Scavenger Reef (31 page)

He turned over on the soggy sheets and tried
to go to sleep.

*

A lot of guys didn't like to work on
Saturdays and didn't like the four-to-midnight shift. They had
wives, families, girlfriends, boyfriends. They had dinner dates,
poker games, softball leagues to get to. Which was fine with Jimmy
Gibbs. To him, a day was a day and the evening shift had certain
advantages.

For one thing, it was cooler, sort of. As
the sun got lower, the steel roof of the washing shed stopped
groaning against its rivets. The steam was still as suffocating,
Gibbs's short gray ponytail still got glued with sweat against his
neck, but at least in the short breaks between spotless rented
ragtops a man could drop his chamois and draw a breath or two that
didn't scorch his lungs.

Then too the lighting, or the lack of it,
was better after dark. Inside the shed, orangy spotlights gave a
fittingly hellish cast to the dancing sheets of vapor. Out in the
yard, purplish floods, rather feeble and spaced too far apart, cast
a weak gleam on the fleet of convertibles that stretched away a
hundred yards or so to a perimeter of chain-link fence. Beyond the
fence, through a broad gate to which most workers had a key, was an
employee parking lot that was barely lit at all.

That was the lot where Jimmy Gibbs parked
his truck. Except today he didn't have his truck. Nobody knew it,
but he'd walked to work, three miles maybe from Stock Island,
carrying two empty five-gallon gas cans. He didn't try to hide
them. What was unusual about gas cans in a place where people were
always fiddling with cars? He stashed the containers in the washing
shed, and when the guy who worked the pump went on break, he
casually strolled over and filled them up. Sometime later, after
dark, he tucked the cans into the trunk of an anonymous
lease-tagged ragtop as it clattered by on the conveyor. He drove
the washed car out of the shed and parked it near the others, only
a little farther from the purple floodlights, a little closer to
the gate. He put the key into his pocket.

At midnight, when the shifts were changing,
Jimmy Gibbs went to the employee men's room, slipped into a toilet
stall, and sat there till his shift mates had gone home and the new
group had settled in. He felt good. Things were going smoothly.

Talking to no one, he walked past the
washing shed and through the yard. He opened the gate, strolled
back to the car with the gas cans in the trunk, drove it through,
got out and unhurriedly locked up behind himself. He felt so calm
he even took a moment to find a good station on the radio before he
motored away. There was nothing to worry about. Tomorrow he was
off, and by Monday he'd be back at work, scrubbing coral dust off
fenders and scratching bird shit off windshields, a little tired
maybe but neither surlier nor friendlier than tonight, acting like
nothing at all had happened.

*

On Sunday morning Joe Mulvane stopped by the
Silver house. His blue shirt was translucent with sweat, you could
see the whorls of stomach hair. Ray Yates had not been found; the
detective had no news for them; they had none for him. He gulped a
glass of ice water and he left.

The white sun climbed the sky, and even
Reuben seemed knocked off balance by the pulsing force of it. His
movements, like those of a distracted cat, were less lithe and
weightless than usual, his relative awkwardness resulted now and
then in a small sound—a brushing against furniture, the clatter of
a plate—that seemed loud because of its unexpectedness. At moments
he was gripped by an antsy drive for projects; he rearranged
cabinets, folded and refolded linens. Between spurts of ambition he
slipped into a kind of trance, a waking siesta in which his eyes
stayed open, he would answer normally if spoken to, yet seemed to
be asleep and dreaming. He fell into long gazes at the picture of
Fred the martyred parrot, met the bird's red stare and communed
with it somehow, seemed to plumb the mysterious space behind the
paint in a way that not even the painter had done.

Afternoon came, shadows lengthened. But the
sun stayed and stayed, stayed like a draining and obnoxious guest
who moved tantalizingly to the threshold but would not go home.

The heat killed appetites,
digestion seemed a gross and thankless exercise. Not till evening
did anyone think about food. Then Reuben tossed a salad, sliced
some fruits. When the three of them sat down at the poolside table,
the sky was still flame-red in the west and it was nearly
10 p.m.

