Open Water (15 page)

“He’s fair now,” Fritz told Showalter. “In the summer he browns. He’s well-done by the Fourth of July.”

“Jesus,” Willis said. “Where are we going with this?”

Showalter told him to sit down, relax.

Willis and Fritz sat down, together, on a leather sofa. The sofa cushions were gleaming, tight pillows of golden hide, and Willis had to keep his feet squared on the floor to keep from sinking back. He had one of his crazy flashes: his dime-store pocketknife scored the leather couch, a ladder of deep gouges, a cruel diagonal tic-tac-toe. He visualized the
X
’s and
O
’s. He imagined the
O
’s with demonic happy faces.

The room was decorated with artwork and bric-a-brac. Willis studied a skinny metal sculpture on the coffee table.

Showalter said, “That’s a Giacometti reproduction.”

“Looks like Reddi Kilowatt,” Willis said.

They were sitting in a library. The books were arranged in glass display cases. There was something wrong with it. Willis blinked his eyes. It was a library, all right, but the books were all tiny, only two or three inches high. Hundreds of doll-sized volumes, various foreign-language dictionaries and Bibles, some with velveteen or gold leather bindings. Willis squinted at the tiny, pristine rows behind the glass.

Showalter said, “I collect these. Miniature books.” He pulled open a glass door; the frame fell from the top and rested against Showalter’s collarbone as he reached for a miniature volume. He closed the glass door and turned the key. He placed a book in Willis’s hand.
Prescott’s Conquest of Peru.

“Is this the whole book. Every word?”

“Unabridged. It’s all there.”

Showalter looked at Willis. He looked into Willis’s eyes in a way no man had tried. Then he looked away. Showalter gave Willis the feeling that he was being briefed and interviewed at the same time. Willis fingered the tiny book called
Prescott’s Conquest of Peru.
He was actually wondering about this fellow Prescott.

“I have an interest in these tiny books, being a printer myself. These are really just printing challenges, that’s all. It’s a mathematical problem—how to fit the print on the page. These books keep increasing in value. Know why?” Showalter said.

“Why?” Willis said.

“They cost to produce, then they get lost. These are so
small, people can’t keep a hold of them. They just disappear.”

Willis rested the small volume on the arm of the sofa.

Finally, Showalter wanted to see the boxes. “Let’s see what we have. This is going to be something new for us, our golden egg,” Showalter said.

Willis didn’t like the plural form, but he waited as Showalter took one of the boxes onto his lap.

Fritz said, “I don’t know about that golden egg. We haven’t heard a peep. If it’s worm bait, it was worm bait long before we came into it.”

Showalter ripped the staples and plucked open the taut cardboard leaf. There it was. A dozen feathered corpses. Vibrant greens with yellow caps. Amazon parrots, not one left alive. Showalter opened the other cartons. Smaller, fruit-colored birds; some of the carcasses were sizzling red like Corvette interiors. Each small body was motionless. Showalter sighed quietly. Willis admired the professional restraint of the man. He had made a verbal contract and he didn’t look disinclined to come through with his payment despite the bad outcome of events. But Willis felt there was something odd about Showalter. His posture and gait suggested that he was fighting an injury. It was subtle, as if his spine was not in correct alignment and even small movements had to be carefully mapped or shooting pains might jar him.

Showalter took a list from his pocket. It was a handwritten invoice for the contents of the boxes. He read the list to Willis and Fritz. “Six double yellowheads. Those are Amazon. Those green ones. Six dead ones.

“One pair electus. That must be those two. One is red, one is green, male and female—they’re dimorphic. Those right there. They would have got me around two grand.

The grey ones are Congos, a breeder pair. These smaller ones are conures—”

Willis looked at the birds and shrugged in one or two sympathetic body gestures. “Too bad it went bust,” Willis said. “Some air holes might have helped.”

“Air holes are a giveaway. Besides, they don’t need much air,” Showalter said.

Willis nudged Fritz. Fritz was sipping his drink, tonguing an ice cube.

Fritz had told Willis that Showalter ran a printing business, one of those InstyPrint franchises, but he was into different illegitimate ventures, and Willis wondered which business was the actual sideline. The mini-books, the parrots? Something brought in the money because Showalter was dressed in expensive trousers and a beautiful jacket. His shoes weren’t broken in, they still had creamy soles with the clean black stencil mark at the arch on the new leather, as if the shoes had not yet met the street outside.

