.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “The chaos is deliberate,” she advised me. “Damned Yankee Press was the most disorganized place I’ve ever worked.” With pride in her voice, she confided, “My novel is drawn from life.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Estelle Grant’s novel was called Multitudes in the Valley of Decision. Although I traced the phrase to the Old Testament, I never did figure out the meaning of the title. Multitudes seemed to refer to the book’s thousands of adverbs, most of which were unpronounceable, pedantic, or both: “sillily,” “inchoately,” “hermeneutically.” Valley, I deduced, alluded to the depths to which prose can sink. As for Decision, mine would’ve been to burn the manuscript.

  Instead of saying or asking like normal people, the characters were always interjecting, interpolating, querying, or essaying. The women were forever crying out. The men kept ejaculating. The creative process, I should explain, had transformed the real publishing house into a fictional house of prostitution. Maybe the novel was supposed to be an allegory. The narrator was one Stellina Brandt. Jack Andrews appeared, I thought, as a lovable client named Mack Sanders. Shaun McGrath, in contrast, was cast in the role of a sadistic pimp called Seamus McPhee. Especially considering the book’s theme, I was, for once, happy to discover a complete absence of dogs. The only animals, other than most of the human characters, were rats. Poison figured in the story. Leather abounded. Characters of both sexes were always getting their bottoms slapped. A rabbi kept suffering flashbacks about a homosexual encounter on a submarine. The brothel was raided by the police, most of whom were regular customers of the establishment. In crucial scenes, Stellina repeatedly gasped, shrieked, sighed, moaned, sobbed, wailed, groaned, whimpered, or giggled sillily, inchoately, or even hermeneutically, as the mood took her, “More! Yet more!”

  “If you’d had to read this book,” I told Steve late that same Saturday night, “you wouldn’t want to have sex, either.”

  I finished the manuscript the next afternoon. At a loss as to what to say to Estelle about a work she was still polishing after eighteen years, I decided to describe the novel as “complex.” My judgment of writing is merciless, but when it comes to writers, I’m all sympathy. Estelle’s eager voice on the phone inspired me. “Complex!” I cried out, sighed, or perhaps gasped before shrieking in triumph, “Hermeneutic!”

  By then, I’d looked up “hermeneutic” in the dictionary. I didn’t really understand the definition—something about principles of interpretation—but at least I knew how to pronounce the word. Estelle was so pleased that she invited me to her house for herbal tea.

  An hour later, having managed to park in a spot unoccupied by traffic cones, lawn chairs, or, of all things, another car, I was seated at Estelle’s kitchen table choking down sips of the true explanation for her prose. I came close to advising her that the way to get published was to switch to coffee. The kitchen walls had been painted white sometime around 1965, I guessed. The psychedelic-orange trim on the windows probably memorialized someone’s bad trip a few years thereafter. The old white gas stove reminded me of the one at Professor Foley’s. The refrigerator dated to the same era as the stove. The chipped white sink was clean and empty. Arrayed neatly on open shelves were a great many bottles of food supplements, together with boxes and jars of seeds, beans, and whole-grain cereals. Between the kitchen and the living room, in place of a door, hung numerous long strings threaded with ziti and elbow macaroni. The kitten was having fun batting at the pasta. The liquid in my mug looked and smelled like samples that cat owners deliver to Steve in specimen cups.

  “The rats in the cellar were typical,” Estelle said in disgust. “So was the irresponsibility about the poison.” Today, she was fully dressed in a sort of sari or toga that seemed to have been fashioned from an Indian bedspread. Her eyes were a beautiful shade of bright blue, but the whites were shot with red, and the pouches underneath were yellow and puffy. “Jack was really a sweet, charming man, but in a lot of ways his mind was off in space somewhere. The place was always in chaos. The doorbell was broken—it was gone, missing—and there were a couple of wires dangling out that you had to put together to make it ring! Fortunately, most of the time, the door was open, unlocked, and people just walked in. The files were a mess. The supply cabinet had a million beat-up manila folders you were supposed to reuse, and no pens except green, and then maybe three or four five-pound bags of sugar and a few dozen cans of coffee! And that was where Jack was storing the poison!”

  “With the food?”

  Estelle nodded. “And the cellar! The first day I was there . . . I was there a week. I started the Monday before Shaun murdered him. I was there the whole week. And the following Monday, too, the day Jack was murdered. So, the first day, Jack sent me down there to look for a box of books, which was ridiculous to begin with, because I was supposed to be typing, for God’s sake, not hauling cartons around, but I made the mistake of going down there, and Jesus! I’ve never seen such a mess in my life. There was old office equipment, electric staplers, collating machines, all this trash, and moldy manuscripts piled on the cement floor, and cardboard cartons, all this junk everywhere. I mean, any books that’d been stored there would’ve been all mildewed, anyway, but, hey, what did I care? It was a day job, right?”

