Fifty Mice Part 16

Jay nods. "No. Okay. It looks a little fancier than the memory stick I use to back up my iTunes. Which is maybe one gig. What happened to exhibit A?"

"You." Both of Magoniss eyes sync and settle on Jay. "Youre exhibit A."

Jay was pretty sure this was the answer hed get, but it still has a troubling chill to it. He flips the flash drive back onto the desk. "What about the flower girl?"

"Shes deceased."

Jay walks to the window, buying himself time to sort these details, then turns, thoughtful. "You guys think I have the list?" Suddenly it all lines up: the someone who broke into his apartment was a Doe, or a Public: Feds. Looking for their list. When they couldnt find it, they grabbed him, they expected him to come clean right away, and when he didnt, this, the island, the safe house, the questions, Magonis. Convinced somehow that Jay has it and/or has hidden it and/or knows where it is.

But Jay wonders, again, ineluctably, Why?

"I dont know that you do or dont," Magonis responds without inflection. Then, thoughtfully: "If you pressed me, Id say you didnt. But some of us think you do know why we dont have the list anymore.

"And herein lies the irony of your fortune tellers prediction: Unless you remember? You and I will be here, on this rock, in this room, Prometheus and an old walleyed eagle, doing this, this crazy headshrinking rondel, hoping," Magonis adds, coldly, matter-of-fact, "that, G.o.d forbid, n.o.body gets it into his tiny paranoid impatient bureaucratic mind that it might be a whole lot easier to put a bullet in your head and disappear you in the rocky depths off Jewfish Point and hope that the list is never found."

16 .

THE RESERVOIR, filled to capacity for so long, now tapped, empties of all the words Helens held hostage.

It turns every walk home into an aria.

Each afternoon, from the schoolyard to the bottom of the hill that leads to their bungalow, the little girl serenades him with a steady outflow of eight-year-old chinwaggery, like some midget castrato AM radio talk show host on Red Bull: Barbie, Ariel the mermaid, puppies, unicorns, musicals, playground etiquette, the magnificence of Miss Healy (best second-grade teacher ever), peanut b.u.t.ter vs. Nutella (close call, but only one comes in crunchy), Jenny Humberts hair (all the way down to here), ocelots, the possible extinction of the narwhal, clips vs. scrunchies, green-tea ice cream (how weird is that?), Charlottes Web (its true, animals can talk to one another and we dont understand them), why there are words that sound the same but mean different things, triangles, counting by threes, Movies I Know Id Like if Mommy Ginger Would Let Me See Them, Arlo the Shaky Kids struggle with quiet time, ponies and horses, good cat names, state capitals, mysterious possible barf under the play structure, favorite food (Chinese chicken salad), and why the Chumash people ate grunions. Every afternoon Jay and Helen take their downtown Avalon loop through the cool winter shadows of the bay-facing businesses. Water slaps against the seawall, sailboat riggings rattle, and Helen talks.

"-Ive always wanted to live in a village like Belle and have all the villagers say h.e.l.lo and sing and Id walk to school instead of going there in the car, so, yeah, like this place, I guess, except its not really where we live, is it? In the place where I used to live it wasnt a village, really, it was apartments and not so many trees, bigger and kind of scary and I couldnt go outside because of the bad kids and mean dogs and stuff. But Mommy says nothing is like a cartoon, and I know that, everyone tells me its not real, but it could be, couldnt it?"

Jay doesnt disagree.

"And there could be magical animals and spoons that can talk. And there could be a Santa Claus even if he doesnt come to my house. And my friend Jenny who I dont know anymore was nice and gave me a hair band that had real jewels but I lost it. The jewels werent actually real, just real for me, but. I dont miss her. Jenny. Sometimes she was mean."

The maze her mind runs never fails to enthrall him; eight years old, the same age as was Jay when his life disa.s.sembled. They never talk about why she quit talking, or whether shes who has a secret the Feds want to protect, and not Ginger.

No one follows them.

