Owner was counting money in the till but could not help turning and shouting with a great flashing smile, “SIXTY!”
“Mr. Minot!” Owner slammed the register shut and turned his attention to Charles, who bowed perceptibly but not dramatically.
“Are you here to give me the Merkel?”
“Yes, I am. And the Minerva.”
“Pardon me, Mr. Minot. Would you repeat what you just said, sir? Days and nights of internal combustion have weakened my ears as well as my eyes. My nerves are shot and I can hardly walk a straight line. Everything tastes of oil and my fingers are numb from the vibrations.”
“I say I am here to sell you the Merkel and the Minerva.”
“Ah, that’s what Oi t’ought you said.”
The men at the railing regarded Charles impassively, the Italian boys fell silent as if embarrassed. The men carrying crates stood outside smoking, and Mexican murmured to himself, apparently translating a story in the newspaper.
Charles had never looked at the photographs and advertisements papering the walls, but did so now. One caught his eye. Five men with their arms slung around each other, hanging on and sagging against each other, clowning and making faces. Rising massively behind them was the heavy lumber of the armature of a great bowl-shaped track in—he leaned closer—in Detroit. In huge white letters, ten feet high and nailed to the outermost studs, the sport’s chief attraction was spelled out: NECK AND NECK WITH DEATH. The man in the middle, upright, grinning, had either told a terrific joke or was the only sober member of the group. The other men were convulsed in hilarity, faces as blackened as if they were pretending to be a nigger minstrel banjo band, with wide, white, clean rings around their eyes where the goggles had been. Beneath the clean and sober man in the middle were the words “Daredevil Derkum and his friends are neck and neck with death—AND THEY USE OILZUM!” Derkum was a man well known in California racing, who was also a fireman on the lead engine of the Owl train that ran every night from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
“How’s your old man?” asked Owner.
“He’s fine, he’s fine, he . . .” Charles said, faltering a little in the face of all the apparent knowledge of his family strangers were ready to draw on—strangers and Vera. “He’s just back from Iceland.”
“Iceland!”
“Yes, as strange as that may sound: Iceland.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Fishing.”
“Fishing! Fishing—for what sort of fish might one angle in Iceland? Let me guess, let me . . . grayling?”
“Umm, no, you’d think so, wouldn’t you, but interestingly enough, no, no grayling.”
“Trout, of course.”
“Browns, yes.”
“Nasty fish, the brown. Cannibal fish. That’s what I hear.”
“I think they prefer baitfish to their own, but sure, I guess that’s true to some extent,” he said with the return of his casual authority.
“German fish,” continued Owner. He winked.
“Oh yes, of course. German fish.”
“It’s in all the newspapers. A German fish and they are eating up all the good American brook trout. And they’re supposed to be inferior on the table.”
“Au bleu, with the right wine, they taste all right to me.”
There was a brief silence and then the place was roaring with laughter. When it subsided, Owner gave Charles a wry but gently consoling look. “Char,” he said. “That’s what I was thinking of earlier. The rare and mysterious arctic char.”
“Sure, lots of nice species of char. But it’s the salmon they went for.”
“Of course. Salmon. How could I forget? Salmon! So the fishing was good?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“No?”
“I mean, I haven’t heard.”
“But generally, the reputation of Iceland is . . .?”
“Good, yes, very good.”
“Why else go to Iceland, right?
“My father says it’s the most beautiful country in the world. Volcanoes with glaciers creaking around them. Fifty-mile-an-hour winds straight from the North Pole and you can stick your hand in a creek of nearly boiling water. They’re only just emerging from the Middle Ages, thanks ironically to the war in Europe.”
“But ironically too the war in Europe makes it a risky business to go steaming about in the northern Atlantic, does it not?”
Charles shrugged. “He likes to fish.”
“But you do not?” asked Owner. “Like to fish.”
“Oh no, I do, I do, I do very much, but I’m, uh, I’m, uh . . .” Charles faltered again, inexplicably. “I’m in a play and . . . you know. Vera too—”
“You’re an actor,” said Owner, a bit like a lawyer.
“Yes,” Charles admitted emphatically, maybe a bit testily. “Yes, I am. Several plays, actually. A season of them. In repertory.”
“And the shows must go on.”
“That’s what they tell me. Even if the theater is burned to the ground.”
“The Savoy is a beautiful building. We were relieved to hear the damage was not great and that repair will go quickly.”
“Yes. We found the money pretty easily too. Mother finds the money. She used to sing, but she prefers now just to find the money. The insurers feel now that the fire was not caused by a firework launched by, they think, some trolley drivers who were celebrating something about San Francisco’s role in the war that one of the city commissioners said, or promised, or promised to say at some point in the near future. Or didn’t say. Promised not to say.”
“Not caused,” Owner repeated.
“That’s right: not caused. I’m not sure about any of the details. I should be, but I’m not. But it was late at night, after that . . . anarchist picnic . . . .”
Everyone in the room was suddenly uneasy. The results of the investigation had not yet been made public. Charles had forgotten that. This would be news to them: that they, or their friends, had done it. If in fact these men were actually anarchists. It was a leap, but they had the look and feel and sound of, well . . . anarchists, did they not? Which meant that it was to be understood as a blow against, Charles supposed, the aristocracy, or perhaps the aristocracy specifically involved in what was perceived as a patriotic theatrical production of a play called The American. The aristocracy specifically known as “the Minots.” Known more specifically in that room as “Charles Minot.” Father’s adventures in the punishment of graft and his hatred of URR were, the thinking was evidently to go, not good enough for the anarchists. Whatever Father may think, may wish and yearn to believe about his progressive Christian politics, it was too little too late: you get your ass ripped apart like all the rest of the rich people.
It was as preposterous a lie as they’d heard yet in the city, but still it gave them pause and made the room, the shop, the big happy family with its radical character actors ranged up along the mezzanine rail and its colorful young Italian criminals, all terribly quiet.
Charles thought what silenced them was the shadow of lies to come falling over their stage. His stage, their stage, everybody’s stage. The little old stage set about to come apart, once again, at the seams.
“And what is the name of the first show that must go on?” It was Owner’s shop and he would conduct