The air-conditioning continued to murmur away like God’s own brook, unaware that it was a mere appliance, albeit a half-a-million-dollar one. Stumpp couldn’t look at his elephants anymore. He didn’t know why he came in here so much. Was coming in more and more. It hadn’t been that long ago that there was meaning for him here, and now it meant less every time. Couldn’t be good. He dimmed the lights and locked up, then followed the yellow footprints down the hall to the Wildebeest Lounge. Yellow footprints went to the lounge, blue to the exit, white to the water closet, green to the gift shop, red to the petting menagerie. Ridiculous idea though it had been his own, Stumpp being directionally challenged. No inner logic to the color code, no basis in anything. Still, of no import. Hadn’t they gotten all the colors mixed up in some early translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead? Now, there was a blunder. Someone working away on day seven after death or whatever day it was, working at following the red light and red wasn’t the right light at all, took them straight to Hell.
Stumpp made another martini in the lounge, then went into the cafeteria and popped a bagel in the toaster oven. Onion, his least favorite. Only onion left. Old people had taken all the sugar packets again, kiddies had lightly unscrewed the tops of all the condiments. He ate his supper hurriedly, keeping all further thoughts at bay, rinsed his glass and plate, set all alarms, and walked out through the blueblack night to his blueblack limousine.
35
We went sailing today. It was a lovely day, you would’ve enjoyed it.
A good brisk sail with a following sea.”
“Darling?” Carter said.
“Yes?”
“That’s impossible.” He was going to stress this from now on in his dealings with Ginger.
She crossed one tanned leg over the other. “It was”—she paused—“a ketch. It was not a yawl. Won’t ever mix those two up again. I remember asking you and asking you in the past and you never made the distinction clear. She was all polished and bright, and she had a lovely name. Her name was Revelance.”
“Darling?” Carter said.
“Yes?”
“Don’t you mean Relevance?”
“No, I do not mean Relevance, I mean Revelance.”
“But she couldn’t be named Revelance, darling. That would be a mistake. Now, it may very well be a mistake and your recollection quite accurate. The person who painted the name on the stern just got himself too close to the work. The fellow’s laboring over one big letter at a time with the utmost care, and he loses, well, not perspective, but the sense of order, and an error is born. I’m trying to put myself in the poor man’s shoes, darling.”
“What are you talking about?” Ginger said with disgust. “You’re not making any sense. You have no grasp of the situation at all. My best friend here is Cherity, are you going to dispute her name as well? You can’t even picture this vessel, can you?”
“You said it was a ketch,” Carter said dispiritedly. Scarcely out of the gate, and he’d faltered in his reserve.
“Try to picture the vessel with me, Carter.”
“No,” Carter said.
“Try to picture us all on board.”
“No, no,” Carter said.
She smiled at him in a friendly fashion, which was not like Ginger at all. The cordiality emanating from her felt almost sticky. She held the smile steadily aloft.
“Getting out on the, ah … water, certainly seems to agree with you,” Carter said.
“You should come along next time. Always room for one more on the Revelance.”
Carter winced. He simply could not stand the name. “I don’t think I’d be welcome.”
“Oh, you would, Carter, you would!” She bent toward him. “Why stay here? This is no place for you. Do you know that the desert is the loneliest land ever to come from God’s hand?”
“No, I … why, that’s very prettily put.”
“He said that himself. Didn’t know why he even bothered making the damn thing.”
“Actually,” Carter said, “on further reflection I’d have to disagree. I don’t think it’s any lonelier than anyplace else.”
“You disagree?” Ginger said.
“That is only one of the sometimes many benefits of being alive, as opposed to being dead. When you’re dead, as you are, Ginger, you don’t have the option of expressing a conflicting point of view.”
“You are actually disagreeing with—”
“Plus, when dead, I suppose you’re more conscious of which side your bread is buttered on.”
“I fail to appreciate the point you’re making here, Carter.”
She had recovered the use of phrasing, at least. They’d always been known for their educated quarrels. If overheard, people would say, “Well, at least it’s an educated quarrel.”
With a start, he realized it was daytime. Ginger was here at the pinnacle of healthful day, when the arrows of death flew unseen. This new development perturbed him. She had reached some new level of accomplishment or confidence. Daylight was streaming into the room as though to some promised jubilee.
Donald had suggested that Carter simply tell Ginger to go away, which just showed how little the wonderful boy knew about women, particularly a woman like Ginger. But Donald insisted that his mother had good luck with this back in Nantucket when there were silverfish in the drawers. “Go away,” she’d said firmly to the silverfish, not yelling, and they had. Another suggestion of Donald’s, which he’d carried out surreptitiously, was to scatter salt in the corners of the bedroom, but that had not been effective either. He’d had an idea himself but had forgotten it. What had it been? An apathy had overtaken him in the last few days, a numbness, a peculiar weariness. A hair had sprouted from his ear, vigorously long and ugly. His headaches were adopting a schedule of sorts. His feet itched.
There was a knock on the door.
“I’m not leaving,” Ginger said.
“Daddy?” Annabel called.
“What do you mean, you’re not leaving?”
“I won’t leave, and there’s nothing you can do to make me, nothing at all. Your crucials are at hand,” she added, alarmingly.
“Daddy!” Annabel cried. “A terrible thing has happened.”
He flung open the door.
Annabel was holding a crumpled paper napkin in her hand. “She blew her nose in it!” she wailed.
Carter looked at it, dumbfounded. It did look used, not disgustingly so but definitely damp; a paper napkin, after all, fulfilling, perhaps, its destiny.
“I’m sorry,” Alice called from somewhere.
“We were in my room,” Annabel cried, “and I have this little thing for Mommy there that I’ve made.”
“A thing for Mommy,” Carter said. “What kind of thing for Mommy?”