More Stories from the Twilight Zone (46 page)

But his fantasy was lost, evaporating, as it did every evening. Herbert followed the noisy routine upstairs, his eyes going from the magazine to the ceiling where every creak and footstep resounded like a death knell. Another day gone. Never to be relived.

Iris opened the door to the basement, Daisy barking as if an earthquake was imminent. Herb closed his eyes mournfully and sighed. He felt his head retreating between his shoulders.

“Herbert! HERBERT! Daisy needs to be walked and fed! I've worked like a slave and there's still dinner to make. HERBERT! ARE YOU LISTENING?”

“Yes, dear. I'm coming. I'll walk the dog. Why don't we order take-out?” Herbert said, his tone soft and gutless.

“And just throw two hundred dollars' worth of Whole Foods groceries away? Why don't we just put the free-range chicken and fresh sage out in the front yard and burn it! And speaking of fire, you better not be smoking those stinky cigars down there, Herbert Menkel! I can smell them from here! You're going to get CANCER!” Iris hollered, punctuating the end of their conversation with the door slamming and more barks from the nasty beast of a retriever.

Herbert sighed again. He realized that after many years with Iris he was very good at sighing. A professional sigher. He tossed the copy of
Ocean Navigator
onto his desk. Looked at the cigar smoldering in an ashtray. A couple more puffs, he thought. He should hear the rush of water through the old pipes any second. Iris loading the washer. Then the television. She insisted on listening to the local news from the kitchen. Which meant turning the volume up so high it rivaled any quality public address system.

Five minutes and she'll be back, he figured. Per routine. For Herbert and Iris their first conversation of the day usually took place under such dysfunction. Iris at the entrance to the basement, yelling down. Herb muttering his replies from behind stacks of sailing magazines.

And she'll use my full name,
he predicted. With total accuracy.

Just as he brought the wet tip of the cigar to his lips, Herbert heard footsteps. Then the door and its terrible rusty moan.

“Herbert Menkel, will you puh-lease walk Daisy? I just cannot do it all by myself! HERBERT MENKEL, ARE YOU LISTENING?” Iris said, her voice a histrionic caterwaul Herbert likened to that of a rabid monkey, or a cat being dipped in turpentine.

“Yes, dear,” Herb replied with a squeak. He stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray and shuffled up the stairs.

 

Herbert managed to avoid Iris for a few more minutes. He knew what was coming. Dinner. He'd sit across from her as always and she'd talk and talk and talk. Work. Gossip. Politics. Business. Her opinions on everything were spoken as if the future of the country depended on their very utterance.

Daisy stood by the front door waiting for Herbert. He held the leash in his hand. She never wagged her tail. Never looked happy to see him.

Herbert noticed the neat stack of bills on a table in the hallway. He tried not to think about when the ominous-looking envelopes would be opened. And how the bills enclosed would be paid.

The words
“Please write your account number on your check or money order”
drifted through his mind when Daisy bit him.

The retriever never bit him hard, not hard enough to draw blood anyway. But it wasn't a playful bite, either. It was an act of
meanness from a mean animal. Always happened when Herbert put Daisy's collar on. She led him out the door. He had to jog to keep from being yanked off his feet.

 

Outside in the yard Herbert stepped in shit. Daisy woofed at him. Herb didn't speak dog, but he knew those woofs were laughter.

 

“Why don't ye just divahce her, Herbaht?” Monte Doogan said to Herbert over coffee in the breakroom.

“Divorce?” Herbert replied, as if he'd never heard the word before. Monte shook his head.

“Maybe she's cheatin' on ye, Herbaht. Evah considered that possibility? If I caught Lorraine messing 'round on me, I'd find the cahksuckah and throw 'em both into the Pawcatuck Rivah!”

Herbert sipped his coffee. He smiled at his best and only friend. Monte was a hillbilly from Eastern Connecticut. A lost breed of New England ape. Known for his talent with a chain saw, sculpting tree trunks into bears and hawks and other woodland creatures. He delivered office equipment from a distribution center that Herbert managed in quiet, effective bursts of competence.

“Think 'bout it, Herbaht. Iris drives ye fackin' nutty, that I knows. If I was yous, I'd cat and fackin' run to tha hills,” Monte said, departing with a wink and a tip of his filthy hat. The Red Sox cap Monte never took off looked to have been buried in motor oil and fertilizer for several decades.

