The Dead Fish Museum (21 page)

“Get up,” Ramage said.

“Just act right,” RB said. He slapped the pry bar in his palm. “Act right, you know what that means?”

“Enough,” Ramage said.

“Fuck enough,” RB said. “Little half-nigger almost fucked me up just being stupid.”

“He’s sorry,” Ramage said.

“I didn’t hear him say so,” RB said.

For the rest of the night, Ramage worked with Rigo close by his side. His silence got on Ramage’s nerves. After they’d hauled the last load of broken drywall outside, Ramage offered Rigo a cigarette.

“Don’t get all quiet inside yourself,” Ramage said. “It’s a pain in the ass to everyone else.”

Rigo said, “I quit.”

“It’s stupid to quit now. Hang in there, okay? Get paid.” Rain swept through the blue light of a street lamp. Ramage squeezed Rigo’s shoulder, giving it a pat. “The job’s done,” he said. “Gather up my tools and let’s get out of here.”

No one had arrived at the warehouse for the last day of shooting, and Ramage, after making coffee, sat alone in the black room; it was the only box still standing. The walls shone with the rich luster of ebony and his reflection floated as if submerged in dark water. Other than a bed, the room was empty of furniture. The floor was carpeted in orange shag and a pine box stood against one wall. Ramage opened the lid and found the day’s drama: a braided bullwhip, handcuffs, black leather chokers studded with chrome spikes. He lifted the bullwhip and gave it a crack in the air.

When Greenfield showed up, he stood in the middle of the warehouse, silently taking in the scene. He scuffed his cowboy boots on the floor. A long blue cigarette hung from his lips.

“Don’t put RB in the movie,” Ramage said.

“Why not?” Greenfield said. He looked at Ramage, and then up at the skylight, washed with gray.

“I just prefer it.”

“I was never going to anyway.”

“He’ll say you promised.”

“I can’t get caught up in all that,” Greenfield said. “You’re the foreman, you’re in charge of the cheap seats. You tell him.” Greenfield looked up at the skylight. “I still haven’t quoted
Citizen Kane,
” he said. “You know Rosebud was Hearst’s pet name for his mistress’s clit? You know that? Orson Welles knew that. Rosebud, Rosebud. It was an inside joke. It drove Hearst crazy.” He shaded his eyes against the gray light. “I’d like to get at least one shot of all this from above.”

RB was in back of the warehouse, dressed in slacks and a rayon shirt. The smell of pomade hung in the air around him, and he stood alone, rocking back and forth on the heels of his work boots, apparently the only shoes he’d brought with him. Ramage stepped next to RB, and for a full minute went unacknowledged.

Finally Ramage said, “I talked to Greenfield. There might not be time to get you in.”

RB hesitated, then resumed his rocking.

“It’s an orgy,” he said. “Everybody climbing all over everybody else, can’t tell one person from the next. I get in there, who cares? It’s all equal.”

“You can’t just walk on.”

“Won’t nobody know the difference.”

Four strands of rope were anchored to the corners of the room, and Desiree waited, shackled at the ankles and wrists, crouched quietly in the convergent center. Enough slack played in the rope for her to crawl a few feet in any direction. Her sunken reflection swam below the surface of the polished wall, surrounded by a vague wash of white faces. The wall did not reflect the crews’ eyes or mouths; black hollows bloomed in their heads like the holes in a skull. An assistant took a powder puff and dabbed away the glare from Desiree’s forehead. The chalky cloud caused her to sneeze.

The set was cleared, and Ramage left RB, who insisted on staying there on the sidelines until Greenfield called him in. Ramage went to sit on the fire escape. Rigo was planted in front of the peephole, peering through it as if it were a telescope, subdued and quiet, his open mouth pressed against the plywood. With RB out of the way, this was his chance, his opportunity. Then Ramage looked, too. Through a tangle of cameras and booms, he watched Desiree tug at one of the ropes binding her ankle. A hooded man cracked the bullwhip and the tasseled tip snapped against the back of her thigh. The contact was accidental, outside the choreography, and she lurched forward, trying with her bound wrist to protect herself. She howled, and then someone in the crew moved, standing in Ramage’s line of sight.

