The Way of All Fish: A Novel (37 page)

Paul stayed behind them, moving slowly until they reached the room where tickets were sold. There were a dozen or so customers in the small cramped room from which people boarded the vintage funicular cars. Five of them, including Paul and the old lady and child, lined up to buy tickets.

The ticket seller was a man with a loud voice who was admonishing the couple at the front for not having the correct change; they had to go through pockets and tote bag as if searching for documents to prove their right of passage to border patrol.

Eight or nine passengers were sitting on narrow benches around the room, two middle-aged couples and a young pair who looked left over from London’s Goth days, she with a headful of streaked hair, red locks and blue; he with the blackest hair Paul had ever seen and various nose and ear piercings. They sat chewing gum in a desultory way.

After the couple with no change had been shamed into using the change machine on the wall, the old lady and her granddaughter stepped up to the ticket seller. She said in a clear voice that, as she was a senior and her granddaughter only five, they didn’t need to pay admission.

That was indeed what the sign said, Paul remembered.

Almost like a carnival barker, the ticket seller said, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”

The woman was taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you a U.S. citizen?” he barked.

“What? I don’t see what that—”

Paul was—as he’d been informed by Molly—a man of a mercurial temper, to put it nicely. He could gun himself up from zero to sixty in five seconds. Molly had told him (often enough) he should enter himself in the Le Mans Classic. He wouldn’t need a car.

As the ticket man stood there looking as if he’d staged a brilliant coup, Paul stepped up and said loudly,
“Que voulez-vous dire? Quelle insulte! Le . . . Le cheval est . . .
ah
 . . . sortie par  le porte!”

The ticket seller took several quick steps back. “What? What? Who are you?” He stepped farther back as Paul got so close, there was barely daylight between them.

“Je suis le consult français!”
Paul whirled around to face the astonished but clearly delighted passengers.
“Quel qu’un qui parle français?”
He held out his arms, invitation extended to all French speakers present.
“Parle français?”

To his surprise, the black-haired fellow got up and came over, grinning.
“Oui?”

Now there were two of them. The ticket seller looked frantic enough to race for the vintage car, moored at the door.

“Je suis le consult français!”
Paul clapped his hand to his chest, then pointed wildly at the ticket seller.
“Dire, dire!”
He got out his cell phone and started tapping in a number.

The fellow said to the ticket seller, “Listen, man, you better just forget askin’ folks if they’re U.S. citizens. This guy’s the new French consul—”

“
Oui! Oui!    
” said Paul.

His black-haired interpreter added (seemingly for good measure), “And he’s a good friend of the mayor of Pittsburgh. That’s who he’s calling.”

“What? No! Tell him no no no,” said the desperate ticket seller.

The kid turned to Paul and grinned. “No no no.”

Paul laughed artificially and spoke into his cell phone to dead air.
“Allo, allo . . . oui . . .”

The ticket man was waving his arms frantically toward the car at the door. “Everybody can board, go on, board.”

The passengers rose with obvious reluctance. They hated to leave the scene. The short-of-change couple wore huge smiles. The grandmother, her hand to her face, was thrilled with this unexpected ally.

Paul continued to spout into his cell phone. “
Que esque ce,
ah, Duquesne Incline.” His English pronunciation was remarkably good for one who’d been such a short time in the country.

They all got into the car, the black-haired kid and his girl facing Paul, the old lady and her granddaughter taking seats next to him. The grandmother said, “Thank you.”

There was a ripple of applause all around the car.

The boy said, “That was cool, man. Especially that shit about the horse.”

“Horse?” said Paul, mystified.

When they left the car and walked out to the street, Paul was surprised to see that it was just a street. What had he expected? Trees and tangled undergrowth? Deer? Bear? A horse? He was even more surprised to see a limousine at the curb, waiting, apparently, for the old lady and the little girl.

She stopped on the pavement ten feet from the car and said to the chauffeur, who had the rear door open, “I’ll just be a moment, George.” She turned to Paul and put out her gloved hand. “My name is Vera Hudson, and this is Virginia.”

“Ginny,” said the girl, holding her grandmother’s free hand, with her other hand clutching her bear.

“Paul Giverney.” He shook the woman’s hand.

Vera said, “We want to thank you for the rescue. I was feeling really humiliated. I can’t imagine what that man was thinking. I’d say Ginny and I look quite American, don’t we?”

The girl tugged at the grandmother’s hand. Vera Hudson bent down, and Ginny whispered something in her ear. “Oh. All right.” She turned to Paul. “Ginny wishes to tell you something.”

Ginny beckoned him down to her level with a small wave. Paul knelt. Quickly, she kissed him on the cheek and then turned just as quickly away before embarrassed giggles overwhelmed her.

