TEN FORTY-FIVE A.M.
Ten minutes pass. In fact, fifteen minutes pass: you want to be fair. When, at ten forty-five, Q-Jo has yet to call, you don your Burberry raincoat, seize a pretty polka-dot umbrella as if it were a pig-sticker, and march out the door. Downstairs, you decide to drive Belfords Lincoln, reasoning that if by some miracle AndrE should appear in the drizzle along your route, he might consent to come aboard. Driving the Porsche, you would deny him a ride even if he were standing in an intersection flagging you with an SOS banana and a broken arm. You cannot forget the time you agreed to take AndrE to the vets for his annual flu shot. (Belford was closing a big sale.) Riding home, the cute little fellow ripped off every button and knob in your Porsche, bit holes in the leather upholstery, and swung from the rearview mirror. As you pulled into Belfords driveway, he tore open his jar of purple monkey vitamins, stuffed his mouth with them, then, screeching at their foul flavor, spit them out, permanently staining the seats, the floor mats, and your new Armani pantsuit. Belford made the brute get down on his hairy knees and pray for Gods forgiveness, which is touching, you suppose, but to this day your nine-hundred-dollar HermEs attachE case bears embarrassing purple spots.
The choice of car proves academic, however. You encounter no stray animals and few pedestrian humans on your way to police headquarters. The relentless rain has taken its toll on that minute portion of the citizenry still brave enough, affluent enough to shop. From the occasional doorway or cardboard lean-to, arms can be seen thrusting soggy candy boxes into the gloom, hoping to attract a coin or a cigarette. Aside from that, little moves on Seattles sidewalks except rivulets of rainwater. When, between the U-Park and the Public Safety Building, a wild, wet gust turns your umbrella into a scarecrow chest X ray, you begin to regret that you have ventured out.
In terms of your reception, the weather is no balmier indoors. You might have anticipated it. Put yourself in their place. You step up to the window in that fifth-floor lobby decorated by Kafkas proctologist and announce, I want to report a missing person. And the woman with a face like a slab of Cro-Magnon bacon regards you with a ripple of recognition on the flat yellow surface of her ox-bile eyes and says, You mean a missing monkey.
No. Person.
Person as in human being?
Exactly.
Person as in your gentleman friend, who went looking for his chimp and got lost his own self?
Negative. May I speak with the detective, please. Holding your temper is not unlike containing a pit bull in a pillowcase.
The detective aint here. Hes off on a real situation.
Are you insinuating that this is not a real situation?
Im not insinuating nothing, lady.
Can I make a report or not?
That depends.
On what?
Situation.
So, you try to explain the situation, but she keeps interrupting. The individuals name is what? She weighs how much? Shes been missing since when?
Eventually, the carrion-faced clerk goes to a phone at a desk out of earshot and makes a call, doubtless to the detective who is alleged to be absent from the premises, although you suppose it could be to the nut squad at Harborview. As she talks, her eyes never leave you. Her co-workers watch you, as well. Such wariness, such suspicion! You are suddenly keenly aware that you arent wearing underpants. After she hangs up, she returns to the window, intent on sending you away. The police, she explains, will not investigate the whereabouts of a person missing less than twenty-four hours unless there are mitigating circumstances.
Well, damn it, there are!
Well, damn it, there arent! You said yourself that the individual has been known to stay out nights with male individuals. The fact that this particular male individual has a tattoo on his hand and talked smutty to you in a bar dont make him a suspect. If your individual dont turn up by seven tonight, you can come back and an officerll take a statement. Im obliged to tell you that. Myself, I think… . She bites her suety tongue and with a cross between a smirk and a glare, leaves the window.
Thanks for the help! you yell after her. You are boiling-but can you really blame the cops? One day you waltz in with a soiled swain begging for assistance in locating a born-again French monkey jewel thief, and the next day you are here claiming that a three-hundred-pound queerly named woman in a turban may have been abducted by a man who was paying her to look at pictures of Timbuktu. They must think youve got a six-ring circus for a fantasy life. Okay, they can choke on powdered doughnuts for all you care. You are going to go find Q-Jo Huffington. Dead or alive.
