Cape Cod Noir

TWENTY-EIGHT SCENES

FOR NEGLECTED GUESTS

BY JEDEDIAH BERRY

Yarmouth



For Emily

1.



In the illustration of the crime scene, the full moon is high and small over the sea, shining through a halo of cloud. The dark water reflects a thin, crooked finger of light. In the foreground, the beach is littered with black stones, bits of shell, seaweed, sea glass.

The body lies facedown in the sand, wedged between two large, thumb-shaped rocks. The hair is long and stringy; it obscures the face and spreads across the ground like the head of a mop. One slender arm is draped over a rock, and the other is hidden by the fabric covering most of the body. A mourning dress? A costume? It clings to the flesh of the corpse, all ragged black folds. The bare feet stick out from beneath it, toes angled toward the water. They appear carefully poised, like the feet of a dancer.

And then there’s the dog. Black and round, a mutt with stubby legs and floppy ears, it’s not the kind of dog you’d expect to discover a corpse, at least not in any official capacity. The dog holds itself rigid, something like pride in its stance, snout aimed at the body.

Not just at the body, but at the exposed right forearm which, upon closer inspection, reveals a tattoo along the length of its inner side. The flowing, ornamental script is impossible to decipher at this angle. A clue? Yes, this could be a clue.

The dog’s paw prints are visible in the sand. Hours ago, there may have been other prints to read—the victim’s, the killer’s—but if they were here, the sea has washed them away.

2.



The Untoward Specter, cloaked all in black crepe, sits weeping in the gazebo. “Is it time for a game of pies?” it asks.

The Three Widows of North Varnish clutch their bosoms. “But we do not know how to play,” they cry.

Lord Lumpish leans from the balcony and heaves a great sigh. “I do not permit games to be played upon the greensward,” he says.

From a distance comes the squeak and shuffle of a handcar. The Three Widows of North Varnish put their hands over their ears, but the Untoward Specter looks up and stops weeping. It sways from side to side, as though mesmerized by the sound. “I should like very much to teach you how to play a game of pies,” it says.

3.



I should like very much to knock that woman over the head, thinks Carl. He’s playing the part of all three widows, a thin rustling dress on each hand and one draped over his face. But this woman Alex—loud, hysterical Alex from no-one-seems-toknow-where—is upstaging all three of him. And she the newcomer, her first show with the troupe, her first time onstage anywhere, as far as he knows. Correction: she’s the kind of woman who has been onstage her whole life.

The widows aren’t easy to operate. A lot of string-pulling to move their little arms, to make them titter and swoon. In his best elderly treble, Carl says, “That terrible sound! Is it the handcar of the Hands of the Orphans?”

But before the line is fully out of Carl’s mouth, before he can even get Widow Number Three to point to the horizon, Alex calls from the gazebo, “I am certain the Hands of the Orphans will want to play a game of pies!”

Carl is about to throw the damned widows off his hands, but then he hears Ted cooing his approval from the front row. Ted, whose mess this whole thing is. Ted, who spends maybe five percent of his time in the real world.

“Everyone!” cries the Untoward Specter, louder than before. “Everyone must play or no one at all!”

Now Ted is clapping with quiet glee. Yes, thinks Carl, right over the head, with something blunt and very heavy.

4.



Aggie’s hands hurt. Not from the hour spent pulling bent nails out of a broken panel of the set (gray sky, black clouds, a distant tower), but from the role she has landed without meaning to. Ted had stopped her on the first day of rehearsals, while she was carrying lumber into the theater. “Your hands,” he’d said. “Those are the hands of the Hands of the Orphans.”

His own fingers were decked with enormous iron rings, weird totems that clacked and gleamed when he gestured. The rings, and the beard, and the ratty tennis shoes: for a moment she mistook him for a crazy person who’d wandered into the theater. Then he showed her the puppets he’d made for the play he’d written, the play she was building sets for. Onto her hands he slipped a pair of black felt gloves. At the end of each finger was a grasping, desperate little child’s hand.

