Wild Thing: A Novel

by Josh Bazell

  If it’s a gamble, I can see where Reggie might want to let it ride for one last night.

  “We’re still interested in the trip,” Wayne Teng says.

  Tyson Grody says “We’re cool to wait too.”

  “We’ll consider it,” the grim safari guy says.

  Reggie looks at Violet and me. “We’ll have to check with our boss,” Violet says.

  “Thank you,” Reggie says. “Thank you all.” He looks genuinely touched, though it could just be that his frozen-open eye has a tendency to run.

  14

  CFS Lodge, Ford Lake, Minnesota

  Still Friday, 14 September

  “Here’s what I want to know,” says Fick, the grim-looking safari guy. To Violet, though she’s eating and pretending not to notice. “Why does evolution have to contradict the Bible?”

  Reggie’s guys Del and Miguel, at our end of the table, perk up. Earlier, Fick described himself as “a businessman,” and his wife, “Mrs. Fick,” as “a homemaker,” and Miguel said “That’s cool—Del and I make homes too.” Del and Violet and I laughed. Even Mrs. Fick smiled. Fick not so much.

  Also not smiling was the bodyguard of the Teng brothers who’s seated with us—either because he doesn’t understand English, like Teng said, or because he’s pretending he doesn’t—and Clipboard Davey, our earnest young guide.

  Davey has turned out to have an equally willowy and sun-desiccated wife who’s also working as a guide for Reggie’s tour, one Jane. Right now Jane is at the end of the other table, sitting next to Tyson Grody, and Davey looks worried.

  I’d be worried too. I wouldn’t call Grody attractive, exactly, but he’s got the energy of a mongoose, and the shamelessness. When Violet and I met him, he introduced his bodyguards to us, swear to God, as “M’blackberries.” Neither of them seemed offended by it, or by Grody in general.

  “Miss,” Fick says. “Miss.”

  “You’re talking to me?” Violet eventually says.

  “Sure am.”

  “Can you pass the corn?” she says to Miguel.

  Exactly what I was thinking. I haven’t had creamed corn since I was a kid. Particularly with the burnt part mashed into it, it’s awesome.

  Miguel pushes it over. Fick says “Why does evolution have to contradict the Bible?”

  Violet pours. “I don’t know. Does it?”

  “Not in my opinion.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I would say that where a lot of people who believe in the Bible respect scientists, not too many scientists respect people who believe in the Bible. Why is that?”

  “I have no idea,” Violet says.

  “Do you believe in the Bible?”

  She looks at him. “You’re asking me about my religious beliefs?”

  “Why, are you an atheist? Most scientists are, in my experience.”*

  “I don’t know that I believe anyone’s actually an atheist,” Violet says. “Everybody believes in something irrational, even if it’s just that they’d be happier if they had a nicer car.” She turns to me. “Don’t start on my car. Jump in any time, but don’t start on my car.”

  “You think believing in the Bible is irrational?” Fick says.

  Violet looks around. Del and Miguel both nod, egging her on. I just eat, but I’m impressed. I never argue with people whose opinions I don’t care about.

  Violet sighs. “Believing that it’s the word of God?” she says. “I don’t know. What’s the evidence for it?”

  “More people believe it than don’t.”

  “So reality is subject to democracy?”

  “No, but unless there’s evidence to the contrary, the wisdom of the crowd is a good place to start.”

  “There is evidence to the contrary. The Bible says humans were created the same week as the planet. Jesus says the world’s going to end within his audience’s lifetime. You can try to semantically twist those things so they don’t contradict your hypothesis, but that’s not rationality. It’s just faith.”

  “I wasn’t aware that faith was a bad thing.”

  Violet looks at him. “Did I start this conversation?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I never said faith was a bad thing. It’s just obviously not all that satisfying, or you wouldn’t feel the need to try to bully people like me into agreeing with you.”

  “Oh boy,” Del says.

  Fick says “Let’s keep this respectful, please.”

  “Why?” Violet says. “Here’s what I don’t understand. When did the definition of religion stop being ‘things people should have the right to believe’ and become ‘ideas other people should be forced to respect, even if they’re demonstrably false’? And why doesn’t it work both ways? You clearly don’t feel a need to respect rationality.”

  “Maybe I just don’t see how believing in evolution is rational. People have been trying to prove evolution since Darwin’s time, and it’s still just a theory.” He looks around, smiling. “Now that’s what I call faith.”

  Violet stares at him. “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Evolution’s a theory in the Pythagorean sense, meaning it’s a general rule that applies to numerous real-world cases. Not in the sense that it’s never been proved. It gets proved all the time. Every time you get a flu shot you prove evolution.” To me, she says “Like I say, jump in any time.”

  “What is this, trout?” I say.

  “I mean about this.”

  “I totally agree with you,” I say.

  “So maybe you can answer a question I’ve got,” Fick says to me.

  “Probably not.”

  “Evolution happens because everything’s trying to survive, right?”

  “Okay.”

  “But that feeling itself—the will to survive. How did that evolve?”

  “You got me.”

  Violet stomps on my foot.

  “Dr. Hurst knows, though,” I say.

