Mirror Lake

by Andrée A. Michaud

  While my eyes followed the image Jack Jack’s fingers were creating, of an octopus or a Vitruvian Man, I was following, over Joe Dassin’s ditty, the conversation he was having with the other Jack, Big Jack. Essentially, Big Jack needed to find a weapon, ammunition, and some dough for Picard, who was in a fix. I was the one in the fix, in case they hadn’t noticed, but I kept my mouth shut, all the more so because Little Jack became enraged, just like Joe Dalton, when Big Jack wanted to know if there was any tangible proof that Picard had sent me. When he saw the colour Little Jack turned — a bright crimson, suggesting the risk of an internal hemorrhage — Big Jack saw it was pointless to insist. He slipped behind the filthy curtain and immediately returned with a third man, the third Jack, the Middle-Sized Jack, who sat down next to me as Averell shuffled to the end of the line. Seated in this order, the third Jack became William and me Jack, resulting in four Jacks sitting at the bar, talking about a fifth Jack.

  The parade of Jacks was a little mind-boggling, so I ordered a coffee from Artie and he asked me if I’d like an ice cream cone with it. Which meant he didn’t have any coffee. And then, somehow, I found myself with a Magnum, a box of ammunition, and a wallet of bills in front of me. To be certain I wasn’t tricking them, the Dalton brothers decided that Artie would accompany me, this not pleasing me too much, but as I was a little drunk and clearly had no choice, the idea of a second driver was welcome. Except that Artie refused to drive. “What, so you can point the Magnum at my head? Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”

  “What if I give you the Magnum?”

  No way. Artie didn’t want to take the wheel because in movies it’s always the driver who’s in a weak position and gets trapped. Amazing! Artie didn’t only like dogs, he also liked cinema. That would give us something to discuss on the journey, which could well be a long one.

  I waited for Artie to close up his till, went to take a piss, he went to take a piss, and then we left the three Jacks behind us in the darkness of the bar, unaware that, outside, the swift was still animating fecund nature with his melodious song. After we passed the first intersection I started breathing a little again and suggested to Artie that we might turn on the radio, this so that once and for all I could bury Dassin, who was finishing his refrain in the glovebox, indifferent to the compassion he inspired in me. Artie’s answer was no, he didn’t like music. Okay, that was a good thing, otherwise we wouldn’t have discovered the onion.

  I should explain what I mean by that. As Artie and I were leaving Bangor we heard an odd screeching noise in the car. At first we thought a small animal must have found its way into the vehicle, maybe a squirrel or a field mouse. I stopped driving with the intention of letting the animal out, but all we found was an onion rattling under Artie’s seat. I wanted to let it out anyway, just as I’d have done with an animal, but Artie said, “No, let’s keep it,” putting the thing in the middle of the back seat to keep an eye on it. Artie explained that he had a certain fondness for objects, that when he was little a potato became his confidant for a few weeks after Bing died. At that point, of course, I didn’t yet know who Bing was, so he told me the story, highlighting his emasculation of Jack Ryan and Jack Bryan, two who wouldn’t touch another dog for the rest of their fucking lives. As stories go, it was pretty bloody, but somehow touching. And then the potato showed up, Artie said, and he called it Bing, in memory of Bing. It was a New Brunswick potato, the sweetest type, with little eyes and everything, Artie added, and then he went quiet, moved by the memory. If I hadn’t been slightly drunk, I’d have thought Artie had a couple of screws knocked loose just before or after he was born. I was drunk, though, and intoxication renders people sentimental, so piously I joined him in silence, then broke it by telling Artie he could keep the onion, that I’d give it to him. But he didn’t want it. “Your car, your onion,” he said.

