“Yes, dear,” Herb replied with a squeak. He stubbed the cigar out in the ashtray and shuffled up the stairs.
Herbert managed to avoid Iris for a few more minutes. He knew what was coming. Dinner. He’d sit across from her as always and she’d talk and talk and talk. Work. Gossip. Politics. Business. Her opinions on everything were spoken as if the future of the country depended on their very utterance.
Daisy stood by the front door waiting for Herbert. He held the leash in his hand. She never wagged her tail. Never looked happy to see him.
Herbert noticed the neat stack of bills on a table in the hallway. He tried not to think about when the ominous-looking envelopes would be opened. And how the bills enclosed would be paid.
The words “Please write your account number on your check or money order” drifted through his mind when Daisy bit him.
The retriever never bit him hard, not hard enough to draw blood anyway. But it wasn’t a playful bite, either. It was an act of meanness from a mean animal. Always happened when Herbert put Daisy’s collar on. She led him out the door. He had to jog to keep from being yanked off his feet.
Outside in the yard Herbert stepped in shit. Daisy woofed at him. Herb didn’t speak dog, but he knew those woofs were laughter.
“Why don’t ye just divahce her, Herbaht?” Monte Doogan said to Herbert over coffee in the breakroom.
“Divorce?” Herbert replied, as if he’d never heard the word before. Monte shook his head.
“Maybe she’s cheatin’ on ye, Herbaht. Evah considered that possibility? If I caught Lorraine messing ’round on me, I’d find the cahksuckah and throw ’em both into the Pawcatuck Rivah!”
Herbert sipped his coffee. He smiled at his best and only friend. Monte was a hillbilly from Eastern Connecticut. A lost breed of New England ape. Known for his talent with a chain saw, sculpting tree trunks into bears and hawks and other woodland creatures. He delivered office equipment from a distribution center that Herbert managed in quiet, effective bursts of competence.
“Think ’bout it, Herbaht. Iris drives ye fackin’ nutty, that I knows. If I was yous, I’d cat and fackin’ run to tha hills,” Monte said, departing with a wink and a tip of his filthy hat. The Red Sox cap Monte never took off looked to have been buried in motor oil and fertilizer for several decades.
“Sound advice coming from a guy with four ex-wives,” Herbert whispered in response. He took another sip from his coffee.
It was almost quitting time.
Herbert knew something odd was up when he pulled into the driveway. Iris was home early from her job at the insurance company. He hesitated, his hand wavering near the doorknob. Herb looked around, expecting to see a camera crew. Practical jokesters lurking in the bushes. Nothing but the hum of the ocean. The shore. A breeze.
Herbert nearly fainted at the sight of his wife, singing a tune, hustling food from a pan to a dish to an oven. A pleasant aroma in her kitchen. A full pot of coffee. Iris hated the smell of coffee. She never drank it. She forbade Herb from brewing it in the house.
Herbert didn’t trust anyone who didn’t drink coffee.
Iris turned and lavished a gaze so false and rehearsed he thought for sure this was hell and his car had been struck by a train or crashed into the Pawcatuck River. Before he could find a knife and prick himself to see if it was only a dream, Iris brought him a steaming cup of black coffee, wrinkled her nose at him, and returned to her chore of preparing what looked to be an exquisite feast.
Herbert steadied himself. Seated at the kitchen table, he noticed a three-pack of his favorite brand of cigar. Even Daisy the retriever sauntered up and nuzzled him with a wet nose and a flash of pearly whites.
This surely must be what hell is like, Herbert thought.
But he’d seen this act before.
“I thought we’d eat in the dining room for a change, Herb,” Iris said. She carried a baking dish to the table. A hot, aromatic casserole. Brown rice. Steamed cauliflower. Veal cutlets.
Herbert decided just to eat quietly. He sensed what was coming. It was all too good to be true.
“So I spoke with Jim Mitchell over at the bank today,” Iris said, nervously picking at her food.
“Oh?”
“I’ve been working on a business plan. Put a lot of work and effort into it. You know it’s a dream of mine, Herb!”
Oh, boy. Here it comes.
Herbert was very familiar with his wife’s entrepreneurial fetish. Something she’d failed to mention during their unremarkable courtship, but had become an obsession once Herbert muttered the two saddest words in the English language: I do.