  Violet shakes her head as she puts down her fork. “Evolution doesn’t require the will to survive. It just requires the tendency to survive. If you have a bunch of different molecules, and two of them randomly have a tendency to stick to each other, then you’re going to end up with compounds made of those two molecules. And if some of those compounds randomly form in such a way that they tend to stick to other compounds, they’re going to form more complicated compounds. And so on till you get to organisms. The will to live might be an advantage for animals that have it, but it’s a product of evolution, not the cause of it. Sea anemones don’t want to survive any more than heroin wants to get injected by a junkie. They both just tend to when the circumstances are right.”

  “So what about the second law of thermodynamics?” Fick says.

  “I was just about to ask that,” Miguel says.

  “Me too,” Del says.

  “What about it?”

  “Well,” Fick says, “you just got done telling us, at length, that it’s possible for a bunch of chemicals to randomly assemble into a human being. But the second law of thermodynamics says things tend toward entropy and disorganization, not toward complexity and organization. So does evolution just happen to get an exception to that rule?”

  Violet looks disgusted. “The second law of thermodynamics states that isolated systems tend toward entropy. The Earth isn’t an isolated system. It gets materials and energy from space all the time. It gets a continuous hundred and twenty petawatts of energy from the sun alone,* most of which just dissipates back into space. Evolution doesn’t have to be entropic, because the solar system it takes place in—which isn’t isolated either—is massively entropic. You just don’t understand the physics.

  “You know,” she says, getting angrier, “I think that may be the problem. You want to believe that anything you don’t understand personally is either wrong or not knowable by anyone. You don’t understand physics, so physics is wrong. You don’t understand biology, so biology is wrong. Anything you yourself can’t figure ou
t has to be due to a glowing man with a beard—because that, at least, you can picture. And since you’re not actually interested in learning anything, ‘glowing man with a beard’ becomes your explanation for everything. Which I’m then supposed to somehow ‘respect.’ But what about that is there to respect?”

  Fick shows teeth. “Oh, come on, now—”

  “Let me ask you a question,” Violet says.

  “Not if—”

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes,” Fick says, suspiciously. “I do.”

  “Do you believe that God believes in God?”

  “You mean does God believe in Himself?”

  “No. Does God believe there’s a higher God than God.”

  “No,” Fick says. “Of course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would He?”

  “Why would you?”

  “Because that’s what it says in the Bible,” Fick says.

  “What if God has a book that says there’s a higher power than God? Then should He believe it?”

  Miguel says “Oh, shit! Time warp.”

  Del says “Does not compute!”

  Miguel says “Lady scientist has blown my mind!”

  “If that book was actually written by a higher being, absolutely,” Fick says.

  “What if there’s no evidence for it being written by a higher being, although a lot of people have told God that it is?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Fick says.

  “You’re right,” Violet says. “It is. But at least you’re not accusing God of being stupid enough to use the same reasoning you do.”

  Miguel makes a whip-cracking sound.

  “Is that a regular whip crack, or a pussy-whip crack?” Violet says.

  “I don’t know. Little of both,” Miguel says.

  “All right then,” Violet says. She and Miguel clink beers.

  “I’ll thank you to not use that language in front of Mrs. Fick,” Fick says.

  “What,” Violet says, “ ‘pussy’ or ‘evolution’?”

  “Oh, shizzle,” Tyson Grody says from behind us.

  Fick stands up. “That’s it. We’re leaving.”

  “Don’t on my account,” Violet says.

  “On whose account would you suggest we leave, then?”

  There’s an uncomfortable pause while people try to figure this out.

  “Look,” Violet says, “if I offended you, I apologize.”

  “You did and you should.”

  “Fine. Let’s just agree to not talk about religion. Or science. Christ.”

  Fick turns to Reggie. “We’re going to stay the night in Ely. We may or may not come back tomorrow.”

  “I hope you do,” Reggie says.

  “Me too,” Violet says blandly.

  Fick lets the screen door slam shut behind them.

  “Sorry,” Violet says to the room.

  “He started it,” Miguel says.

  “Yeah. That’s not really an excuse to take a dump on his conceptual framework, though.”

  “I think it is,” Del says.

  “Thanks, but it’s not. If your dog humps your leg, it’s understandable. If you hump your dog’s leg, it’s a problem.”

  “Dog might have a problem,” Del says. “I don’t have a problem.”

  Miguel says “Del, not everybody wants to hear that, man.”

  Bark looks up from the floor smiling, like she knows they’re talking about her.

  “Yeah, like Bark and I have sex,” Del says. “Bark and I don’t have sex. We make love. There’s a difference.”

  “That’s true,” Miguel says. “I’ve seen the videotape.”

  “You’ve paid to see the videotape.”

  “Damn,” Violet says. “I hope you guys aren’t planning on talking that way in front of Mrs. Fick. If Mr. Fick brings her back. I’m sorry, Reggie.”

  Reggie waves it off. “They’ll come back or they won’t. Either way, we’ll be fine.”

  “Can I ask you a question, Doctor?” Wayne Teng says.

  I turn around to face the other table, but of course it’s Violet he’s talking to, not me.

  “Sure,” she says.

