People rose, murmuring, greeting him, raising their mugs and wineglasses
in salute. He was very tall, broad-boned, lean, and muscular, a warrior in
frayed jeans and a faded flannel shirt. His white-gold hair hung thick and
wild to his shoulders; an ivory mustache like a pair of ram’s horns curled
down the sides of his mouth. He held a gnarled staff in one hand, a carved,
polished hiker’s stick he used as a cane. He needed it, Pierce saw. Though he
smiled broadly as he entered, the lines on his face tightened slightly at
every other step as pain bled through him and into the shifting, halting
staff.
The young man whose collar announced he was holy followed, carrying a gaff the
length of a spear. The metal pirate’s hook at the end of it glistened oddly
with a sheen of red, as though it had tangled with something closer to human
than fish. Merle came after him, holding a huge oval platter with the biggest
salmon on it Pierce had ever seen. The platter, an ornate, old-fashioned piece
with bumps and ruffles and flutings all over it, looked as though it were made
of pure gold. The knife laid across the edge of the platter beside the fish
riveted his attention. The blade was crafted of hand-hammered metal with a
sandwich of polished ash fitted along the length of the metal handle. Long,
broad, and sweetly curved to its point, the blade would rock with a satisfying
heft in the hand, finely mincing anything it was fed with its thin, wicked
edge: elephant garlic, delicate chives, hazelnuts, words.
I want that, he thought, and found Merle’s eyes on him across the room as
though he had heard.
Carrie, oven mitts on both hands, followed her father, carrying a cauldron
etched all over with an endless, dreamlike tangle of circles and knots. The
cauldron filled the room with the smell of seafood seasoned in brine and aged
sherry and mysterious spices from some land so exotic it hadn’t yet appeared
on a map. Even she was smiling a little, her ivory skin flushed in the steam.
Under the chandelier, which was still all cold stars and no visible light, Hal
stopped. Everyone stopped. No one spoke. Candles burning on the bar tables,
small lamps along the walls shed a misty, golden glow over Hal’s white-gold
head, the oak in his hand, the bleeding gaff, the salmon and the blade, the
silver cauldron. Pierce watched, wondering. Then time flickered; past and
present seamed together in the moment; what was old became new, and new became
more ancient than he could imagine.
I know this, he thought, then: But what is it?
“Welcome,” Hal said, “to the Kingfisher Bar and Grill. We have an
inexhaustible feast of crab cakes, shrimp, scallops, halibut, salmon, oysters,
clams, all you can eat and any way you like them. Come into the restaurant or
stay here and eat as you please. Just let us know what we can do for you.”
The odd procession broke apart; the gathering in the room and in the
restaurant itself, visible now beyond the open doors, dissolved into jovial
chaos. The restaurant tables, Formica-topped rounds with a single plastic
flower in a bud vase on each, began to fill. A gray-haired woman, a skinny
young man in black, a gum-chewing girl with purple hair, moved among them,
taking orders. Pierce looked around for the gaff, the platter, the knife, Hal
with his staff. They all seemed to have vanished.
What was that? he wondered. What was that about?
“Something you need?” Tye asked, unexpectedly in front of him despite the
crowd around the bar. He lingered as Pierce gazed at him mutely, wondering at
his attention amid the clamor. “Anything?”
Pierce shook his head abruptly. He was on his way south. No mysteriously
crippled fisher, no amount of goodwill and fellowship, no hints of lost glory
would strand him there with the Formica tables and the chandelier that didn’t
work anymore. “I’m fine,” he said. “Thanks.” He raised the beer with an
appreciative smile, and Tye moved away.
The girl with the purple hair came soon after to take his order. He sat there
at the bar and ate the seafood stew, trying to identify its tantalizing
backwashes of seasoning, then the crab cakes with their outrageous sweet-fiery
sauce, and, when he could positively eat no more, a few bites of deep-fried
salmon, which seemed a disgraceful end for such a noble fish until he tasted
it.
“God,” he said reverently, and Tye, rattling a martini shaker, smiled.
“Nope. Carrie.”
He found himself with yet another beer in his hand and smiling mistily at the
memory of the meal. The room around him was quieting. Most of the diners had
left; there were rumbles and clangs of cleanup from the invisible kitchen. The
homely tables within the next room had been tidied, set for the next day.
Through the swinging doors, propped open now, Pierce could see the ghost of
the hotel in the high, shadowed ceiling too far above the modest restaurant
area, and the hint, behind three makeshift walls around the tables, of the
long, wide, empty husk of the older room enclosing them.
Someone loomed into his dreamy stupor. He started, found the disquieting
Carrie in front of him, holding sheets and a towel now instead of a cauldron.
“My dad told Ella you’re staying the night,” she said briskly. “She asked
me to take you upstairs.” She raised her chin slightly, catching Tye’s eye.
“Number three okay?”
“Far as I know, nothing leaks in there.”
“How much do I owe—?”