Willis stood up after taking the booze. Willis knew that he should never turn down a drink, but he shouldn’t accept another one or hang around.

“You fellows have another stop after this?” Showalter said.

“That’s right.” Willis plucked his car key from his tight pocket and sawed the key against the denim, waiting for Fritz.

Showalter said, “Before you leave, I’d like to show you something. Have you seen my workshop?”

Of course, Willis had not seen this fellow’s workshop, not recently nor in some distant past life. Willis didn’t like the affectation.

Showalter was walking to the elevator. It wasn’t an actual limp, exactly, but there was something artificial in his
gait. Willis didn’t see what else he could do and he followed the man into the elevator. They waited for Fritz to step into the cage, then Showalter pressed a lever. The open compartment sank away, falling from street level into a momentary black abyss.

Then the bulb flickered and the cage halted. They were in the cellar. Showalter shoved the accordion gate open and walked a few steps to touch a light switch.

Fritz and Willis walked off the elevator and followed Showalter into a large carpeted room. The room had a plush sectional sofa, an overstuffed horseshoe, and behind that there were two lines of folding chairs. The rows of chairs faced an eight-foot movie screen; its smooth, metallic coating glistened under the fluorescents. At the opposite end there was a banquet table set up with a large projector and stacks of materials.

Fritz said, “He’s got his-self a little theater.”

“Indeed I do,” Showalter said.

“A movie theater?” Willis said.

“This is a slide projector, specifically,” Showalter said.

“Filmstrips?” Willis said. “Shit, I haven’t seen a film-strip since Bible school.”

Showalter laughed. His chuckle had a natural timbre that made Willis wobble between opposing waves of acute hostility and helpless contrition. It all looked fishy. It was some kind of operation, and Willis understood he was being indoctrinated whether he liked it or not.

“Not movies. This is stereographic equipment. It’s a whole different story,” Showalter said.

Willis saw that the projector was too large and intricate to be an ordinary family model. Next to the table with the projection equipment, there were shelves of inventory. Showalter showed Willis the slide mounts and matching
cardboard mailers, a box of cheap plastic lorgnettes with plastic sleeves, stacks of anaglyphic postcards with corresponding colored lenses—left eye red, right eye green. There was a big spool of bubble wrap, padded envelopes, blisters of mailing labels and
RUSH
stickers. A rubber stamp with the words
HAND CANCEL
.

Showalter touched the projector and Willis heard the fan start; a cone of uninterrupted light hit the empty screen across the room.

“Here’s a pair for you. And for you.” Showalter offered Fritz a pair of ordinary-looking eyeglasses and he gave some eyewear to Willis. Willis took the eyeglasses from Showalter. He was borderline edgy.

“Put your glasses on,” Fritz told Willis.

Willis notched his pair over his ears and peered over the lenses at his friend. Fritz looked sheepish. He was in on it, somehow, but Willis couldn’t guess the angle. The sooner he cooperated with his friend the sooner he would be out on the sidewalk in the open air. “These glasses are polarized,” Fritz told him.

Willis said, “Is that right? What does that mean exactly?”

Showalter pulled open a drawer and found his own set of glasses, nice ones with tortoiseshell frames. He picked up a handheld control cable and pushed the button. In one and the same instant the button cut the overhead lights and a slide appeared on the screen at the other end of the room.

It was Venice.

A bridge arched over a murky canal and a gondola floated beneath it. The scene was garishly three-dimensional. The bridge stuck out. The gondola stuck out. The gondolier’s pole poked out of the landscape. Each element of the photograph was suspended in its frozen
solitude, separate from the rest of the whole. The three-dimensional scene did not look more natural or realistic than an ordinary photograph, it looked fractured, the buildings and structures revealed in painful gradations. The one attraction might be the feeling that you could reach right in and take the pole from the gondolier.

The cartridge flipped and the next slide was the New York skyline. The World Trade Center’s twin towers jumped up; the Chrysler Building, the Empire State; each fought for dominance in a field of aggressive granite shoots.