  I murmured agreement. Actually, I was glad to have something to do with my mouth besides drink that kitty-cat tea. “I tried temp work myself a couple of times,” I told Estelle. “I wasn’t much of a success at it. Now, I manage to scrape by doing a column and freelance articles, but I still haven’t published a book.”

  “What’s your column about?”

  “Dogs,” I said.

  Estelle blinked.

  When I’d explained about how Chip had assisted mankind in a new and publishable way, Estelle understood perfectly. Then she went on about the cellar of Damned Yankee Press: “And this rat went running across the floor and right over my foot! And, I mean, I don’t get hysterical about mice or anything, but this was a really big rat, and I went hightailing it up the stairs, and I never went down there again.”

  “Of course not. Estelle, how many people worked there?”

  She licked her lips. There was nothing even remotely sensual about the act. Stellina Brandt would have enticingly flicked her pink and hungry tongue. “Jack,” Estelle said. “Shaun. This secretary who was away. I forget her name. She was the one I was filling in for. Then there was a woman who basically worked for Shaun. She used the computers. Really, she just keyboarded, but back then, it was a big deal. Computers! There was a part-time book-keeper, but she quit while I was there. Shaun told her she was fucking everything up, in those words, and Jack tried “to get her to stay, but she stormed out. And there was an older woman, Elsie, who did most of the practical stuff about orders for books. There were, a few other part-time people. I don’t remember them. It really was a small press.”

  “Do you ever see any of the people from there?”

  “I used to run into Elsie now and then, but she died a few years ago. No one else.”

  The chaos of Multitudes in the Valley of Decision had made me wonder whether Estelle could produce a cogent account of anything, but she managed to give me a blessedly clear and simple outline of the daily routine at the press, at least to the extent that there had been one. Regular office workers arrived at nine and left at five. Part-time people, she thought, came and went at will. Some, she had suspected, handed in time sheets that vastly overstated the hours they’d worked. Shaun McGrath had challenged someone on the subject, but Jack had intervened. Shaun himself worked nine to five. Jack arrived when he felt like it, Estelle thought, sometimes at nine, sometimes at ten or so, and he came and went during the day. He walked his dog. But he always remained at his de
sk after everyone else had left. “Jack always stayed from five to seven. Everyone who worked there knew that. He did some editing then, and he wrote letters.” She remembered perfectly: The police had been interested, and she’d gone over Jack’s schedule many times with them.

  “Did you type any letters for him? Or did the person who used the computers?”

  “The police asked about that, too. I did a few, but they were just business letters, like to Delta Dental and Harvard Community Health Plan, a couple of bookstores, that kind of thing. He did his own letters to his published authors and to people who sent in manuscripts. That was one of the really sweet things about Jack. When he rejected books, he didn’t just send out form letters. He sent everyone a personal note. We talked about it. That’s sort of in Multitudes, right? Mack is sort of based on Jack.”

  “I wondered,” I said.

  “And that’s important for his character: that he never really wanted to reject anyone.”

  “Yes, I remember. Estelle, did Jack usually keep Chip on leash? In the building?”

  “Sort of. Jack used a leash when he took him in and out.”

  “Did you used to go into Jack’s office?”

  “Not a lot. The office where I worked, the main office, was on the first floor, naturally, and Jack’s office was on the third floor, so most of the time, if I had to ask him something or whatever, I just used the phone. Mostly what I was there for was to tell people that their checks were in the mail! But, no, Jack wasn’t one of the ones who want you running in and out all the time.”

  “When you went to his office, did he tie Chip to his desk?”

  “No. I like dogs.” She reached down and scooped up the kitten, which had abandoned the dangling pasta. “I like cats better, though.”

  “What about Shaun McGrath?”

  Estelle’s face clouded. “Let me tell you about Shaun McGrath. First of all, we were supposed to call him Mr. McGrath. Do you believe it? In this pigpen of an office? In Cambridge? And not just on the phone, to people who called, but to his face!”

  “And he called you Estelle.”

  We shared a smile.

  “Naturally. Even back then, Jack didn’t go in for any of that kind of bullshit. And it wasn’t like it was an insurance company or something. Even if it had been halfway organized, it would still have been pretty informal.”

  “What about that Monday? The day he was murdered.”

  “I went over that a million times. With the police. Really, there was nothing special. What I do remember is Friday, the Friday before, because that was the day when Jack got rid of the poison. That wasn’t just Shaun. I mean, it wasn’t just Shaun who told him not to keep it around. Everyone did. It really was dangerous. Obviously.”

  “And what did Jack do with it?”

  “Typical.” Estelle shook her head. “I didn’t see him do it, but apparently he just took the bottle outside and threw it in the trash. Elsie told me, I think, or someone else in the office. I remember we talked about it, but it was crazy, and it was just like everything else that went on there. Anyway, nothing special happened on Monday, not that I can remember, and not that I could remember back then, either. Jack and Shaun had a fight about something, but they had a fight about something practically every day.”