First it was the antique store, then the nightclub, the trendy boutique, the art gallery, the gym for toddlers, the movie theater for the blind. Iris Menkel had quite a reputation among shop owners up and down Main Street of Craftbury, Connecticut. And she damn near bankrupted the two of them every time. Herbert had squandered a rather healthy inheritence, amassed large deficits on his six credit cards, but most of all, he’d sold his sailboat. The only thing that had given him true happiness. Six years ago. He hadn’t been on the ocean since.
Herbert nodded. His eyes betrayed him. Iris was gauging him as she would a derelict on her doorstep holding an axe.
“So, Herb, I met with Jim Mitchell and we discussed a potential business loan. He heard me out and just loves my proposal,” she said, the wine turning to snake oil in front of her.
I’m sure he loved your proposal, Herbert wanted to say.
“Are you ready, Herb?”
Iris clasped her hands, the prestige moments away. Herbert nodded. Someone very dumb and sad had taken over his mind for the past thirty years and was at the controls now.
“I plan to open a restaurant right off Main. Now, Craftbury doesn’t have a lot of independent eateries. Sure, there’s the fast-food junk and take-out. But here’s the genius of my restaurant. We’ll only serve leftovers! That’s right! Leftovers! I plan to call my diner ‘Yesterday’s Lunch.’ Everything on the menu will be at least a day old. Jim Mitchell thinks it’s a really niche idea! Can’t you just see the neon sign out front, Herb? Herb?”
Herbert was nodding uncontrollably. He wasn’t so much following Iris’s big pitch as he was seizing up like an epileptic caught in a strobe light. He regained enough composure to reach for his cup of now-cold coffee.
“Sounds like a winner, dear,” Herbert finally said.
Some other vestige of Herbert Menkel, deep down in his brain, perked up and shouted, Did you really just say that?
“And I’ve raised the capital to get started on Yesterday’s Lunch,” Iris said, beaming.
“You have?”
“It’s a win-win. I worked out the details with Jim Mitchell. Just a matter of refinancing this and that, freeing up some equity, taking out that second mortgage you and I have talked about—”
Coffee didn’t spew from Herbert’s mouth, but it did trickle over his lip and drip onto the china-white tablecloth.
“Second mortgage?” he sputtered.
“Everybody’s doing it, Herb. After six months, we’ll be the talk of Eastern Connecticut. It’s a slam dunk! Herb? Herb? HERBERT MENKEL!”
Iris’s voice climbed to registers shrill enough to direct a flight of bats into a brick wall. Herbert found himself in the kitchen. His legs moved involuntarily, as if a switch in his brain had malfunctioned. Herbert freshened his coffee, grabbed the cigars. Daisy growled. He tiptoed down into his basement refuge.
For the next few hours Herbert studied the floorboards overhead through a haze of cigar smoke. Iris was hard at work slamming kitchen cupboard doors, clanking dishes, stomping this way and that, and watching Entertainment Tonight with the volume on AIR RAID. Herbert winced. He sighed. He eventually fell asleep in his chair, a copy of Sailing World on his chest, rising and falling with his snores.
That night he dreamt of his old sloop.
The Caribbean. A stranger on the beach.
And the weirdest single
event of Herbert’s life.
A solo voyage to St. Lucia. Drunk on the beach, a much younger Herbert relaxed under a full moon. Dark waters lapped against the shore. A ragged-looking man approached. A dreadlocked local, walking stick in hand. The smell of strong ganja. His name, he said, was Dahntay.
“White mon, sitting all alone here on the beach. How a boy like you get all the way down here?”
“My sloop. I sailed,” Herbert said, pointing to the slips a quarter of a mile away.
“I see. A mon of the water. Then you must know my God, Agwe?”
“God?”
“Agwe, mon. God of the ocean, protector of all that is salty,” Dahntay said incredulously.
“Sounds like a good guy.”
“Oh, he is, mon. Agwe is good and evil and righteous.”
Dahntay produced a spliff the size of a zucchini. He lit the end and passed it to young Herb, who had been feeling particularly adventurous since arriving in the Lesser Antilles. He liked smoking ganja and listening to Dahntay, who could have been anywhere from twenty to a hundred years old. It didn’t take long for Herb to get very stoned.