  To pass the time, we tried to come up with a name for the onion. At first, Artie wanted to call it Bing, but in my opinion, I said, all these Bings and Jacks were starting to be silly, and I asked him how back in Bangor they managed to figure out which Jack they were talking about. “It’s all in where you put the stress,” Artie said. “For Little Jack, you put the accent on the first letter, for Middle-Sized Jack you put it on the second letter, and for the tall one, on the third and fourth, which sound identical — [k], [k],” Artie said, using the phonetic pronunciation and sputtering slightly because of the weighty velar occlusive. Conclusion: you can only effectively identify three Jacks despite there being four letters in the name. Beyond that, things would start to be confusing. “Ha, clearly I should have known,” I said. Returning to the subject of the onion, we reached a compromise and called it Ping, Ping the Onion. Artie was pleased, one thing led to another, night fell, because it had to fall, and then we arrived at Mirror Lake without having had the chance to chat about film.

  I was a little nervous as I stepped out of the car, because I wasn’t sure what we’d find inside the cottage. With a guy like Picard, ready to do anything to avoid the darkness, you never know what might happen — hence the double-speed hammering of my heart, which Artie couldn’t hear. As I started up the porch stairs, he put his big hand on my shoulder and said, “Ping, did you forget him?” Ping . . . I’d left him in the car and, to stay in Artie’s good graces, went back to get him. “Come on, Ping,” I said, loud enough for Artie to hear, “I’m going to show you your new house.”

  I could tell from the way Artie smiled that he was satisfied, it didn’t take much to make the asshole happy. I walked back to the steps, saluting the four-hundred-million-year-old rock on my way past — I, too, was something of an animist — and we went inside.

  I was wrong to worry. Everyone was asleep: Picard on the couch, Jeff on the carpet, Bill on the carpet, Winslow too, on the spot where his chair had tipped over. Artie found the scene touching and wished he had his camera with him, but I was irritated more than anything. Neither Jeff nor Bill had so much as batted an eyelid when we arrived, which wasn’t normal, and a thought raced into my head that filled me with panic: if neither dog had reacted, they must be dead. I raced over to Jeff, just as Winslow woke up with a start, yelling “NO! NO! Humpty Dumpty is not a potato!” and Picard leapt off the couch and grabbed Jeff and the knife before I could. Jeff started to bark, Bill too, and Artie pinned Picard down in a bear hug. Even Ping joined in, rolling along the carpet in sync with the hustle and bustle of the moment and emitting noises of frying and excitability.

  Frankly, the scene was ridiculous, and frankly I was sick of our behaving like idiots, so I stood in the middle of the chaos and shouted, “Whoa, stop,” but nobody was listening to me except Ping, who took a hit and, out of breath, rolled to a silent stop in a corner of the room. Around me, the swearing, the gasping and delirium, Humpty Dumpty, Humpty Dumpty, the barking, the biting, the tripping and vicious uppercuts continued. Total chaos, which I stopped by cocking the Magnum and firing a shot at the ceiling, prompting a chandelier to fall and land on Artie, who fainted, whereupon Picard grabbed Jeff and the knife again.

  We were back at square one, but at least I could avail myself of a little silence — if I ignored the ambient noise of people catching their breath. Now it was a revolver versus a knife, but Picard had an advantage in the form of Jeff.

  “Okay,” I conceded. “You give me Jeff, I give you the gun, but you give me Jeff first.”

  I suppose Picard didn’t trust me, because he wanted me to hand over the gun first. But given that I didn’t trust him either, we were at an impasse. Whatever, if I wanted Jeff back, I’d have to let go of the Magnum, but what evidence did I have that Picard wouldn’t just shoot the whole lot of us, including Jeff, as soon as he had it?

  “You have my word,” Picard said, but what was a crook’s word worth?

  I was considering this when Winslow, who’d read Morgan’s novel, butted in to say I should give Picard the damn Magnum, he would keep his word, because that’s wh
at happened in the damn novel.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I muttered in Winslow’s direction, whispering not because I wanted to confide in him, but because an invisible hand was squeezing my vocal cords.