At first Aggie thought they were terrible. All those sprouting pale nubs, like an animal they’d keep in a tank at the science aquarium. But now she feels, somehow, that the hands need her, and she can’t go anywhere without them. On break from rehearsal, while the others go to a sandwich shop, she takes her bagged lunch to a bench by the shore and sets the Hands of the Orphans beside her.

“Do you think Carl likes me?” she asks the hands. She sips coffee from her thermos and nods. “Mmm, yes, he does have very nice eyes.”

5.



Lord Lumpish stands with hands clasped behind his back, admiring the tapestries. The Untoward Specter appears at dusk. It glides down the hall, rustling as it swoons.

“I have a craving for sea air,” the Untoward Specter says, “and the Hands of the Orphans have offered to arrange an excursion.”

Lord Lumpish fiddles with his cuff links. “I fear that none of us are ready for a game of pies,” he says.

6.



In his usual booth at Jack’s Outback, Ted sits with his grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato on white bread, his fruit cup in a bowl. Because fruit cup in a cup just isn’t enough fruit cup.

He’s nervous about Neglected Guests. Something is lacking in the third act. The Three Widows of North Varnish have a secret he can’t quite get at. He, who made them with his own two hands.

No, what’s really bothering him is that he can’t place what’s bothering him. It makes him grumpy, having to worry about all these other people. And yet every summer, another script dashed off, more puppets, more rehearsals. Actors! They’re the very opposite of cats, always wanting you to know what they think.

There’s one last grape in his bowl. He tries to get it onto his fork, but the grape rolls and rolls, eluding him.

“Get you your check?” asks Ellie.

“No!” Ted says, much louder than he’d intended, and he and Ellie both are startled.

7.



Perry climbs onto the deck of the Murasaki and holds up a paper bag full of egg sandwiches. “Egg sandwiches!” he says. He made them himself.

The other guys working the restoration job set down their hammers and chisels and brushes. They shuffle over and take the wrapped packages from the bag, muttering thanks.

“I get to wear a beard in this play I’m in,” Perry says. “I’m like some kind of king, you know? I have my own greensward.”

The others pass around a bottle of ketchup.

“The guy who wrote it is crazy, just crazy. He’s directing too. You know who he is. That poster, with all the kids and how they died? It’s hilarious.”

One of them says between mouthfuls, “Yeah, dead kids, funny,” and the others chuckle.

“Everyone in the play is awesome and we all get along great,” Perry says. “I mean, I don’t like them better than I like you guys or anything.”

They’re all chewing, looking at their feet or at the water or at other boats.

“Though there is this one girl,” he says.

This gets their attention for a moment, but Perry knows how that will go: the whistles, the ugly winks and uglier questions.

“Anyway,” he says, “the show’s this weekend. You should all come! Wait till you see the part about the pies.”

For a moment the others think maybe he brought pies in addition to the sandwiches, but then they figure out that he’s still talking about the play, and they shake their heads and wipe their mouths on their shirtsleeves and get back to work.

8.



Aggie, at home, has to take off the Hands of the Orphans so she can answer the phone. It’s Jared. He sounds like he’s trying to swallow something.

“I have bad news,” Jared says. It’s about Otto, the dog. Their dog, though he lives with Jared now.

Aggie tries to keep to the facts. “What does the vet say?”

“I have to bring him back on Tuesday. But it doesn’t look good.”

“What does that mean, doesn’t look good?”

Jared’s voice goes hard. “Look, I thought you might want to know. So you can make time to see him, if it comes to that.”

“Comes to what, Jared?”

“I shouldn’t have called,” he says, and then there’s another voice in the background—Honey? it says, or is Aggie imagining things?—and then the line goes dead.

9.



At the bar, Carl takes his beer onto the deck and finds Alex alone, staring out over the pond. He touches her shoulder and says, “Listen, I feel like things are all wrong between us. Maybe we can talk this out.”

“Things are all wrong between us?”

“Come on.”

She brings her face to within a few inches of his and says, “Take your hand off my shoulder, Carl.”

