The Way of All Fish Read online

  “Yeah, I know that. You know who the plaintiff and defendants are?”

  Their legal vocabulary was stunted except when it came to matters with which they had grown familiar.

  “Hess is the plaintiff, and the defendant’s Cindy Sella.”

  “The only one in those photos in his waiting room who looks like she’s got a life.”

  “He’s suing her publisher, too. Some outfit called Harbor Books—Whoa! Listen to this: Harbor Books is part of Mackenzie-Haack.” Candy slapped down the folder and stared at Karl.

  “Our old buddy Bobby Mackenzie, the friggin’ son of a bitch! Is he back from— Where’d we get him a ticket to?”

  “Africa? Who knows. No, it was Australia, I think. Clive called me last month.” Clive Esterhaus was the unfortunate senior editor at Mackenzie-Haack whom Bobby had assigned the dirty job of finding a hit man. Candy went for his glasses. The print seemed to be deteriorating before his eyes.

  Karl was up and firing the soda from the syphon into his glass. It was more that he wanted exercise than soda water. “So what about Clive?”

  “Clive’s okay. Bobby gave him some reward, like his own book thing. What d’ya call it? Imprint? Like that.”

  “Good. Clive deserved it. I’m surprised Bobby Mackenzie can make a generous gesture. Maybe we taught him something.” Since their foray into the shadowy halls of the publishing world the year before, Karl had become well acquainted with its language, some of it extremely peculiar. It was almost as bad as legal.

  “Bobby really treated him like shit.”

  “Bobby treats everybody like shit. Except he’s cool.” Karl chuckled.

  “So how does Bobby keep ’em in line?”

  Karl snuffled a laugh. “Breaks legs. Y’know, if Bobby Mackenzie wasn’t such a self-centered SOB, I think he coulda made a name for himself in our line of work.”

  “No, he ain’t got our scruples, K.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s so. Come on, what else’s in those papers?” Karl picked up his glass from the cocktail napkin that stuck to it. It had red coral printed against a turquoise background.

  Candy said, turning a page, “As far as I can make out, Cindy Sella—defendant—is guilty of breach of contract and the tacit—tacit?”

  Karl said, “It means unspoken but understood.”

  Candy nodded. “Okay. Tacit understanding of the irrevocability of the agency clause—”

  “What the hell’s that?”

  Candy raised his hands in an “I surrender” gesture. “Don’t ask me.”

  “Okay, so the bottom line here is what?”

  “Can’t find one.”

  “It’s got to be money, maybe love. How many bottom lines are there? There’s ‘I love you dot dot dot’; or ‘I owe you dot dot dot.’ How much is he claiming she owes him?”

  “I don’t see it.” Candy leafed through the sheaf of papers. “I can’t read this stuff. I bet his own lawyers never read it. This looks like some sleight-of-hand guy at one of Trump’s casinos did the writing. It’s definitely in the ‘now you see it now you don’t’ category.” Candy got up and went over to the fish tank and tapped in a few flakes of something.

  Shaved truffles, probably, thought Karl, who was staring up at the ceiling, thinking.

  They were silent for some minutes. Candy contemplated renaming his fish.

  “You know what?” said Karl.

  “What?” Malcolm, maybe. Or Oscar.

  “Is her address in there?”

  “Yeah. West Village, on Grove. Why?”

  “I think maybe we ought to pay a visit to our girl Cindy.”

  Already she was their girl.

  Lucky Cindy.

  7

  Cindy was looking out of her Grub Street window at what she could see of midtown Manhattan. Not much. She wished it were dark and the Empire State Building would light up, because a corner of it was visible if she stretched her neck a little. The rest of what she saw was the building across the alley and up on the corner, Ray’s coffee shop, where she spent a large part of her time. There was even a booth at the rear that they kind of kept for her, “kind of” meaning if somebody else got to the booth first, that was okay with them. New York, she had found almost immediately upon getting there, was a world of everyday small betrayals.