  “I’m telling the truth,” Winslow shot back. Then he told me that, in the novel, Picard takes hostages in a scene very similar to the one in which we were currently starring, and that he didn’t kill anyone when the fool who’d driven a couple of hundred miles to find him a weapon finally gave it to him. Absurd, really, the whole situation was utterly absurd; had we been in a novel, or some classic stage play, someone might have used our example to demonstrate Aristotle’s theory of verisimilitude and its opposite.

  “So?” said Picard and Winslow in unison, and I lowered my arms, because I was surely in a dream, and you don’t die in dreams. You might be beaten up a little, but that’s where a dream ends. I handed Picard the gun, Picard released Jeff and the knife, and Jeff jumped into my arms. Bill didn’t know where to go because Winslow was still tied up, and Artie peered our way, stunned by the tableau Jeff and I formed. “I’m in a dream,” the jerk snivelled, and Winslow asked politely if someone wouldn’t mind untying him.

  Ten minutes later we were all sitting around the table with the cold chicken, and Winslow, who thought I seemed a bit depressed, kept telling me you couldn’t rewrite history, that when it’s written, it’s written; when it’s done, it’s done. I told him my view of dream and reality, one that Picard, who was something of a philosopher, didn’t entirely share. As for Artie, he was eating with Ping sitting in front of him.

  “What is this onion?” Winslow finally asked.

  “It’s Ping,” I said. “A magical onion. Nobody can touch it.”

  Picard thought I was a nutter but, to the extent that I was, someone else’s opinion of me mattering as much to me as what they thought of Father Christmas, whom I have no time for Then Picard told us the story of his escape, which happened during a meal with six other prisoners. Just like in the novel, Winslow remarked, not in the least bothered by the situation that was making me, on the other hand, rethink my entire conception of the world.

  “Life is a storybook,” Winslow said to boost my morale, though Picard was the one who cheered me up by talking about one of the prisoners, a man called Bob, who was completely obsessed with Humpty Dumpty, and he asked Winslow if he suffered from the same fixation. “Are you obsessed with this potato?” he asked.

  I should have got the hell out of there — it was the ideal moment — but I was too afraid of ending up in a different novel. So I started laughing, what else could I do, and asked Picard what the other prisoners’ names were, but I already knew the answer: Bill, Jeff, Artie and Robert, who didn’t like being called Bob.

  “Just one missing,” I said to Picard. “With you, that makes seven.” I was afraid he would tell me the seventh one was called Ping, but it was worse, his name was Tim.

  When he said the name, Winslow and I looked at each other in the manner of two guys who know each other well enough to be able to communicate without speaking, and we shouted, “Everybody move, the cops are coming!” The others didn’t understand right away, but when they heard tires squealing outside, they thought it was best to believe us — even Picard, who knew that this particular scene wasn’t in Morgan’s novel. Time was pressing, so I took charge of operations. I dispatched Winslow outside to delay Robbins for as long as possible and, with memories of Anita, sent Picard into the closet in the bedroom, and told Artie not to move, that if anyone asked him any questions, he should just say he was my cousin.

  “What’s my name, then?” he asked.

  “Artie, your name’s Artie,” I said a little dryly.

  “You have a cousin named Artie? That’s funny . . .”

  I didn’t respond, the fella was clearly even more stupid than I’d thought. I barely had time to notice the Magnum and sit down on it before Robbins entered, unleashing a volley of barking from Jeff that was immediately imitated by Bill and made me rejoice inside. “Good dog,” I should have said to him but, given the circumstances, I ordered him and Bill to be quiet. Jeff seemed a little frustrated, and Bill disappointed, but there was no way I could make every Joe and his neighbour happy.

  “Having a little cocktail party, are we?” scoffed Robbins with a hammerhead-shark smile, as he noticed the chaos in the cottage that we’d not tidied after the brawl I’d started.

  “Yeah,” I answered, more laconically than ever.

  “What brings you here?” chimed in Winslow, conscious of the deliberate pithiness of my reply. It was obvious, really: there’d been a report of a Picard sighting in the area and Robbins was doing a tour of the cottages just in case someone was in a sticky situation.

