North of Boston (22 page)

After a few pleasantries, I give my spiel. Act naturally, throw in some laughs and a couple of heartfelt sighs. The logic of my proposition unwinds smoothly. My various motivations are progressively revealed. I take care not to overexplain. Johnny doesn't expect me to be sensible, doesn't like sensible people. He's always grabbed license to heed whatever calls to him, be it women or whales, and he understands others who want to do the same. But he's nobody's fool.

When I'm done, he says with a crooked smirk, “I knew you liked fishing, but I got to admit, I didn't see this coming. But, hell, I'm not surprised. Still crazy after all these years, right? Who said that? Bob Dylan?”

“Paul Simon.”

“Yeah, right. Never liked him. But you, you're something. More balls than half the guys I know. But come on. You really want to do this? You sure?”

“That's why I'm here. You can work it out for me, right?”

“Absolutely.” He nods straight up and down to emphasize his power. “Some of the guys might be surprised to see you, but I'll tell them you were tight with Rizzo, I've known you from way back, and so on. We had a woman up until a few months ago. Big dyke named Abby who moved down to Florida. Flabby Abby, we used to call her. You can cook, right?”

I nod. I'm wearing very tight jeans, very high-heeled boots, and a very low V-neck sweater. This is the closest I can get to cheesy-seductive without wanting to throw up.

“What about Dustin Hall? Doesn't he have to agree?” I ask.

“Nah. He leaves the operational shit to me. All of it, especially crew. I know who can be trusted and who can't. My guys are loyal to me, even Captain Lou. They don't give a shit about Hall. He's too busy sucking up to Jaeger and the so-called guests. Hunt club, they call it. Like a bunch of pansy Brits. Wait till you see them. Not one of them is normal, like how you or I would define the term. They don't give a shit about Hall either. They're superrich; he's just sort of rich. Us guys on the bottom, we're all the same. Room for everyone where we are.” He swigs some beer, rubs his mouth with the back of his hand.

I have a feeling there's more to follow, so I wait.

“Hall, man. That guy has no business being at sea. The minute the swells are over three feet, he goes green. Keeps a bottle of Dramamine in his pocket, and pops pills when he thinks no one's looking. I wish he'd stay off the boat when we're working. He just gets in the way. Always checking up on me:
How's it going, Oster? We on schedule? We find whales yet?
I'll tell you, I'd rather be a fucking untouchable than that sorry bag of floating turd.”

Years ago Johnny took courses at Harvard Extension School but never finished a degree. He painted for a while and burned his canvases while drunk. A section of one of his abstracts looked like a guy hanging from a noose.
Is that a guy hanging from a noose?
I asked.
What the fuck? It could be fucking anything,
he said, glad to be found out.

He glances around the shadowy room, finds the waitress, swings his beer bottle from two fingers to show he wants another. “You'd think they'd give you peanuts or chips,” he says. He shifts, crosses his other leg over his knee. A heavy, muscular leg. Old Nike sneakers, the laces grimy.

I sip my sparkling water. This whole thing feels wrong. Johnny's trashing Hall instead of flirting with me. His eyes are swooping around the room, resting on me intermittently and then taking flight again, as if they made a mistake. Maybe he's found a hot new mistress and doesn't want me anymore. More troubling than that is the fact that he acquiesced so easily to my request, taking me into his confidence without so much as a pause. Maybe the whole operation is a lot looser than Parnell and I thought.

“You're lucky,” he says. “No spouse, no kids. Get up and go whenever you want. I envy that.” The waitress arrives, and as she puts his fresh beer on the table, his eyes travel up her slender arm to her face. “What took you so long, sweetheart? A man could die of thirst.”

He waits for her to leave. “Who else knows about the whales?”

“No one. Me and Thomasina, that's all.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Don't lie to me.”

“I'm not lying, Johnny.”

