The Mirror Thief

by Martin Seay

  Stanley, Claudio says. Will we go in?

  Stanley feels a gentle pressure on his ankle. He looks down. One of the bag-of-bones stray cats is rubbing the dome of its skull against his leg; another rears on its hind feet to tap the rim of his bucket with a cautious paw. Claudio is fending off three more.

  The volume of the music increases; the front door has opened. A peal of laughter comes from the stoop, and then a woman’s voice. What on earth? it says.

  Stanley and Claudio look up. The woman at the door is slender and very tall, dressed in a long flowered dress that looks homemade. Her winged wire-rimmed glasses and her long straight ponytail make her seem younger, and at the same time older, than she probably is. She wears no makeup, and her bronze hair is streaked with gray. Stanley figures her for about forty. Good afternoon, ma’am, he says, putting on his best little-boy-lost front. Is Mister Welles at home?

  Yes, he’s here. Are you Stanley? You must be Stanley.

  She swoops down the steps, along the path. Her gait is quick and athletic; it’s easy to imagine her playing tennis, or golf. She’s barefoot, and her tan forearms are speckled with what looks like white paint. She’s carrying a steaming cup of tea, and as she reaches the fence she shifts it to her left hand to shake with her right.

  I’m Synnøve, she says. I’m Adrian’s wife. He was so happy to meet you! He couldn’t stop talking about you. Now, who is this?

  I am called Claudio, Claudio says. I am greatly honored, señora.

  Sorry for the mess on my hands. I’ve been all morning in the studio. My word, look at all these cats! What on earth are you carrying?

  My friend and I, Stanley says, we went fishing last night, and—

  Are those grunion? So early?

  Yes ma’am. We wound up with more than we know what to do with, so we thought that maybe you and Mister Welles—

  Well, aren’t you both dear! You’ve come at the perfect time, too. I hadn’t a notion of what to do for dinner tonight, and we simply adore grunion. Now, you must both come in at once, before these furry bandits devour you. Come, come! I still have hot water for tea.

  Mrs. Welles—Synnøve?—has a funny accent: Scandinavian maybe, or German, or Dutch. She speaks English like she learned it in England. Adrian! she calls over the music as she opens the front door again. Stanley and Claudio are here! They’ve brought us fish for dinner!

  If Welles responds, Stanley can’t hear him over the shrieking hi-fi. He and Claudio set their buckets on the kitchen floor—the fish make shadowy airfoils under the ceiling fixture’s light—and while Synnøve fixes the tea and chats with Claudio, Stanley takes a look around. The walls and the tabletops are cluttered with weird art: old planks splashed with hot lead, driftwood snared with yarn, burst ceramic eggs that something hatched from in a hurry. As Stanley pokes around, he hears a quiet precise male voice filter from the next room; at first he thinks it’s Welles. Then a second voice joins in, just as Stanley’s noticing the tinniness of the sound: it’s a radio program, coming through a loudspeaker. Why the radio and the hi-fi would be on at the same time he can’t begin to guess. From upstairs comes a creak of floorboards, a scrape of wood: someone moving just overhead.

  Stanley, Synnøve calls, Adrian told me that you’ve come all the way from New York, and that you found his book of poems there. Is that true?

  Yes, ma’am, Stanley says. I’m from Brooklyn. I picked it up in Manhattan.

  Wonderful! I think it’s what every poet dreams of, in a way. It’s like putting notes into bottles and throwing them into the ocean. I am an artist—when I make something, I know where it goes—so I don’t really understand. Adrian says I don’t. But I must tell you this. Yesterday? When he came home from his office? He went upstairs to his study, and he closed the door. Now? Tonight? It is just the same. He has not written like this in years. Years! It is because of you. He will not tell you this, so I’m telling you. Would you like some milk in your tea? Or sugar?

  No ma’am. Just plain. Thanks.