ELEVEN THIRTY-TWO A.M.
The rain has increased in volume, and inexplicably, so has traffic. Cars hiss along with their lights on and spray water on one another. (Pity the poor windshield wiper, for its Sisyphean labors will never attain the status of myth.) For years now, most automobiles have been designed to roughly resemble eggs. Manufacturers claim the ovoid shape maximizes aerodynamic efficiency, but if that is true, how come a bird has to break out of the egg before it can fly?
At Grandpa Matis funeral mass, you asked why men were made to remove their hats in church and women were not, to which your mother replied, In the Middle Ages, it was decided that only men should have to remove their hats because women are already eggs. Your understanding of that decision remains incomplete. And this unintended meditation on eggs is making you nervous. More than once in the past, you have entertained horrific visions of Belfords sperm: so steadfast, so patient, so annoyingly persevering in their attempts to hoist their little sacks of fertilizer over the barricades you have erected at the portals of your womb. Good grief! You shudder and switch on the Lincolns radio.
A Zen nightmare of clapping hands roars out of the speakers. You assume the applause is for the President, who must be outlining to the nation his plan of action in the wake of Thursdays crash. Better late than never, you suppose. Alas, what follows, rather than a presidential proclamation, is just another fillip of flapdoodle from Dr. Motofusa Yamaguchi. The governor of Washington State has just asked Yamaguchi if his cancer cure will usher in a better age for all mankind. When one thing get better, the good doctor replies with the hint of a giggle, some other thing have to get worse. A big front has a big back.
Right. You tell em, Doc. Jesus! For some reason, you always expected the breakthrough in cancer research would come from a very sober, very earnest team of white-smocked, sharp-featured, metallically clean, handsomely paid Swiss chemists in the employ of one of those giant drug companies of whose alleged net worth you, in your time, have peddled oodles and oodles of shares. Life is full of surprises, most of which we could well do without. Wuf, you bark at the radio as you turn it off. Better to listen to the curses of unseen street people-Drive me to the hospital in yo Lincoln, bitch!-and the rat-a-tat of the rain.
A womanish figure in a red turban ducks into the doorway of a burnt-out building. Instinctively, you touch the brakes, although you know from a glance the person could not possibly be Q-Jo, who, as if living proof of Yamaguchis law, is equally big, front and back. This woman was way too narrow, and besides, it was probably a bloody bandage wound round her head. Once when you told your large psychic friend that her turban made her look like some kind of cartoon swami, she responded, It may be a clichE to a tight-ass titmouse like you, but to regular human beings, my turban is like the dome of a cathedral or the steeple of a church. It identifies what they can expect to find underneath it and guides them to a particular variety of assistance. Right or wrong, her towelhead has remained an embarrassment to you, although youd pay a pretty penny-had you a pretty penny left-for a glimpse of it this morning.
Only the rain fills the void of Q-Jos parking space, however, and only silence greets your knock at her door. The lone message on your machine is from Belford, moreover, apologizing that he had been insensitive earlier to your PMS. PMS? What PMS? Normally, this would have taxed your sweet disposition, and, indeed, you are on the threshold of fury, but hey, your horn i
s tipped now ever so slightly toward the stars, and there is a fresh melodic line, reckless and vaguely self-amusing, that you seem destined to pursue.
ELEVENFIFTY-FIVE A.M.
From the Posner residence, Barbara Posner, a gracious blue-haired matron whom you have met socially on several occasions, takes a moment to register your name. Oh, yes, of course, Miss Mati, she says at last, and she excuses herself to fetch her husband. But it is her voice, not his, that next comes over the line. Very sorry, it would be inconvenient for Mr. Posner to speak with you right now, but he says he is looking forward to a conference with you in his office on Monday. He had already penciled it in.
Tell him its not work related.
Oh? If its a personal matter, Miss Mati, perhaps that could be broached at your conference, as well.
Look, all I want from your husband is an address. Larry Diamonds address.
Who, please? Im not sure were acquainted with this person.
Would you ask? Larry Diamond. Its vital.
