Wild Thing: A Novel

by Josh Bazell

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. But he definitely got referred to as a chicken.”*

  She rolls, propping up on her elbows. “You know what your problem is?”

  “Bring it.”

  “You don’t just make doing dangerous shit look fun, you make being informed look fun. Which is another thing that’s not true.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not a compliment. Good night.”

  A few minutes after turning away again, though, she says “How was the kiss?”

  “I’ll never tell. It was fun seeing you jealous, though.”

  “I wasn’t jealous. I have no interest in kissing Sarah Palin. I didn’t even before I saw you doing it. It looked frightening.”

  “It was.”

  Outside, a bird starts bitching about something or other. It can’t be that long before dawn.

  Violet says “Just so you know, Rec Bill and I only spent one night together.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about it.”

  “We didn’t even have sex. We mostly stayed up all night talking. We didn’t even kiss until after the sun came up.”

  “I said you don’t have to tell me about it.”

  “Fuck you. We were in Tsarabanjina.”

  “Really? I love Tsarabanjina.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course not. Where the fuck is Tsarabanjina?”

  “Who were you saying was jealous?”

  “You. Where is it?”

  “It’s part of Madagascar. We were there about six months ago. Rec Bill wanted me to do some rock analysis on a fossil he was thinking of buying.”

  “The one in the lobby of his building?”

  “Well…”

  “What?” I say.

  “That’s not the actual fossil. But—not important.”

  Not important? Small-talk lifeline, more like. “What do you mean it’s not the actual fossil?”

  “The one in the lobby is a cast, like they use in museums.”

  “They don’t use actual fossils in museums?”

  “Not to assemble into skeletons. You’d have to drill them, and they’d be too heavy. Real fossils are solid rocks inside other rocks. But will you listen to me, please? It was the most romantic place on earth. We had these balconies overlooking the ocean, and we could see each other from them, so he invited me over. We got drunk and hung out talking.”

  Great. My postapocalyptic Violet Hurst fantasy has come true. For Rec Bill.

  “In the morning we made out a bit, then I went back to my room and fell asleep. And it hasn’t happened since.”

  “Okay,” I say. Even neutral sounds bitter, but what am I supposed to do—high-five her?

  “Since then I’ve barely even seen him. We went out for dinner a few times and it was totally awkward. He invites me to foundation events, but if I go he barely even talks to me.”

  “Nice.”

  “Then he texts me when he gets home, and we talk for like two hours.”

  “By text?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about? Maybe you should be charging him.”

  “Okay: mind out of gutter, please.”

  “I meant for therapy.”

  “Whatever. We talk about whatever he’s thinking about. Articles he’s forwarded to me at work. I used to actually read them in case he was sending me some kind of message, but I think he just wants someone to communicate with.”

  “Are you sure it’s him on the other end?”

  “You know, you should work with paranoids. You’d be very calming.”

  “So we’ve established that he outsources his conversations with you. Is he dating anyone else?”

  “Not that he’s mentioned. But I don’t even feel like I can ask him.”

  “Which you put up with for what reason?”

  “Because I don’t even know if I want a relationship with Rec Bill. That night, there really seemed to be something there. But maybe I imagined it. Maybe I am just dazzled by how rich he is.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “You don’t strike me as particularly materialistic, but I can see where a man who’ll buy a woman a dinosaur might be one to hold on to. Is he a decent human being?”

  “I think so.”

  “Just not to you.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “I think it’s called ‘keeping you hanging.’ ”

  “At least he hasn’t fired me. That’s pretty charitable.”

  “I don’t believe that at all.”

  Violet reaches past me to get her canteen out of her day pack. Doesn’t affect me—I’ve had a boner since we got back in the tent.

  “I’m not saying I suck as a paleontologist,” she says. “But the project he’s got me on is total crap. Anyone but Rec Bill would have shut it down months ago.”

  “And it was your idea?”

  “No, it was his. But I’m in a better position to judge it than he is.”

  “Do you lie to him about it?”

  “No. I tell him it’s fucking ridiculous and he should shut it down.”

  “So there you go.” I add, casually, “What’s the project?”

  She pauses to let me know she’s telling me intentionally and not because of how sly I am. “It’s called the Poultroleum Project. The idea is that since Americans kill twenty-two million chickens a day, and chickens are descended from dinosaurs, we should use their bones to make crude oil. No, I’m not kidding.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “No. I’m not,” she says. “That’s it. That’s what I do: I run the Poultroleum Project for Rec Bill.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Of course not. Oil doesn’t come from dinosaurs in the first place—it comes from algae and zooplankton. Which you then have to crush under ultrahigh pressures and temperatures for millions of years in anoxic conditions, using massive amounts of energy.”

  “Does Rec Bill know that?”

  “Of course. I’ve been telling him since before he hired me.”

  “Fuck,” I say. “He really is in love with you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So why doesn’t he fire you?”

