He had a new squat now. A big two-bedroom on Fourth between B and C. Or actually, as he explained, it was more of a share. When he moved in, it had been a squat, because the owner, according to the tip he had received, was supposedly dead and there was no next of kin and the city had no immediate plans. A key had been under the mat and there was some furniture (including a sinkful of unwashed but perfectly usable dishes) and the electricity hadn’t been cut off: paradise. He thought about letting a couple of his colleagues from the demolished squat in on his find but decided to keep a low profile for a while. Which was a good thing. Because the owner wasn’t dead. He came in the second evening as Fish was flossing his teeth on the couch: an old guy in a beat-up porkpie. Fish stopped stock-still with the piece of floss between a pair of molars. The old guy, however, did not appear to see Fish, who was sitting very much in plain sight. This was because, as Fish quickly gathered, the old guy was blind. He was also, apparently, extremely hard of hearing. Fish had spotted a monstrous pair of hearing aids by the bed in the room he had not chosen to sleep in and the old guy’s ears were currently unencumbered. Fish stood up, very slowly, and went and leaned against the wall farthest away from the door. The old guy, who had not removed his beat-up porkpie, immediately started puttering around in the kitchen and singing to himself. He did the dishes, which Fish had added to, and he put away everything that was on the counter. Fish thought about getting his stuff and making his getaway while the old guy did his thing around the kitchen, but instead he kept leaning against the wall, and when he finally moved after the old man had gone into the bathroom and started a shower, it was just to go into the little room he had chosen and to go to sleep.
He still doesn’t know I’m there, said Fish.
I don’t believe you, I said. I don’t believe a word.
I’m pretty discreet and if I see he’s got his hearing aids in I don’t move.
What, he can’t smell either?
The guy’s ancient. Plus he’s always cooking. He likes spicy food.
You’re full of shit.
I keep my stuff under the bed.
You’re squatting in a guy’s place and the guy still lives there.
Like I said, it’s more of a share. Anyway, there’s weirder shit going on.
Which of course is true, and you don’t have to look very far to come up with examples. As a matter of fact I immediately thought, as Fish said this, of the story I had read that week about a woman who had kept the remains of her dead child in a box in a closet for twenty years. The extra-creepy part was that she had two other kids and they had grown up in the apartment with the remains of their sibling in a box in their mother’s room. Then there was the guy in the Bronx who kept a tiger as a pet. When the tiger started to get surly the owner moved out, returning daily to toss meat in to it. The neighbors heard roaring along with “odd thumping noises” but didn’t, they said, give it too much thought.
Anyway, not long after my experience with the unpleasant substitute dentist and subsequent conversation with Fish, my regular dentist informed me in a rather lengthy and unfortunately detailed phone message, which Carine listened to before I returned home, that I could no longer come to her office, that I could no longer set foot on her premises, that if I came back or followed her again she would call the police.
The blue envelopes became white envelopes from a collection agency. Then they became collection agents, joining the other collection agents, not to mention some of my former friends, including Fish, in pounding on my door.
One afternoon shortly after Aunt Lulu’s visit, I told Mr. Kindt some of what I have just related, including the anecdote regarding teeth, and he said, what did the dentist do? I said I didn’t know, because I hadn’t let Fish finish his story.
What kind of name is Fish? asked Mr. Kindt. Is it short for something? Fischbach or Fischstein or Fischman, perhaps?
I don’t know, I said.
It’s a very nice name, he said.
I thought you would like it.
I would like to be called Fish, said Mr. Kindt. Perhaps under other circumstances I would ask you to call me that.
He smiled. I thought about Fish and about calling Mr. Kindt, who cried when he thought of fish but not when he ate them, Fish, and smiled too.
But it is a shame that you didn’t permit him to finish his story, it is a promising beginning.
Is it?
It is. In the Leiden of my earlier days there was just such a dentist who had just such a dream.
There were dentists in those days?
After a fashion.
And how did his story end?
I don’t know, when I was told it the teller was called away before he could continue past the point where the soon crazed dentist takes a mallet to a young woman’s tooth.
Maybe it’s the same story, I said.
Likely, said Mr. Kindt. Many stories without clear endings are the same.
This remark made me think of Aunt Lulu and of a series of unpleasant afternoons many years before. It also made me think of Dr. Tulp, who that morning had told me I might soon be moving on and that the nature of our relationship would consequently change.
Change how? I had said.
Dr. Tulp hadn’t answered.
Do you mean that things between us might become more amicable?
Don’t you think they are quite amicable now?
I mean more amicable.
Dr. Tulp had smirked and shaken her head.
So am I better?
I’m not sure it’s useful at this juncture to think in terms of better or not better.
This is because of my aunt, right?
Do you feel like discussing your aunt now?
No, thanks.
Then we won’t.
So what will we discuss?
Dr. Tulp had looked at me, long and hard. She had crossed her legs and uncrossed them. She had lifted her clipboard and written something on it. She had stopped looking at me and looked at the clock over the whiteboard she sometimes used for drawing diagrams. She liked to use different colored markers for her diagrams. There were bits of violet, red, green, and blue ghosting the white surface. In one corner it was still possible to make out the remains of the adapted Greimas square she had used at a previous session to discuss opposites (life/death) and negatives (not-life/not-death) and the way these binaries interacted every time we said something. A reference to Gondola Bus Lines appeared to have figured into the discussion. I said “Gondola Bus Lines” aloud. For the second time. The first time having prompted her explanation of the diagram. This time she just nodded and tapped two long white fingers on the armrest of her chair.
I think we’re done for the day, Henry, she said.
I’m not sure I like this stories-without-endings thing, I told Mr. Kindt.
No, said Mr. Kindt, neither am I. Fortunately, many stories do have endings, even if they aren’t nice ones.
The last thing I have to say, in this connection, is that once as I was walking near the smoking rubble downtown I heard a guy say, with great depth and seriousness, my friends, it is my great delight to reveal to you that it is either a Ritz or it is a Saltine, and because I wasn’t in any big hurry, I stopped and asked him what “it” was.
The answer, he said.
That is the story of my teeth. The story of my life is different, though, and even if it is not entirely coherent, even if some parts have been elided into others, it does have a beginning, a middle, and an end.