He pulls away as though he’s been burned. “It’s Perry, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t answer, but he swears he can feel some kind of heat coming off her. And something else, like maybe she enjoys this.

“Poor, simple Perry,” he says. “That your kind of guy?”

He grabs her shoulder again and moves to kiss her, but Alex hits him in the gut and knocks his beer off the railing. In the moment that he flails for it, she heads for the door. Plop! goes the mug into the water, and Alex is gone too.

10.



They take five, so Aggie brings her tools out to the truck. The sets are done, and she’ll need her own things if she’s going to finish those cabinets Ted wants for his place. She tosses the bag onto the floor of the cab, then climbs into the passenger seat and gets her cigarettes and lighter out of the glove box.

“Just one,” she says to the Hands of the Orphans, which are nestled on her lap.

The window is still spotted with Otto’s dried slobber, though it’s been months since he’s ridden in her truck. She keeps the window cracked while she smokes.

“The thing about Carl,” she says, “is that we’re both people who work with our hands.”

11.



En route to the shore, Lord Lumpish operates the handcar while the Untoward Specter acts as lookout. The Three Widows of North Varnish sit at the back, knitting scarves for their cats.

“I am not certain that fewer than three terrible things will happen to us today,” says the Untoward Specter.

“Are there any more cabbage sandwiches?” the widows want to know.

“If we must play a game of pies,” says Lord Lumpish, “I would like to be the baker. But who will be the pies?”

“The Hands of the Orphans will be the pies!” announces the Untoward Specter. “But where have they gone?”

“Here they are,” say the widows, who have accidentally knitted them into their scarves.

The Hands of the Orphans squirm in the yarn as the handcar rolls into a tunnel.

12.



Rehearsal runs late, and Carl misses the last ferry back to the Vineyard. Aggie offers to put him up at her place.

“Nothing special, but it’s cozy,” she says, and there’s something about the way she chooses these words. Like she herself is figuring out what she has to offer.

He follows her pickup out of town and onto a winding road off Route 2. The cottage looks like an Arts and Crafts throwback; she probably built the place herself. She leads him inside—front door isn’t locked—and he stands in the kitchen while she goes through the house, turning on lights in every room. “Open a bottle?” she calls.

There’s a little rack on the counter. None of the wines look good, but he settles on a Malbec that can’t be terrible. He’s rummaging through drawers, looking for a corkscrew, when he hears a man’s voice on the answering machine in the next room. Then hears, after a minute, the sound of Aggie weeping.

He sets the bottle down and walks into what probably used to be a dining room but is now a woodworking studio. Tools everywhere, and buckets of stain, and on a table a set of finished cabinets.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, what happened?”

She’s sitting on the floor by the phone, rubbing her eyes with her fists. “Wednesday’s going to be my last day with Otto before he dies.”

Those cabinets are beautiful. Maybe he ought to hire her sometime.

“God, I’m so sorry,” he says, and kneels beside her. “Who’s Otto?”

Then Aggie has her arms around him, and her mouth is against his, and she’s moving her lips and nibbling.

He pushes her away. “I don’t think—”

She appears to wither a little, but she doesn’t start crying again. “You can take the bedroom,” she says, nodding toward the hall. “We’ll take the couch.”

“We?”

She looks startled, and her hand goes defensively to her pocket. Sticking out from it are five pale little hands.

13.



Perry drives out to Truro, to pick up Alex before rehearsal. She’s staying at her uncle’s place for the summer. The house is on a dirt road off another dirt road, at the top of a hill overlooking a salt marsh.

When she answers the door, she isn’t wearing pants.

“Wow, hi,” Perry greets her.

“I’ll be just a minute,” she says.

He follows her inside and closes the door behind him. He tries not to look at her thighs, but she snaps the elastic of her blue underpants as she goes into the bedroom. There are sounds of drawers opening and closing. “Hey,” she calls out to him, “if you were going to kill Carl, how would you do it?”