  “He says he doesn’t care whether the project works out or not, because it’s worth it to him to have someone in-house who could become the world’s foremost expert on petroleum formation.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I’m not the right person for that job. Petroleum formation’s been the highest-paying subspecialty of geology for a hundred years—it’s how we know where to drill. There are ten thousand people out there who are already better at it than I’ll ever be. I’m not even interested in it. I think petroleum’s done nothing but evil to this planet. To me all technology is a separately evolving parasite on the human race.”

  “And he’s a tech billionaire. Like I say, it must be love.”

  Violet ignores this. “He also says he likes having researchers who think outside the box, because he’s only interested in long shots. Which makes me feel like I’m ripping him off even more. How many major scientific discoveries are the result of someone working on their own, outside of academia?”

  “I don’t know—penicillin? Relativity?”

  “Neither of which involved technology. And both of which were a long time ago. Technology progresses logarithmically—even in the oil world it’s past the point where any one person could keep track of it.”

  She drinks and hands me the canteen. I take it, stupidly touched. “Anyway,” she says, “the underlying premise is fucked: net exothermic petroleum synthesis is a perpetual motion machine. And even if you could invent a new way to make oil, it would just cause the ecological disaster to happen before the oil-crash disaster, instead of the other way around.”

  “Maybe he wants somebody with that attitude for the job. I would.”

  “You don’t understand. There is no job. I don’t do anything. There’s nothing
to do. I have a ridiculous non-job that probably still exists only because the boss is either hot for me or feels guilty about acting like he was six months ago.”

  “I thought he was the cheapest man alive.”

  “I’m not that expensive.”

  “And if he’s only employing you because he’s hot for you, he doesn’t seem to be doing much about it.”

  “No he’s not, thank you for pointing that out. Anyway, that’s not the point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “It’s that I shouldn’t have freaked out on you for being… whatever you are. A bodyguard-slash-doctor or whatever. It’s totally hypocritical of me to act like I’m somehow better than that. Better than you, I mean. I’m not better than you, in any way. If anything I’m worse. We both just work for Rec Bill. And what you’re doing for him is a lot less shameful than what I’m doing.”

  “That’s the point?”

  “Yes.”

  “Violet, you are better than I am.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. Thank you for saying that, but you are. You’re just hard on yourself because you think you should be out trying to stop the human race from killing itself, but you haven’t figured out how to do that yet.”

  She looks at me. “Now you’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “That’s like Keanu: so shallow it seems deep.”

  “Hey, at least it seems deep.”

  “Less and less as I think about it. You may need to recalibrate your character-judgment skills, my friend. All I want is to learn to relax and let the world go fuck itself.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Fuck you, ‘Uh huh.’ And anyway, who are you to talk about this kind of shit? You still haven’t told me what your deal is. What, you were a Navy SEAL? You worked private security in Afghanistan? What?”

  It’s asinine for me to be as surprised by that question as I am. To cover it up, I stretch like I’m yawning.

  “Tell me,” she says.

  “Nothing like that.”

  “So… what?”

  I turn away from her. “I’ll tell you later.”

  “How bout now?”

  “Can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “I need you to still be talking to me.”

  “You’re not worried I’m going to stop talking to you because you’re so annoyingly evasive?”

  I make it trail off: “Now that you mention it.”

  “And now you’re pretending to go to sleep?”

  “Not pretending. Monster in the morning.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Sleep well.”

  “You know I’m only going to imagine things that are worse than you could possibly tell me.”

  “I’ll take the risk.”

  “And the first thing I’m going to imagine is that you have no secrets, and just get off on frustrating people.”

  “Mm.”

  “Ugh. You are so fucking stubborn.” I hear her turn away as well. “Talking to you is like talking to myself.”

  “I feel that way too.”

  “That’s because you’re a narcissist. Good night, Dr. Azimuth.”

  “Good night, Dr. Hurst.”

  28

  Lake Garner / White Lake

  Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

  Still Thursday, 20 September

  Seven-thirty, half an hour after sunrise, and the only thing the sun’s done so far is brighten the fog. There’s fog all over the place. Even Lake Garner looks like it’s inside a cloud. White Lake looks like the Canyon That Time Forgot.

  Reggie’s handing out coffee, like he’s done all four days, I think because he hasn’t had enough else to do. His earnest and willowy guides are too efficient. Along with everyone else, he seems skittish about the fact that Bark still hasn’t turned up.

  “You okay?” I say.

  “You mean am I worried about Del’s goddamned dog? No. She’s probably joined a pack of moose.” He shoots a guilty look, though, over at Violet and Palin’s young relation Frodo, who are sitting on a boulder looking desolate. “I’m fine. Canoe trips and lake monsters aren’t really my thing—weirdos in amphibious boats neither—but at least we’re halfway done with the canoe part. All I need to do is make it back.”

  “Reggie, what happened to all the hunting equipment Chris Jr. ordered that didn’t get delivered till after he died? Like the hooks and stuff?”

  He shrugs. “Returned it. Never thought I’d be out here to use it.”

  I take two cups of coffee over to Violet and Frodo, but Frodo’s already drinking a hot chocolate, so I keep one and sit down next to Violet. She leans into me, consciously or not I can’t tell, although when’s the last time you unconsciously leaned into someone?* Either way it’s nice.