The busboys have left the island, evidently their cooling out completed, and the Wednesday game has been bolstered by new faces: a pale, frightened, hair-challenged man who says little and does nothing but jack up long shots that rarely hit; a short young woman who mustve played in college and trash-talks the Conservancy interns until theyre crippled with laughter; a Fed, Jay can tell hes a Fed, who works out of the island bank and fouls hard.

"But shouldnt everyone have, like, a village, and friends, and magic?" Helen is asking. "And there wouldnt have to be some guy with a flute like in the Pied Piper were doing, luring the children off into caves because the mommies and daddies wont give him his money. A safe place for a family. Because kids have to be safe so they wont mind how tough things are, later, when they get older, because theyre sort of like, I dont know, they get real, real . . . well, tired? for one thing." Sometimes she loses the thread. "So they dont give a hoot? And need to take a nap and then, when they get up, they can have a Harvey Wallhanger or something and then kick back and forgetabout.i.t!" She cracks herself up, and laughs too hard, and they have to stop, and Jay waits for her to calm down, pretending hes found something interesting in the dusty antiques store window that reflects their mirror images back at them.

Behind Jay, a spectral Catalina ferryboat idles out at the transparent jetty, taunting him, as always, with escape and freedom. If thats what he still wants.

"-Im just being silly." Helen catches her breath.

Jay says, "Harvey Wallbanger, not-"

"My old daddy liked them," the girl says absently, leaking something from that private part of herself without even realizing it. "I think they taste like cough syrup."

"Old daddy?"

Helen frowns then, made cautious, and doesnt answer him, as if two worlds have collided and canceled each other out. "Nothing," she decides finally.

"What was he like? What did he do?"

"I dont know," Helen says too quickly. "Theyre not for kids," she observes. "Harvey whatevers. Are they?"

"No."

"Im only ever talking to you," she reminds Jay gravely. "n.o.body else."

"Only ever. That sounds like a long time. Why? Why not your mommy, or-"

"Mean," Helen says out of nowhere, and it takes Jay a moment to understand what shes talking about: the old daddy. "He was really really mean." She stares up at Jay, in the window, abruptly saddened, and then goes completely expressionless. Shes learned to turn her emotions on and off; at the age of eight Jay found the off switch but had a more difficult time finding the on. "Everything is hard to understand."

"Youre not wrong," Jay says.

"Does that mean Im right?" This cheers her; she announces, "The rule from now on is there always has to be a mommy and a daddy."

Jay doesnt know what to say to this.

"I decree. In my land. Its like if you have food on your plate, you have to eat it. And youre the daddy, right?"

He looks at her reflection, s.h.i.+mmery in the gla.s.s, angled, slightly set back from him, in the shade, with the sunlight bright behind her. The ferry is heading back to San Pedro, a slurring slash of white in the window-gla.s.s bluescape.

A man who looks a lot like Sam Dunn stands on the pier with a new boat-kiosk guy, both with arms akimbo, legs wide, like cardboard cutouts. Dunn should be on his plane, making his afternoon mail run, Jay thinks absently. Is it not a daily flight? He files this away, with the other bits and pieces hes collecting: the Realtors unused golf cart, the coming and going of delivery trucks from the north island, the faces of locals who pay too much attention to him and tourists who return with regularity but no firm purpose, the slow relaxing of federal vigilance that hes felt more than observed.

"Youre the daddy. Thats what Mommy said," Helen adds to fill the silence, less sure of herself.

"Im not, though," Jay says, so regretful that it surprises him. "Not really."

"Yes, you are." In Helens tone he hears Gingers familiar Dont contradict me. "You are," Helen repeats. "Thats what you are now, and Mommys Mommy and Im . . . me. Helen."

"Its parts in a musical, isnt it? Just for the show. You cant make something so just by saying it is."

Helen looks at him fiercely, with a small childs intractable conviction. "You can if you want to."

"And if I dont?"

"What?"

"If I dont want to make something so just by saying it is."