  Winslow assured Robbins everything was fine, that we’d just arranged a little party, we were having fun, we hadn’t seen anyone, we were just having a laugh, we’d phone him if we spotted any shifty guys through the window. Either Robbins was bored, wanted to introduce a little levity, or didn’t believe us, but he decided to sit down at the table and start making conversation with Artie. This was the moment of danger: if Artie opened his trap, we were done for. Hastily I abandoned my silence to answer Robbins’s questions in his place. Robbins was annoyed and wanted to know if Artie was mute. “Yes, he’s mute, completely mute,” I confirmed, looking Artie straight in the eyes to be sure he understood. And he did, the idiot. If we’d been alone I’d have given him a kiss, but that could wait until later.

  Seeing that he wasn’t about to get anything out of Artie, Robbins turned to Ping and asked, “What’s with the onion?”

  Why they were all so interested in Ping, I have no idea, but it was starting to get on my nerves. “It’s Ping, a magic singing onion, so don’t touch.” If I was to appear a lunatic, I might as well go all in.

  Disconcerted, Robbins glanced skeptically at Ping, stepped up, and declared that he was going to have a look around the cottage. Believing he meant the outside of the house, I didn’t react, but when I noticed he was heading for the bedroom, I stood and shouted “NO!” revealing the Magnum, which Artie noticed and promptly sat down on. I was so impressed I decided I would owe him two kisses when Robbins made himself scarce. “Do you have a mandate?” I asked, but Robbins was baffled. “A mandate,” I repeated, “a piece of paper, an authorization.”

  “Oh!” he exclaimed, bowing to my lack of vocabulary. “You mean a w-a-r-r-a-n-t.”

  “Yes, a warrant, letters rogatory, whatever you want to call it, you dickhead, do you have one?” No, he didn’t, I was correct, though all he had to do was come back with one.

  After our little exchange — which showed, as Bob Winslow and Ludwig Wittgenstein also believed, that using the right words facilitates conversation and can even save lives — Robbins knew something was up. “What’s going on in here and what are you hiding in that fucking room?” he said threateningly.

  “Nothing, my privacy, get a warrant and I’ll give it up.”

  Robbins stared at me straight in the eyes, we were doing a lot of looking people straight in the eyes that night, and in the reflection of his Ray-Bans I saw the whole story of Little Red Riding Hood flow past. What big eyes you have, grandmother, what big teeth you have! The lie was written all over my face, but what could I do about it — I was lying. If there hadn’t been any witnesses I’m certain Robbins would have ignored my request for a warrant and kicked the bedroom door down with his spurred boots, but as we weren’t alone he had to yield.

  I wasn’t sure the verb obtemperate was appropriate, but wanted to use this word rather than obey, so said it: “Obtemperate, Robbins.” And then I let him have his own turn at stewing in his own ignorance. A few seconds passed, a long enough pause that someone outside the scene might have thought we were bored or had forgotten our lines, after which Robbins headed to the door with an “I’ll be back,” an assertion which was becoming
tedious and didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. As the oaf exited, he tried to catch Artie out by clapping his hands and shouting “Boo!” which naturally made him — and everyone else in the room except Ping — jump.

  “Ha!” said Robbins triumphantly. “I knew he was a fake.”

  I reminded him that Artie was neither deaf nor a fake, but mute. If Robbins had eyes, I’m sure we’d have seen how uncomfortable he was feeling, but the Ray-Bans hid that sort of thing.

  As Robbins left, I could see that he was still questioning himself and wondering where he’d gone wrong.

  “What a bloody fool,” Artie whispered once the door was closed.

  Robbins immediately reopened it and barked, “Who said that?” And despite being a little slow, Winslow had his antennae tuned in, and he immediately sacrificed himself by saying, “Me.” Robbins didn’t believe him, but without a lie detector he didn’t have many options, so he left again.