  “Fistfights?”

  “No, sometimes they didn’t even raise their voices. Shaun would just go around sulking, and you’d know that Jack had told him to quit bothering people or whatever.”

  “Did they ever argue about the dog?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “Do you ever remember hearing that Shaun forged Jack’s signature on an insurance policy?”

  Estelle raised the kitten to her shoulder. It started chewing her hair. “No, but it would’ve been just like him. He always struck me as a very calculating person. No one could stand him. I don’t know why Jack ever got hooked up with him, except that Jack was such a nice man—he was ready to like everyone.”

  “And on Tuesday? The day after the murder?”

  “I showed up for work. The police were there. I spent a long time answering questions. Then I went home. I never went back. The press is still in business, you know. They still hire temps, but not me! No way am I ever setting foot in there again! Of course, I’ve thought about the place a lot. Like the police? In Multitudes? I think it’s always really vital to start with what you know.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Ifi I substituted the electric zap ofi a shock collar fior my smiles, praise, and treats, neither of my dogs would throw a rivalrous fit of shrieking when it was the other dog’s turn to train for obedience. Rowdy’s pad cut had heightened the competition. Although we could work on attention, heeling, and retrieving, he was still forbidden to jump. Furthermore, he was starved for the vigorous exercise that’s the best cure for destructiveness in the house. When I trained Kimi in the yard, his keen ears picked up whispered commands, and when I put Kimi and our portable PVC jumps in the car and headed for a park or a tennis court, I’d return to find signs of Rowdy’s regression: damp remnants of chewed magazines, and unanswered and now unanswerable letters from strangers whose return addresses resided in Rowdy’s stomach. If I crated him, he battered the wiremesh door so violently that I was afraid he’d reopen the wound. As I’ve said, training with punishment would’ve killed the rivalry and solved my problem by teaching both dogs to associate obedience work with a nonlethal version of capital punishment. Not for anything, however, would I electrocute my bond with my dogs.

  In the midafternoon on Monday, my cousin Leah’s arrival offered a temporary solution. Although Kimi is definitely mine and although I work with her, it’s mainly Leah who trains and shows her. Unfortunately, in the past few weeks, Leah’s studies at the ivy-infested place down the street had been interfering with Kimi’s education. The time-grabber was chemistry. Leah wants to become a vet. Anyway, on Monday afternoon while Leah was working with Kimi, I removed Rowdy from the audible evidence that Kimi was having fun while he wasn’t by taking him for the kind of long walk he needed. Purely by coincidence, our route on that sunny, chilly day just so happened to take us onto Cambridge Street and down a little side street where we just so happened to pass Damned Yankee Press.

  In truth, I’d noticed the address in one of the Damned Yankee guides. I’d borrowed the book from Rita, who relishes what I consider to be the gross discomforts of B&Bs and country inns—afterthought bathrooms, no privacy—and who, on arrival in heaven, will pose polite questions about local museums and historic buildings, and will expect to rent a tape recorder with a headset to wear while she takes a self-guided tour. Even to my critical Maine-bred eye, The Damned Yankee in Maine was surprisingly accurate. Portland does have a lot of good microbreweries. The Union Fair is well worth a visit. Helen’s Restaurant in Machias does serve the best fresh strawberry (or, better yet, raspberry) pie in the state. There really are snowy egrets in the wildlife refuge in back of the cement plant on Route 1 in Rockland. The listings had been updated since Jack Andrews’s murder. Eighteen years ago, there’d been no microbreweries, and Helen’s had been in the center of Machias, not on the way out of town. Still, I felt convinced that it was Jack Andrews who’d shared my love for the taste of Helen’s pie and my fondness for the long-legged, golden-slippered birds that improbably inhabit a marsh in back of a factory in Rockland, a community that happens to be right near my own hometown.

  I intended only to stroll by the press. Well, naturally, if Rowdy was seized by the impulse to mark a tree, fire hydrant, or utility pole, I might glance up at the third-floor windows and imagine the face of Jack Andrews on the other side of the panes. But I never meant to go inside. What impelled me to mount the steps was my startled realization that, after eighteen years, the doorbell still consisted of wires protruding from a small hole next to the front door. The press, I should mention, occupied a wood-frame building—once someone’s house, I suspected—with a small porch. Wide stairs ran almost to the sidewalk. The front lawn
, such as it was, consisted of two little patches of dirt on either side of the steps. Dying dandelions poked through matted leaves. On the sign fastened by the door, the central letters had faded almost completely. Or maybe a disgruntled employee or neighborhood kid had scraped the paint. For whatever reason, the business now proclaimed itself:

  DAMN PRESS