Circus of the Grand Design (2 page)

Unsecured? Ridiculous—the guy never said anything about a deposit. "Look, you checked my references, you know where I work. I'm paying you plenty for a place with no heat."

"I have valuable artwork here."

Lewis looked around, avoiding Are No's eyes. The house was too dark. He would turn on all the lights as soon as Are No left.

"Do you have your checkbook?"

He would have to pay—only way to get rid of this fucker. Lewis reached into his backpack for his checkbook, filled one out, and handed it to Are No.

"Great then, we're all squared away." Are No picked up his suitcase and opened the door. "Enjoy your stay. After my inspection we'll talk about return of your deposit."

Lewis remained in the doorway, listening to the thump of Are No's trunk shutting and the rumble of his sports car engine. The car backed down the driveway, and Lewis moved to the front room, looking out one of the small, round windows that bracketed the fireplace until the lights of Are No's car faded from view.

Sometimes, Lewis wished he was more like his older sisters, one a medical doctor like their parents, the other a biochemist for a pharmaceutical company. Their lives had stability, predictability, and income. He had always been able to find work when he moved to a new city, but never for much money. School had never interested him, and being like his sisters would have required an early commitment to academics. The sisters, they thought him feckless—one of them, he couldn't remember which, had once used that word to describe his life. Feckless and peripatetic. Aside from the amorphous bond of having grown up together, they had little to keep them close.

Perhaps while he was here, at Are No's Fabulous Beach Resort, he would write to them, something he usually did at least once a year.

~

Deciding to go down to the water before bed, Lewis rummaged through Are No's kitchen drawers and cabinets (noting assorted serving utensils, corkscrew with a fish-shaped handle, empty box of candles, plastic dishes painted with scenes of purple fish and orange kelp) until he found a flashlight.

The truncated road, where it met the shoreline, reminded him of an amputated leg. Looking out across the dark water, an inlet of a larger bay to the northeast, he wondered what had happened to the rest of the road. He remembered dreams of highways entering the water and continuing past submerged homes, graveyards, churches. His father had told him stories of burial mounds flooded when the government built the dam in the hills near their old family homestead. Lewis's grandmother's house likely still stood somewhere below the surface of Clearwater Lake. Catfish inheritors nosed through the rosebushes and up the stairs.

Pale gray mist drifted on the surface of the bay. Mist flowed from his mouth when he exhaled. "Here we are. Here we are," he kept saying, as if the words lent some affirmation to his surroundings, and the cold air he took into his lungs reinforced his sense of being adrift in an unknown and unknowable land of severed roads and mist.

The wind picked up, chill penetrating his clothes and inadequate coat. Rain had turned to ice, which made a slithery sound falling among the ragged grass.

He returned to the porch, where the thermometer hanging from a beam showed twenty degrees, and despite Are No's claim of expertise, the fire had died. Leaving the door open, Lewis made several trips to the woodpile, stacking logs beside the fireplace until he thought he had enough to last the night. Only a few pieces remained on the porch. Tomorrow he would need to find more.

Still wearing his coat, he squatted on the cold Plexiglas surface of the collage to rebuild the fire. From this position, he could see that each photo showed a different view of sea and sky, not the same two photos duplicated. At the bottom a label said: Project Poseidon.

The flames took hold again, and he went up the stairs to the bedroom, each step of ascent bringing him deeper into a hungry maw of ice, lying in wait, splayed across Are No's second floor...the two rooms repulsed him, a tactile force of cold his body could not penetrate. He wouldn't sleep up there, but the mattress on Are No's brass bed would be impossible to move. In the studio though...a futon couch. He dragged the thin futon mattress down the stairs, then returned for a down comforter and flannel sheets he had found in the bedroom closet (though Are No had instructed him to bring his own bedding).

Thinking it would be nice to sit up in bed, before the fire, and write in his journal, he pulled the notebook from his bag and looked around for the light switches.

"I don't believe this crap," he said.

Every light in the house was already turned on, but aside from a lamp on Are No's desk and an overhead in the kitchen, they were all low-wattage bulbs and fixtures, mounted under the artwork and pointing up at it.

He sat at the desk and opened his journal to begin a letter to one of his sisters—didn't matter which, he would say the same thing to both, but after a few sentences, Are No's guidebook distracted him. He picked it up. A red tab marked the section referring to Point Elizabeth.

~

The coastal area near Point Elizabeth is a maze of saltwater marsh and narrow inlet. Farther out on the island, of course, one can find the flashy summer homes of the Hamptons, where old and new money clash, fighting for ascendancy in stores selling designer clothes and foods, but in Point Elizabeth, life moves at a different pace, the pace of scallop and lobster fishers and their traditions.

Point Elizabeth was first settled in 1649 by the Dutch (though England was already in control of the former New Amsterdam, it still drew settlers from The Netherlands). Hendrik Hemmen, a minister who came to the area in 1731 left this record, "Game and Wildlife abound, as well as Mosquitoes in even greater numbers, but the good soil and fine weather will likely draw many. I can see this settlement expanding far beyond the size of Boston and other meager cities of the mainland."

Despite the failure of Hemmen's prediction, the population did expand over the centuries, and in addition to the fishing industry, the town boasts several antique shops and a restaurant.

~

The scent of wood smoke relaxed Lewis, and he forgave Are No for his inadequate lighting and nonexistent heat. Swiveling the chair around, he watched the flames, letting their dance and crackling laughter mesmerize him. It wasn't so bad here, though having Martha with him would have been better. They could have kept each other warm.