  She thought she might have gotten along extremely well, albeit in her extremely minor key, with Dr. Johnson and Addison and Steele and the others (the “others,” Cindy?), not in any way because of her writing (as if that fact needed saying even to herself) but because she loved coffee shops. When she imagined eighteenth-century London, it was so easy to insert herself into a chair at White’s or the St. James or the Turk’s Head, and there to sip coffee and smoke . . . did women smoke pipes? That was a really nice touch.

  She had lived in this same apartment for nearly seven years, and she was happy knowing it wouldn’t be turned into condos or a co-op, because then she’d have to buy the apartment or move. She’d remind herself she’d written three books in this place, and it might be ungrateful to kick it aside like an old shoe.

  For God’s sake. It was bad enough assigning feelings to every cat dog mouse roach that crossed her path, did she have to anthropomorphize the inanimate?

  She pressed down a key on her typewriter. She still used her old IBM Selectric. She smiled at the stir it had created when her dad’s secretary got one, her fulminating over the machine. Miss Duckworth (the secretary) liked to draw comparisons between the Selectric and her elderly Royal or Remington. Why she liked to discuss the IBM with the child, who was four or five, Cindy couldn’t imagine. But she had the impression that she had known back then. How queer. She’d made her father promise that he would give her the typewriter.

  If she told people this little chapter from her life, they would always say (in a smarmy tone, for how could it be otherwise said?), “Why, then, you always knew you were going to be a writer! Of course!”

  She would shrug and say, “I never gave it a thought until I was thirty.”

  What she should do was go into hiding. She was getting less and less done. She thought of George Gissing. It had taken him only two months—two months—months, not years!—to write New Grub Street. Over five hundred pages and three volumes. And here she was after two years and not two hundred pages, less than half what Gissing had written, to say nothing of not being anywhere nearly as good as George Gissing.

  The time that had gone into this absurd legal business with her agent and publisher was time she could have spent on her book. Then she told herself (as if she couldn’t leave feeling bad alone; no, she had to go to feeling worse) that she hadn’t had to take all of those calls from Wally Hale, those calls for no reason except “just to check, see how you’re doing, Cindy,” to which she’d say, “I’d be doing better, Wally, if you hadn’t already racked up three minutes, which will come to around fifty dollars just to check on me. Now it’s fifty-five. It will soon be seventy if I don’t hang up. Good-bye.”

  She wasn’t a Luddite; she did have an Apple computer and an HP printer. She just hated that booting-up sound first thing in the morning. The skittering of the IBM Selectric was comforting; it sounded like work; it sounded as if the rolling ball were keeping time with her mental processing, digging around in the twirl and pivot of the type ball. The computer received the print in silence, as if it had no stake in the operation, as if, in its fluid way, it was all taking place in another writing dimension. It rejected nothing; it kicked out nothing; it allowed all sorts of awful writing because it was so effortless.

  If she’d stop slopping around in her chenille bathrobe and Acorn slippers half the day, she might get a grip. That morning, early, she had gone out to get some supplies for her clown fish bowl, then gotten back into the chenille bathrobe, as if it were some kind of writing uniform. The fish especially seemed to like the two green plastic leaves that stuck to the bowl. They liked to lounge on them.

  Cindy sat back and looked around the room for t
he thousandth time, considering moving. If she could afford a New York lawyer, she could afford a New York row house.

  Here it was noon already, and she hadn’t written a word. She looked at the sheet of paper in her typewriter, at the words she had set down last night:

  Whatever the cost, Helena would pay it.

  Christ. Had she been into the second bottle of wine writing that? Helena. Yes, she would pay the cost, because she was an idiot. Cindy tried to remember why Helena was thinking this. She leafed through the last few pages she’d written, but there was no mention. It was like writing “I’ll never be hungry again” and forgetting why Scarlett was standing on a hill with a carrot.

  It was not a novel she was writing but a short story. How could you forget a character’s dilemma in a short story?

  Cindy went to the kitchen and got the coffee out of its airtight can; she shoved a filter into her Mr. Coffee machine, then a half-dozen tablespoons of coffee.

  After she flicked on the coffeemaker, she leaned against the counter and thought about her novel. Then she went back to the desk and looked at the last page: 196 pages in two years (not 500 in two months). Cindy feared she was becoming like her main character, Lulu, in this novel she could not seem to make go forward.

