Some Other Town (8 page)

Again I look surprised. And this time I actually am. Celeste does not often stop by about work. Certainly not about Joe or his eponymous and gifted series. And I wonder then if she's concerned about him or his trouble with the Trout Route. If she knows he's been acting strangely. One could venture even a bit fishy. Which, put that way and also to be fair, would not normally be an issue.

That is to say, Joe Trout is just that, a trout. Of the rainbow variety,
Oncorhynchus mykiss
, native to the American Northwest. He spends his days swimming small freshwater streams and is an uncommonly handsome fish fellow, silvery and spotted and magnificently finned with a soft pink tinge to his belly.

A creation of Celeste's, Joe heads up our gifted and talented texts. His series are the Project's most prodigious, also—due to
Celeste—its most florid. Each week she turns out a new installment or two; it's hard keeping up with her layouts.

Celeste calls her series the Joe Trout Adventures in Science and, in a stroke of basal innovation, along with a string of the usual phonemes she has introduced actual content. Joe's stories aren't just tales of vowel phonic patterns; he also takes on natural science.

We at the Project are agog. We'd no idea Celeste had it in her. Celeste is a dreamer, a devotee of New Age, of meditation, levitation, crop circles. A follower of Ram Dass, Tim Leary. An attender of Esalen and Findhorn. Who knew she knew scientific method?

And here a professional confession of sorts. Although I am hired just to paste up Joe's flats, to wax and lay out and rub down, for months now I've also been reading his text, word by every overwrought word. In this spring alone, I've seen him through numerous exploits in science—cell fission, migration, an entire Krebs Cycle—as well as diphthongs, sibilants, and hard g's.

But it is not Joe's subjects per se that engage me. My interest comes down to just this: Joe Trout. Despite Celeste's own inauthenticity, Joe is good, even heroic company, well worth my morning reads. Joe's heart is pure. He is hardworking, courageous, a good sport, and a tireless champion of nature. Moreover, or at least normally, he's a seeker of beauty and truth along with, at times, paired vowels. Master of strategic “ou,” “ee,” and “ea,” he cleaves his streams on a quest—coming in, going out, turning about, seeking the unseekable Trout Route.

But just this morning, as I sat at my light table finishing Joe's latest boards, a particularly hazy lesson on weather, I could see things were slipping with Joe. He was not his old driven self. His
stroke had turned flaccid, his smile bemused, and his paired vowels had dropped off considerably, softened to “moon” and “croon.” Most alarming, as I have mentioned, Joe somehow had lost the Trout Route. Or given up seeking it entirely. Instead, his direction was decidedly leisurely, it was this morning a desultory float.

Then, as I burnished the lesson's last galley, a short unit on storms, and a large dark cloud passed over, a strange thing happened indeed. Joe rolled dorsal, took a breath, and floating in this position, started to move his lips. It was a kind of fishy low hum, you could tell, which he seemed to want to keep to himself. But as thunder and lightning began moving in, Joe's hum escaped his control. Growing continually now louder and bolder, it began to look something like song. Until, as the sky grew darker and the downpour let loose, Joe Trout appeared to as well. With his head thrown back and mouth open wide, he began belting out musical numbers. Show tunes, specifically. “Singin' in the Rain.” Also “Come Rain or Come Shine.” It was as if he'd completely forgotten himself, not to mention his station.

It is not at all like Joe Trout. And I wonder again if Celeste sees it too. If she realizes this wrong turn Joe is taking.

“Margaret,” Celeste says, “about Joe.”

I return to my board. I keep working. It is not my place to turn in Joe. Celeste is the series editor here. Still something, I know, must be said. So reaching again for my burnisher, “Yes, Celeste,” I say. “I've been meaning to speak with you too.”

Drifting past me, Celeste fails to acknowledge. She heads for my desk where I have stacked a few boards and takes a long, close look. “The thing is,” she says, “I would like to know what you think of Joe Trout. I'm afraid he is getting away from me.”

“You are?” I say. I turn toward her. Once again I'm surprised. Normally Celeste keeps Joe close to her peasant-stitched vest. She is not one to solicit comments. But here is my chance. I have to speak up. Who else here will level with her?

