Float (6 page)

“Seventy percent,” said Osbert. “That’s a lot of leftovers.”

Duncan let the binoculars rest against his chest and put his glasses back on. “Seacrest’s used to dehydrate the usable scrap for pet and livestock feed, but most of it still had to be towed out to sea in a barge before we found a way to process all of it.”

“It’s expensive to tow and dump anything, isn’t it?” Osbert said thoughtfully.

“And not even legal anymore, if it ever was.” Duncan nodded at Syrie Shuttlethwaite, who’d just come onto the porch with her teeny bit of a dog under one arm and a vodka tonic in her hand, bringing the fresh smell of lime with her. He’d known Syrie since grade school. She’d been his hometown honey in college. If he’d returned to Port Ellery instead of staying in New York, they probably would have married. She sat on the wicker sofa and crossed her legs at the ankles. Most of the women of the Club had already given up their light dresses for corduroy skirts, but not Syrie. She wore a zebra-print dress with a green silk jacket and sling-back pumps. Duncan noticed that women who were recently divorced, like Syrie, exuded summer about them all year round. Would Cora soon be showing cleavage in the middle of the day? Maybe it was Syrie’s business that made her radiate with pheromones like that. When she’d divorced Lance a couple of years ago—an academic man Duncan could never understand and had never liked—she started a phone-sex wake-up service from the family den, recording a new suggestive message every day. Hers was not a seductive voice, but it had a carrying quality that translated well on the phone. What was originally a local operation had expanded across the state, and she was even hiring new voices. How was it that she could make a success out of nothing but a few dirty words, and he couldn’t make a dime with a ton of fish flesh?

“You wouldn’t want to do anything illegal, would you?” Osbert crossed his legs and flung one arm over the back of the chair, and Duncan felt the springs of his own chair dig deeper into his bottom.

“We are completely legal,” Duncan said. “In fact, the costs of legality have nearly sunk us. I spent all that money for emissions controls in time for fish landings to go down because of tighter regulations. No more fish, no more fish waste.”

“That’s bad,” Osbert said. He looked out at the water, keeping the unlit cigar grasped between two knuckles. “But you could make fertilizer out of anything, couldn’t you? I just read that a Swedish biologist developed a method of burial that turns the human body into organic matter in weeks.”

Duncan was not sure if he was supposed to laugh. “Well, the thing is, our profit margins are so small that the raw material has to be free to begin with. In fact, most of the big boats pay us to take the gurry off their hands. We also have a nice seaweed product. But it doesn’t launch until spring, and we’re a little unsure of the market.”

“We must never confuse the invisible hand of the market with the hand of God, Leland. Certainly you can dehydrate
any
sort of waste?”

Again, Duncan was not sure what this man’s point was. “It has to have high organic value, and it has to be from the sea.” Duncan waved the binoculars at the water. “There’s a moratorium on non-marine use on the waterfront”—he snorted—“as if fishing were coming back. I can’t even sell the building for condos.”

Osbert put the cigar in his mouth and stared back up at the ceiling as he rocked. They were silent for a minute, and, other than the squeaking of the rocker, the only sound was the soft wash of water hitting the rocks.

“What’s the biggest piece of garbage your machinery can handle, Leland? Maybe we could do some business together.”

“Whatever biomass fits through the chute.” Duncan held his hands out about two feet apart. “It goes down to the grinder, then off to vats of emulsifier to dissolve before being dehydrated into dust.” He paused to consider what sort of disposal issues a gravel company could have. “It can’t handle stone,” he said uncertainly.

“But bone,” Osbert said, tipping the rocker forward toward Duncan and expelling his breath in his direction. “It could do
bone.”

Duncan leaned back. “Well, it does fish bone. There used to be a big market for the bones to make mucilage, but those days are gone.”

“Oh, the little brown bottles of glue in kindergarten,” said Osbert, closing his eyes. “With those soft rubber tips. I can still remember the smell.” He inhaled deeply.

“I can still remember the taste.” Duncan smacked his lips.

Osbert opened his eyes and stared out into the distance. “I loved kindergarten. I remember Miss Hildenfisch leaning over with her hand over mine to show me how to make my alphabet.” Then he turned and looked at Duncan as if he was just remembering he was there. “So, Leland, when the gurry gets loaded into the chute, who sees it?”