  A pale light flickers in the next room—Stanley sees its reflection in the windowglass, and on the glazed curve of a lamp’s base—and he realizes that the quiet voices are coming not from a radio but a television set. He steps across the threshold for a closer look. It’s around the corner to the left: a Philco model, with a twentyone-inch tube in a mahogany console. Stanley’s been around TVs before, plenty of times, but it’s mostly been in shops, not people’s houses. This one’s playing newsreels—old ones, he’s guessing, unless the Nazis are back in power somewhere and Roosevelt’s risen from the grave. Just like always, Stanley has a hard time focusing on the picture: he keeps getting distracted by the texture of the screen, staring until the image disintegrates into a mosaic of tiny pulsing lights. He blinks hard, shakes his head, turns away in sudden revulsion.

  When his vision settles again, it finds another pair of eyes staring back at him from near the floor. He jumps, makes a startled sound.

  It’s the dirty-blond girl from the coffeehouse: the one he saw kissing Welles’s cheek. She’s seated on the thick patterned rug—her back pressed against a footstool, a multi-colored afghan draped over her shoulders—and she blends smoothly into the furnishings. Stanley can’t remember the last time he walked into a room and didn’t notice somebody. He thinks maybe he never has. The girl’s eyes track him; her body doesn’t move at all. Her expression is relaxed, alert, leonine. It says you’re still alive because I’m not hungry.

  Synnøve comes up behind him, hands him a cup and saucer. Oh! she says. Cynthia! I thought you’d gone out.

  Something in Synnøve’s voice is uneasy, like she’s as startled as Stanley to find the girl here, and not quite happy about it. The girl’s eyes shift from Stanley to Synnøve, then back to Stanley again. She blinks once, slowly, and says nothing.

  Cynthia, Synnøve says, meet Stanley and Claudio. They’re friends of—

  She breaks off abruptly, like she’s forgotten what she was saying, or thought better of it. They are our friends, she finishes. Would you like tea?

  Yes please, the girl says.

  Her voice is plummy: a fat girl’s voice, Stanley thinks, though she’s hardly fat. He makes her for seventeen, eighteen tops. She’s got nice curves for her age, but it’s a figure with a sell-by date: in ten years she’ll be fighting the weight off. Most guys won’t see that now, of course, or won’t care. If her outfit’s not the same one she wore two days ago—bulky black scoop-neck sweater over a black leotard, gossamer crimson kerchief knotted at her neck—then it’s identical. I saw you at the coffee joint, Stanley says.

  Cwoffee, huh? she says, copping his accent with a raised eyebrow. Solid, pops. I hear you cats knocked us some fish.

  You heard right.

  Groovy, the girl says. A slow smile creeps across her face like a dropped egg.

  Synnøve reappears, bearing another teacup and saucer; Cynthia stands up slowly, stretches—twisting her arms above her head till her spine pops—and takes them. Stanley can’t decide if this girl is movie-star gorgeous or slightly grotesque, which he guesses must mean she’s gorgeous. Stacked sugarcubes ring her cup; she spoons a few into the liquid, then eats the rest, crunching as she stirs. The milky tea is exactly the color of her eyes, and a whole lot warmer. Stanley can already tell that he and this skirt are not going to be pals.

  Claudio shoulders past him into the room. Cynthia! he says.

  Hey, gatemouth, the girl says. Slip me some skin.

  I have some skin for you, mija, Claudio laughs, and gives her a warm careful hug. Their teacups rattle on their saucers. I did not expect to see you, he says. What are you doing here?

  This is my lilypad, froggy. This is where I catch my cups.

  Stanley looks rapidly between the two of them. You know this chick? he says.

  This is Cynthia, Claudio says, looking at Stanley like he’s gone simple. My friend from the café. I told you.

  Stanley furrows his brow. Maybe Claudio did tell him; he doesn’t l
isten to half of what the kid says. He watches the two of them chat—naming people he’s never heard of, who he never cares to meet—until he notices the large canvas hung on the wall behind them. Amid rough splashes of flung color and glued-on dried flowers and lumps of paint-soaked fabric, Stanley gradually discerns the shape of a tree. Sigils cut from silver foil scatter in its gnarled bare branches. Two shadowy human shapes huddle by its trunk.