“Sound advice coming from a guy with four ex-wives,” Herbert whispered in response. He took another sip from his coffee.

It was almost quitting time.

 

Herbert knew something odd was up when he pulled into the driveway. Iris was home early from her job at the insurance company. He hesitated, his hand wavering near the doorknob. Herb
looked around, expecting to see a camera crew. Practical jokesters lurking in the bushes. Nothing but the hum of the ocean. The shore. A breeze.

Herbert nearly fainted at the sight of his wife, singing a tune, hustling food from a pan to a dish to an oven. A pleasant aroma in her kitchen. A full pot of coffee. Iris hated the smell of coffee. She never drank it. She forbade Herb from brewing it in the house.

Herbert didn't trust anyone who didn't drink coffee.

Iris turned and lavished a gaze so false and rehearsed he thought for sure this was hell and his car had been struck by a train or crashed into the Pawcatuck River. Before he could find a knife and prick himself to see if it was only a dream, Iris brought him a steaming cup of black coffee, wrinkled her nose at him, and returned to her chore of preparing what looked to be an exquisite feast.

Herbert steadied himself. Seated at the kitchen table, he noticed a three-pack of his favorite brand of cigar. Even Daisy the retriever sauntered up and nuzzled him with a wet nose and a flash of pearly whites.

This surely must be what hell is like,
Herbert thought.

But he'd seen this act before.

“I thought we'd eat in the dining room for a change, Herb,” Iris said. She carried a baking dish to the table. A hot, aromatic casserole. Brown rice. Steamed cauliflower. Veal cutlets.

Herbert decided just to eat quietly. He sensed what was coming. It was all too good to be true.

“So I spoke with Jim Mitchell over at the bank today,” Iris said, nervously picking at her food.

“Oh?”

“I've been working on a business plan. Put a lot of work and effort into it. You know it's a dream of mine, Herb!”

Oh, boy. Here it comes
.

Herbert was very familiar with his wife's entrepreneurial fetish. Something she'd failed to mention during their unremarkable
courtship, but had become an obsession once Herbert muttered the two saddest words in the English language:
I do
.

First it was the antique store, then the nightclub, the trendy boutique, the art gallery, the gym for toddlers, the movie theater for the blind. Iris Menkel had quite a reputation among shop owners up and down Main Street of Craftbury, Connecticut. And she damn near bankrupted the two of them every time. Herbert had squandered a rather healthy inheritence, amassed large deficits on his six credit cards, but most of all, he'd sold his sailboat. The only thing that had given him true happiness. Six years ago. He hadn't been on the ocean since.

Herbert nodded. His eyes betrayed him. Iris was gauging him as she would a derelict on her doorstep holding an axe.

“So, Herb, I met with Jim Mitchell and we discussed a potential business loan. He heard me out and just loves my proposal,” she said, the wine turning to snake oil in front of her.

I'm sure he loved your proposal,
Herbert wanted to say.

“Are you ready, Herb?”

Iris clasped her hands, the prestige moments away. Herbert nodded. Someone very dumb and sad had taken over his mind for the past thirty years and was at the controls now.

“I plan to open a restaurant right off Main. Now, Craftbury doesn't have a lot of independent eateries. Sure, there's the fast-food junk and take-out. But here's the genius of my restaurant. We'll only serve leftovers! That's right! Leftovers! I plan to call my diner ‘Yesterday's Lunch.' Everything on the menu will be at least a day old. Jim Mitchell thinks it's a really niche idea! Can't you just see the neon sign out front, Herb? Herb?”

Herbert was nodding uncontrollably. He wasn't so much following Iris's big pitch as he was seizing up like an epileptic caught in a strobe light. He regained enough composure to reach for his cup of now-cold coffee.

“Sounds like a winner, dear,” Herbert finally said.

Some other vestige of Herbert Menkel, deep down in his brain, perked up and shouted,
Did you really just say that?

“And I've raised the capital to get started on Yesterday's Lunch,” Iris said, beaming.

“You have?”

“It's a win-win. I worked out the details with Jim Mitchell. Just a matter of refinancing this and that, freeing up some equity, taking out that second mortgage you and I have talked about—”

Coffee didn't spew from Herbert's mouth, but it did trickle over his lip and drip onto the china-white tablecloth.