“Oh, mon. Young sailor like you should see Agwe firsthand. You see them starfish over there? Dead as can be, am I right?”
Herb looked at the sea stars a few feet away, probably a dozen in all. Dumped from a fishing net, most likely, and most certainly dead. His eyes drifted back to Dahntay, who had hustled from one of his many pockets a leather pouch. Herb watched in dreamy amazement as his new friend rose, approached the pile of starfish, and with a pinch of whatever was in that little leather pouch, sprinkled it around.
A minute passed. Herbert took his dreadlocked friend for a crackpot. But then there was movement on the sand. Undeniable. The sea stars began to twitch. Arms flexing. Herb couldn’t believe his eyes. Dahntay sang a little tune.
Then the little creatures, once dried-up and dead, began to dance by the light of the moon.
Herbert woke up to a quiet house. He felt weak, worn out, as if the dream of that magical night on the beach had sapped him of his strength. The first thing Herbert did was call in sick at work. Then he went to the attic.
I’ve still got that stuff. I know it.
He rummaged through boxes and foot lockers. Pictures of him and Iris on the sloop, sailing Long Island Sound, the Atlantic, the Caribbean. Happier times. But as if his eyes were suddenly seeing clearly, Iris acquired the appearance of a crazy person. It had taken thirty years and a really outrageous dream for Herbert to finally apprehend the downright wackiness in Iris’s gaze.
She’s nuts. She’s fucking nuts. And I sold my boat for her?
Herbert found the leather pouch buried under old nautical maps and motor boat manuals. The leather was soft and worn. Oil-stained, the stitching barely held the contents inside. Who knew how old Dahntay’s gift really was? Herb had forgotten nearly everything about that night, including Dahntay’s pouch. It was oddly heavy, though it supposedly contained nothing but an ashy powder. Herbert studied the round sack in his hand. Must weigh close to three pounds, he thought.
Agwe.
Herbert showered and dressed. On his way to the garage Daisy the retriever appeared with a leer and a well-timed growl. She’d shat on the kitchen floor, knocked around her food and water dishes, spilling their contents. The dog wore its contempt for Herbert as easily as its golden coat of hair.
“Get leukemia and die!” Herbert shouted in a voice he’d never heard before.
Daisy flinched and crawled under the table. This was not the Herbert she’d known all her life. The pushover, the introvert, the sad sack. Daisy watched him enter the garage from behind a fortress of chair legs, a soft whimper her only retort.
Herbert drove along Craftbury’s shoreline, eyeing the ocean with a nostalgic sadness. Fishing boats dropping their lobster pots. Cruisers and day sailers dotted the blue water. He passed Craftbury’s famous marina, with its million-dollar yachts and catamarans. Herbert imagined that his cherished old sloop was out there somewhere.
With someone else enjoying it.
Midmorning and the parking lot at Stop & Shop was half-full. Mainly housewives and old ladies. Herbert parked near the front entrance of the grocery store. Inside his jacket pocket he massaged the leather pouch with one hand, walking in a kind of daze through the automatic door to be greeted by bright lights and fresh produce. Herbert never thought for an instant that his behavior was strange. He was enjoying whatever trance or spell Agwe had over him. And Dahntay’s odd prediction so long ago on that dark beach came back to him like a lost radio transmission.
Take it, sailor mon. One day you might wake up and have a need for Agwe. The ocean always giveth. And the ocean always taketh away. That, sailor mon, is the essence of Agwe.
Taketh away? Herbert liked the sound of that.
He headed for the seafood department.
A young kid asked Herbert if he needed any help.
“Just browsing,” Herb said.
The kid shrugged his shoulders and returned his attention to a clipboard. Seemed he had a floor to hose down next. Most of the store’s seafood selection was displayed behind glass, but there was plenty of dead shellfish iced down in barrels and trays. Herb studied a bushel of crawfish, some snow crab clusters, whole steelhead trout in a bed of ice.
Glancing around, Herbert removed Dahntay’s pouch, untied it. Just a pinch of dust. No one was watching, except for the security cameras, but the guard usually watching the monitors was busier checking out the new teenage girl at the register in lane five.