  Reggie’s guides cook pancakes while we all wait for the fog to blow over, or burn off or whatever it’s supposed to do. No one talks above a whisper. There’s a wet hush in the campsite that, for an hour, gets broken only by sporadic bird calls.

  When the hour’s up, though, a noise from the direction of White Lake rips into us like we’re inside Godzilla’s throat in THX.

  Naturally, everyone goes apeshit, scrambling into a panicked blur that’s for some reason difficult to look at. Rather than try, I wonder about the timing. Assuming the noise was set off by a human being—foghorn? laptop hooked up to a Marshall stack?—then why set it off now? Why not give us a day or two to poke around White Lake, for verisimilitude? Or else why not just get it over with last night?

  I turn to ask Violet her opinion, but she and Frodo are gone. Not just up from the rock: out of my sight, even though it doesn’t feel like enough time has passed for that to have happened. Then again, I’m not sure my brain’s working properly. A man with what looks like a rifle case goes by, and it takes me so long to process his face that he’s gone before I realize it was Fick. Or that he was running.

  Then the entire concept of time starts to seem fucked up. Why are memories so low-quality that remembering Violet sitting next to me is worthless compared to experiencing it at the time? I mean, granted, meat is not the ideal recording medium. But meat seems to do all right patching the sensation through in the first place.

  Violet, though. I miss that woman. In fact I’m having the strangest feeling about her. Like we’ve just spent five thousand years as statues on either side of the same ancient Egyptian doorway, wishing we could go inside the pyramid and screw.

  Someone yells “Guys, stop!” It’s Reggie—surprisingly, I can identify voices right away. Teng and his guys go by, but without quite seeming three-dimensional. More like they’re animated Colorforms stuck onto different layers of glass, the trees behind them like slow-motion fountains. Which I suppose is what they are.

  All right, I think. Enough of this.

  From my jacket pocket I take out a disposable syringe and one of the two vials of Anduril—four doses total—that I stole from Dr. McQuillen’s medicine cabinet.

  Anduril’s an antipsychotic from the sixties. Said to hit like a hammer but to work, and with fewer metabolic side effects than the shit they give crazy people now. Also said to cold-stop LSD.

  It can lock your muscles up, though, which is why you have to take it with an anti-parkinsonian agent. Which I also stole two vials of.

  I should have premixed the syringes. Making one up now is taking a seriously long time. I’m not sure why I didn’t. Or why I didn’t steal all the Anduril McQuillen had. I really need to learn to trust my instincts.

  Finally I get a syringe together. Since, at this moment, coordinating an injection into my shoulder seems harder than working in an office for fifty years, I jab the short needle into the top of my thigh through my jeans.

  Depressing the plunger causes the needle to spring back up into the syringe. That’s why I couldn’t premix it—self-retracting needle! Amazingly fucking brilliant, modern syringe design is. Like the Unabomber used to say: technolo
gy will eventually kill us, but each small instance of it will be charming.*

  “Reggie!” I shout as I load up another syringe. “What the fuck have you done?”

  No one answers.

  No one’s around.

  I can hear voices from White Lake, though.

  I lumber around the trees to the spit. Three of the canoes are out on the water, abreast, headed away from me into the fog. The guides rowing hard, everyone else standing up. Without luggage, three boats are enough for the whole party.

  And their guns.

  Reggie’s shouting “Put down the goddamn firearms!”

  I run down the beach until I’m ahead of the canoes. Glare at Reggie as I pass him.

  From the front the situation’s even worse. Just the variety of guns is astonishing. Fick, Mrs. Fick, and Teng have variations on straight-up deer-hunting rifles, although Teng’s is stainless steel. Teng’s bodyguards have TEC-9s. I didn’t think they still made TEC-9s. Tyson Grody’s bodyguards have various handguns—two each—though Grody is trying to jump and pull their gun arms down. Palin’s guards have vicious-looking Skorpion submachine pistols.

  Palin herself has a sword.

  Reggie Trager’s following the armada along the beach, coming toward me as he jumps up and down waving, yelling “Stop!”

  I don’t see Violet anywhere. Or Frodo. I’ve chosen them and Wayne Teng’s brother to receive the other three doses of antipsychotic, Violet because she’s Violet, Frodo because she’s young, and Teng’s brother because he’s been through enough shit already. Right now the brother’s kneeling in one of the boats, staring ahead with his face slack.

  Then one of Teng’s bodyguards points and shouts something that has to mean “Look! There it is!”

  Because look: there it is. Even with the LSD starting to abate.

  William the White Lake Monster.

  Or, as it resembles from my angle and through the fog, three humps of ribbed black plastic vent hose, twenty inches or so wide, waving cheaply and being made to move across the lake by means you can’t see but can guess from the bubbles coming up through the water.

  “WAIT,” Reggie says. “DON’T—”

  “No!” Tyson Grody screams.

  Everyone who can opens fire. It’s louder than the foghorn, or whatever that was.