INTERLUDE
The Interview
Miriam takes a drink from her water bottle. Nope, still not vodka, she thinks.
Above her head, sparrows rustle their wings in the eaves of the warehouse – dark shapes, stirring.
She lights another Marlboro. Bats the ashtray back and forth the way a cat might play with a mouse. Blows smoke rings. Drums her fingers so her nails – some chewed to the cuticle, some left long – click on the top of the card table.
Finally, the door opens.
The kid comes in, a notebook and pages tucked under his arm, a laptop bag hanging at his side, a digital recorder dangling from a cord around his neck. His hair is a mess.
He pulls up a chair.
"Sorry," he says.
Miriam shrugs. "Whatever. Paul, right?"
"Paul. Yeah." He offers to shake her hand. She stares at the hand like it has a dick and balls attached to it. He doesn't get it at first, but then it dawns on him. "Oh. Ah. Right."
"Do you really want to know?" she asks.
Paul pulls his hand back and gently shakes his head no. He sits down without saying another word. He gets out the notebook, a couple copies of his 'zine (headlines like ransom notes, printed on pages of fluorescent fuchsia, eye-punching lemon, nuclear lime), and delicately places the digital recorder in the center of the table.
"Thanks for the interview," he says. The kid sounds nervous.
"Sure thing." She sucks on the cigarette. After an exhale of smoke in his direction, she adds, "I don't mind talking about it. It's not a secret. It's just that nobody listens."
"I'm listening."
"I know. You bring me what I asked?"
He pulls a crumpled brown bag, sets it down in front of her with a thunk.
She snaps her fingers. "It isn't gonna unwrap itself, is it?"
Paul hurries to pull the bottle of scotch – Johnny Walker red label – from the bag.
"For me?" she asks, waving him off. "You shouldn't have."
She unscrews the cap and takes a swig.
"Our 'zine – it's called Rebel Base – gets, like, a hundred readers or something. And soon we're going to be on the internet."
"Welcome to the future, right?" She fingers the moist rim of the scotch bottle. "I don't really care, by the way. I'm just happy to talk. I like to talk."
"Okay."
They sit there, staring at each other.
"You're not a very good interviewer," she says.
"I'm sorry. You're just not who I expected."
"And who did you expect?"
He pauses. Looks her over. At first, Miriam wonders if maybe he's hot for her, wants to jump her bones maybe. But that isn't it. On his face is the same look one might have while marveling at a two-headed lamb or a picture of the Virgin Mary burned into a slice of toast.
"My Uncle Joe said you're the real deal," he explains.
"Your Uncle Joe. I would ask how he's doing, but…"
"It happened like you said."
Miriam isn't surprised.
"I haven't been wrong yet. For the record, I liked Joe. I met him in a bar. I was drunk. He bumped me. I saw the stroke that'd kill him. Fuck it, I thought, and I told him. Every detail – that's where the devil lives, you know, right there in the goddamn details. I said, Joe, you're going to be out fishing. It's going to be a year from now – well, technically, 377 days, and it took me some noodling around on a napkin to get the number and the date. I said, you'll be out there in your hip-waders. You're gonna catch a big one. Not the biggest, not the best, but a big one. I didn't know what kind of fish, because, fuck, I'm not a fishologist–"
"I think it's an ichthyologist."
"I'm also not an English major, nor do I care to become one. He said it would probably be a trout. A rainbow. Or a largemouth bass. He asked me what kind of bait he had on the line, and I said it looked like a shiny penny, one flatted by a train so it makes a smooshed oval. He called it a spinner, said that's what he used to catch trout. Again, I'm not an ick, uhhh, ithky, a fishologist."
She taps the cigarette into the ashtray, crushing it.
"I said, Joe, you'll be standing there with this fish in your hand, and you'll be smiling and whistling even though nobody's around, holding it up for God and all the other fish to see, and that's when it'll hit you. A blood clot will loosen and fire through your arteries like a bullet down a rifled barrel. Boom! Right into the brain. You'll lose cognitive function, I said. You'll drop into the water. Nobody'll be there for you. You'll die, and the fish swims on."
Paul is quiet. He worries at his lip with the too-white teeth of a teenager.
"That's how they found him," Paul says. "Pole in hand."
Miriam chuckles. "Pole in hand."
Paul blinks.
"Get it? Pole? In hand? You know, like, his dick?" She waves him off, and pulls out another Marlboro. "Well, screw you, then. Joe would've liked it. Joe appreciated the finer points of a double entendre."
"Did you sleep with him?" Paul asks.
Miriam feigns shock. She fans herself like a wounded Southern debutante.
"Why, Paul, what do you think of me? I am the very model of chastity." He isn't buying it. She lights the cigarette and waves him off. "Dude, I discarded the key to my virginity belt long ago – just up and tossed it into a river, I did. That being said – no, Paul, I did not bang your uncle. We just drank together. Closed out the bar. And then he went on his way and I went mine. I wasn't sure he really believed me until you found me."
"He told me about it a month or so before he died," Paul says, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. Paul stares off at a distant point, remembering. "He totally believed it. I said, just don't go fishing that day. And he shrugged and just said, but he really wanted to go fishing, and if that's how he was going to die, then so be it. He got a thrill out of it, I think."
Paul reaches over and turns on the digital recorder. He watches her carefully. Is he looking for her approval? Does he think she'll reach over and bite him?
"So," he asks. "How does it work?"
Miriam takes a deep breath. "This thing that I have?"
"Yes. Yeah. That."
"Well, Paul, this thing? It's got rules."