Your Duck Is My Duck Read online

  Dedication

  For David, Lucy, Jenny, Nell, Lev—and, as ever,

  of course, Wall

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Your Duck Is My Duck

  Taj Mahal

  Cross Off and Move On

  Merge

  The Third Tower

  Recalculating

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Deborah Eisenberg

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Your Duck Is My Duck

  Way back—oh, not all that long ago, actually, just a couple of years, but back before I’d gotten a glimpse of the gears and levers and pulleys that dredge the future up from the earth’s core to its surface—I was going to a lot of parties.

  And at one of these parties there was a couple, Ray and Christa, who hung out with various people I sort of knew, or, anyhow, whose names I knew. We’d never had much of a conversation, just hey there, kind of thing, but I’d seen them at parties over the years and at that particular party they seemed to forget that we weren’t actually friends ourselves.

  Ray and Christa had a lot of money, a serious quantity, and they were also both very good-looking, so they could live the way they felt like living. Sometimes they split up, and one of them, usually Ray, was with someone else for a while, always a splashy, public business that made their entourage scatter like flummoxed chickens, but inevitably they got back together, and afterward, you couldn’t detect a scar.

  Ray had a chummy arm around me, and Christa was swaying to the music, which was almost drowned out by the din of voices in the metallic room, and smiling absently in my direction. I was a little taken aback that I was being, I guess, anointed, but it was up to them how well they knew you, and I could only assume that their cordiality meant either that something good had happened to me that was not yet perceptible to me but was already perceptible to them or else that something good was about to happen to me.

  So, we were talking, shouting, really, over the noise, and after a bit I realized that what they were saying meant that they now owned my painting Blue Hill.

  They owned Blue Hill? I had given Blue Hill to Graham once, in a happy moment, and he must have sold it to them when he up and moved to Barcelona. Blue Hill is not a bad painting—in my opinion, it’s one of my best—still, the expression that I could feel taking charge of my face came and went without making trouble for anyone, thanks to the fact that, obviously, there were a lot of people in the room for Ray and Christa to be looking at, other than me.

  How are you these days, they asked, and at this faint suggestion that they’d been monitoring me, a great wave of childish gratitude and relief washed over me, dissolving my dignity and leaving me stranded in self-pity.

  Why did I keep going to these stupid parties? Night after night, parties, parties—was I hoping to meet someone? No one met people in person any longer—you couldn’t hear what they were saying. Except for the younger women, who had piercing, high voices and sounded like Donald Duck, from whom they had evidently learned to talk. When had that happened? An adaptation? You could certainly hear them.

  It was getting on my nerves and making me feel old. I’m exhausted, I told Ray and Christa. I can’t sleep. I can’t take the winter. I’m sick of my day job at Howard’s photo studio, but on the other hand, Howard’s having some problems—last week there were three of us, and this week there are two, and I’m scared I’m going to be the next to go. And as I told them that I was frightened, that I was sick of the winter and my job, I understood how deeply, deeply sick of the winter and my job, how frightened, I really was.

  Yeah, that’s terrible, they said. Well, why don’t you come stay with us? We’re taking off for our beach place on Wednesday. There’s plenty of room, and you can paint. We love your work. It’s a great place to work, everyone says so, really serene. The light is great, the vistas are great.

  I’m having some trouble painting these days, I said, I’m not really, I don’t know.

  Hey, everyone needs some downtime, they said; you’ll be inspired, everyone who visits is inspired. You won’t have to deal with anything. There’s a cook. You can lie around in the sun and recuperate. You can take donkey rides down into the town, or there are bicycles or the driver. What languages do you speak? Well, it doesn’t matter. You won’t need to speak any.

  Naturally I assumed they’d forget all about their invitation, so I was startled, the day after the party, to get an e-mail from Christa, asking when I could get away. One of their people would deal with the flights. I could stay as long as I liked, she said, and if I wanted to send heavy working materials on ahead, that would be fine. Lots of their guests did that. It could get cool at night, so I should bring something warm, and if I wanted to hike, I should bring boots, because snakes, as I knew, could be an issue, though insects were generally not. I would not need a visa these days, so not to worry about that, and not to worry about Wi-Fi—that was all set up.

  I doubted that anybody else who visited them would not know exactly how to prepare, and yet there was Christa, informing me so tactfully of everything, like snakes and visas, that I’d need to know about, by pretending that of course I’d already have thought of those things. A week or so later a messenger brought a plane ticket up the five flights of stairs to my little apartment, which was when it dawned on me that the good thing Ray and Christa had perceived happening to me was that they now owned one of my paintings, which meant, obviously, that it most likely was, or would soon be, worth acquiring.

  My job at Howard’s studio expired, along with the studio itself, at the end of the following month, just in time to save Howard and me from my quitting right before I got on the plane. At least it was no problem to sublet my apartment, even at a little profit, to a guy who liked cats, because as everyone was observing with wonder, the real estate collapse had not flattened rents one bit.

  Howard looked around at all the stuff that represented his last thirty years. Bon voyage, he said. He gave me a little hug.