I take a breath. “Celeste,” I begin.

“Hmm,” Celeste says, not listening. She fingers a board, tilts her head, considers a line drawing of Joe.

She studies the art, then suddenly blanches. “Oh Margaret!” she says, gasping. “Look here! Just look what she has done now.”

Celeste stabs a long finger at Joe's large trout head, mouth open in his new list toward song. “It's Emmaline again.” She is sure of it.

I stare as though I do not know what she means.

Celeste holds up the board. “See what she's done to his lips, Margaret?” she says. “She's redrawn his lips, the lips are all wrong.”

I get up from my table, take a look. And I am going to bring up another point then, that in the flat that she holds Joe is singing. That's the reason his mouth looks like it does. He is opening it wide in song. Although, I will add, as tactfully as I can, the text is not all that clear why. I'm pretty sure trout aren't known for their voices.

But I look at Celeste and realize she has somehow not caught all this, at least not the part about singing. Which does of course raise the question of just who is writing this series.

Celeste taps at the board again. “Just look, will you, Margaret,” she says. “Joe's mouth reaches all the way back to his eyes. It's frightening, really, I tell you. What will the children make of it?”

She sighs. “Whatever will we do with our Emmaline?” Apparently now the issue with this flat is all our Emmaline's fault. Although I still think Celeste is missing the point here.

She stares at the board a moment more. Then, “Say, Margaret,” she says, and she brightens.

She looks up to see I am watching her. “Do you think, Margaret,” she says, “you could fix him? Maybe re-ink his lines just a little?” She points to the mouth. “It just wouldn't be right to send Joe away to the printer like this.” She leans forward, lowers her voice. “And let little Emmaline win.”

She smiles sweetly. She does not wait for an answer, she only stands up straight and gives me a pat. “Thank you ever so, Margaret,” she says. “It is so fortunate to have paste-up in-house.” Then with a wave and a swish of her gauzy full skirt, she turns, headed early, no doubt, for her tub.

I wait until I hear her office door close, then take out my Rapidograph and blade. I scratch at the clay coat of the paper and put Joe's lips back where they belong.

Still, this little patch does not change the drift Joe has taken. Joe Trout is floundering, it's clear. He has abandoned his phonics, his science—indeed his quest for the crucial Trout Route. As signs go, none of this bodes any good.

He stands in his landlord's plowed furrows. Breathes in, smells the earth. Knows it's good. Good he's come back, good he is here.

He picks up a small stone, throws it far. Watches it arc, fall to ground. And knows now he longs to start over. To put his thoughts straight again. Find what was lost, the hunger once felt, the sureness
he'd felt as well. Wake before light, feel hope. Know again what the next step will be. Know it will turn out right.

He looks to the end of the landlord's wide field and thinks yes, maybe here he'll begin.

With Celeste out the door and Joe's mouth back in place, I check the clock. There is still time before lunch for a little more of Ben. I would like now to get back to Ben. About how we first met and the happy parts. About where that first coffee of ours led.

But before I can take that particular bent, I hear a crash from Celeste's suite next door. And from my table see her run into the hall, waving a galley overhead.

“Look here, oh my god, come look here,” she shrieks. And at that the other editors appear at their doors. “Just look at what's happened now.” Then gathering all of us to her, “See there,” she says. “There in the next to last line.” She holds up the end of the galley. “A typo!”

At which point we all start to relax. We know about Celeste and her typos. She can be prickly about transpositions.

But “No!” Celeste's voice rises higher. “There was no typo when I came in today. I checked that galley just this morning. But now at noon—look there,” she says, giving the galley a slap. “You see what has happened, don't you? Whoever, whatever it was changed that ‘r' in the last line to ‘d.'”

Celeste stops, breathes in, collects herself. Then lowering her
voice and offering an instructional shiver, “The word is supposed to be ‘room,'” she says. “At the end of the story, Joe Trout is supposed to go off to his room.”

Celeste holds the galley back up for us. She takes a second look herself. Then shrieking again, “But now that ‘r' has turned into a ‘d'!”