He picks carefully at a piece of lint on his jeans, and I'm reminded of the tiny things he makes at home. “Rizzo should have kept his mouth shut. But I'm not surprised he didn't. I'm pretty sure a couple of other guys have talked. Thing like this, you can't keep it secret for long. Too many people involved. But it doesn't matter at this point. The whole thing's going to come apart pretty soon anyway. I can feel it. Jaeger's getting flashy, and his boys are getting too slick, too comfortable. Taking too many risks. Hall wants out, but he doesn't have the balls and is scared of the company going under. Some weird stuff has happened lately, people showing up in weird places. What's that law they talk about in physics? The one that says everything goes to shit?”

“Entropy.”

“Yeah.” He laughs. “That's the one. Hey, you explained it to me once. Remember that? Think you can do it again?”

“You just said it, Johnny: everything goes to shit.”

“Right. The law of entropy. Something I always suspected. Sort of makes it official when it gets a name.” He reaches over and grabs the new bottle, but doesn't drink from it. “So right now our little operation is on the entropy side of the equation. I'm thinking, after this voyage, it's time to cash out. Got to know when to fold 'em, right? Who sang that? Johnny Cash?”

“Kenny Rogers.”

“Damn. Could have sworn it was Johnny Cash.”

“It might have been. I don't know.”

“So why'd you say Kenny Rogers?”

“I thought it was him. Yeah, actually, it was him.”

“But you're not sure.”

“I don't know, Johnny. Who gives a fuck?”

“Don't act like you know if you don't know. That's all I'm saying.”

“OK. I hear you.”

He tents his fingers in front of his face. “You ever tell anyone what we're doing out there, you'll regret it. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” I hold his gaze, try not to let my feelings show.

There's something eerily calm about him, as deeply settled as a sunken galleon, as if we've finally reached the dark, hidden part of his heart.

“I mean, you'll seriously regret it, Pirio. That's all I'm gonna say. You know what I'm talking about, right?”

I nod.

“I need you to tell me that you heard what I said. Say you heard it for sure. Say it in words.”

“I know for sure, Johnny.” The back of my shirt is damp with sweat.

“Good. Now if we ever had a disagreement, you couldn't pretend you didn't know.” He snaps a dry smile at me. Swigs long and hard from the bottle. “You're all excited, huh? You're thinking it's going to be better than
Moby Dick
.”

My hair is loose, twisted over my shoulder. I'm stroking it like it's a cat. I try to smile. “I don't know. What's it like, Johnny?”

“You mean the killing?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you are a bloodthirsty little bitch. You don't mind me saying that, do you? I mean it affectionately.” He's starting to act drunk, but he can't be drunk on two beers. He must have had a few before he arrived.

“What's it like?”

“It's like nothing, darlin'. Hate to disappoint you. A whale's just another animal, a big one. Big as a bastard. You'll see. And the blood, warm blood, lots of it. Maybe for you it'll be some big experience. Like the rich boys finding their inner cavemen, and getting all sticky about it. They take videos and show them to each other; it's fucked-up. For me, it's just a job. I do it so I can pay the mortgage and buy iPads for my kids. And to help my employer through a hard time, I suppose. I'm a loyal company man.” He laughs at his own falseness, looks over at the bar, lets his eyes fall on an elegant woman sitting there.

I start thinking about my new Minolta. I've been practicing with it, and it's captured my heart. All I need is a few minutes of slaughter in the same frame as some of the ship's identifying marks and, if I can get it, a face or two.

“You look like you've got something on your mind,” Johnny says.

I smile, pick the lemon wedge out of my glass. “This keeps away scurvy, right?”

“There won't be any scurvy on this cruise, sweetheart. I promise you that.”

“When do we leave?”

“We? No, just you. I won't be going on this one.”

“What?” I balk. I didn't see this coming. “I thought you'd . . .”

He looks quietly amused at my confusion and, I might as well admit it, my distress. I realize that I thought that Johnny being on board would be some kind of safety net for me. An obviously foolish idea, but the kind you cling to anyway without even knowing it's there.

“Oh, right,” I say casually. “I guess you're going to Michigan to see your in-laws.”

“Actually, that trip has been postponed. I've got some business to attend to right here in Beantown that can't wait.”

“Really? Sounds important.”
Is it tracking down Russell Parnell,
I wonder,
or something innocent?