Helen is quiet. Then, in a pretty good eight-year-olds imitation of Jay: "Yeah, well, but once you get past that-"

Jay laughs. "-Clouds?"

Helen nods, solemn but pleased: "Clouds."

Behind them, the sun is, in fact, curtained by a cloud and the light level dips and their reflections dissolve and now Jay can clearly see the baroque cerise velvet chaise longue featured prominently in the front display. He muses: Who on this island would buy that? He thinks: If everyone here is like me, hiding, holding back, trawling through the murky waters of their past for memories someone else needs, and tending to pointless businesses existing only to give legitimacy to the lie- -how is that different from real life?

The ferryboat horn bleats a faint, last good-bye as it clears the speed buoys, its dark, departing shape barely a punctuation on the seam between the sea and mainland. Dunn and the boat-rental guy have gone into the kiosk.

Helen steps up next to Jay, and takes his hand and presses her nose against the window and makes a low animal noise in her throat.

"Why did you tell me Ginger wasnt your mom?" Jay asks, fis.h.i.+ng. "The other day?"

"I dont know." Helen probes her nostril with a wiggling finger, and then gestures royally to the chaise with the other hand. "Thats pretty. Its, like, for a princess, from a castle. Id want to have it in my room and lie on it. But not be Sleeping Beauty. And I dont like the color. Do you think it can talk?"

Jay is still back with her reveal: "What did you mean, Gingers not your mom?"

"What?"

"Helen-"

"I dont know. I just said it."

"Whos your real mommy?"

Helen takes her hand away, wont look at him. She breathes out and fogs the gla.s.s and draws a circle with two dots and cat ears before the condensation evaporates. "You dont want to be my dad?"

Jay no longer has an answer for this, everything has become so involute. So layered and confusing.

Gold-brocade curtains cascade around either edge of the chaise. A neon sign that tilts down overhead past the awning from the second-floor hotel spells VACANCY backward and gleams and trembles in the pair of filigree mirrors bookending the chaise.

After a while, Jay wonders aloud what color Helen thinks it should be. Helen says she doesnt know, but suggests pink, her color default.

Jay frowns at the chaise. "That is pink."

"No. Its just light red." Bored: "Can we go now? I think Mommys making cookies."

"Ginger?"

"Mommy." She looks at him, challenging him to deny her this. He wont.

The sun behind them blazes again, cloud-free, and Helen, as if quoting (Ginger, probably), turns away, declaring: "Family is everything." She walks out into the sunlight and away down the street.

Jay stays for a moment, staring at his reflection, which seems, suddenly, a stranger to him. By the time he moves, Helen is marching off, small, happy again, singing at the top of her lungs and tunelessly: "Family is everything," with the chorus, "thats the way its going to be."

"You got it all figured out," Jay says.

"Yep." Helen skips ahead, turns, and walks backward, facing him, smiling. "It was really really really hard. But you know what? It doesnt even matter what I say, because things just are what they are," she sings, making up her own musical, "and theyre not what theyre not-thats what I say so its so," after which she launches into another monologue about good Jenny and bad Jenny that takes them all the way to the end of the street and around the corner.

17 .

SMOKE FROM A BARBECUE, thick and black, roiling, eddies alchemical around John Public and his snorkel, mask, and tongs, flipping chicken and pouring some of his beer on the red-hot coals of the Weber grill, causing even more smoke, smoke so dense it drives even the few nicotine diehards and their ringleader, Magonis, back into Jay and Gingers bungalow from the patio behind it, where theyve been communing with a pack of Kools.

The little house overflows with guests: some federal agents (known and not), and a potpourri of island full-timers (in-program and oblivious to it) Public has encouraged Ginger to invite; a casual neighborhood housewarming party for all appearances, good form now that theyve been here for more than a month, with music blaring, white and red meat, potato salad, a potluck of appetizers, much beer consumed, pretzels and crackers and chips and trail mix getting macerated into the floor and the Fed-who-calls-herself-Sandy making frozen strawberry margaritas nonstop in a blender, her sneakers starting to stick to the linoleum.