His question implied something unwholesome, but Duncan gave it serious thought. “The whole operation is fitted and sealed now so that nothing can be seen—or smelled.” He did not say that, with the right key, you could also open the hatch and drop in, oh, say, a couple of dead birds. It would have been disastrous if the New Adoniram Project camera had followed him and Josefa to the other side of the building and filmed their dark work. They had to be more careful from now on, what with people running around with phone cameras and YouTube accounts.

“Leland, we might be able to help one another,” said Osbert. He held the cigar gently, as if he were protecting a long, firm ash. “After all, fish aren’t the only fish in the sea.” He smiled at his own joke.

A gun went off, and Duncan nearly sprang out of his chair. The race was over. He settled back, removed his glasses, and lifted his binoculars, this time paying attention to which end was what. When he got the fleet in focus, it was as he suspected. After four hours, no one had crossed the line, and the race was over. No winner and no loser. Good for Nod.

Syrie Shuttlethwaite loudly flipped through a magazine. “There are plenty of fish in the sea,” she said, dipping her oar in. Porch etiquette declared that if you could hear a conversation, you were included. “If they caught lesser-known fish, there’d be plenty of waste for everyone.”

“There’s no demand for the odd fish,” Duncan said. “Besides, it costs money to refit a boat for different species, and it’s a big risk if the fish doesn’t catch on with the public. Slocum still has to explain what pollock is to tourists.”

“The problem isn’t with the pollock, it’s with Slocum,” said Syrie, closing her magazine with a sharp slap. Chandu looked up at the noise, as did her own little dog, who had been sleeping on her knee. It was so small it was more like a cat in drag and could have balanced on the tip of Chandu’s nose like a biscuit. “You know I adore the man, but the way he cooks, he makes fish sticks taste like an alternative species.”

“Maybe
we’re
the alternative species,” said Osbert, staring out to sea.

“At least he tries,” said Duncan, defending his friend. “He wants to do something different at Manavilins. He wants people to experience seafood in all new ways.”

“New is good, isn’t it, Duncan?” said Syrie. She picked up her drink and fished a slice of lime out of it and tossed it in his direction. It landed at his feet with a splat. Was she flirting with him? Or was she still carrying around some residual anger over him leaving so suddenly way back when? The fact that he could never read her went a long way toward explaining why he bugged out when he did. With Cora, they were usually surfing the same tide, and if he didn’t understand her actions, she was happy to explain her thoughts and his as well. She sometimes accused him of being as tightly shut up as an oyster, but he much preferred to have her interpret him than to try to untangle the mess that was his inner world. But lately she’d been saying he had to learn to sort things out on his own, so he could pass it all down to his kids, and therein lay his problem. He didn’t even know where to start.

Like now. Was new good or not? Thankfully, he didn’t have to respond to Syrie because two racers entered the porch talking loudly as if they’d been in high seas all day instead of the calm harbor.

“I say you should be penalized,” said Tim Roland, stepping over Chandu. “Passing a foot!”

“We weren’t sure, and what if we’d been wrong?” asked Jerry Fadiman. “We would have lost the race for nothing!”

“But you weren’t wrong. It was a
foot.
A human
foot.
Does that mean nothing to you, Fadiman?”

“Foot, schmoot. The rules say you have to stop for anyone that has fallen off your boat—they say nothing about stopping for an unknown foot. The committee boat went back for it when we told them. I think we’ve done our duty.”

“The race was called,” said Tim, throwing his hands up. “You could have spent all day retrieving the foot, and you wouldn’t have lost an inch in the standings.”

“We didn’t
know
the race was going to be called, did we?” said Fadiman. “We’d
all
do everything differently if we bloody well knew the future.”

And then the two men disappeared to the bar, both trying to get through the door first, their discussion having turned to a race five years ago when someone hadn’t stopped to help a windsurfer blown out to sea, and the penalty exacted for that. The racers had a very strong collective memory.

“That’s horrible,” said Syrie, and she pulled her own two feet closer to her.

“Josefa Gould found a knee the other day on Colrain,” said Duncan. “They suspect it’s Slocum’s brother-in-law, who went down in the storm. Must be his foot, too.”

“Why would he be in little pieces from a drowning?” asked Syrie. “Sounds like a shark.”

