The Way of All Fish: A Novel (25 page)

He turned in. He relived the scene again and again. He had embellished the incident, seeing himself as some lesser ocean god (in other words, not Neptune) rising out of the sea. Finally, he went to sleep. In his dream, he held a trident. Two tridents. One in each hand as he frolicked on the back of a dolphin in the small waves.

In the cold light of morning, drinking coffee and eating toast, with Simone still trying to get more details from him, he ramped his vision
down from god of the Gulf to one for whom God was quite possibly on the lookout.

On the United flight back to New York, he tried to rid the event of any hint of the miraculous. The alligator rising up with him on its back was probably some odd reaction of its cretinous mental faculties or a reflex to something in the water other than L. Bass Hess. He gave a sour little snort. He had always considered himself as cynical as the next man. Ridiculous, of course. Still, it would be interesting to talk to an expert on alligators.

He vowed not to mention the incident to a living soul.

A
lligator expert?” said Paul Giverney. “I dunno. Is there such a thing?” He was sitting on one of the black and chrome love seats with his feet on the coffee table. He knew this drove Bass to distraction. Tented on his stomach was the newest unacceptable version of the contract.

“There’s an expert in every walk of life, Paul.”

“Why? Is one of your clients writing something about alligators?”

“No. I had a very strange experience in the Everglades. Very strange.” He gave Paul not a brief description but a moment-by-moment account of the entire episode. He even included the ghost orchid search, since he felt that bolstered his image as fearless and adventurous, even though he’d gotten nowhere near a ghost orchid.

“Ghost orchid? Did you see that movie?”

“That’s got nothing to do with this.”

“It does. It was based on
The Orchid Thief
. It’s—”

“I mean the alligator, Paul. It’s got nothing to do with the alligator!”

“So you think this alligator literally saved your life?” Paul’s smile was broad and gathering itself for a laugh.

“It certainly seemed that way, yes.”

Paul was laughing heartily. “Come on, Bass. You were scared shitless because you were drowning. You were hyper, so naturally the mind invents—the wishful thinking of the mind takes concrete form.” He had no idea where that bit of psychobabble came from. “And plays out in an hallucinatory montage.” Boy, he was on fire with this crap. He could have gone on all day.

“It was no hallucination!”

Paul gave it a moment, then said, “Maybe it was just a log caught on the mangrove roots.”

Bass was close to springing from his chair. “Logs do not have teeth!”

No, but neither did Sammy. Molloy had described Sammy in meticulous detail. No teeth was a plus, since they were not trying to tear Hess limb from limb, just trying to organize an experience that would leave him in his current state of mind. Paul was going to give Molloy and Monty another thousand. He went on, “Listen, are you sure it wasn’t just some guy dressed up in an alligator suit?”

L. Bass rose and slammed his fist on his desk. It was more emotion than he’d shown since Paul had known him. “Don’t you think I’d know the difference between an alligator and an alligator suit?” He paused, breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. “Anyway, why in the name of God would someone be swimming around the swamp dressed as an alligator?”

“This is South Florida you’re talking about. All sorts of weird things go on there.”

Bass dropped with a thud into his swivel chair. “All right, all right. Let’s just drop the subject and go back to the contract.”

Which was why Paul was there. Ostensibly. “So what’s Mackenzie want this go-round?”

“Page seventeen: He’s struck out the twelve weeks and penciled in six months.”

“That’s ridiculous. Six months on the
Times
list? Did even Harry Potter hang on the list that long?”

“Yes.” With a pale sigh, Bass said, “You want me to pencil it back in?”

Paul shook his head. “I’ll compromise. Make it three months.”

“Paul, that’s no compromise. Three months
is
twelve weeks. That’s what you already had.”

“Oh yeah. You’re right. Okay, let’s say four months, and I get a bonus.”

Bass made a note, saying, “It would be more politic to let Mackenzie have a smallish victory, I think.”

“Such as?”

Bass had left his seat at the desk and wandered over to sit opposite Paul. He had loosened his tie and was sitting there like one of the boys in the locker room. He said, lowering his voice as if in confidence, or as
if imparting the L. Bass secret for success, “The thing is this, Paul. I like to save my fights for the big issues. We don’t want to waste energy on the small ones.”