But no, good little Martha had to stay in the city and work. He slapped the guidebook closed and went into the bathroom to prepare for bed. Martha was too much like his sisters, too responsible, too much of a rule-follower. She worked as an editor for a large glossy magazine and always bragged about the actors and artists and other important people she met. He hated his publicist job at the engineering company. Next week he would turn thirty. He had always thought if you didn't establish yourself before thirty, the struggle grew harder, but he still hadn't figured out what he wanted to establish himself in.

~

He woke shivering. The fire had subsided, and the cold seemed worse, even under the comforter. He added more logs and went back to sleep. A few hours later the cold air forced him outside for the remaining wood. He piled it on the embers until the flames blasted up the chimney. As the heat grew, he wandered around the room examining the tacky furnishings—the stuffed catfish attached to the mop handle so that the mop hung from the fish's mouth, the folded patch of iridescent hardened foam on a pedestal, and the blue and yellow painting of slogans inside road sign shapes, such as:

Under the road sign painting was a pine cabinet, about chest high. He tried the door, locked.

Despite his annoyance with Are No's ridiculous house, one of the artworks intrigued him, an etching showing a scene of pyramids, a volcano, and a three-headed sphinx. The faces on the sphinx's heads were all of the same woman. Her sad beauty thrilled him. The title,
Cybele Enchants the Magma
, was written at the bottom beside the artist's signature. Are No's contribution had probably been the tacky red plastic frame.

He returned to the locked cabinet, tugging on the door and playing with the latch. He even tried to pick the lock with a paperclip.

Before getting back in bed, he went outside to see if he had missed any wood. One heavy log hung over the edge of the porch, but it looked too long for the fireplace. He swept the flashlight around the yard. Icicles glittered in its beam. To his right lay the bay, its waters still; in the other direction a hedge veiled a large house, dark, probably sealed for the winter. The thermometer now showed ten degrees.

An ax hung from a nail beside the former woodpile. Thinking he could split the big log, he picked up the ax and hacked away, but only succeeded in knocking off shards of bark.

"Soon as I fall back asleep the fire will go down and I'll freeze."

He burrowed under the covers, but now he couldn't sleep. That Are No...lot of nerve, renting the house in this condition. Lewis would never take advantage of someone like that. No heat. Are No heat. He said there's plenty of firewood. See No wood. And Martha. Her fury formed a horrid beast, but only he witnessed it. She kept a good face for everyone else, but she was cold. She had a cold soul. Maybe he needed someone cold. So cold in this house. What would he do after the wood was gone? The wood was already gone.

He would burn some furniture.

"Are No's precious cabinet goes first," he said.

Either burn or freeze. Though really, the house wasn't
that
cold, was it? He was overreacting. Likely there were more blankets...upstairs though...even colder up there...stay right here, under the comforter. Finally asleep, he dreamed of cooking beef stew in Are No's meat-free kitchen, until the cold air woke him again.

He put on his shoes and went outside for the big log. It was too heavy to carry; he dragged it through the door, rolled it over the futon to the fireplace, and pushed one end in, thinking he would keep pushing it in farther as it burned. The other end stuck out several feet, where it rested on the edge of the futon. He lay down and watched the big log catch fire. It occurred to him that letting the log lie on the futon might be dangerous, but then thought, who cares? He congratulated himself for being so wicked with so little practice.

But he wasn't finished. He returned to the porch for the ax and took it to Are No's cabinet. He inserted the blade between the locked doors and twisted. The wood buckled and the latch snapped. Lewis threw both doors wide with one exaggerated motion.

This is what Are No kept in a locked cabinet? Four shelves, each covered with a layer of fishing lures. He carried one to the desk to examine in the light. Long and fat, tapered on one end, like a cigar with a filter. Red body, with green polka dots and blue eyes. A ring on one end, strands of hair and three barbed hooks on the other. Three barbed hooks on top.

The air felt warmer. Lewis spun around. Fire had engulfed the big log. He lunged to pull the futon away from the fireplace but dragged the log with it. The comforter began to smolder. Pain stabbed his hand—the lure—one of its hooks had punctured the skin of his palm. He ran toward the bathroom for a bandage, then stopped—no time—and picked up his backpack. Feeling safe in the open doorway, he stopped to ease out the hook. The point hadn't penetrated to the barb. About to drop the lure on the porch, he changed his mind and pulled a sock from his pack, wrapping the lure so the hooks wouldn't prick him again.

His journal lay on Are No's desk. He wouldn't leave it. Though the futon was burning, the fire hadn't spread. A few quick steps brought him to the desk. While there, he picked up the phone to call the fire department, but the line was dead.

Cold fingers of air pushed smoke toward him; he hurried back to the door. Fire had spread to Are No's green chair. The etching Lewis had liked hung near the door. It would be a shame for it to burn; he lifted it from its hook, then left.

~

Ice hung from the branches, pale in the light of the rising sun. He broke off a piece and clenched it against the puncture. His hand hurt, but it hadn't bled much. The wind battered him all the way to the train station; he warmed himself by maintaining his anger at Are No. He still couldn't believe the man's arrogance. Who would blame Lewis? No heat. Are No Heat. What a joke of a house anyway. But the so-called valuable art. He had saved the only worthwhile piece, and the clownish fishing lure. Everything else, the hundreds of other lures. Gone. Never to catch another fish, poor things.

He would call the fire department from the train station. Say he had been asleep when the fire started. No one could blame him. Say he was going home because he didn't have a place to stay in the area. He hoped it took the fire department a long time to reach the house.