Ramage left Rigo and climbed the fire escape, making his way up a ladder that curled over the parapet and onto the roof. The skylight was made of green tinted glass and reinforced with chicken wire. Ramage shaded his eyes against the dull glare. Twenty feet below, the full cast was assembled, the orgy well under way, a swarm of white bodies that gradually came apart as men and women, pairing up, crawled across the orange carpet. They moved silently, dividing like cells and then joining again, their skin pale and colorless under the burning lights. The hooded man loomed over Desiree from behind, holding on to her hair like it was the reins of a horse. It was hard to imagine what exhaustion, what wasting away of power, would bring the orgy to an end. Everything was eternally available, everything equal. Ramage sat up and looked out over the town. Nothing moved, not a car, not a pedestrian. It felt as if some vast Sunday had devoured the day. The sea was flat and the waves rolled evenly along the shore.

After an hour, a raucous cheer rose from the set, and Ramage went downstairs, entering the warehouse ahead of Rigo. Greenfield bowed first toward the cast and then toward the crew, sweeping his hand along the floor. “Thank you one and all.”

Women wiped themselves off with towels. A few naked men stood nonchalantly in a huddle, asking one another about their itineraries, where they’d go next. Desiree’s skin had a stung, hectic appearance, and one of her ankles was still bound, the rope trailing after her as she moved about the set, saying her goodbyes.

RB was partly undressed, standing foolishly in his stocking feet and boxers and rayon shirt. He said to Ramage, “Greenwad fucked me.”

Ramage didn’t say anything.

“You get a bone on?” RB said, looking at Rigo. “You know what a bone is, right?” With a fist he feinted in the direction of Rigo’s crotch. “Huh, Harvard? A bone? A woody? Huh? You like seeing women tied up? That what you do in your country?”

Rigo reached for RB’s mouth as if to stop the flow of words, smashing it shut. An instant passed and then RB smiled, the gate of white teeth washed pink with blood. His lip was torn. RB slammed the butt of his palm against Rigo’s chin, shoving back on his jaw as though pounding open a door. It was a moment before anyone noticed, but then a circle gathered, and the onlookers, by their steady gazes, seemed to freeze the fight in tableau: Rigo fallen on the floor, RB smiling down on him. Rigo rose once more and rushed RB, and again RB knocked him to the ground. This time Ramage bent over Rigo and told him to stay down. RB’s hand filled with blood. He showed it to Ramage as if the substance puzzled him. “Fucking Harvard,” he said, and then he slowly wiped the blood off his hand, painting Rigo’s face with it.

After Greenfield paid him off, Ramage walked down to the pier, looking for Rigo. His encampment was on the lee side of a restroom; a picnic table tipped on its side formed a second wall of his shelter and he’d made a roof of the door he’d scrounged from the ocean. A small pit in the sand was filled with sticks of driftwood and wet ashes. Rigo was gone.

Desiree came by the motel later that evening, carrying her suitcase.

“Where to?” Ramage asked.

“Los Angeles,” she said. “Another job. You?”

“RB’s coming by,” Ramage said. “I’ve got to pay him. Then it’s over.”

“I had a dream about me and you last night. Somebody was taking us somewhere, they wanted to show us something. We were riding in the back seat of a limousine. There was a baby in it, this dead baby.”

Ramage waited. “And?”

“That’s it,” she said. “The baby was dead, but it wasn’t ugly and rotten or anything. It was just still.”

There was a hard rap on the door and Ramage answered.

“Oh boy, what do we have here?” RB said. He pointed to the bottle of rum. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Ramage found another plastic cup in the bathroom. He removed the safety seal and poured out a small measure of the rum and then watered it down. RB sat in the chair beside Desiree.

“I’ve got your money,” Ramage said.

“There’s no rush,” RB said.