“Second mortgage?” he sputtered.

“Everybody's doing it, Herb. After six months, we'll be the talk of Eastern Connecticut. It's a slam dunk! Herb? Herb? HERBERT MENKEL!”

Iris's voice climbed to registers shrill enough to direct a flight of bats into a brick wall. Herbert found himself in the kitchen. His legs moved involuntarily, as if a switch in his brain had malfunctioned. Herbert freshened his coffee, grabbed the cigars. Daisy growled. He tiptoed down into his basement refuge.

 

For the next few hours Herbert studied the floorboards overhead through a haze of cigar smoke. Iris was hard at work slamming kitchen cupboard doors, clanking dishes, stomping this way and that, and watching
Entertainment Tonight
with the volume on AIR RAID. Herbert winced. He sighed. He eventually fell asleep in his chair, a copy of
Sailing World
on his chest, rising and falling with his snores.

That night he dreamt of his old sloop.

The Caribbean. A stranger on the beach.

And the weirdest single event of Herbert's life.

 

A solo voyage to St. Lucia. Drunk on the beach, a much younger Herbert relaxed under a full moon. Dark waters lapped against
the shore. A ragged-looking man approached. A dreadlocked local, walking stick in hand. The smell of strong ganja. His name, he said, was Dahntay.

“White mon, sitting all alone here on the beach. How a boy like you get all the way down here?”

“My sloop. I sailed,” Herbert said, pointing to the slips a quarter of a mile away.

“I see. A mon of the water. Then you must know my God,
Agwe
?”

“God?”

“
Agwe,
mon. God of the ocean, protector of all that is salty,” Dahntay said incredulously.

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“Oh, he is, mon.
Agwe
is good
and
evil
and
righteous.”

Dahntay produced a spliff the size of a zucchini. He lit the end and passed it to young Herb, who had been feeling particularly adventurous since arriving in the Lesser Antilles. He liked smoking ganja and listening to Dahntay, who could have been anywhere from twenty to a hundred years old. It didn't take long for Herb to get very stoned.

“Oh, mon. Young sailor like you should see
Agwe
firsthand. You see them starfish over there? Dead as can be, am I right?”

Herb looked at the sea stars a few feet away, probably a dozen in all. Dumped from a fishing net, most likely, and most certainly dead. His eyes drifted back to Dahntay, who had hustled from one of his many pockets a leather pouch. Herb watched in dreamy amazement as his new friend rose, approached the pile of starfish, and with a pinch of whatever was in that little leather pouch, sprinkled it around.

A minute passed. Herbert took his dreadlocked friend for a crackpot. But then there was movement on the sand. Undeniable. The sea stars began to twitch. Arms flexing. Herb couldn't believe his eyes. Dahntay sang a little tune.

Then the little creatures, once dried-up and dead, began to dance by the light of the moon.

 

Herbert woke up to a quiet house. He felt weak, worn out, as if the dream of that magical night on the beach had sapped him of his strength. The first thing Herbert did was call in sick at work. Then he went to the attic.

I've still got that stuff. I know it.

He rummaged through boxes and foot lockers. Pictures of him and Iris on the sloop, sailing Long Island Sound, the Atlantic, the Caribbean. Happier times. But as if his eyes were suddenly seeing clearly, Iris acquired the appearance of a crazy person. It had taken thirty years and a really outrageous dream for Herbert to finally apprehend the downright wackiness in Iris's gaze.

She's nuts. She's fucking nuts. And I sold my boat for her?

Herbert found the leather pouch buried under old nautical maps and motor boat manuals. The leather was soft and worn. Oil-stained, the stitching barely held the contents inside. Who knew how old Dahntay's gift really was? Herb had forgotten nearly everything about that night, including Dahntay's pouch. It was oddly heavy, though it supposedly contained nothing but an ashy powder. Herbert studied the round sack in his hand.
Must weigh close to three pounds,
he thought.

Agwe.

Herbert showered and dressed. On his way to the garage Daisy the retriever appeared with a leer and a well-timed growl. She'd shat on the kitchen floor, knocked around her food and water dishes, spilling their contents. The dog wore its contempt for Herbert as easily as its golden coat of hair.