Alex is a year or two older than Perry, maybe twenty-eight, and he wants to be able to keep up with her. But he just laughs and can’t think of what to say.

“Something sharp, maybe?” she says. “Right through the eye? Or something weird. Some kind of poisonous sea creature on his chair.”

Perry says, “Hey, do you think Carl and Aggie—”

“Nope,” she cuts him off. “No way.”

There’s some kind of altar set up on the kitchen table, looking out of place here. Perry bends down for a closer look: candles, a glass skull full of clear liquid, round tarot cards, old photos, bits of fur, scraps of paper with names and phrases written on them, and something that looks like a narwhal tusk. He reaches out to touch it but Alex says, “Don’t touch that.”

She’s standing right behind him, dressed in the black pants and shirt that will disappear beneath the Untoward Specter costume.

“Are you some kind of witch?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He can’t tell if she’s serious.

“I’m working on a spell,” she says. “That’s the real reason I’m here. It’ll make me forget everyone and everything I never want to think about again.”

“Well, I hope you’ll let me know if it works.”

“Oh, you’ll know,” she says.

14.



“My husband died because he ate too much,” says the first of the three Widows of North Varnish. “Too much poison, that is.”

“And my husband died because he hit his head,” says the second widow, “against the skillet I was holding.”

“As for my husband,” says the third widow, “he died of natural causes.”

“Is that so?” asks the first widow.

“We were standing together on the edge of a very high cliff, just admiring nature, and then he fell right into it.”

The three widows huddle close, giggling.

Ted leaps from his seat and onto the stage. “Stop! Stop!”

Carl lifts the skirt of the middle widow off his sweaty face. Final dress rehearsal, and he’s never seen Ted looking so distressed.

“This isn’t working,” Ted says, rings clinking as he waves his hands. “We’ll have to strike this scene.”

“But—” Carl starts to say, his voice cracking because it’s still half widow. He coughs. “But Ted, it’s the funniest bit in the whole damn piece.”

“It is an incontestable disaster. We’ll have to go from the Devil Costume Mix-Up straight to the waltz of the Untoward Specter. Alexandra. Alexandra! Kiddo, can you manage this?”

The wrinkled black figure shuffles out from behind the set. “Yes,” Alex says, fixing the folds of her costume. “Yes, sure, that’s fine.”

“Carl,” Ted says, “do stay onstage, please. The specter can push the widows aside as it enters. That should get a laugh.”

Carl blinks; the salt of his sweat is burning his eyes.

“Here,” Alex says to him, “let me help you,” and she pulls the skirt down over his face.

15.



Aggie loads the finished cabinets onto the bed of her pickup and drives to Ted’s place in Yarmouth. The house is covered with vines on one side, and the other side is partially devoured by an overgrown rhododendron. She climbs the sunken porch steps and knocks on the door, which is sorely in need of paint.

There’s some quiet shuffling within, and Aggie knows she’s being scrutinized from one window or another. Then the door opens, and Ted’s pale, bald, bearded face looms into view. His eyes are dark and unhappy—no trace there of the diligent whimsy she’s come to know at the theater.

“Agatha, you’re early,” he says, and from the dimness beyond comes the quiet plunk of a cat landing on the floor.

“Wrapped up sooner than I thought.”

He lets her in, and even tries to help her carry the cabinets, though she manages fine on her own. Inside the house, piled on tables and shelves, and scattered over the floor, is all the outrageous clutter of a thousand odd pursuits. Old glass bottles, blue telephone pole insulators, dolls, clothing irons, ancient-looking cheese graters, piles of CDs, skulls, stuffed animals. A shriveled thing she knows to be a real mummy’s hand. Bowls of marbles. Stray amulets and rings. Marionettes, newspapers, books everywhere, and everywhere the cats, four or five or six of them, coming and going, dozing in high places. The couches and chairs are devastated by their attentions.

