Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales (23 page)

For some reason, the Whom of Kaboom and his entourage came to our town. I guess they thought a failing waterfront would be fun. Anyway, he brought his yacht and invited Easel “Jack” Kovach to go on a cruise with him. He’s that artist who did the infamous Venus de Mylar in front of City Hall. You know—that thing you have to walk all the way around to get past. Why a celebrity like Jack the Hipper should live in this dump, I don’t know, but I once heard him say on the news he did it as a joke. When the Whom invited him Easel asked if he could bring a dozen friends, thinking that was a joke, too, so imagine his concealed surprise when the Whom instantly agreed.

The problem was, Easel had just published his tell-all autobiography, and now he didn’t have a dozen friends. So, he invited a dozen people at random out of the phone book. It was supposed to be conceptual art, and even the Whom could appreciate the publicity that comes from charity. Anyway, I was invited, and so were some people you wouldn’t want to meet. One you wouldn’t mind meeting, but one you wouldn’t remember meeting, was a little old lady named Reedy Wetwagon. She had never harmed anyone in her life, and to make sure, she never married or raised children. She was not only the most harmless but the oldest person on board, because the Whom may look dissipated, but he’s youngish, and he likes a young staff, and even the yacht’s captain was on his first command. Reedy didn’t quite understand why she’d been invited, and I didn’t either until my wife pointed out it was a joke, it was to mock me. Still, I decided to go on the cruise for the experience. And there was the possibility it might somehow be glamorous fun.

We set sail through a forest of flashbulbs. I was introduced to the Whom very briefly, but it was obvious we wouldn’t spend any time with him or Easel Kovach. His assistant shook my hand for him, and the Whom asked me if I liked the skyline, but all I could think to say was that the new buildings looked like stacks of silver quarters. He smiled a little, and said that to him they looked like those peaked horns you see on demonic idols. That was the last I saw of him until the shark appeared.

The skyline, evil or not, soon disappeared from the horizon, and the caterers opened a perpetual
buffet. The other random guests and I pretty much stationed ourselves there, except Reedy Wetwagon, who sat at the back of the dining room. She kept waiting for everyone to sit down, so she could fill her plate without jostling anyone, but the catering staff had to stand at the table at all times, and she didn’t want to jostle them either, so she went unfed.

Meanwhile, according to our steward, the whole trip was a business expense. The Whom and Easel were having even more exceptional food in the Whom’s cabin, where he was outlining a proposal to have Easel design a skyscraper in the shape of Kaboom itself. This would not have been easy, because I’ve seen Kaboom on the map and its borders are very ragged. The building, and Easel’s fee, would have been colossal. Hundreds of rotating searchlights aimed in every direction would have been built into it, like X-ray eyes trying to see what was in the safe, or even where the safe was, and the traditional music of Kaboom would have been broadcast from hundreds of speakers at all times. The Whom said it was time our town knew what Kaboom sounded like. It sounds impressive, and I suppose there were a few janitorial jobs in it, but I still feel it was to make fun of our town. If it had been built, I don’t suppose anyone here would ever have gotten any sleep again. Anyway, the steward said Easel seemed willing enough but admitted he was no architect, and pointed out that anything he designed might collapse or at least not support furniture or people. The Whom said it didn’t have to, that the whole skyscraper could be hollow, no one would need to go inside it. It
sounds more like a statue, but I wasn’t there, so I don’t grasp the fine points.

Just as the steward was telling us this gossip, a great storm arose, and the yacht was tossed in the mad maternal arms of the sea. The buffet table overturned and that started a panic. We heard a strange roar and we all ran out on deck. There in the water was the world’s largest shark, and it began to demand a human sacrifice. I don’t know what was more impressive, its enormous size, or that deep voice, but in the dementia of the storm it all seemed inevitable and natural. Apparently celebrities are attracted to each other, and when the Whom finally appeared on the upper deck, he shouted that he knew this shark. I guess they had met somewhere. He shook his combination scepter-phone at it and officially damned it, but he seemed to have no immediate power over it.

The dead-eyed fish kept on demanding a human sacrifice, as if it were responsible for the storm and could still the waters once it was fed. The Whom went back into his cabin, which I don’t think he should have done, but at the time we assumed he was fetching a harpoon. The danger didn’t seem to register with Easel, either, because he started taking photos of the shark. I guess they might have been for the police later, but I doubt you would have trouble picking it in a lineup. Unluckily for Reedy, the crew and most of the passengers were superstitious under their clean clothes, and crisis does bring out the craven and primitive. The captain, who really was too young, said in a jittery voice that it was a Jonah situation,
and he called for straws to be drawn to see who would be thrown overboard. There were no straws on board, since this was a high-tech kind of yacht, so swizzle sticks were passed around, on the understanding that whoever got the least fancy one was to be God’s choice for Jonah. As it happened, and I had my eyes closed the whole time, the old lady got the plainest swizzle stick, one with just a spherical knob at the end. Obviously, someone had to give it to her, but all I knew was that I had gotten one with a tiny pagoda that had pink elephants waving from its tiers, so I was safe.