“Oh, it is. I assure you. Don't worry; you'll be in good hands. You leave Friday, five a.m., from the fish pier. I'll arrange it all.” He signals to the waitress for another beer and turns back to me with a boyish smile. “By the way, you're in for a surprise.”

“Not sure I can handle too many surprises, Johnny.”

A quick wink. “No worries, Pirio. You can trust me.”

My shirt is now soaked with sweat, and the blood pounding in my ears sounds like a stampede. “What's the surprise, Johnny?”

“You'll see.”

“OK. Thanks for the drink.” I've got to get some air.

“Gotta go? So soon?”

“Yeah, I gotta be somewhere.”

“Feeling OK?”

“Fine.” I stand up.

“Wait. Let me look at you.” His gaze is long and empty.

“What are you doing, Johnny? You're acting weird.”

“Good-bye, Pirio.”

Outside I squint painfully at the headlights of cars, the neon signs. I draw a deep breath, but I don't relax. I walk past a brightly lit glass foyer, where a clock on the wall says ten past ten. How many hours and days will there be until all this is over? I don't know. But I can hear time ticking. It's as if, somewhere in the accelerating cosmic entropy, an hourglass with my name on it was just turned upside down.

T
he gorgeous strains of Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 21 waft through the closed doors of Milosa's study. It's the end of the famous andante movement—elegiac, heavenly. If there is a God, he poured this melody directly into the mind of Mozart. I figure Milosa is hanging on the last beautiful notes, so I wait for their echoes to fade before knocking.

He's sitting in his leather wingback chair, which has been turned slightly to face a window framed by velvet drapes. The room smells of cigar stubs and oily furniture polish and Milosa himself—dry, dense, spiced with something like anisette. His expression is sadder and more tranquil than I've ever seen it. I feel like I've come upon him in a deeply private moment and mutter that I can come back.

“No, come in. I want to see you.”

The chair across from him is also tilted toward the window. When I sit down, I notice his shoes. Ugly utilitarian shoes with thick laces. Russian shoes. There's a wool blanket heaped on the floor next to his chair. He probably had it wrapped around his legs and tossed it aside when I knocked.

Hesitantly, I ask if he's well.

“Very well.” He gazes out the window at the autumn afternoon. Dusk is approaching. Burnished sunlight splashes into our laps like daytime's final gift.

Then why do you seem changed
?
I want to ask. But I'm no braver than he is, no more honest, for all my complaining. I head for the safety of our usual turbulence by asking a question that's been on my mind since our last talk.

“Why were you so worried about the way I might treat Maureen?”

“Oh, that.” He lazily touches the iPod on the table next to him to lower the volume. “You're impulsive, Pirio, and you're still holding a childish grudge against her. But you'd be a fool to push Maureen aside. She knows more about Inessa Mark than anyone else, including you and me.”

“Wait. Are you saying you don't think I could run the company without Maureen?”

The orchestral third movement of the concerto is swelling softly through the speakers. He touches the iPod to pause it. “You're too much like your mother. She couldn't have run a company.”

“She did, though.”

“She had me.”

“People like you can be hired.”

He chuckles dimly. “Oh, I see. I was dispensable. Is that it?”

I think about it. “More or less.”

“Ah, there it is. The stubborn pride. I used to admire that quality in Isa—it made her exciting. But it was also just blindness, and got tiresome in the end.”

I feel my ire build. There he goes again with the gratuitous criticisms of the dead. “I don't care what you think about my mother's character. Or mine.”

“Bravo! She would have said the same. It's uncanny to see you grow more like her, despite not having her around. Like you, she was indifferent to other people's opinions. She treated me badly when I met her. Nineteen years old, in a cheap cotton dress. Scornful and aloof. I thought she'd change, grow softer, but she never did. It's strange to look back and see everything so clearly—there I was all those years, an atheist waiting for a miracle. I believed in love. Did you know that about your old man, Pirio?
I believed in love.
”

It chills me that he's talking this way. I say the only thing I can get my head around. “My mother wasn't indifferent, and neither am I. She wasn't scornful and aloof. Maybe to you, but not to me.”

“Of course. You were her child. She saw herself in you, and loved you all the more for being difficult.”