  The plane took off in frosty grime and floated down across water, from which the sun was rising in sheer pink and yellow flounces. It was a different time here—must that not mean that different things were happening? I’d brought my computer, but maybe I could actually just not turn it on, and the dreary growth of little obligations that overran my screen would just disappear; maybe the news, which—like a magic substance in a fairy tale—was producing perpetually increasing awfulness from rock-bottom bad, would just disappear.

  I had exuded a sticky coating of dirt during the night on the plane, but in the airport, ceiling fans were gracefully turning and the heat was dry and benign, like a treatment. As everyone exited with their luggage, I kept peering at the e-mail from Christa I’d printed out, which kept saying: Someone will be waiting to pick you up. I had her cell number on my phone, I remembered, and scrabbled in my purse for it, but as I pressed and tapped different bits of it and stared at its inert face, I was struck by how complete the difference is between a phone that works and a phone that doesn’t work.

  For a long time, whenever I traveled anywhere, it had been with Graham, who would have thought to deal with the issue of international phone service, even though Christa hadn’t mentioned it. And as I stood there, a lanky apparition ballooned up into the void at my side, frowning, mulling the situation over. Graham! But the apparition tossed back its fair, silky hair, kissed me lightly, and dissipated, leaving me so much more alone than I’d been an instant before.

  Wheeling my bulging, creaking suitcase here and there as my mind cluttered up with great, unstable stacks of potential disasters, I located an exchange bureau, and my few sober monoch
romatic bills were replaced by a thick, fortifying sheaf of festive ones that looked like they were itching to get loose and party. Onward! I thought, and swayed on my feet from fatigue.

  I was deciding which exit to march myself to and then do what when Christa strode up. “The driver and Ray got into some big snarl,” she said, hustling me along. “And he took off. He’s acting out all over the place.”

  “He’s, like, crashing into stuff?” I said.

  I wasn’t managing my suitcase fast enough to keep up with her, and she grabbed it from me irritably. “He’s buying something.”

  “A car?”

  “What? Did you remember to hydrate on the plane? Some subsidiary. It always makes him crazy, but, hey, nerves are a weakness, I’m the one who’s nervous. So this morning Mr. Sang Froid accuses the driver, who by the way is also one of the gardeners and a general handyman, but what difference does it make if everything falls apart, of scratching the Mercedes, which I happen to be one hundred percent certain is something he himself did the other night when he came home blind drunk at dawn and almost demolished the gate. So the driver stormed off, just before he was supposed to leave to pick you up, and then Ray stormed off, too, in a black cloud, to God knows where. Plus, the place has been crawling with, just who you want to hang out with, accountants. Well, one of them’s a lawyer, and I think there’s an engineer, too. They look like triplets, or maybe it’s quadruplets, hard to tell how many of them there are, you’ll see. They’re Ray’s guys, his pets, a week ago they were golden, guaranteed to go for the throat, now all of a sudden they’re a heap of sloths who just lounge around swilling his wine and hogging up his food, which big surprise, and he fucking well better be back for dinner, because I’m not entertaining those turnip heads. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay, though—Amos Voinovich is here, too, except he’s pretty antisocial, which I didn’t really get until he showed up, and it turns out he hates the beach. He says he’s working, which is great of course—maybe he’ll do something for us while he’s here. And anyhow, he’s better than nothing.”

  “Amos Voinovich the puppeteer?”

  “Well, I mean, yeah. You know him?”

  I didn’t know him, but I’d seen one of his shows, which was about two explorers and their teams. There were puppet penguins and puppet dolphins and puppet dogsleds and of course puppet explorers fighting their way through blizzards and under brilliant, starry skies to be the first to get to the South Pole. Voinovich himself had written the lyrics and the music, which was vaguely operatic, and each explorer sang of his own megalomaniac ambitions, and various dogs from each team sang about doubts, longings, loyalties, resentments, and so on, and the penguins, who knew very well that one explorer’s team would prevail and flourish and that the other explorer’s team would die, down to the last man, sang a choral commentary, philosophical in nature, that sounded like choirs of drugged angels. The eerie melodies were often submerged, woven through the howling winds.

  Christa chucked my suitcase into the trunk of her car, and as we sped up winding roads in the brilliant sunshine, the deluxe night of Amos Voinovich’s puppet show wrapped around me, and while Christa groused about Ray, I kept dozing off, which was something I had not been doing much of for a very long time, and her voice was a harsh silver ribbon glinting in the fleecy dark.

  We came to an abrupt stop in front of a smallish house, covered with flowering vines. “This is where you and Amos are. I put you in the same place, because you’re the only two here right now and it’s easier for the staff. You’ll be sharing a kitchen, but I mean nothing else, obviously.”

  “Accountants?” I asked, stumbling out of the car.

  “They’re staying in the main house with us, unfortunately. Ray insisted, although we could perfectly well have given them a bungalow. They’ve got their own wing, at least, across the courtyard. You’ll see them at dinner, but except for that you won’t have to deal with them. I gather they’re all taking off tomorrow.”