  From the kitchen comes Synnøve’s voice, calling over the sound of the running faucet. I just remembered, she says. The bakery closes early today, and I want a loaf of challah bread for dinner. Cynthia, will you entertain our guests while I’m out? I’m afraid I can’t guess when Adrian will emerge from his lair. Boys, if I give you my good knife, would you clean the fish you brought?

  I’ll clean the fish, Cynthia says.

  As Synnøve pulls the front door shut behind her, Stanley and Claudio carry the buckets to a sunny spot on the covered side porch. Cynthia gathers equipment—brown paper bag, vegetable scraper, eyelash-thin fillet knife, beachtowels to sit on, old copies of the Mirror-News—and follows them outside. The porch is bordered by plank benches, and she spreads newspaper over these, then pours water from one of the buckets onto the lawn, crowding the fish down, making them easier to grab. The salt will probably kill the grass, but Stanley doesn’t say anything.

  Cynthia hands the scraper to Claudio. You’re doing the scales, she says.

  Then she dips her hand into the bucket, comes out with a squirming fish, slaps it on the paper, and opens its belly from its anus to its throat. Her small thumb slips inside to push out the little lump of guts. Then she chops off its head just behind its pectoral fins, and she hands the body to Claudio. The tiny downturned mouth is still gasping as she tosses it, trailing intestines, into the paper bag.

  Claudio sets to work on the headless fish without asking Cynthia any questions, without even seeming to think, and soon the newspaper is showered with silver flecks. Cynthia has the head off another fish and is starting on a third. The one she just finished twitches a little on the paper. Her knife reminds Stanley of one he had for a while back home: he taped the handle of his, wore it on his calf. Then he used it and had to get rid of it. He begins to feel lightheaded from watching her work. He stands up, crosses the backyard to where a rambling rose pushes through the fence, and breathes deeply over its waxy white blossoms.

  Soon a ragged calico cat is walking toward him across the toprail, sniffing the air; a second cat meows from somewhere below. Back on the porch, Claudio has fired up his customary jag, talking about movies, movie stars. The chick has no problem keeping up: she chimes in with her own material—foreign-sounding names that Stanley’s never heard in his life, strung together with obscure hepcat jive that he can’t make heads or tails of—as she slaughters her way through the twin buckets. Looking past them to the house, Stanley sees Synnøve in the kitchen, home from the bakery. He figures he probably ought to go in and talk to her about art or something, but he doesn’t. Instead he just moves back and forth along the fence, stopping sometimes to scratch the stray cats on their matted necks, sometimes to catch them as they make beelines for the bag of heads and plop them back over the fence. Just once, he thinks, just one goddamn time, he’d like something to work out like he expects it to. That might be nice for a switch.

  After a while the girl takes the cleaned fish into the kitchen, and Claudio crosses the yard. Stanley? he says. Are you okay?

  Stanley keeps his eyes on the cats. Don’t come near me with that shit on your hands, he says.

  In a moment I will wash them. Are you feeling sick? You seem strange.

  I’m doing great, Stanley says. I just got a lot on my mind.

  Claudio’s quiet for a second. He’s doing that nervous thing he does with his fingers: Stanley can hear soft smacks as their tips stick and un-stick from his slimy thumb. Cynthia is my friend, Claudio says. I like to make friends. I believe it is a natural thing to do. You left me in the café alone. You did not say you were going. Stanley, you don’t think—

  The screen door slams: the girl is back. She does a ballet move off the porch, then pounces on Claudio, mussing his hair. Watching Stanley the whole time.

  Stanley, Claudio says, Cynthia and I are going to see a film tonight after dinner. Will you come along with us?

  Stanley gives them both a frosty look. Sorry, he says. I gotta have a word with your pops tonight, sweetheart. Man to man. But thanks for the ask-along.

  A funny expression crosses the girl’s face—irritated and embarrassed, a little panicked too, like Stanley just interrupted her graduation speech to tell her her slip is showing—but then that’s whisked aside by a wiseacre grin. Wow, she says. It’s a little early to be asking for my hand, don’t you think? We haven’t even had our first date.

  Yeah, Stanley says. Well, I move pretty quick. Hope that trousseau’s coming along okay.

