THIRTY-SEVEN

THE FISHER QUEEN

Miriam thought, Oh, we’ll just stand on shore and cast lines and something-something bobber-bait-chum-rod-and-reel, but oh, no. They’re out on a boat not far from shore. Miriam didn’t expect to be in a boat. She doesn’t like boats. Doesn’t like water. Especially since almost drowning in the Susquehanna. Just thinking about it gives her the shivers, even in the heat.

This is not a big boat. Two-seater. So they’re right there on the surface, water slapping against the side, and Miriam’s brain does strange things and she thinks that the slapping sound reminds her of the sounds made during sex— skin on skin, thighs against thighs— and now she’s thinking about Gabby and that’s more than a little awkward because Jerry’s staring at her like he knows she’s thinking impure thoughts.

The bird is looking at her, too.

It oinks like a pig at her.

“It just oinked at me,” Miriam says. The boat rocking back and forth. Her stomach going the other way.

“She,” Jerry corrects.

“She just oinked at me.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They kinda grunt?”

She presses her fingers to her temples and tries to tell the bird to do something, anything. Jump. Fly. Nod. Poop. All it does is oink. She’s not sure why she has her fingers to her temples other than she saw it in a movie once and it just feels right.

Jerry’s looking at her again.

“You put some suntan lotion on, right?”

“What? Yeah. Sure.” She mentally commands the bird to open its mouth and get her a cigarette. The bird clacks its beak together but does nothing more. Almost like it’s mocking her. “It’s— she’s—mocking me.”

“She’s not mocking you.”

“I think she’s totally mocking me.”

Jerry laughs again, starts looping a rope around the bird’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Miriam asks.

“This is my fishing line.”

“This is goofy.”

“I know, but it’s pretty cool, right? My family are fishermen on the River Li. Or were, anyway. A lot of them used cormorants to fish. Way it works is—” He finishes looping the rope and then he positions the bird so it’s facing the water. “The bird goes down in the water—” He gives the bird a gentle shove and the bird squawks and dives, disappearing beneath the waters. “And then catches me some fish.”

“And she doesn’t eat them? Because if I were that bird, I’d just eat the fish.”

“She tries to eat the big ones but the rope around her neck prevents her from swallowin’ those suckers. She can eat the little ones, but that’s okay—I don’t want the little ones. Meanwhile, the big ones stick in her throat. You’ll see.”

“So you’re choking a bird underwater for fish.”

“She eats, too. And she likes it.”

“That’s what every man says.”

And here she sees she’s reached Jerry’s discomfort point. It happens eventually. Rare is the other human who doesn’t mind being dragged over the deepening lines of impropriety while talking to Miriam Black.

With her, every conversation is a landmine.

Eventually: boom.

One of the few people who could hack it was Ashley Gaynes.

How fucked up is that?

Jerry shifts nervously now.

“You’re not from around here,” Jerry says.

“Neither are you,” she says.

“Yeah, but I live here now. You, you’re just passing through.” He says through as true. “Who are you?”

She thinks for a moment to use the truth to break a window, see how he handles all that broken glass and ugly reality, but this calls for the touch of the screwdriver because a lie will be more useful. “I’m a bounty hunter.”

“Like on the TV?”

“Uh-huh. Looking for a, uh, perp.” Is that the word? Perp? “A perp hiding out here in the Keys somewhere.”

“The Keys seem small but they’re pretty big.”

“No kidding. Where would a—” But before she can finish the question the bird emerges from the water with a splash. Throat bulging like a snake that ate a fat-ass rabbit. Jerry helps the bird stand on the edge of the boat and he reaches into the creature’s mouth like he’s rooting around in a trash can for something he accidentally threw away—

And he pulls out two fish.

Plop. Plop.

The smell of seawater and the life that comes with it crawls up her nose. Corie the cormorant squawk-oinks.

Then it gives Miriam a look.

She’s sure of it. It turns that freaky turquoise eye right toward her. The skin around it is puckered and leathery, kinda what she imagines a dinosaur’s asshole looks like. It blinks but it doesn’t blink— something slides over its eye, something cloudy and opaque that darkens the eye but does not hide it.

Jerry must see the look on Miriam’s face. He says, “Nictitating membrane. She slides that over her eye so when she dives she can see underwater. It’s like a reptile thing.”

“But she’s a bird.”

“The dinosaurs never went extinct. They just became birds.”

That explains it. “So they’re all operating on a reptile brain.”

“More advanced than a reptile’s. But at the core, yeah—it’s still that prehistoric kill-screw-sleep-eat thing.”

Miriam thinks, That sounds familiar.

Maybe that’s why she likes birds and they like her.

Though the way this one’s giving her the shit-eye, she’s not sure.

Suddenly the bird splashes back into the water.

“Sorry,” Jerry says. “You were saying?”

“Oh, ah. Yeah. I was gonna ask where you think a . . . perp might hide out down here.”

He thrusts his tongue into the pocket of his cheek like he’s thinking. “Well, lots of places. Thing about these islands is, there’s a whole lot of ’em. Like, close to two thousand of them. Some of them are practically no bigger than this boat. But it’s not just the ones the roads connect—it’s like, all these little outliers.” He points to little dark pockets of palm and earth out on the horizon. “Now, most of those islands are down by Key West. Lots of places to hide down there. That’s why the Keys are known for some . . . less savory actions, you know what I mean?” Knowwhaddamean? “Smuggling pot. Smuggling coke. Making meth. Smuggling Cuban immigrants out of the Keys. Bringing bodies down to hide in the Keys.”

The enormity of the situation is a tsunami crashing down on her shores. Three days to find a ghost. Three days to fail.

“You ever hear about submarines carrying drugs?”