The editors recoil. But Celeste just goes on shrieking. “It's Emmaline, again. Don't you see?”

And then she stops, takes another long breath, and adds, “Or maybe one of the others.”

Which is to say, we are haunted here at the Project. Some days Celeste cannot get it out of her mind. Really, we think, she should have adjusted by now, she has known of the hauntings since we all first moved in. Still, “Shh,” she'll whisper and sit up very straight, interrupting whoever is speaking. “Footsteps in the hall—Who's there?” Or then suddenly pointing to a window and turning shockingly pale, “Good god,” she will cry. “That face just now at the glass. We're four stories up. My god!”

Nor does she leave it at that. Frequently, to remind us all of the seriousness of our situation, she'll point to other signs. The mysterious cold spots in the hallways and suites. The rushes of wind over desktops, the sometimes sulphurous smell to the air. Or the strange noises at dusk, the loud gargling, then the unexplained banging, the moaning.

The series editors pay attention to Celeste. She is someone who knows about ghosts, they believe, a true student of the afterlife. If Celeste saw a face at the window—well, most likely there really was one. Celeste's just more attuned than the rest. More here/now, as she would say.

It's unsettling indeed, this ghost or possible ghosts that Celeste
insists upon sighting. Still she thrills, I have noticed, to the thought of them. The editors thrill just a little, too. They never know what new mayhem awaits, even when it's not footsteps or floating faces at glass. Not all sightings are so dramatic. Some days they amount to mere office pranks. “Look, Joe's mouth moved!” That sort of thing. Editorial outtakes, that's all.

But Celeste bears none of it lightly. The typo just now, for instance. “You know,” Celeste whispers before we disband, not leaving us to our own conclusions, “ancient Greeks said the dead know the future. They can tell you your fate.”

And then nodding again at the typo of doom and clamping her hand to her cheek, “My god, think what those ghosts are saying.”

The editors listen to Celeste wide-eyed. But I myself am of another mind. Celeste needs to rethink things, I think. It is only ghost stories, not ghosts, here at play. Celeste's signs are just things she believes that ghosts do. My guess is Celeste's typo was in fact always there. She's just looking for an excuse to have missed it.

And besides, I say to the editors, it's old news, this haunting of Elmwood. All sanatoriums are haunted, there is some sort of rule. And if we were more of a profitable mind here, we'd be charging for midnight flashlight tours.

The fact is, people like to be frightened, I say. It just makes life a little bigger. We here, for instance, like to think we have ghosts, as without them we'd just be text editors. Without ghosts there'd be only the ordinary.

Still there is one ghost, this ghost Celeste calls Emmaline, who is starting to try all of our patience. In the last few months, she seems to keep coming up on our floor, these past days more than
ever. Or so Celeste believes. I, however, have my doubts. “But Celeste,” I tell her, “it cannot all just be Emmaline.”

Celeste says well yes, it can. It is Emmaline who's at fault here, yes of course. And she says then Earnest, the janitor, has seen her. “You don't have to believe me, just ask Earnest.”

I nod. I say I'll look into it, as though maybe I just might. But what Celeste doesn't know is I've already heard all about our young Emmaline. Earnest filled me in several weeks ago now, soon after he'd come back from retirement. It was on a night I got caught in overtime—something I don't make a practice of—but we were behind on our annual report. Steinem had dragged with the executive letter, so I had to stay late doing paste-up in hope of making our deadline by dawn.

I was in fact just burnishing the last of the letter and beginning to size Steinem's photo when a shadow moved over my light table.

“Earnest?” I say. “Is that you, Earnest?”

“The girl in the nightie who jumped,” he says. “She was one of the screamers here.”

I look up. “Thought you would want to know,” he says.

And I realize then I am caught. So I put down my burnisher and “Jumped?” I say. “She jumped?”

Earnest leans on his mop. “Jumped. Yes,” he says. Then halting in places as though to recall, he continues. “Young girl, very pale. I remember her now. Small, quiet, kept to herself. You wouldn't take her for a screamer. But one day she came back from the treatment wing wrapped up in a bloody sheet, and it was never the same with her after.”