When she picks up the phone again, Barbara Posner says, Yes, oh yes. We do remember. Mr. Diamond. Rather a character. Left Dean Witter under somewhat of a cloud, I think, though hes said to have recently returned from the wilds of Africa, heavy with wisdom.
Thats the guy, you declare, although privately you are unwilling to concede the wisdom part.
Sorry. Mr. Posner has no idea where Mr. Diamond resides.
You swallow hard. He doesnt?
Happy Easter, dear.
Neither Phil Craddock nor Sol Finkelstein is at home, and Ann Louise is too recent on the scene to have successfully offered Diamond her ass. Where to turn? What to do? You prepare a small salad, using the mizuna and patsoi that you had the Thriftway produce manager order especially for you. The store hasnt stocked greens like those since the eighties. They are bitter enough to turn a bunny rabbit into a carnivore, but you are too lost in thought to notice.
Midway through the salad, mizuna leaves virtually sawing on your tongue, you spring up from the table and punch Diamonds number again. The message hasnt changed, but it isnt his message that interests you now. Those rumbles, those crashes in the background! They are familiar somehow. You hang up and call again. And again. On the fifth call, there is a sudden synaptic click, and the hall light flickers on in your brain. On the sixth call, a heavy marbleized ball rolls down the hall.
Excited, you drop the receiver and dash to the bookcase, from which you snatch the slender sheath of your mothers poetry. There it is. On page fourteen. Homage to the Chinese Master, Bo Ling.
Fingers dipping like rat fangs
into the round black cheese
-O moon that orbits Milwaukee!-
you heave it onto the path,
the wayless Way,
the long and slippery road
at whose end there await,
amidst thunder,
the ten buddhas.
Bo Ling, indeed. Your mom wrote that poem after she had reluctantly accompanied your father and his friends to an Asian-American ten-pin tournament-you wish now you could remember at which lanes. Never mind. Youre on to something. The noises on Larry Diamonds phone. Thunder House. Yes, by Jesus, in an embroidered shirt! For whatever reason, goofy or corrupt, Larry Diamond is conducting his life from a bowling alley.
TWELVE-TWENTY P.M.
Fourteen bowling alleys are listed in the yellow pages of the Seattle telephone directory. As you might have expected, there is not a Thunder House among them. There is, however, a Thunderbird Bowl in the Ballard district, and that strikes you as as good a place as any to begin.
Tarrying only long enough to step into a pair of panties-you most certainly are not about to risk encountering Larry Diamond with your little clam on the half-shell, so to speak-you grab your extra umbrella and the keys to the Porsche and set out. For about five seconds, you consider taking the Lincoln but reject the notion on the grounds that wherever Belfords little rascal might be, he would not be in Ballard. A jewel thief in Ballard? Dont make you laugh. A lutefisk thief, perhaps.
Ballard is known as Little Norway or Little Sweden, depending upon which side of the Skagerrak ones sentiments lie. The irreverent call it Snoose Junction, referring to the snuff some residents dip. It aint hip to dip, your dad said once, refusing to move the Mati family to a cozy cottage in Ballard, even though rents in that area were among the lowest in the city. Odd that Ballards bowling alley would be named for Thunderbird, rather than, say, for Thor. But then, Indians lived on the site long before Scandinavians, so it may be fair. Ethnically, everything is all mixed up now anyway, you think. Cultures strewn and scattered among other cultures like shingles after a tornado. Japanese tourists in German cars stopping off at the South Seas Motel in Moscow, Idaho. Your Filipino father beating Caribbean drums and talking like he was raised in the streets of Harlem. You wonder if this multiculturalism of which Belford Dunn and his ilk are so admiring isnt at least partially responsible for the nations economic fizzle. In point of fact, America has always been multicultural, but until fairly recently the nation was a symbolic pot in which various peoples were metaphorically melted, blending into one rich alloy; and it was that fusion of talents, philosophies, attributes, and inclinations-renewable and adaptable-that gave the U.S. its zip and its zest. Nowadays, however, it seems few immigrants are inclined to assimilate. They bring their native cultures with them, virtually intact, and cling to them, refusing even to learn to speak English and getting angry when the social institutions of their adopted land fail to address them in their indigenous tongues. Which keeps them out of the work force, naturally, and in a state of victimization; a selfish, self-pitying, self-perpetuating state insidiously exploited by leftists for their own political ends. Thus, instead of a strong, nutritious broth, pungent with the aromatic spices of labor and success, America has become a plop of separate little lumps of undigested stuff. Kind of like-vomit. Good-bye, melting pot, hello, chamber pot.