The phone rang. Reuben jogged into the
living room and answered it. A harsh thick voice said, "This is
Claire Steiger. I need to speak with Augie."

"Meester and Meesus Silber," Reuben said,
"they just sit down to dinner."

"Get him, Chico," said the agent. "It's
important."

Reuben paused. He'd gotten unaccustomed to
being insulted and realized quite suddenly that he didn't have to
take it. "What you say is very stupid. I will tell Meester Silber
you are on the line."

Augie dabbed his lips and went toward the
phone. Nina strode ahead of him and switched the speaker on.
"Hello, Claire," the painter said.

The agent took no time for pleasantries.
"That little prick," she said. "That clever vile sneaky little
prick." She sounded like she'd been drinking, and this was
unusual—not for her to have a glass too much, but to let it show,
to lose control of her measured tone, her polished diction.

"Who?" said Augie.

"Brandenburg," Claire spat out. "The sexless
little creep bastard."

Half an hour before, the
agent had come into the city from Sagaponack to find that an early
copy of
Manhattan
magazine had been brought by courier to her building on Fifth
Avenue. She'd read the piece on Augie and started swilling vodka.
It had been such a perfect weekend, that was the bitch of it. Kip
was away, off finagling with his bankruptcy attorneys; she'd had
her beloved beach house to herself. She'd slept with a south breeze
bringing her the sound of surf; she'd wakened to a soft damp mystic
light pouring serenely through her gauzy curtains. Two days' peace
had been enough to soften her, albeit briefly, to trick her into
imagining that things might yet turn out all right, that somehow
she could buy back her mortgaged life. "He's ruined us. The little
eunuch has ruined us."

More than anything, Augie Silver was
confused. "Claire, it wasn't even a review. What could he possibly
have said—"

"Nothing bad," she cut in bitterly. "Not one
disparaging word. That would be too direct for Peter. Too honest.
He took a much wormier approach. Here, I'll read you some choice
bits."

There was a pause in which was heard the
rustle of glossy pages. Augie and Nina could almost see the clumsy
workings of Claire Steiger's drunk and trembling fingers.

"Here, how's this?" she said. " 'Augie
Silver, a mercurial artist whose each new phase seems almost to
undo the work that's come before' ... Or this: With a candor that
more careerist painters might gasp at,' blah, blah, blah. . . . Oh,
and here's the capper: 'After a three-year retirement that saw his
earlier canvases become sought-after rarities, he seems bursting
with creative drive and has set himself the daunting goal of being
'as prolific as the tropics.'"

She fell silent. Through the speakerphone it
sounded almost as though she was panting, not out of breath but
waiting avidly, hungrily, for someone to join in and fortify her
pique. No one did. Augie and Nina looked at each other. Reuben had
moved away and was staring at the picture of Fred.

"Don'tcha see?" Claire resumed, though of
course Augie and Nina did see. The distraught agent raved on
anyway. "It's all in code, and every fucking word of it is telling
buyers not to buy, to wait. The older work might turn out to be
considered minor, just a warm-up. Then again, you don't think about
your career, you could shoot your mouth off and blow the whole
thing any minute. And now you're gonna flood the market—"

She broke off finally, blowing air between
her teeth, and it was a mercy she could not see Augie at that
moment, because Augie was smiling. The smile had appeared
gradually, had taken the painter unawares, starting small and then
spreading almost to a grin.

"Damnit, Augie," said his agent, "say
something."

"Claire," he said, "it's only one
auction."

"Only one auction," she mimicked. "Only one
auction. Goddamn you, Augie, you're impossible."

She hung up, the speakerphone squawked
static at the loud bang of the receiver, and as soon as the
connection had been broken the house seemed cooler. A faint breeze
slid through the French doors, it carried a whiff of jasmine and
chlorine.

Nina waited a moment, then said, "Augie, why
the smile?"

He reached for her, took her forearm in his
hand. "I feel like I've been reprieved," he said.

His wife just looked at him.

"If someone's trying to kill me," he went
on, "they'd wait at least until my price goes up again. Don'tcha
think?"