  “Do you believe in luck?”

  “Luck?”

  “My own life has been very, very lucky. It’s hard for me not to see that as some kind of evidence of something.”

  Tyson Grody kisses the back of his own hand. “Hear that.”

  “Me too,” Miguel says.

  “If I didn’t believe in luck,” Violet says, “would I be suggesting we all move on to the casino on the Ojibwe reservation?”

  “Be serious,” Teng says.

  “I am being serious: we should go to the casino on the Ojibwe reservation.”

  Teng laughs. “Fine. I accept that—for now. And I have space in my car.”

  “I do too,” Grody says.

  “You should come,” Violet says to me. “I probably won’t forgive you for not helping me out with that asshole, but you never know.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. I was about to say something that would have totally changed his mind, but I decided not to at the last moment. Anyway, I think I’ll stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “I already believe in statistics.”

  Even on the ship, where the best-looking women are the blackjack dealers, I don’t go near casinos. Like a surprising number of other things on cruise ships, casinos are independent concessions, paying a flat rate to the cruise line to use the space. If there’s any part of the ship that’s going to be mobbed up, it’s the casino. And even if it isn’t, it’s where mobbed-up people are going to want to hang out. Once they’re done with the buffet, I mean.

  Also, I really shouldn’t be spending an evening drinking with Violet Hurst just prior to sharing a cabin with her.

  “We’re not going there to gamble, SquarePants,” she says. “We’re going there to drink. Come on. I’m sure they can TiVo Judge Judy for you.”

  “I have things I need to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “E-mail. Including e-mailing Rec Bill to ask him if he wants us to hang out for the delay.”

  “Weak. What else?”

  “I have to do some reading.”

  “Bring it with you.”

  “I can’t. It’ll blow the mortgage payment. Have a piña colada for me. Charge it to Rec Bill.”

  “I don’t know you well enough for a piña colada.”

  “A club soda, then.”

  “You know, your deepening squareness concerns me,” Violet says. “I’m tempted to stay here with you.”

  “That’d be cool,” I say, realizing I have no willpower whatsoever.

  “Luckily,” Violet says, “temptation rolls right off me. And after that bullshit with the fucking Ficks, partial sobriety lacks its usual allure. What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You think I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Did I say that?”

  “No,” she says.

  “Did I make some kind of face?”

  “No. You had no facial expression at all. Which is fucked up. Who doesn’t have a facial expression?”

  I stare at her expressionlessly.

  “Stop that. You’re scaring me. And stop trying to diagnose me.”

  “If you’re worried about the co-pay, we can work that out.”

  “You know, you should take that act to the Catskills.”

  “How do you know about the Catskills?”

  “I know about a lot of things, my friend. Like that I’m not an alcoholic. Know how I know?”

  “Because you’re not defensive about it?”

  “How dare you. Because I don’t have to drink to have a good time.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Usually because I’m already drunk. Come with us.”

  “I can’t. Have fun, Dr. Hurst.”

  She trails a hand down my shoulder as she stands.

  “You too, Dr. SquareP
ants.”

  15

  CFS Lodge, Ford Lake, Minnesota

  Friday, 14 September–Saturday, 15 September

  The e-mail from Robby, the Australian kid who’s covering for me on the ship, is signed “Fuck you very much, mate,” which I take to be good news. At least he’s still engaged.

  Cruise ship doctors tend to burn out into either martyrs or Caligula. I picked Robby because I thought he would stay down the center of the lane as long as possible before veering toward martyrdom. Patients get better treatment from the Peace Corps types than the Love Boat ones.

  I did my best to leave him detailed instructions—things like how to argue with the captain to get someone airlifted when they’re having a heart attack and don’t have MedEvac insurance, how to steal supplies, where to hide those supplies given that so many crew members use the examining room of the staff clinic as a fuck pad, and so on.* I told him to watch for groom-on-bride honeymoon violence, since the “security guards” have orders not to interfere with it.* And I told him never to bother the senior physician, Dr. Muñoz, when he’s ballroom dancing with the old ladies, because Dr. Muñoz hates that, plus is incompetent. But Robby always has questions even so, about things I forgot to tell him, or that I purposely left out because I didn’t want to scare him off.

  In the office of the registration cabin, which is where Reggie told me to go to use the Internet, I answer the ones he has now and wish him well as sincerely as I can, given that I essentially lured his ass into the job just so I could flee it. And to do what—go on vacation?

  Oh, right: to earn enough money to somehow buy my way out of a mafia vendetta. And come up with a plan for how to do that.

  I have given it some thought. Mostly about contracting a prison hit on David Locano. But even supposing Locano’s not in protective isolation, I’d still need a way to hire someone in prison to kill him. And as far as I know, there isn’t one.

  In real life, even hitmen who aren’t in prison are close to impossible to hire privately. Or even contact. No matter what you think of the FBI, and no matter how justified you are in thinking that, they’ve got to be as good at finding freelance hitmen as some schmuck who wants his wife whacked is going to be. Every real hitman I’ve known, or even heard of, in or out of prison, has tried to work for as few people as possible, generally within the same branch of the same mafia. Usually some mafia that now wants me dead.*