Ah, yes, Gwen, but what if there was some way to take advantage of your minority status when the hatchets start to swing on Monday? You cannot deny that it has occurred to you that you might charge Posner Lampart McEvoy and Jacobsen with racial discrimination or sexual harassment, or both. Get a settlement, at the very least, and maybe collect damages or preserve your job. That occurred to you yesterday. It occurred to you during the night. Today, though, you feel strangely disassociated from the idea, as if you have somehow risen above it.
Good grief! Will this rain never stop?
Ballard is the home port of Seattles fishing fleet, and as the Porsche plows through standing water onto the long bridge that connects Snoose Junction with lower Queen Anne, you can gaze down through the business-page format of the mist (endless columns of minuscule gray symbols furnished by some atmospheric equivalent of the New York Stock Exchange) and see work boats of various lengths and tonnage, from bantamweight purse seiners to monstrous floating canneries, hitched to the docks, twiddling their antennae, waiting for the salmon runs of summer. One might never guess the salmon were dwindling-the crab and halibut, too-from the plenitude of boats in the harbor. Fish, you say aloud, with a squeaky and altogether mirthless chuckle. You could be thinking that it is quite amazing how much we human beings-evolved, civilized, sophisticated, created in Gods own image-depend on those cold-blooded, elongated, squamous vertebrates (slippery, pop-eyed, and por nographically scented) that hide from us in unknown numbers beneath the waters, deep or shallow, broad or narrow, fresh or briny, rough or placid, of the world. Heaven forbid you are thinking of the Nommo card.
Having traversed the bridge now, you turn the Porsche to the right and travel for a couple of blocks through an industrial neighborhood with direct links to commercial fishing. Then you turn north again, away from the docks, and motor very slowly up a street lined with the modest clapboard cottages your father had been too cool to inhabit, until you spot, at an intersection with a busy commercial avenue, an excrementally brown, draconically oversized, windowless hellbox
of a building that could only be an Albanian mental hospital, a Midwestern schoolhouse, or a bowling alley; and although its neon sign is not illuminated-like many local establishments, it must be trying to conserve on its utility bills-you are confident it is the last. Shifting gears, you speed up and fairly squeal into the parking lot. Its the Thunderbird Bowl, all right. You fix upon a nylon-jacketed man carrying a round satchel into which a human head would fit perfectly, even a chubby-cheeked head bound in a turban. When he pulls open the wide front door, you can hear rumblings and crashes inside. The next thing you hear are your tires, squealing back into the street again.
TWELVE FORTY-FIVE P.M.
Four times you drive around the block, the Porsche weaving in and out of the rain-slowed traffic like the essence of a Henry James sentence weaving in and out of prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, and parenthetical asides (periodically hitting the brakes to avoid misplacing a modifier). You are telling yourself, all the while, that the prudent thing to do, the wise thing, the safe thing, the simple thing would be to go home-or downtown to the disco if you can gain admittance-and concentrate on repairing your career: theres got to be a way to blow some smoke in Posners eyes when he summons you to his teakwood desk on Monday. You can think of plenty of reasons to flee Ballard, not the least of which is the unlikelihood of coming across Belfords precious monkey here, and hardly a single reason to remain. In the end, however, you return to the Thunderbird Bowl, park, and get out of the car. What is it that that irksome Yamaguchi said? Another day in the life of a fool.
And as if you hadnt enough to feel foolish about, you allow your capitulating bumbershoot to expose its soft white underbelly to the fangs of the wind so that seconds after opening, it has gone from concave to convex and joined its polka-dotted counterpart in umbrella Valhalla. By the time you reach the door, the hairs of your head, black and gray alike, are pearled with raindrops that jiggle and vibrate with each rumble, each crash.