  She brought me into the little house, which was divided in two, except, as she’d said, for a kitchen downstairs, which both Amos and I had a door opening onto and which appeared to be very well equipped, though meals and snacks and coffee and so on would always be available in the main house. She showed me light switches, and temperature control for my part of the house, and where extra blankets and towels were kept. Dinner was early, she said, at eight, and no one dressed, except once in a while, if someone happened to be around. Lunch was at one. And breakfast was improvisatory. The cook would be on hand from six, because sometimes Ray liked to swim early. Did I have any questions?

  I gaped. “Guess not,” I said. “Um, should I . . . ?”

  “Yeah, come on over whenever you want,” she said, and gave me a quick, squeamish hug. “So, welcome.”

  What was not dressing? I was incredibly tired, despite the little nap in the car, but not even slightly sleepy. I opted for jeans, which were mostly what I’d brought, and when the clock on the night table informed me that it was 7:45, I went over to what I assumed was the main house and wandered through empty rooms until I happened upon Christa, who was wearing a little vintage sundress, the color of excellent butter.

  Dinner meant helping yourself from a selection of possibilities including some things on platters over little flame arrangements and then sitting down at a long, polished table that probably seated thirty. Amos the puppeteer did not in fact show, but the accountants or accountants plus lawyer plus engineer were there. They didn’t wear jackets, but they all wore exhaustingly playful ties, which suggested, I suppose, that Ray’s forthcoming acquisition was so sound that chest-thumping frivolity was in order. Ray had reappeared, and said hello to me, but barely, giving me a bitter little smile as though he and I were petty thugs who had just been flagged down by a state trooper, and that was the last notice of me he took that evening.

  I watched, through the glass wall, as evening slowly began to rise in the bowl of the valley below and soft lights glimmered on. Up over the mountains, though, it was still day. A dramatic terrain. The soft, mauve twilight currents were rising around the table, so you didn’t really have to converse, or you could sort of pretend that you were conversing with someone else. Somewhere in that gently swirling dusk the accountants were talking among themselves—telling jokes, it seemed. Their bursts of raucous laughter sounded like reams of paper being shredded, and after each burst they would instantly sober up and swivel deferentially around to Ray.

  Terrain—was that what I meant? “What language are they speaking?” I whispered to Christa, who was sitting in a darkening cloud of her own.

  “You really better drink some water,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s all bottled. There are cases over at your place, by the way, I forgot to show you, in one of the cupboards, but tap is okay for your teeth.”

  It was English, I realized, but specialized. One of them was finishing up a joke that seemed to concern a Pilgrim, a turkey, a squaw, and something called credit swap rates.

  They all laughed raucously again. Ray was drumming his fingers on the table, making a sound of distant thunder. The accountants et cetera swiveled around to him again with sweet, boy’s faces, and he stood up abruptly.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, with a tiny bow. “I have a great deal to gain from this transaction, assuming it all proceeds as anticipated. But if at zero hour, by some mishap, it should fall through, let me remind you that, owing to the billable-hours clause you were so kind as to append to our contract, only you will be the losers. I salute your efforts. I have the highest hopes, for your sake as well as mine, that your irrepressible confidence in them is justified. But perhaps a moment of sobriety is in order at this point, a moment of reflection about the tenuous nature of careers. Or, to put it another way, don’t think for a moment that if the boat is scuttled, I’ll throw you my rope. I’m sure you all recall the Zen riddle about the great Zen master, his disciple, and the duck trapped in the bottle?”

  He drained his large glass of w
ine, glug glug glug. “Everyone recall the master’s lesson? It’s not my duck, it’s not my bottle, it’s not my problem?” He slammed his empty glass down on the table and wheeled out.

  “What did I tell you?” Christa said.

  What did she tell me? I had no idea. Presumably I’d been dozing at the time, soaring aloft on polar winds as the two explorers savagely pursued their pointless goal under the remote, ironically twinkling stars.

  “Plus,” she said. “I think he’s seeing someone here.”

  “Oh, wow,” I said, and I thought of the bite that every morning would be taking out of her beauty and glamour and how rapidly an individual’s beauty and glamour could be rendered irrelevant by standards that had been embryonic only months before, or supplanted by some girl who was just about to walk through the door. “Oh, wow,” I said again.

  “You can say that again,” she said. The accountants et cetera had disappeared from the table, I realized. All that was left in their place were crumbs.

  “Well, so, good night, I guess,” I said, as she wandered off. “Guess I’ll just be going back over to the, to the . . .”

  Upstairs in my bedroom, I began to unpack, but there was the issue of putting things wherever, so I decided I would leave all that until morning. I set up my laptop after all, though, as tossing out my old life seemed both less plausible and maybe less desirable than it had some hours earlier.

  I fished my pj’s out of my suitcase and opened the shuttered windows for the breeze. I was listing, as though I were drunk, which I supposed I was, from all the wine it had seemed appropriate to toss down at dinner, but mainly I was exhausted, though still wide awake, as I was so often—wide awake and thinking about things I couldn’t do anything about. Couldn’t do anything about. Couldn’t do anything about. Also, an unfamiliar, somewhat rhythmic tapping suggested that there might be a beast, some brash snake, for example, in the vines just outside my window, trying to get me to open the screen and let it in.