Nina smiled wanly. Outside, dry foliage
rattled; it sounded not like living leaves but like beans and
pebbles trapped inside of pods. Reuben also tried to smile. But he
was still staring at the painted parrot, and the bird's red eyes
seemed to be saying something different from what Augie said. The
young man turned his face away.

Clay Phipps had taken
Augie's advice. He'd gone to bed on Friday afternoon and slept
through till 4
a.m
.
on Saturday. He read till dawn, then, groggy and disoriented,
puttered in his house and fiddled in his garden before straggling
back to bed around five that afternoon. Sunday he again woke up in
darkness and went to sleep in daylight. By 2
a.m
. on Monday he was all slept
out.

His eyes snapped open as they sometimes did
when he was in the deepest throes of jet lag. He felt a similar
sort of edgy alertness, an energy more delicious because it could
not last, a refreshing dislocation; though he was in his own bed in
his own house, he felt a freedom that usually came with being far
away: He felt he could, if he dared, afford to be a different
person, a bolder person.

But bold how? For what? He scratched his
belly, looked up at the ceiling, and wondered what was still worth
being bold about. His writing? No, he'd blown it forever on that
front. His love life? Well, maybe, if a fitting partner ever came
his way. But in the meantime he came up with just one answer, and
the simplicity of it surprised and pleased him: his friends. It was
worth it to be bold and vigilant and insistent upon frankness with
his chums. Wasn't it just exactly that sort of boldness that had
brought Augie to his door in the middle of the night? That had
cleared the air, got them talking again? There was a lesson there,
Phipps thought. He had other friendships that were in trouble. What
had happened to Yates, to Natchez, to their close if barbed
camaraderie? Yates had left town without a word; Clay Phipps knew
it only by his absence from the airwaves. Between good friends, it
had come to that. But Natchez was here, a mere four blocks away.
Why not go to him? Why not hammer on his door, wake him up, grab
him by the shoulders, and force upon the poet the kind of cleansing
confrontation that Augie had initiated with him?

Excited by his own resolve, he dressed by
the light of a bedside lamp and went out into the night.

It was close to three now and the moon had
set. A filmy canopy of mist slid along the sky, it was visible only
by the way it dimmed the stars then thinned to let them shine more
brightly. The heavy air carried reminders of the ocean, a hint of
fish and seaweed. A stray and unkempt dog lolled by, its tongue
hanging, its paws making dry clicks on the pavement, its head down
in the shameless skulking posture of the scavenger.

Clay Phipps felt brave and young in the
empty streets, he almost strutted. But his knees were not good at
stairs, and as he labored up to Roberto Natchez's garret, he used
his arms as much as he could to haul himself along the banister. By
the time he stood on the third-floor landing, he was sweating and
winded. He looked through the skylight at the flickering stars,
took a moment to compose himself.

His newfound boldness was a tenuous thing,
and his first knock was a soft one. But no matter—the poet's door,
which was not locked or even closed securely, swung open under his
light touch. Phipps, nonplussed, fell back half a step, then peered
into the dark apartment. "Natch?" he said.

There was no answer, and something in the
way his own voice was swallowed by the darkness told him with
certainty that no one was at home. He stepped into the corridor and
switched on its dim light. The first thing he saw was a small
reddish feather on the floor, the first thing he heard was the
erratic whirring whine of an out-of-balance ceiling fan. He inhaled
and caught a strange bad smell, a smell from the bottom of a
forgotten garbage can.

One small step more brought him to the
living room. He switched on the ceiling light and his jaw fell
slack. On Natchez's desk was a strangled chicken, its yellow feet
clenched and brittle; the bird's narrow head faced back along its
spine, a single drop of blood had spilled from its beak and dried
on the poet's blotter. Swinging slowly from a blade of the ceiling
fan, slightly stretched from the outward force of turning, was a
hanged gray cat. It had been hanged with an old necktie, its fur
overlay the knot like the loose flesh on an old man's throat; its
open eyes were glazed and bulging, its claws were out and just
barely whistled as they sliced the air.