Willis wanted to say, “What’s the point?” but he let Fritz talk. Fritz praised the 3-D scenery in the pictures, the face-to-face feeling it gave him. It was a studied pitch.

Showalter flipped the slides, showing them scenes from an “American Almanac of Stereographic Wonders.”

The Grand Canyon.

The natural bridges of the southwest desert.

The Hudson River. The breathtaking ledges of the Palisades.

A ruby-throated hummingbird probing a blossom, its thin black tongue like a waxed shoelace.

Next, a naked woman was crouched in a bathtub. The steaming bathwater was pink; a bright spaghetti rope of blood curled beneath the faucet.

Her wrists were slashed. She had carved into herself right there on screen. Willis recognized the shot. It was Georgina Spelvin in the opening suicide scene of the classic porn film
The Devil in Miss Jones.

“Shit,” Fritz said, “doesn’t it look real? She just pops out at you.”

Showalter said, “That was directed by Gerard Damiano. He was a realist. Look at this shot. You almost feel sorry for her.”

Fritz agreed and poked Willis.

Showalter said, “It’s just a souvenir, really. A stereoscope from pornography’s Golden Age. Just for fun.”

Willis stared at the 3-D slide of the actress taking her life, her pale opened wrists, her shaved pudendum. The shot triggered a vivid memory of the twenty-year-old film, which Willis had found to be a relatively sad feature.

Showalter was saying, “Look how it spirals below the surface of the bathwater, like real blood. That’s salad oil with a squirt of dye.”

“Shit,” Willis said.

“Wait, we’re just thumbing through these; these aren’t that interesting yet.” Showalter flipped the slides until he found one he liked. It was, without question, a hard-core panorama. The phallus was shooting. In the three-dimensional photograph, the pearly elongated puddle of semen was sailing right at you like a Frisbee.

Fritz was giggling in a jangle of wounded nerves and excitement. Fritz didn’t want to disappoint either associate.

Showalter was laughing along with Fritz in that strange, wholesome tone. “Anything look familiar?” Showalter asked Willis.

Willis didn’t know what Showalter was driving at.

“Look familiar?” Showalter said again,

“Maybe in a broad sense,” Willis said.

“Recognize anything?” Showalter asked again.

Fritz was squirming. Fritz said, “How would
he
recognize it?”

“Don’t you see what we have here? A new wrinkle on the industry. Stereographic pornography. Stereoscopes are for connoisseurs. It’s a bonanza with a diverse clientele. Eggheads love the scientific aspects. The gay client appreciates the artistic opticals. Our future is with the gay viewer.
Throughout art history, in every medium, the homosexual society is at the cutting edge, they support every wave. In many cases, they are the wave, the first pulse in theater, art, and fashion. Now Fritz is helping me out.” Showalter blinked at Willis’s old friend.

Willis looked hard at Fritz, as if he couldn’t remember his features. “You’re doing what?”

“For the money.” Fritz talked to the rug.

Showalter said, “Fritz is kind of scrawny as a model—give him a glass of tomato juice, he looks like a thermometer. We’re relying on his dominant factor.”

“His dominant factor?” Willis said.

“His outstanding feature.”

“What is it you’re telling me?” Willis said.

“His principal asset.”

“I see. I see what you have here. You’re running a business right out of your basement?”

“That’s correct, and Fritz is working with me. We’re shooting some stereoscopes. Pornscopes. Fritz makes cash as a model. Now, you wouldn’t be interested in that?”

Willis wanted the story from Fritz. Fritz was tongue-tied.

Showalter flipped the slides forward until one fell onto the screen. It was Fritz eating a spoonful of gelatinous red goo from a can of One Pie cherry filling. His penis was erect.

Willis couldn’t look at it for very long. He said, “Who buys this stuff?”

“Not sickos,” Fritz told Willis. “They’re Einsteins. College grads.”

Showalter said, “I market the entertainment, but I want to start moving the technology. The technology is where the money is going to be. People can’t walk into K-mart and compare prices.”

“I guess not,” Willis said.

“Kodak isn’t mass producing these items. A lot of these cameras are antique; they’re homemade gems, worth thousands. Then you’ve got a nice mail-order selection, all kinds of affordable stereoscopic camera equipment and accessories—my idea is to mix in the pornscopes, maybe some sex toys—”