Once she sets to work mounting the cabinets in his studio, Ted appears cheerier. He makes tea and brings two cups upstairs, talks to her about the play while she works. His drafting table is here, and it’s hard not to steal glances at the little book he’s working on. One illustration depicts three willowy figures, a man and two women. One of the women has just knocked the other over the head with what looks like a doorknob. On another page, a man in a fur coat is about to be crushed by an enormous urn.

Ted sees her looking and says, “All those tiny murders we think about but never make happen. I don’t know where I’d be without them.”

The cabinets are ready. “What will you keep in here?” she asks.

“Oh, well, this and that.” He stands and runs a hand over the door. “Spiffy!” he says.

On her way out, while they’re saying goodnight, Aggie feels the urge to tell him about Otto, about Carl, about the fact that she’s been sneaking the puppets home with her every night. She touches his arm, and a shocked look appears on his face, then quickly stows itself behind a strained smile.

Ted looks very tired again. “See you at the theater,” he says.

16.



Carl has invited everyone out to his place on the Vineyard. In the morning, Aggie drives to Jared’s house to pick up Otto. Jared starts to say something about how he’ll be at the play, but she hurries off, telling him that she has to catch the ferry.

The entire cast and crew (except for Ted, who declined the invitation with an embarrassed fluttering of his hands) meet at the Steamship Authority. On board, Alex sits across the table from Aggie and says, “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve … you know?”

The Hands of the Orphans are hidden on Aggie’s lap. She squeezes their fingers.

“Two and a half years!” says Alex.

Aggie doesn’t know whether or not she’s supposed to believe her.

“Do you believe me?” Alex asks.

“I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”

Alex takes a white marble from her pocket and sets it on the table. The marble rolls slowly one way, then the other. It goes right to the edge of the table and stops there. Aggie holds her breath, waiting for it to fall, but Alex grabs it just before it drops.

“What does your tattoo mean?” Aggie asks.

Alex keeps her arms extended, turning it over so the script is in the light. It runs from her wrist to the crook of her arm, all angles, swoops, and dots. “It’s Tibetan for one of the four immeasurables,” she says. “But I forget which.”

17.



Around his property, among the trees and on the grassy slope down to the beach, Carl has erected dozens of wood and metal sculptures. Some have faces, some are just hands. “Derelict things,” he calls them. “I make them in my spare time.”

One has spinning windmill sails on top of its large, Buddha-like body. Perry reaches out to touch it.

“Don’t touch that,” Carl says.

He puts on an old jazz record. Everyone sits on blankets and opens picnic baskets. Otto scampers among them while they eat, begging bits of meat from their sandwiches. Then one of the stagehands leans back and bellows, “I wish I knew how to play a game of pies!”

“This is supposed to be a break,” says Carl.

Alex stands up and bunches the front of her skirt into her hands, as though preparing to run. “I should like very much to teach you how to play.”

Perry, stammering a bit, says, “Right here, upon the greensward?”

“Right here,” Alex answers, staring straight at Carl. “Right here upon the greensward, and to hell with what old Lord Lumpish thinks.”

18.



The baker is hard at work, and the kitchen is hot, hot! He’s rolling out a fresh batch of dough when he hears a knocking at the door. Who could it be? A customer?

The baker goes to the door, opens it just a little, and peers outside. “Who’s there?” he asks, though the baker can see who’s there. It’s the devil with the dirty face and hands.

“The devil with the dirty face and hands,” says the devil.

“Go wash your dirty face and hands!” the baker says.

The devil sighs and goes to the well. He draws up a bucket of water, kneels over it, and washes his dirty face and hands. Then he returns to the baker’s door and knocks again.

“Who’s there?” the baker asks.

“The devil with the clean face and hands.”

“Well, come right in!” the baker says.

Now the devil is feeling fine. He likes it here in the hot, hot kitchen. He can smell good things cooking. “Do you have any pies today?” asks the devil.

“Of course I have pies,” the baker says. “Can’t you hear them clapping in the oven?”

19.



They go for a walk on the beach together. Otto weaves among their legs, grabbing pieces of driftwood and barking at the ones he can’t get his jaws around.