“I haven’t seen any battles going on over any
big
ones. The advance? I guess three million is a big issue, but you didn’t have to fight for it. The e-book split? Subrights? What fights did you wage over those issues?” Paul folded his arms across his chest.

“Mackenzie seemed to have no problems there.”

“Then you haven’t waged any battles except for this stupid payout scheme of Bobby’s. So wage some.” Paul looked at the contract, humming. He could find all sorts of snippy little things to keep this contract floating in the ether.

“Will you compromise with, say, a four-month bestseller list as opposed to the three-month?”

“Sure.” Paul yawned, checked his watch. “It’s after seven. You going home?” It would be dark soon.

“Yes, in a minute. I’d like to get this settled.”

“Nah, leave it. Don’t you live somewhere off Central Park?”

Bass nodded. “East Seventies.”

“Listen, I’m going to meet a friend at the Boathouse. Why don’t you join us?”

“No, but thank you. I’ve a very tight schedule. I do like to take my constitutional before going home. I never have a heavy meal in the evening.”

“Let’s take a cab to the park and walk through it. I’ve always liked the Ramble.” Which was the path that Hess took every evening, like clockwork, according to Karl and Candy. “Maybe we can hammer out a few of the details.” He held up the contract.

Bass rose, adjusted his tie, and said, “I’ll be with you in a minute. I just have to give Stephanie a few instructions.”

“Fine. I need to call this fellow to let him know I’ll be there around eight o’clock.”

When Bass left the office, Paul made his call. “Graeme. It’s Paul. Listen, how much time do you need to set up? We’re leaving Hess’s office probably in ten minutes. The ride’ll take maybe twenty minutes, depending on the cabbie’s mood. Then there’s the walk. Is that enough time?”

“Sure. We’re completely ready. We’ve been here for an hour. It’s keeping people away for that one minute that’s tricky. But Monty and Molloy and me, we figured that out. Anyway, it doesn’t work the first time, we just do it again. You go through the Ramble, then there’s a path off to the right with a great hedge that might work.”

“No, a hedge doesn’t send the right message, Graeme. The road to Damascus wasn’t lined with hedges.”

“Yeah? How do you know?”

“I don’t. It’s just a guess.”

“Whatever you say, Saint Paul.” Graeme sniggered. “Okay, there’s a bush, a holly bush.” Graeme gave him several landmarks—bench, fountain, statue, oak tree—asked him had he got that right? When Paul said he had, Graeme rang off.

T
he cab stopped and shoveled them out at the entrance on Seventy-second Street, dumped them in the way New York City taxis almost literally do, seeming to begrudge the ride to every fare they pick up.

“I always take this route,” said Bass, turning to his right. “It’ll take us across the bridge and around the lake. So you can get to the Boathouse.”

The route was imprinted upon Paul’s mind. He’d found out more about Central Park in the last three days than he had in his whole New York lifetime. The next time he took Hannah to the Central Park Zoo, she’d be happy that he wasn’t wandering around like a blind man.

“Let me just walk you through this,” said Bass. He was talking not about the walk they were on but about the pending contract with Mackenzie.

If there was anywhere Paul didn’t want to walk, it was in and out of the boring contract. Besides, the condescension and the suggestion that Paul needed a guide gave him the urge to shove L. Bass Hess off Bow Bridge and into the water. He paid no attention to Hess ticking off contract points; he himself was ticking off landmarks along the way. Massive oak. Stone bench. Water fountain, stone base. Two oaks. Statue. Holly bush (wrong one). Park bench, wood and iron. This grew more difficult in the descending darkness.

L. Bass’s voice kept grinding on. “. . . and the point of this clause is . . .”

Nothing
. Birdbath. Maple. Bench. They’d been walking for fifteen minutes when they came upon the half-moon curve. This bend was manned on the near end by Molloy, with his NYC park-works-like
orange reflecting jacket; and twenty-some feet on by Monty, same gear. Both had furnished themselves with sawhorses. Fortunately, Hess’s route wasn’t as much used by city folk as the one that looped around on the other side of the Boathouse.

Third bench, regular park bench.

“. . . and the payout, Mackenzie’s agreed to ten instead of twelve, which I still think is . . .”

Molloy walking toward them with his sawhorse, passing, winking at Paul.