Surprisingly, though I guess it made sense, Reedy Wetwagon didn’t resist her selection. If she had, it might have caused an argument, and she also figured she really ought to pay for the cruise somehow, and it might as well be with her life. Chance had raised her high, so she owed it the favor of going when it sent her home. All she requested was that Easel do a sketch of her before she was thrown overboard. Even harmless types dream of immortality, and in her mind she may have thought its monetary value would help her somehow. He hadn’t brought any materials with him, unfortunately, and even though the captain had pencils and chalk on the bridge, Easel didn’t like them. The old lady herself had an Instamatic camera, however, and the famous artist offered to take her picture with it, since the fact that he had pressed the button would make people look at it. He took her picture, and she started to weep—over the attention, I guess, and the fact that she was to be thrown overboard.

The storm had continued to rage all this time, and the other guests got hysterical and shouted for the old woman to be thrown to the shark. They got violent about it, which I guess you should expect if you just pick twelve names at random out of the phone book to share times of crisis with. I admit I started screaming, but it wasn’t anything about her. I never screamed anything about throwing her overboard. I just sort of screamed so no one would notice me.

Then the littlest of the caterers—who looked like an orphan with his bangs, and someone had said he was—slammed two serving trays together to get everyone’s attention. He offered to carve a likeness of the old lady out of ice and throw it to the shark instead. He had already carved ice centerpieces for the buffet tables, mostly of eagles, swans ridden by figures of the Whom, and what was either a flat-topped dollar sign or a letter S, for Super, I guess. Anyway, Easel said that he could do a more memorable job than the caterer, even though ice wasn’t his medium, but he pointed out that this shark was no fool, and if it could speak to make ultimatums, not to mention control the sea and the elements, then it probably knew ice from flesh and blood.

Suddenly the caterer grabbed a crate of after-dinner mints and threw them overboard, hoping to convince the shark that it had already eaten. You have to admire him, since he was small and everyone wanted to throw him to the shark if the old lady didn’t work out. Maybe that’s why he did it, but I’d like to think he was the baby she might have had and
given up for adoption and she was the mother he never knew. She was way too old, I suppose, but I’m sentimental, and if they weren’t related it’s unclear why he was so persistent. He was crying, too, but to be fair his buffet had been overturned and he was soaking wet.

The shark swallowed the crate, all right, but the sugar rush from the mints only made it intensify its cries for a sacrifice, and it began to chant the old lady’s name. It’s funny, because everyone else on board certainly had more meat on them than she did, and the Whom is enormous, but the shark seemed to be looking forward to eating her, since she had been selected by fate, and sharks aren’t necessarily above superstition themselves. It wanted what it had become convinced it had coming to it.

Then the little caterer threw the shark a tan-colored deck chair, hoping it would mistake it for a scrawny human sacrifice, but the shark knew better the moment it swallowed it. At last there was nothing to do but throw the old woman overboard, because the caterer had passed out after hurling the chair. One of the guests was an accountant and said Reedy had the least life to lose, so it was the best thing. I averted my eyes.

No sooner had she been tossed to the shark and swallowed than the mood on board became remorseful and more rational, a sort of postcoital enlightenment. The Whom finally emerged from his cabin and said he had just had to take an important phone call, but it was a secret and he couldn’t tell us who had called. It reminded me that despite all their money,
the people of Kaboom always depend on us to defend them. Everyone below realized that we had capitulated to the shark’s demands too quickly, and since it was a talking shark, we wished we had tried to reason with it, to offer it money or other alternative booty mere dumb unspeaking fish would turn up their noselessness at. I had felt that way all along, but no one had asked me.

We all noticed that the storm still continued to rock the yacht. That was something else we hadn’t considered. The shark had been bluffing. This got the Whom furious. He was angrier about the blow to his entrepreneurial pride than out of love for the old woman, who, with all respect, was a total stranger to him and too insipid for anyone to love deeply. The bad weather put him out of sorts, too. He shouted curses at the shark again, and spat into the water in challenge. Then he sent his bodyguards into the roiling icy waters to punish the shark for its misrepresentations and fraud. The little caterer regained consciousness and volunteered to go into the brine himself, but although no one discouraged him, the urge just sort of passed. There’s still the possibility he was the old lady’s lost son, or grandchild, anyway, even if they never realized it, and life does have magical near-misses as well as magical reunions.

Lightning writhed overhead like a dragon wracked by nightmares of monsters worse than itself, and thunder cracked like a nervous breakdown of the skies, offering a horrified accompaniment to the struggle. The bodyguards eventually hurled the falsifying shark onto the deck with us, where it thrashed and
expired, despite the rain. Then they cut it open with a big knife from the Whom’s own attaché case, and there was Reedy Wetwagon, among the license plates, anchors, and lost penknives. She was sitting in the tan-colored deck chair, which the shark’s stomach acids had given a sort of tie-dyed look, and she herself was soggy but her hat was still on. She smiled and offered everyone after-dinner mints, which were only partially digested thanks to their plastic wrappers. Someone said she looked like an angel, but I think we were all edgy and eager for grace.

It would be nice to report at this point that the storm stopped, but in fact it continued for several hours, though it let up for a while and then got bad again for a few minutes. The shark really had been faking, and we all wondered how we ever could have believed a talking shark could do impossible things. The weather had calmed down, though, when the peaked horns of the city appeared like those of a clumsily concealed savage on the horizon. We all prepared to go our separate and even skewed ways.