“Bodies,” Osbert said, shaking his head. He put his cigar back in its case, then picked up his walking stick and used it to stand. He adjusted the crease in his pants and examined the wafer-thin watch on his wrist. “I’d like to come down and have a look at your operation, Leland. Why don’t I swing by on Monday, see the place, take you out to lunch? We’ll go to Manavilins!” He raised his stick to Judson Drake coming up the lawn, back from his conjugal visit with
L’ark
. “I have to talk to Judson. See you Monday, Leland.”

He bowed to Syrie. “My dear.”

And then he stepped over Chandu and was gone before Duncan could either agree or disagree. Duncan watched as a few more racers disembarked from the launch, balancing sail bags the size of futons on their shoulders. Others were already rolling out their mainsails on the lawn to dry as they talked about race rules and the foot. Nod was still at the mooring untangling his ropes and would be for a while. Usually he’d be at their own dock, but the rusty chains that held the float at their pier gave way in the storm, and it still hadn’t washed up.

Syrie got up from her sofa and dropped down upon Osbert’s vacated seat as if she were a nymph sinking onto a lush mink throw.

Duncan was acutely aware of being alone on the porch with Syrie. She was not pretty in the usual way—her face was mostly lips and chin, but the whole package was quite appealing. It always had been. Chunks of gold hung from her ears like figs and made her eyes sparkle. Did she think he was available? He knew how Club gossip swirled and eddied around every little disturbance in the social waters. His separation from Cora must be causing all sorts of speculation. They probably made more sense of it than he had. “Nice weather,” he said finally.

“We’ll pay for it,” she said, talking slowly, as if she were charging him by the minute. “I saw you on TV.” Her movements were unhurried and deliberate as she slipped off her shoes and crossed her legs. “Nice moves with that seagull. You were a real hero.”

“Not TV, exactly,” said Duncan. “YouTube.”

“No, real TV. You were on the local news this morning. ‘Area businessman rescues seagull’—and then they showed you dancing with it. They interviewed Josefa to ask how the seagull was doing. It’s still alive, thanks to you.”

Duncan looked out over the cove. Nearly invisible skeins of shore birds swooped close to the water and up again, driven by a communal sense of urgency as they prepared for their trip down south. He envied them their fixed routine. He wished he had somewhere to escape to. “I hope they happened to mention that it was art,” he said, not looking at her. “It wasn’t just me being ridiculous.” He turned toward her to make his case and was struck by the intensity with which she was looking at him.

“Indeed,” she said, shifting in her rocker until she showed nearly all that was possible of her legs. “They also interviewed the adorable college kids who were running the project. Who knew so much theory could be wrung from so little art?” She sipped from her straw and watched him over the lip of her glass. “What is it that Osbert wants to wring out of you?”

Duncan shrugged. “I’ll find out on Monday, I guess. Do you know him?”

She pressed her lips together and looked up without moving her chin. “I wonder about him.”

“What do you mean, wonder?”

“He seems so normal, and then he doesn’t. And his only friend that I can tell is Beaky, that little guy with the rodent.”

“It’s a ferret, not a rodent,” said Duncan. “His name is Fingers.”

Syrie shuddered slightly. “At any rate, Osbert seems to have a mysterious disposal problem.” She leaned in closer to Duncan and put her mouth to his ear. “Like the mob,” she whispered. She sat back in the rocker and ran her fingers along the pearls at her neck. “I’d just be careful.”

Duncan turned to watch Osbert fold himself into his black Mercedes, and when the car door shut he could barely hear it. It was the silence of luxury engineering. It was funny how he had never noticed the benefits of wealth until he had none. Nice cars, big homes, and pots of money weren’t everything, but they helped a person get through the day. He wondered how far he would be willing to go to get back to all that. Would he take Osbert’s garbage, whatever it was? What did it mean to be tainted by the mob these days anyway? Everyone was corrupt in one way or another. So what if Osbert was involved in the illegal dumping of toxic waste? Or medical waste. Or worse. Was Duncan supposed to be such a saint while others who were not shackled by honesty and integrity got rich around him? It was, after all, his business to clean up the mess of others, to take what wasn’t wanted, all the useless parts, the guts and tainted flesh, so that he could transform it all into something useful. Back to the earth with you! Dust to dust.