Okay, don’t be so damned obvious with your thumbs-up sign. Had Hess noticed? Of course not. Molloy disappearing around the bend. Monty up ahead, the other end of the bend. Graeme? Who knew? Concealed somewhere.

And there was the bush at last, and . . .
Woooosh!

It was all Paul could do to keep from jumping, and he knew it was coming, so it was hardly surprising that L. Bass Hess yelled, “My God!” and fell back, breathing hard.

“Bass, what’s wrong?” Paul moved quickly toward him. “What is it?”

“Wrong? You saw it! That bush went up in flames!”

Paul looked along the length of Bass’s outthrust arm, hand, finger. He squinted. “What bush?”

White-faced, Bass stared at the holly bush. One of its little berries plopped to the ground. “You didn’t see the
fire
? You must have.
You didn’t see the flames?
”

A couple strolled by and looked at the bush that Bass’s eyes and index finger were trained on. They looked at Paul, then Bass, then each other. They obviously could not understand why Bass was looking at them in that beseeching manner. “You saw it, didn’t you? You must have! You were just walking past it.” A voice like weeping. The couple picked up their pace and walked on.

Paul marveled at the fact that after the barriers came down (the temporarily placed sawhorses and park attendants now removed), all of Manhattan appeared to have chosen this elusive little route for their evening ramble.

An old guy bent nearly in half with two canes plied the path beneath his feet, shouting, “End of days!” as he passed or didn’t pass. He was
sharing his message with whomever he saw, but he must have thought Hess, given his pale face and frightened look, was the person most likely to listen with an ear cocked. “
End of days!
” the old man yelled smack into Hess’s face.

As Paul moved to intervene, two youngish men, their fingers intertwined, shoveled by with what looked like one wolfhound each—dogs almost as big as ponies—greeting everyone as if the party were in full swing. Hess shouted at them, “Have you seen it?”

“Practically everything, dear.” They looked, they laughed, they walked on.

Hess had a handkerchief pressed to his face and seemed frozen in place.

Paul yanked at his arm. “Come on, Bass. The Boathouse is right up there. I see the lights.”

Indeed it was, and indeed Paul had chosen it because it would be. Paul bet his timing was up there with Jay-Z or Chris Rock or Stephen Strasburg.

He manhandled Hess into the restaurant’s bar and sat him down at a table. He ordered two double whiskies, and to the waiter’s question about brand, he said, “Hundred proof.” He went on, “Now Bass—”

L. Bass was mopping his sweatless face with the immaculately, precisely squared handkerchief, murmuring, “I don’t understand, I don’t understand. You had your back to it, that must be it.”

“The bush?”

“That’s why you didn’t see the conflagration; it must be.”

“I was kind of angled away, but I think I’d’ve seen, well, something go up in flames, Bass.” Paul snorted.

“The vagrant! The tramp must have seen it. That’s why he was shouting ‘End of days!’ ”

“Yeah, but wait: Something on fire has to die out. You’re saying you saw it in flames for two or three seconds, and then it just—stopped.”

“It did.”

The waiter set down the drinks.

Bass tossed back half of his whiskey and still looked sober-white. He ran his finger around inside a collar that looked too big for his throat.

Paul could swear Bass Hess was shrinking. The collar stood out around
his neck, his jacket sleeves looked too long for his arms. Shrinking before Paul’s very eyes. Henry James could have done wonders with the subject, better than Jules Verne. “You’ve been working too hard—”

“Every day of my life! I’ve always worked hard; hard work is a point of pride. Frankly, I’m sick of listening to whining writers tell me how hard it is to write a book!” He slammed his glass on the table. The couple sitting near them turned. “I’m sick of writers like Cindy Sella.” It came out like a cat’s hiss. Once he got started on Cindy Sella, Hess might even manage to set aside the burning bush.

“That’s very stressful,” said Paul. “That and all of your other work, like this contract of mine. Dealing with Mackenzie is no picnic. You need some sleep, Bass. Then we’ll talk. Are you okay with going home?”

Bass nodded and clutched his drink with all the fervor of someone who was going to shout “End of days!” He finished his drink. “Something strange is happening. First the alligator. Now the burning bush.”

That’s about the size of it, Paul didn’t say.