“Believe me, that rarely happens.”

“Thank you, Ginny.” He smiled.

Ginny, having rushed so eagerly toward him, now had to disdain him, lest she be swallowed up. She would not look at him.

“Well, we must go. Thank you again, Mr. Giverney.” She paused. “What a lovely name. It’s familiar.”

“Monet’s garden. My name is spelled with an extra E, though.”

George held the limousine door, and Ginny climbed in.

Vera Hudson was about to follow, when she stopped and turned, not looking at him as much as the pavement. “Paul Giverney,” she said, looked at him briefly, doubted herself, and shook her head.
“Très impossible.”
She murmured this more to herself than to him, then got in the car.

George shut the door, went around to the driver’s seat, and got in.

Paul watched the limousine pull away with Ginny’s face at the rear window and wondered how well Vera Hudson knew French. And him.

It was eight o’clock. They had parted just before dusk; now it was dark as Paul finished his dinner. All of the restaurants at the top of the mountain were positioned to take advantage of the view of the city below.

He was not old enough to remember the Smoky City, though his parents had talked about it often enough, streetlights being on all day because “the smog was so thick, you’d’ve thought it was bloody London!” East Liberty, where they lived for so long, they had left because it became little better than a slum. That was when they moved to Shadyside.

What the city had given up in industry, it had taken back in beauty. In the early-evening light, it had glowed dimly. In the dark, it was as if that moth in the Lunesta commercial had trailed its silver sweepings along the banks, across the three rivers, outlined the tall buildings and the bowl of PNC Park. The city looked mysteriously, sleepily alight.

About to leave, Paul stood and looked at the scene and bent his forehead toward the glass. He thought of the old Leigh Hunt poem:

Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in.

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Time, you thief.

That was another Pittsburgh.

B
unny Fogg knew just what to do.

Jackson Sprague always left his office at twelve-thirty for lunch at the Four Seasons. His glorified secretary, whose title was “associate” and whom they called the Duchess, left at the same time as her boss, though not for the Four Seasons. She went to Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s to shop or to get a manicure.

Bunny couldn’t understand leaving an office with such reckless abandon, important files that could be plundered so easily, drawers that could be opened, a safe that could (she bet) be cracked, artifacts stolen, computers hacked. (She had a taste for the dramatic.)

Since the job of feeding Jack Sprague’s aquarium fish usually fell to Bunny, there would be no reason to question her presence in Jack Sprague’s overwrought office. Did he really need to have the hide of a wildebeest layered over a zebra hide, both striking poses over the skin of a cheetah? All on an Oriental rug?

Bunny reached into her white leather tote and brought out Oscar, swimming in a fitted-out little box, a clear square filled with water. She lowered the box into the aquarium and very carefully removed the top. Oscar floated out, unharmed, unbothered by his new environment (if she were any judge of fish). She returned the box to her bag and left Jackson Sprague’s office to go to Bobby Mackenzie’s.

“Oscar seems to like the big aquarium.”

“You think so?” Candy turned in his chair to talk to her. He and Karl were sitting in the same chairs they always sat in, with an air of
ownership. (They could have been in directors’ chairs with their names splashed across the back.)

Bunny nodded. “Sure. You can tell.”

Karl turned. “Oh, come on. How can you tell about a fuc—” He thought better of “fucking fish” and settled for “little fish.”

Bunny remained unfazed. “Because you can.”

That was what Bobby liked about Bunny. She held her ground. “Come on in, Bunny. Want a Scotch?” He held up his glass. “Gin? Vodka?”

“No, thank you. I just wanted to report on Oscar.”

“You think Jackson will notice?”

“No. He pays no attention to the fish. I don’t think he’d notice if they all went belly-up and floated on the surface.”

The others snorted with laughter. Except for Candy, who looked a little worried.

Bunny said, “Happy to be of service.” She half-turned, then turned back. “I just wondered—could I possibly be in the office when you do this? I would so much love to see it.”

Clive smiled. “If you can come up with some excuse for being there.”

Bunny smiled. “Oh, I imagine I can.”

T
he Duchess was sitting at her desk outside of what Bunny (and many others) called the Royal Suite of in-house counsel. The Royal Suite amounted to four rooms, one a conference room, the other three attorneys’ offices: Jackson’s, Bryce’s, and another lawyer’s.

Bunny was headed toward Jackson Sprague’s office for the second time that afternoon. She had just come from Bobby Mackenzie’s office. Oddly, he had wanted to talk to the head of security, and she had found him (Ben Wink), and when she left, Bobby was ushering Ben Wink into his office: “Something I’d like you to do—or, rather, not do,” said Bobby as the door closed behind Ben Wink.