I want to hurl a sharp retort.
Difficult children, lonely children, remember love from those who give it.
But I need these moments of honesty so badly that I manage to hold my tongue.

“Why are you saying these things now, Milosa?”

A smile so fleeting that it fails to become one. “I'm dying. Didn't Maureen tell you?”

I think I may have misheard him, so loud is the rush of emotion that fills my heart. I suspected it, of course. But I denied it, too. Milosa dying? Was that even possible? I believed every legend he ever told about himself, every posture of strength he adopted. I never saw him sick, never fearful or uncertain, never even slightly diminished until recently. I'm angry, as though he's been tricking me all along, making himself out to be larger than life. Then I wonder how he'll die. Not placidly. I think he'll die raving like a lunatic. It scares me to imagine it. Like imagining an enormous, jagged-peaked mountain sliding thunderously into the sea.

I steady myself with some effort and manage to ask him what he's got. By which I mean, what disease.

He laughs like I've told a real knee-slapper. And doesn't answer.

OK, so it's obvious. He's got life, a human body. Organs programmed to screw up. One or two cells forgetting how to do their jobs is all it takes. What difference do the details make when the end is the same? I want to ask if he's sure that he's dying, but he wouldn't have used that word if it wasn't accurate and earned. I won't bore him by asking him to describe what the doctors can and can't do.

“I'm sorry,” I say finally. No gush of sympathy, no tearful scene. Because I know that's what he wants. He accepts my simple comment with something like pain clouding his eyes. But it isn't pain; it's vulnerability, need. Our eyes see each other's emotions—a moment horrifying for both of us. He turns to the window, remarking that he always liked the view.

“Yes, it's beautiful,” I say quickly.

We are looking down on a small yard and flagstone terrace. A sparrow flits among the wet branches of the apple tree, flicking off sparkles of recent rain. I used to gaze out my bedroom window onto just this view, envying the birds their ability to fly away. I was raised with beauty and luxury, and only wanted to escape. Now I'm sitting here, heavy as a boulder, and Milosa is leaving. The room already feels emptier.

“I've always loved the second movement of this concerto,” I say.

“Oh, yes. The Elvira Madigan theme. It's very famous. But the one that was just playing, the third, is the one I prefer. Mozart unleashes himself in that movement. It's as if he gave himself permission to apologize for nothing, cater to no one, and obey no rules. The tempo is allegro vivace assai, which means ‘play it as fast as you can.' The pianist has to be a real virtuoso—only real risk takers, high-wire performers, dare to take it on.”

I tell him I'd like to hear it again. I suddenly want to go where he goes, hear what he hears. Be close however I can.

“I'll start it at the beginning,” he says with pleasure. He fiddles with the iPod; the music begins; he pauses it immediately to explain something. “The orchestra introduces the first theme. The piano opens with a solitary G above high C, followed by a fermata or dramatic pause. The first musical phrase—all played above high C—is E, F, F-sharp, G. . . . Oh, what am I saying? This doesn't mean anything to you.”

“Wait. How much of it do you know?”

He closes his eyes. “E, F, F-sharp, G, A, G, F-natural, E, D, grace note E, D, C . . .”

“You know the actual notes?”

“I used to play before you were born,” he says impatiently.

“I never knew that. Why didn't you keep it up?”

“I was no good.”

“But you can't believe that.”

“Of course I can.”

“You couldn't have been
that
—”

He waves away the blandishment. “No. Listen.
I was no good.
Now you'll hear someone who
is
good.” He presses play
and closes his eyes.

I want to love it, really want to love it, but my attention wanders. There are pictures of my mother all over Milosa's study. Isa in Paris, wearing a prim hat and double-breasted suit by Dior, seated in pale hauteur at a drugstore counter next to a gray wolfhound with limpid, bulging eyes. Isa running through Central Park toward the soaring New York skyline, wearing a short flounced dress by Bill Blass, her legs long and almost shapeless. There are candids, too—Isa at different ages, in different moods, yet always riveting, diffusing her tragic, playful, provocative light.