  Perhaps that was the point, or at least the trouble. Lulu could not move forward. She was stuck in the tragedy of the everyday.

  Lulu had gone no further than switching off the ignition. Now she merely sat in the car, in the dark, with no coherent thought. The streetlights had flickered out or had not yet flickered on. She had so little sense of time anymore.

  There had been a time when letters had been written, envelopes addressed, stamped. Not just cards; people now depended on the message supplied by the cards. Some of the work done for them, the artwork shouldering the rest of the responsibility. Even the blank ones could fare as letters with a bare minimum of original message. When had she last seen a real letter? Lulu had herself written them, if only to help stave off their total loss, her own letters adding to that small cache that a few people still kept going. One day some horribly misguided person would put together an organization of letter writers because nothing could be left alone anymore. Not even a letter on a mat. It would have to be put together with another letter on another mat.

  Cindy rose to get her coffee. She had no idea what Lulu was doing, sitting in her car where she’d been for nearly twenty pages. How long could a reader be expected to stay for that? Even though she should be getting Lulu out of that car, she drank her coffee and closed her eyes and saw—her mind’s eye moving from house to house down the street—all of those letters lying on all of those mats, homeowners opening doors and looking down in surprise: A letter? A letter! They would bend down, a mother in a nightgown, a father in a business suit . . .

  Lulu put her head in her hands.

  Cindy was afraid that Lulu might just quit cold.

  There was a knock at the door. Who in God’s name could be coming to see her? Twelve-thirty it was, and here she was in this old blue robe. She left the coffeemaker and went to the door.

  Forgetting, as usual, to look through the security hole, she opened the door and saw two men standing there. Her eyes rounded, her mouth fell open. A perfect response for Helena, who never rejected a cliché.

  “Somethin’ wrong?” said the shorter of the two. “Did I spill somethin’ on my tie?”

  “Miss Sella?” said the taller one.

  Cindy found words. “You’re the ones in the Clownfish, the men with guns!” She stepped back and yanked the tie of her robe tighter, as if it were armor loosening.

  The short one smiled wickedly, held up his palms. “We never started it, if you recall.”

  “Oh. Sorry. No, of course you didn’t. Please, come on in.” Cindy’s smile was not wicked. It was one of those flame smiles. It lit up and warmed the place.

  Candy and Karl walked in and felt immediately at home. For Karl it was the smile; for Candy it was the fishbowl on the shelf.

  “Yo!” said Candy. “You got the fish! You got two of them.” He was already over at the shelf that held the bowl. Gus the cat sat there, eyeing him.

  “Don’t let him get started,” said Karl. Then “Oh, yeah. Let me introduce us. I’m Karl; he’s Candy.”

  “How do you do. I’m Cindy.”

  “We know.”

  “Sit down, please.” She nodded toward the sofa-and-club-chair suite (which was about the only thing to nod toward for sitting), and Karl thanked her and sat. Candy was stationed in front of the bowl. So was the cat. Both of them were looking at the fish.

  “Hey, C., get over here, for God’s sake.” Karl turned to Cindy. “He took his fish home, too. It’s taking up half his life, such as it is.” He smoothed the crease in his pant leg. “Reason we’re here is this agent of yours, Hess—”

  Cindy took a step back. The crazy agent. She managed to forget him, and then his name bubbled up like the surface of the La Brea tar pits. “Did he send you?”

  “You kidding?” said Karl, getting comfortable, resting his arm along the back of the sofa.

  From his place by the fish, where he’d picked up the little tin of food, Candy said, “We work for that guy? Come on.” He sprinkled a bit of food over the water. The cat watched.

  “No, no. We’re taking this on for you, pro bono, strictly. Call it our yearly donation to the National Arts Foundation or whatever.” Karl let loose a hacking sort of laugh.

  “You’re working for me?” said Cindy, perched on the edge of the chair that faced the sofa with Karl on it. “What was all that at the restaurant? You guys had guns.”

  “True. Like the other guys had guns,” said Karl.