Alex picks up a stick and throws it for the dog to fetch. Watching him run, she says, “He doesn’t look like he’s dying.”

“I know,” says Aggie. “But Jared tells me he cries all night. It’s some kind of cancer.”

“You’re doing the right thing, absolutely,” says Carl.

“Because you’re the death expert,” says Alex.

“Ted’s the death expert,” says Carl.

“Death expert!” says Perry, and does a flying jump kick.

Aggie kneels as Otto comes back. He drops the stick at her feet, and she rubs his round head with both hands, flopping his ears. Then she sees that it isn’t a stick he brought back. It’s an old umbrella, just a few strips of fabric still clinging to its broken ribs.

20.



“Can’t you hear them clapping in the oven?” the baker asks.

The oven door opens a little, and the Hands of the Orphans emerge. They all begin to clap, and the sound is like rain, or like radio static.

“I do hear them clapping!” the devil says. “Do you have any strawberry pie?”

The baker glances at the Hands of the Orphans, and the hands recoil. “I’m sorry,” he says, “no strawberry today.”

“What about peach?”

The Hands of the Orphans turn and turn.

“No,” says the baker, “no peach.”

The devil is getting impatient now. He taps one hoof against the floor. “How about cream pie?” he asks. “Surely you have some cream pie?”

“Cream pie,” the baker says. “Well, let me see.”

The Hands of the Orphans all are trembling.

21.



Aggie wakes to the sound of Otto whimpering next to her bed. She switches on the light and sees him lying on his side on the blue carpet, his open eyes rolled back into his head. His legs are twitching, as though from a dream of running.

She gets down next to him and strokes his head, whispers his name. Then she sees, next to him on the carpet, one of the Hands of the Orphans. The other is a few feet away, near the nightstand. She had left them both on a chair at the other end of the room.

She picks up the nearer puppet and finds it damp with slobber. The fabric is shredded, and the hands themselves have been chewed to pieces. Fragments of fingers and thumbs are scattered over the floor, and Aggie remembers, now, that she had heard a crunching sound in her sleep.

“Bad dog!” she screams at Otto. “Bad, bad dog!” and hits him in the ribs with her fists.

Otto is still whimpering, still moving his legs. Her blows turn to soft thumps, and then she stops hitting him and buries her face in his fur. She listens to Otto’s heartbeat. “Just die if you need to,” she says, but she hopes he can’t hear her.

22.



Neglected Guests

A Worrisome Diversion by E____ G____

Thursday–Saturday, 8 p.m.

A dreary sight upon the shore has made a horror of their tour.



23.



Wearing her costume over her jeans, Alex takes the path down to the beach. No one knows she brought the Untoward Specter home with her. It seemed right for the occasion, so she had to have it. Her pockets are full of paper, and on each torn scrap is written the name of somebody or something she would like to forget.

With the waves lapping at her bare feet, she removes the scraps one at a time, reads aloud what’s on them, and tosses them into the wind.

When she’s finished, she walks for a while along the beach, then sits between two rocks shaped like big thumbs. There’s supposed to be a full moon tonight, and that, she realizes, is the only thing she’s sure about.

Alex shivers, takes a deep breath. “It worked,” she says.

24.



Carl calls Perry and says, “Hey, you’re giving Alex a ride to the big show tonight?”

“Sure am,” Perry says.

“Listen, I’m going to be in P-town today—have to pick up some things for a piece I’m working on. So I’ll just grab her on my way back.”

“Oh, well—”

“So what’s the address?” Carl asks.

“Maybe I should give her a call first,” says Perry, and that’s all Carl needs to hear to know that, Yes, these two are definitely sleeping together.

“In a hurry here, my man. Just give me the address, all right?”

Perry agrees, of course—would probably give you his own pants if you asked for them—and Carl heads out to Truro early. It feels good to drive for more than ten minutes, and he takes Route 6 a little faster than he needs to.