RB fingered the arm of his chair, running a nail back and forth through the fretted grooves, blindly retracing a rosette. In a minute, Ramage decided, he would give RB his money. The bills were crisply folded into a small manila pay envelope Ramage had slipped into his shirt pocket.

RB finished his drink and tapped the plastic cup against the armchair. He looked at Desiree. “I was wondering, how is it you get paid? You get your money by the hour, or you get a salary, or what?”

“By the scene,” she said. She was looking at Ramage when she answered; her voice was barely audible.

“The scene? You mean what you do, how many times you do it, like that?”

“Will you call me a cab?” Desiree asked Ramage.

“Like two men—you do two men you get paid more?”

She nodded.

RB said, “I seen you in a movie with a midget. I figure a dwarf can do it, I can, too. You remember that guy, that midget?”

“Sure,” Desiree said.

“That was sick.”

She got up and went to the bathroom. RB and Ramage sat silently. Through the thin door, they could hear her peeing.

“Shouldn’t hang no hollow-core doors in a small room like this,” RB said. “No privacy.”

Ramage handed RB the envelope. “Here’s your money,” he said. “There’s a bonus.”

RB set the envelope aside.

“You all laid-in, you taken care of. Desiree Street, huh?”

“Take your money, RB.”

“Couldn’t have no nigger in on that.” RB counted his pay, tossing one of the bills to the floor. “I don’t want your bonus.”

Ramage dialed the phone and ordered a cab.

“Bitch taking a long-ass time in the bathroom,” RB said.

“Don’t make this a bad scene,” Ramage said. He twirled his drink as though there were ice in it.

Desiree came out of the bathroom. She sat on the bed and worked the strap of her sandals, refastening the tiny brass buckles.

RB said, “Why don’t we all make a movie?”

Desiree took a drink. Over the edge of her glass she said, “Where’s your camera?”

“In my head,” RB said.

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “You all got cameras in your head.”

“I’m not like all them.”

“None of you are like all of them.”

“In my movie,” RB said, “I wouldn’t tie you up and whip you or anything. I’d treat you right.”

“Sure you would,” Desiree said. “In your movie you’d send me flowers every day.”

Ramage followed Desiree out the door and through the empty lot to a waiting cab. She settled in the back seat and he waited, expecting her to roll down the window and say goodbye, but she didn’t. He went back to the room and gathered up his stuff, zipping his tool sack shut. RB had moved from the chair to the bed.

RB said, “I come here, I see you got your own little movie in progress. You didn’t want me in on your thing. You cut me out.”

“You’re wrong,” Ramage said. “There was no thing.”

“Spooky, man, how dumb do you think I am?”

He put his sack down in the motel lobby. Behind the glass, through a beaded curtain, he could see the blue glow of a television, could hear the snappy rhythm of sitcom repartee and the spurts of canned laughter. On top of the television, between a potted cactus and a jar of pennies, was a photograph of a young man and woman, circa 1950, the woman laughing, her light hair blown by some long-ago breeze, the man with a cigarette in his mouth and a collar upturned against the same stiff wind. Ramage couldn’t see where they were standing; the photo was overexposed and the background had bleached away. The desk clerk was asleep on the couch, her fat, heavy leg resting on a coffee table cluttered with magazines, a plastic bowl of popcorn, a can of diet soda, a spotless green ashtray. Ramage tapped the service bell.

“I’m checking out,” he said.

The woman looked through her files; she shrugged, hopeless.

“I can’t find your thing,” she said. “How long’ve you been here?”

“Three days,” Ramage said.

“Seems longer,” she said. She started the itemized math on a receipt.

Ramage separated seventy-five dollars from his pay and set the money on the counter. Outside, the motel’s blue vacancy sign was just beginning to glow in a halo of mist blowing up from the beach.

“Seventy-five,” the woman announced.

Ramage slid the money forward. “Kind of dead this time of year,” he said.

She gave him the receipt. “You know the others, that was next to you? They skipped out.”

“You should make people pay in advance,” Ramage said. They waited in an awkward frozen silence, staring at each other. Ramage rapped his knuckle on the counter, breaking the spell, and left.