I could not offer a solution to Olmstead’s worries, and so concentrated instead on delivering the most agreeable whole-body massage I could to this client whom, to my surprise, I had become so very fond of.
The hour after midnight that same evening found me once more down in the depths of the Palace with Usk. After our robust hinky-jinky and a chapter or two of Mr. Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River, I made to leave. But Usk detained me with a teasing query.
“You picked out your dress yet for the Prof’s coronation ball down in Washington?”
I halted in my tracks. “Whatever do you mean?”
“He’s got the Mayor and his cronies in his pocket now. Only a matter of time till the whole country’s his to command.”
“How so?” I demanded.
“That bum-wash what he and the doc cooked up. Makes any man the Prof’s slave. Saps their native will and substitutes the Prof’s.”
“I don’t believe you! The Professor is a noble intellect! He’d never stoop to such a thing!”
Usk shrugged. “Believe as you will, makes no nevermind to me.”
I stormed out, all in a dithery confusion. Should I confide this news to my sisters, and ask their advice? Confront the professor directly? Or do nothing at all?
I resolved to seek Olmstead’s guidance first.
The hours till our next appointment dragged their feet, but at last we were fragrantly en-tubbed together.
Before I could venture my request for guidance, Olmstead burst forth with plentiful yet somewhat inane zest.
“Lord above, I’ve never felt better nor been more peaceful of mind! All those troubles I was blathering about to you— Vanished like the snows of yesteryear! Who cares if the Fens ever get transformed? Not me! And to think I owe it all to high-colonic hydrotherapy!”
Rain in great sheets and buckets; rain in Niagara torrents; rain in Biblical proportions.
The skies had poured down their burden unceasingly for the past twenty-four hours, ever since I had left Olmstead, as if in synchrony with my foul, black mood. Nor did they seem disposed to stop.
Just beyond the walls of the Palace, the throbbing, gushing waters of the Charles were rising, rising, rising. I could feel them, even out of sight. It even seemed possible they would soon threaten to lap at the catwalk where I had eavesdropped, high as it was.
All the talk among the patrons of the Palace centred about roads swamped, bridges washed away, dams upriver that were bulging at their seams.
Something had to be done. About my anger, about the professor, about the subversion of poor Olmstead. But what?
The professor had been like a father to me and my sisters. We owed him our work, our maintenance, our purpose in life.
But didn’t he in turn owe us something? Honesty, if nothing else?
Finally, when I had worked myself into a right tizzy, I stamped my way to Professor Fluvius’s office, and barged in without knocking.
He was there, seated behind his big seashell desk, idle, back to me, looking out the window at the incessant precipitation with what I immediately sensed was a melancholy ruminativeness. I stood, quivering and silent, till at last he wheeled to face me. His long tresses, white as sea spume, framed a sad and sober visage.
“Ah, Charlene, my most local and potent child. I should have known it would be you who might tumble to my schemes. I hope you’ll allow me to explain.”
“What is there to explain! You’re bent on accumulating a greedy power over your fellow men!”
The professor chuckled wryly. “These men are not my fellows. But yes, I need to pull their strings for a while.”
“To glorify yourself!”
Professor Fluvius arose and hastened toward me. I took a step or two backwards.
“No, Charlene! Not at all. Or rather, yes. I seek to glorify what I represent. The natural state of all creation. This city— It’s an emblem of all that’s wrong with mankind. That’s why I established my Palace here, on the front lines of the battle. Can’t you see what they’re doing? Tearing down their hills and dumping them into the waters! It’s an assault. Yes, an assault on creation. If they succeed here, they’ll go on without compunction, dumping whatever they wish into the seven seas, into rivers and canyons. Before too long, the whole of nature will be naught but a soiled toilet! I had to stop them, here and now and hence forever. You must see that!”
The words of my master tugged at my loyalty and heart. But counterposed against them was my affection for Olmstead, and my own sense of thwarted individual destiny.
“No!” I yelled. “I won’t let you! I’ll stop you! Stop you now!”
And so saying, I slammed my small fists into his blue-vested chest.
The professor’s face assumed a wrathful mien I had never before witnessed. That blow seemed to unleash greater cataracts from the sky. The noise of the rain threatened to flood my ears. But I could still hear his words.
“You belong to me! You are naught but a tributary! You flow into my vastness! You shall not rebel!”
He gripped me fiercely by my upper arms. Instantly I felt tethers of strange energies enwrap us, coursing into and out of us both. For his part, Fluvius seemed to be drawing on some vast but distant reservoir, while my own forces were smaller, but closer to hand.
Immobile as statues, we struggled mightily in this invisible fashion, while the rain cascaded down.
And then somehow I felt the presence of my sister Naiads at my back, offering support and sustenance. I seemed to hear them speak with a single voice:
“Bold and deep-souled Nodens oversteps himself. He distrusts and hates all men. But we, we who wind our courses gently among them, fertilizing their fields, ferrying their goods, supplying their recreation—we do not. We must give them a chance to be their best selves. End this now, sister.”
And I did, with their help.
Out the window that looked upriver, I could see the wall of dirty, debris-laden water barrelling down, high as the steeple of the Old North Church, aimed to sweep the shoreline clean, and take the Palace down.
Professor Nodens Fluvius saw too, and in the final moment before it hit us, I thought to detect a trace of pride and even approval in his expression.
When that liquid avalanche struck the Palace, tearing it off its foundations, drowning its boilers, I too dissolved, along with Fluvius and my sisters and even Usk. (Of the poor unfortunate mortals caught therein, I speak not.) I dissolved back to what I had been before I awoke on that damp coverlet, not knowing my name, back to an existence of endless flow, never the same from moment to moment, yet eternal, owning a mouth that pressed wetly against my old master, yet this time retaining my name.
Charlene, or Charlie, or Charles.
YES WE HAVE NO BANANAS
1. INVASION OF THE SHOREBIRDS
Thirty years worth of living, dumped out on the sidewalk, raw pickings for the nocturnal Street Gleaners tribe. Not literally yet, but it might just as well be—would be soon, given the damn rotten luck of Tug Gingerella. He was practically as dead as bananas. Extinct!
How was he going to manage this unwarranted, unexpected, inexorable eviction?
Goddamn greedy Godbout!
The space was nothing much. One small, well-used, five-room apartment in a building named The Wyandot. Bachelor’s digs, save for those three tumultuous years with Olive. Crates of books, his parents’ old Heywood-Wakefield furniture that he had inherited, cheaply framed but valuable vintage lobby poster featuring the happy image of Deanna Durbin warbling as Mary Poppins. Shabby clothes, mostly flannel and denim and Duofold, cargo shorts and Sandwich Island shirts; cast-iron cornbread skillets; favourite music on outmoded media: scratch slates, holo transects, grail packs, and their various stacked players, natch. Goodfaith Industries metal-topped kitchen table, Solace Army shelves, a painting by Karsh Swinehart (a storm-tossed sailboat just offshore from local Pleistocene Point, Turneresque by way of Thomas Cole).