“Oh yeah, sure. Sometimes they come up from Cuba or Columbia. Narco-subs, they call ’em. They used to use fast boats, then switched to these little subs that couldn’t go deep. But they do pretty deep now. Radar slides off ’em like water off Corie’s back.”

“Do those go through the Keys?”

“Sure they do. Usually down through those little islands I was talking about. You lookin’ for someone into the drug thing?”

“Yeah. They could be anywhere.”

“Too bad you’re not psychic,” Jerry says, laughing.

And she starts to laugh with him but it’s a fake, forced laugh. Oh ha ha ha ho ho ho you silly cad I am a psychic except I’m the wrong type of psychic and I can’t just—

The world plunges into the water.

It’s like her mind is wrenched out of her body. Dragged down, down, into the deep. Down through a flurry of bubbles. Through a tangle of weeds. Her throat feels full. Something moves in her esophagus. Something struggling. She can’t breathe. Can’t turn around to go up. She’s sinking like a stone.

Please stop please help

Below her, a great abyss lit by spears of light—the shine of fish swimming, catching the sun, in and out of brain-shaped bulges of coral. She’s pointed toward it like an arrow falling through open sea.

I’m the bird.

Holy shit, I’m the bird.

But then, down in the coral—

She sees a body. Fish-eaten. Waterlogged. The gray meat of the skin sloughing off, swaying like seaweed.

She knows the body.

She knows that face.

It’s Eleanor Caldecott.

The woman’s jaw creaks open. More bubbles unmoor, drifting to the surface. A green eel hides in the well of her throat—

Impossible. She’s dead. She died in the river, not in the sea . . .

But then the woman speaks—rotten jaw opening and closing—and Miriam hears the voice in her mind, words like bubbles rupturing:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE

WE ARE FIXED BY TRAGEDY

DARKNESS AND CLAMOR

Then, a childish voice, the voice of Wren there in the deep, sliding around bubbles like a curling worm: IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE . . .

And then the world shifts, spinning on its axis. Light behind is now above, the liquid jewels of sun on the water’s surface.

Everything shimmers—

Miriam gasps, her body jerking like it’s been hit by a King Kong fist. She gags. Chokes. Spits over the side of the boat just as the cormorant launches up out of the bay, throat clogged anew with fish.

Jerry stares. “Hey, you all right?”

He reaches out for her arm—

She tries to pull away. No no no no—

Seven days from now, Jerry swings a gaff hook at Ashley Gaynes in the parking lot of the Conch Out Inn, and Ashley deftly sidesteps it. Jerry throws everything he has at him— puts all his energy into swinging that hook— but even on a fake leg Ashley isn’t fazed. He moves, almost casually, like he’s just trying to get out of the sun— and with every small and calculated movement the hook cuts through the air, swish, swish, swish.

Ashley’s like a cat playing with its prey.

Finally there comes a point when he looks bored and rolls his eyes, and Jerry tries one more time to swing with the hook and Ashley just leans back, lets the hook grab open air only an inch in front of his nose—

Then he pulls a .357 revolver out from a hip holster like he’s a Wild West shooter, and he puts a round in Jerry’s gut. The hook clatters.

Ashley grabs Jerry by the throat. Holds him close. Whispers in his ear. “Where was she staying? She had a bag. Full of money. I want it back.” Jerry tries to spit on him. Ashley punches Wu in the throat. Jerry wheezes.

Ashley turns his head to the sky.

He’s speaking to her again.

“You like the show, Miriam? Everyone you touch, I kill. You’re a poison pill, a toxic cloud, you’re the human equivalent to—”

Suddenly, a black shadow above his head. The cormorant lands on the back of his shoulders, beating him with its wings, stabbing at him with its beak— a clumsy, inelegant attack— and Ashley screams like a woman, lets go of Jerry, backpedals with the gun up—

The bird keeps coming—

Bang, bang, bang—

The cormorant drops to the ground, squirting blood.

Jerry clutches his middle, staggers forward and falls to his knees and paws on the ground for the hook—

And finds the .357 pressed against his temple.

His life disappears in a flash of powder and furious thunder.

Miriam bats his hand away and recoils to the far end of the boat, which is not very fucking far but right now she doesn’t want to be touched, doesn’t want to look at this poor bastard whose life is now hitched to hers just because she chose his motel, doesn’t want to look at the bird and its freaky gemstone eye, doesn’t want to look anywhere but in her own lap.

She fidgets with a cigarette.

Fumbles with her lighter.

Drops it. Growls.

The vision lingers, like how if you recorded over one VHS tape, you might still see the ghost of the old recording still haunting the screen.

In the vision, Ashley shows up at the motel. Kills Jerry. Kills the bird. But seven days—? That happens after her mother. He’s doing cleanup. He just wanted the money. The money she took from “Steve Max?”

Jerry stares. The cormorant looks up at other birds—pelicans—flying overhead. A millstone grinds in Miriam’s head. It feels like it’s pulverizing her to dust. But then something clicks—

. . . too bad you’re not psychic . . .

. . . you are not alone . . .

She knows that others exist like her. People with powers that don’t add up, that don’t fit into any boxes. She met a storefront psychic—Miss Nancy—who told her she was the hand of death. Then Eleanor Caldecott had her own strange power: the ability to see the consequences of a person’s life, chained together in a single vision.

That’s how she’ll find Ashley.

She needs to find a goddamn psychic.

Another psychic, at least. A real one, she thinks with no small irony. Someone with an ability that does something worth a damn.

“I need to go back to shore,” she says.

“Yeah, you got it,” Jerry answers. Then he fires up the motor. Never taking his eyes off her. Like he’s afraid she might bite.

If only he knew what it meant to be caught in her gravity.