He finds the place without much trouble, though it’s secluded, at the end of a long dirt road. No answer at the door, so he wanders around the house. Would Perry have given him the wrong address? He peers through a window, sees nothing but modern furniture and a nice stereo system. But there’s a path down the hill, and if Carl has his directions right, it must lead right to the beach.

There’s a solid-looking walking stick in a bucket by the back porch. He takes that and heads for the trail.

25.



“What’s this?” says Lord Lumpish, kneeling on the shore. Dozens of scraps of paper litter the beach. He takes one of them in his gloved hand.

“There’s something written on it,” say the widows, leaning close.

“My father,” Lord Lumpish reads aloud. “That’s all it says.”

The Hands of the Orphans gather more scraps and hold them up for Lord Lumpish to read.

“The neighbor’s son. The lake. The year I turned thirteen.”

“Is it a story?” say the widows. “Someone’s fortune?”

“What happened in the kitchen,” reads Lord Lumpish. “All my lines. The way home.”

“Well, that’s enough of that,” say the widows.

Just then a black dog comes running toward them along the strand. It leaps excitedly on its short legs, gesturing with its snout in the direction from which it came.

The widows are wringing their hands. “I do believe there’s something it wants us to see,” they say.

Only when they prepare to set out do they realize that the Untoward Specter has vanished.

26.



The devil must have pie. But the devil must guess what kind of pie before he can have it. Those are the rules.

“How about rutabaga?” the devil asks.

“Sorry,” says the baker. “There is no rutabaga pie.”

“Melancholy meringue? Please tell me you have some of that.”

“No, nothing in the way of melancholy meringue.”

“Umbrella pie?” the devil asks, leaning close. “You do have umbrella pie, don’t you?”

“Well,” says the baker, “let’s take a look.”

27.



Just an hour before curtain, and the production is in complete disarray. Ted stalks back and forth behind the stage, trying to direct the men in charge of the lighting. It’s as though none of them have even seen a lightbulb before.

Carl jogs up to him, out of breath.

“There you are,” Ted says. “Why aren’t you in costume?”

“Nobody can find Alex,” Carl answers. “I went out to her place myself; no sign of her. I think she might have packed up and gone.”

“Maybe she’s with—”

But there’s Perry, looking shaken. “I drove up there too,” he says. “When I didn’t hear from her.”

The two men stare at one another. Ted thinks: I should have stayed home, I should have just stayed home. He walks slowly to the front of the stage and collapses on the chaise lounge. The cast and crew gather around him. “Where is Alexandra from?” he asks, but no one says anything. “Doesn’t anybody know where she’s from?” His hands are moving, his rings clacking. “This is the worst thing that has ever happened. I’ll have to play the Untoward Specter myself. But I can’t perform the waltz!”

“We’ll put the bit about the widows’ dead husbands back in,” says Carl. “That’ll patch it up.”

Perry looks lost, is walking in circles under the uneven lights, and then the theater door bursts open. Aggie comes down the aisle, face pale, eyes red, hair a mess. She’s carrying something bundled in her hands.

Ted sits up. “What is it?” he says. “What’s happened?”

Aggie holds out the bundle. It’s a mass of torn fabric and broken fingers and thumbs. It shakes because Aggie is shaking. She holds it up, as though to make an offering, and several digits fall to the floor.

28.



A black dog walks alone on the beach. He has been walking a long time. Sometimes he wanders close to the water, fleeing when a wave advances upon him, barking as the wave retreats. When the tide goes out, the dog discovers things that feel good to carry and chew. A tattered black glove. The hooked wooden handle of an umbrella. A fragment of some sea animal’s tusk.

Often the dog catches on the air the scent of people, a few of them at least, just upwind. He runs in their direction but doesn’t catch them. They must be very quick.

But that’s fine, because there’s plenty here to keep a dog busy: scurrying creatures to chase, birds that pop into the air when you run at them, things to find and bury in the sand. And the dog is possessed by the sense, urgent and profound and brimming with the promise of love and praise, that soon, very soon now, he will discover something important. That he has only to wait until the sun goes down before a great mystery is solved.

And then maybe someone will give him something to eat.