Herbert sprinkled Agwe over the crawfish and snow crab, got a second pinchful, and powdered the steelhead trout. Then he waited. And waited. The kid turned around and eyed Herb curiously. He pretended to be really interested in a tray of Maine mussels.
Then the snow crab began to twitch.
Herbert heard a soft plop and realized the clerk’s chewing gum had fallen out of his mouth, landed on the display window. The other plop was one of the whole trout flopping off the ice tray and landing on the floor. Its reanimated brethren followed. Soon five whole fish were flopping away from the seafood department. Not the panicked death-rattle spasms of a fish out of water. The trout advanced earnestly, an eerie intelligence to their bouncing, hopping movements. After all, they didn’t need water anymore.
A woman screamed. Then he heard the kid speak.
“Mistah, them crab legs are moovin’.”
Herbert tucked the leather pouch back in his pocket and backed away, right into a display full of tortilla chips and salsa. He turned, an icy panic gripping him, and double-timed it down the nearest aisle. By then the chorus of screams had gained in volume. Old ladies shrieked, a man jumped over the pharmacy counter to safety. Children cried. Customers in the checkout lanes curiously craned their necks, mesmerized by the sound of breaking glass and manic shouting.
Herbert passed an end-cap full of batteries. The front door was in sight. The security guard almost knocked him down on his way up aisle seven, his gun drawn, his face twisted with fear.
An awful alien hiss filled the grocery store. Herb broke into a run at the sight of five dozen crawfish scurrying down the aisle in pursuit. Like demonic field mice, they overtook the security guard. An old woman with a purse full of coupons was next. A stock boy swatted at the crawfish with a broom. They made a terrible shriek.
On his way out Herbert heard gunshots.
Craftbury was so close to the state line Herbert could throw a rock from his beachfront yard and hit Rhode Island. And that’s where Herb found himself, cruising along the coast road toward Madangasset and its world-famous fish market. It was midday. The events inside Stop & Shop, unnerving and fantastic as they were, simply drove Herb farther down the rabbit hole. He was on a mission.
And he needed supplies.
The twenty thousand square foot fish market was located on Madangasset Beach, a tony resort popular with the uppity hedge-funders of Litchfield and Greenwich Counties, along with t
he usual millionaire mummies who trickled down from Boston every summer to bake their flesh and drink martinis. Herbert found a parking spot between two Range Rovers. He had to call the credit card company to find out his available balance. There once was a time when he didn’t even look at price tags.
The market was cool and smelly. Herbert pushed a cart past beds of ice. Aproned fishmongers worked the chains and slabs behind the glass displays of seafood. Herbert methodically explored every department, assessing the merchandise like a builder shopping for plywood and nails and paint.
Blue crab, alaskan King crab legs, jumbo prawns, crawfish, sea scallops, rainbow trout, mackerel, red snapper, haddock, whole squid, lobster, razor clams, shrimp cocktails. Herbert selected all his purchases with an eye for design and functionality.
Each seafood piece had to serve a purpose.
Iris arrived home from work as expected, doing her usual entrance accented by slamming doors and cupboards, Daisy the dog woofing its way around the kitchen until Herbert appeared. But Herbert knew tonight would be different.
He couldn’t wait for Daisy to go into the living room.
Where he’d done some rearranging.
Herbert quietly opened the door that led up from the basement to the kitchen. Iris didn’t hear him. Sacks of groceries were scattered along the counters. His wife had a pot boiling already. Herb turned to his right and saw Daisy frozen at the threshold as she studied what he’d done in the living room.
“HERBERT! Come help me with dinner! I am TOO TIRED TONIGHT! Did you hear the news today? People went crazy at the Craftbury Stop and Shop! I had to drive all the way to Stonington. HERBERT!” Iris yelled over her shoulder.
“I’m right here,” Herbert whispered.
“Oh,” Iris said, turning around. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I was ill today. I called in sick at work. But I’m all better now.”
“You’re sure of that? Well, what did you do today? Sit around smoking cigars and reading old magazines? That’s some life, Herbert. And what’s that awful smell?”
More Stories from the Twilight Zone Page 33