  She throws her head back with a showy, throaty laugh. Then she smacks Claudio on the side of his head. Go inside and rinse your dukes, you savages, she says. We’ll see if Mommy needs any help with the chow.

  They start toward the porch. So, Stanley asks, what’s the movie?

  Bonjour Tristesse, Claudio says.

  Buh-huh buh what?

  Bonjour Tristesse. The new film of Otto Preminger, starring David Niven, and the young actress Jean Seberg. In Saint Joan she was not so good, I think. But maybe for her this role will be better.

  Is this some kinda frog flick?

  Ribbet-ribbet, Cynthia says.

  The door swings open, and Adrian Welles is standing in the kitchen, resting an affectionate hand on Synnøve’s back. He turns to them with an impish grin.

  He’s an inch or two shorter than his wife. Not quite as thick around the middle as Stanley had thought: broad, sure, but more brawny than soft. He must’ve been wearing a bunch of layers the other night. The snuffling dog is with him; it charges the open door, yapping its monstrous little head off. Cynthia catches it by the collar and hauls it inside, its white-rimmed popeyes rolling.

  The air in the kitchen is thick with the smells of hot oil and celery and garlic and fish. Welles’s powder-blue eyes have taken on a bright sheen beneath his spectacles, like pebbles of quartz washed by unaccustomed rain. He calls to Stanley and Claudio over the skillet’s hiss. Greetings, my young friends! he says. Such unexpected pleasure you have brought us!

  45

  The fish get plated alongside scoops of greenbean casserole and hunks of fresh bread. Synnøve pulls an extra folding chair from a hallway closet, passes some cucumber salad around. Stanley watches carefully before he takes a bite of anything.

  Everyone eats the fish whole—bones and all, like sardines—but they don’t taste like sardines. Stanley remembers small fish that his Italian neighbors cooked around Christmastime, in those years when his father was away and his mother wasn’t speaking and he had to take meals wherever he could find them: these taste a little like those did. As he chews he thinks of the seething silver carpet on the moonlit sand, and also of the bag of heads by the backdoor—the tangle of guts, the little mouths working, the cloudy unblinking eyes—making himself think these things. But they don’t really bother him. The fish taste good. He’s hungry. He hasn’t had a proper kitchen-table meal in months.

  Welles keeps standing up and sitting down, splashing pale gold wine into half-empty glasses. Soave classico, he says. I’ve had these bottles for more than a year. It’s lucky I saved them! For this meal it’s just right. Fish on Friday! My god, are you angling to re-Catholicize me? Well, it may be working, damn it all, it may be working.

  The guy is keyed up, on a roll; nobody makes much effort to share the stage. Synnøve and Cynthia each get in some good licks, and Claudio slow-pitches a few earnest questions, but mostly they just let Welles wind himself down. Stanley feels like he’s watching a swordfight in an old movie where the hero—Errol Flynn, maybe, or Tyrone Power—holds off a dozen guys at once, only none of them seem t
o be trying very hard to scratch him. Cynthia keeps raising her eyebrows, smirking. Welles talks with his hands, barely touches his food. Stanley finds it all sort of depressing.

  Speaking of Catholicism, Welles says, and then recites part of a poem, something he just wrote. Stanley clenches his jaw, stares at his plate, pushes a french-cut greenbean around with a tightly gripped fork. Thus does faith fold distance! Welles says. So bend the Ptolemaic rays! And Poor Clare perceives, ether-borne, the priest’s vestmented image on the wall. Please stop, Stanley thinks. Stop spoiling it. Stop talking.

  I suppose you’ve heard, Welles says, that the pope just named Clare of Assisi the patron saint of television. Two or three weeks ago, I think. Rather more inventive than declaring the Archangel Gabriel to be the patron of radio, wouldn’t you say? But then the church has always been quite comfortable with the concept of the discarnate word propagated through space. Less so with the discarnate image. The pope had to work a little harder to locate divine precedent. Lately, as I write, I’m finding myself drawn to stories such as these. It seems that this is what the new work will be about. The power of the image. The image of power.

  Cripes! Cynthia says. Get a load of the clock! We better cut out, kemosabe. The curtain goes up at tick sixteen.