  Said Candy over his shoulder, “We always got guns.”

  “Come over and sit down, for God’s sake, C. That ain’t your fish.”

  “So what’s this other one?” said Candy. “Kind of transparent?”

  “A ghost clown fish.”

  “Wow. I like the leaves you stuck in here.” He turned around. “They don’t swim much, do they?”

  Cindy smiled and shook her head.

  Candy went on, “Now, I thought the one I saved was a clown fish, only turns out it—”

  Karl yanked himself around. “Candy, for fuck’s—excuse me”—this to Cindy—“sake! Cut it out with the fish.”

  Candy looked around, frowning. The cat looked around. He could have been frowning.

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “We got business here. You forget?”

  Candy sat down on the sofa. Karl moved his arm. Candy said, as if he’d been talking about the incident in the Clownfish all along, “Personally, we thought it was pretty cold, them shooting up the aquarium, endangering all the fish.”

  Karl nodded. “I have to agree. If all they wanted was to pick off someone in the place—”

  “Who?” said Cindy, feeling a chill. “Who were they after?”

  “Hess—”

  “Was he trying to kill me?” Her voice was anxious.

  “Him? You gotta be kiddin’. You think he’s up for that? You think he’s got the balls?”

  “I don’t mean holding the gun; I mean he could have hired someone.”

  “Cindy, you watch too much TV. No, Karl means it was Hess they were trying to off.”

  Cindy’s eyes widened again. “What?”

  “You know, you probably ain’t the only one he’s tried to run over. We had a peculiar run-in with Hess earlier in his office—”

  Cindy sat up even straighter. “Did you shoot him?” One could always hope.

  Candy and Karl laughed. That was rich. “No,” said Karl, “we didn’t know what a miserable shit the guy was at that point. Excuse the language, except you being a writer, you can handle it, I imagine.”

  “No words are off limits if you’re talking about L. Bass Hess. I think he’s crazy.”

  “We know he’s crazy.” Karl held up the file. “The documents in the case.”

  “T
hat’s the name of a story by Dorothy L. Sayers.” Now she stared at the folder. “He told my lawyer he was in possession of certain things that could ruin my career if they came out.”

  “You’re a writer,” said Karl, shoulders hunching up in a fuck’s-sake shrug. “It’d be like broadcasting that Ernest Hemingway kept a case of Scotch in his cellar.”

  “Or Scott F. Fitzgerald,” said Candy, not wanting to be found less conversant with the habits of some writers.

  “F. Scott,” said Karl.

  Cindy remembered the Mr. Coffee and asked, “Do you want some coffee? Or a drink? I’ve got bourbon and vodka.”

  “Coffee would be great,” said Karl.

  She was trying to process the knowledge that the men in the restaurant who’d whipped out guns and shot at the ones who’d come in were sitting here, in her apartment, talking about L. Bass Hess. She went off to the kitchen. “Milk? Sugar?” she called.

  “Black.”

  “Black, four sugars.” That was Candy.

  Cindy came in with two mugs of coffee, set Karl’s on the table beside the sofa, and handed the other to Candy.

  He was back with the fish tank. He said, “You got a nice arrangement in this, you got your ferns, coral, seaweed, leaf things—”

  “Candy, shut up.”

  “I was just sayin’.”

  “Okay, what’s in the folder?” Having brought their coffee, Cindy perched herself again on the chair with her own cup of black coffee. “That folder.” She nodded toward the folder lying beside Karl. “And why did he give it to you two?”

  “A problem of identity.” Karl smiled.

  Cindy didn’t. “What identity?”

  “He thought we were two other guys.”

  Cindy waited. He didn’t elaborate. Heightening the suspense, she supposed. “What other guys.”

  “Lawyers. Hale and—” He looked toward Candy. “What was the other one?”

  “Richard Gere?”

  “Oh, come on, C., that wasn’t the guy’s name.”

  “Reed, no—”

  “Reeves?” said Cindy. “You mean Wally Hale and Roderick Reeves? They’re my attorneys.”

  “Yours? Well, what in hell were they doing in Hess’s office?”