In the kitchen, Jay and Helen leak tears while carefully chopping tomatoes and peppers and the offending yellow onions under the watchful eye of garrulous Barry Stone, whos been tasked with wrangling the avocados for the guacamole but is concurrently giving a lithe, hard, leathery Avalon divorcee in a black tennis skirt the b.u.ms rush.

"So, you know, Im thinking-and, well"-s.h.i.+fting his weight so that his shoulder angles closer to her-"frankly, its a thought that comes over me in so many situations involving a gathering that parties, you know"-he leers- ". . . wild."

Heavy-lidded, she furrows impossibly pencil-thin brows: "You think this is wild?

"I sold a house," the woman confides, dropping her voice to a murmur, "to a famous celebrity-I wont say who-recently, I cant divulge details, but let us just say that men and women, girls really"-she plucks a grain of mascara from her eyelash and studies it-"in the infinity pool," she adds, "the only infinity pool on the island, but you cant see it, totally secluded, so . . ." She smooths her skirt and crosses her arms under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, lifting them. "Completely naked and unabashed. Men with augmentations and women l.a.b.i.ally sculpted in the spirit of what my plastic surgeon calls the Barbie. 'Libertine is a word you might use. Wild," she concludes, and then, husky, "you have no idea."

At the sink, Ginger, watching everything, eyes bright, shucking the husks off corn: the odd angles of Barry and his a.s.signation as they pose and posture like fas.h.i.+on models, mid-shoot: the protective curve of Jays back as he helps Helen: and through the back doorway, Public darting in and out of its frame, grill smoke blowing off-patio now, and Public, mask up, snorkel dangling, in deep consultation with Leo, the French special forces vet. "Transi de froid" is what Leo keeps barking.

Jay watches Ginger watch.

Barry smiles faintly. "We are what others decide we are. Right? I mean, hey, reality, its consensual. Right? What the doctor says. And vice versa. So, its like, from their point of view, au naturel, plumped and tucked in the amniotic embrace of the watery infinite . . ." He shrugs and lets his murky insinuation hang.

"Well, no," the lithe woman disagrees. "Some real is not negotiable. Im a Realtor, whether you or anyone else agrees that I am or not. Its not up for discussion, it just is. I dont believe in body modification. And my current Realtors reality is somebody keeps stealing my golf cart from behind the office. Its annoying."

"Stealing is a consensual relations.h.i.+p." Barrys chin goes sagely up and down. "Isnt it? And for whoevers doing the taking of your cart, I dunno, their reality might be more in the vein of you lending and them borrowing. Wouldnt you agree, Jimmy?"

Jay blades away onion tears with the heel of his hand and looks at them, caught short, wondering if its possible the Feds know about his inner-island sorties, or if this is just Barry stumbling around in the dark, running into things.

"I thought your name was Jay," the Realtor says, twining long brown legs and raising up on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet like a dancer.

"Well, yeah. In almost every reality but his."

Barry laughs. "J. J for Jimmy," he tries to explain. Then, gesturing to the onions piling up in front of Helen on the cutting board, "Mince, dont chop. Mince."

Jay holds Helens hand and guides the knife until she finds the rhythm of it again.

"Maybe you shouldnt be letting such a little one handle that big sharp knife," Barry parents.

"Have you met Bobs wife?" Jay asks the Realtor, gesturing to the blender, and hardworking Sandy. The lithe woman has not; she smiles emptily and abruptly drifts sideways as if shed been meaning to do it for a while now, opening up the s.p.a.ce between her and Barry.

Dropping the last of the corn into boiling water on the stove, Ginger, watching this, too, locks eyes with Jay and then walks out of the kitchen.

"Ball and chain," Barry jokes, brittle. "And my names Barry," he tells the Realtor, "hes just-" Spell broken, the Realtor keeps sliding away.

Jay nods, "-Confused." Then, softly: "Bob?"