The photos are too familiar to be enchanting. But I keep scanning their surfaces, keep trying to see around and through and behind all the silver frames. I haven't engaged in this particular form of self-torture for years. The news of Milosa's mortality must have made me regress. Because suddenly I'm a child again, wide-eyed and faithfully searching, wondering why in all this monumental glory there isn't even a snapshot of me.

—

I find Maureen at her computer. A shelf of binders above her, stacks of paper on the desk. Reading glasses perched on her nose, gemstones flashing as her fingers fly across the keyboard, making the insect music of rapid rhythmic clicks. Her dress is cream and pink, a boatneck, small stripes, and some kind of floppy belt. It looks as if it started out in the morning for a 1912 steamship, took a detour to a 1950s garden party in the suburbs, and ended up in a 2013 online catalog.

“What does he have?” I say.

She stops typing, gives a deep, defeated sigh. Exits her document and swirls to face me. “Kidney disease.”

“What kind?” It makes no difference, but I still want to know.

“Glomerulonephritis, also known as Bright's disease. They've been treating it with drugs, but his reaction has been poor, and recently his doctor told him he would have to go on dialysis. He's refusing.” She gives a hollow laugh. “Of course.”

“How long have you known?”

“A few months.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“He didn't want to say anything at first. He thought he'd get better. Instead, he's gotten much worse.”

“He said he's dying.”

“He will if he continues to refuse dialysis.”

“Why is he refusing?”

“You know your father. It's all or nothing. Life or death. A machine that cleans his blood means he isn't alive on his own. Also, on the practical side, he says that being treated for a disease that's going to kill him anyway is a waste of time.”

She gestures toward an array of medications on a silver tray on a side table. “He's supposed to take pills five times a day. But I suspect he's throwing them away. I think the only reason he doesn't refuse them outright is that he's afraid I'll grind them and put them in his food.”

I pick up a caramel-colored plastic vial. A white cap with directions:
Open—Push and turn—Close
. The name of the pharmacy emblazoned in red. His name in square black letters: Milosa Kasparov. A patient. It looks odd printed that way. The name of a mortal man.

Maureen joins me, pointing to each vial in turn. “Enapril, for high blood pressure. Calcitrol, a form of vitamin D. Phoslo, a phosphate binder. Procrit for anemia, and Lasix, a diuretic.”

There's one left. I pick it up and read the name. “Halcion. What's this for?”

“Sleep.”

“He has trouble sleeping?”

“He's been ranting in the middle of the night. He gets up and wanders around, going on about Russia. I hear him talking to his mother and father and other people he must have known back there. Then he plays music, symphonies, loud, and when I go into his study I can see he's been crying, but he screams at me to go away.”

Her face is taut, brittle. Milosa is taking his toll on her, as always. Yet she soldiers on, keeping everything going, a corporate and domestic sergeant, forever on duty and at attention.

I briefly think about staying here to help, but I would only get in her way.

“I'm going on a trip. Leaving Friday. Two or three weeks—I can't be sure. Will he be here when I get back?”

“He ought to be. The doctor said a few months.”

“You won't be able to reach me for much of the time. I'll call when I can.”

Her dry lips form a line. She wasn't expecting help from me.

I think about what Milosa said, about her being afraid of me and me being too hard. “Thank you for taking care of my father, Maureen. For everything you've done.”

She looks confused, hurt. “It's nothing to be thanked for. He is my husband, isn't he?”

The question hangs in the air, drawing attention to itself.

“Thanks for covering for me at work, too. I know I've been taking a lot of time off recently. But after these next few weeks of vacation, I'll be back and ready to buckle down.”

She shrugs as if my absences are unimportant. “A vacation is a good idea. It's been a while since you've had one.”

—

I find Jeffrey in the kitchen, unpacking groceries. The television on the counter is showing an episode of
Brideshead Revisited
. Jeffrey watches the entire miniseries—about eleven hours of film—once a year. I used to watch it with him when I was home from Gaston, so I immediately recognize Charles and Sebastian, and sink down into a chair to witness the end of the heartbreaking scene in Venice. When it's over, Jeffrey points the remote, and the screen goes black with a tiny pop. He throws together a celery, carrot, and hummus plate with pita triangles.