Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

“Go get my claw hammer, RB.”

“You know about black men, right, Rigo?” RB said, as he rose from the bed. He lifted a two-by-four off the floor and duckwalked the length of the warehouse with the stud crotched and angled up between his legs. “You’re definitely some kind a nignog,” he said. He stuffed the board in one of the galvanized cans they were using to haul refuse. He laughed to himself as he searched in Ramage’s tool sack. He found the hammer and beneath it the gun. “Hey Spooky, man, what the hell?” He held the gun delicately like a small wounded bird in the palm of his hand.

“Put it back,” Ramage said.

“Is it loaded?”

“No,” Ramage said. “Are my smokes in there?”

The kerosene heaters burned orange and warmed the hue of Rigo’s olive skin. His cheeks flared up and Ramage watched his wide black silent eyes track RB’s movement across the room.

“You want a world where you have to choose sides?” RB said. “Go to prison, man.”

He offered Ramage the handle end of the hammer.

“It’s prison now, is it?” Ramage said.

“What?”

“First it was reform school, now it’s prison. Which is it?”

“It’s all the same,” RB said. “You’d know that if you’d been where I’ve been.”

“Let’s strike these rooms.”

Rigo walked over to the lockbox and grabbed a small sledge and began pounding away the supports that held the room together. Gypsum shook loose as the Sheetrock buckled and white dust sifted into the air. The back wall caved in and the others folded over like shuffled cards. A stud broke free and whacked against RB’s leg. Ramage turned and calmly waited for things to surface. RB closed his hand around Rigo’s neck and shoved his face to the floor.

RB said, “You got to be very careful. People get fucked up on jobs.”

RB let go and picked up a pry bar and began to rip nails loose from the discarded studs. Each nail screeched like a gull. Rigo was still lying on the floor.

“Get up,” Ramage said.

“Just act right,” RB said. He slapped the pry bar in his palm. “Act right, you know what that means?”

“Enough,” Ramage said.

“Fuck enough,” RB said. “Little half-nigger almost fucked me up just being stupid.”

“He’s sorry,” Ramage said.

“I didn’t hear him say so,” RB said.

For the rest of the night, Ramage worked with Rigo close by his side. His silence got on Ramage’s nerves. After they’d hauled the last load of broken drywall outside, Ramage offered Rigo a cigarette.

“Don’t get all quiet inside yourself,” Ramage said. “It’s a pain in the ass to everyone else.”

Rigo said, “I quit.”

“It’s stupid to quit now. Hang in there, okay? Get paid.” Rain swept through the blue light of a street lamp. Ramage squeezed Rigo’s shoulder, giving it a pat. “The job’s done,” he said. “Gather up my tools and let’s get out of here.”

____

No one had arrived at the warehouse for the last day of shooting, and Ramage, after making coffee, sat alone in the black room; it was the only box still standing. The walls shone with the rich luster of ebony and his reflection floated as if submerged in dark water. Other than a bed, the room was empty of furniture. The floor was carpeted in orange shag and a pine box stood against one wall. Ramage opened the lid and found the day’s drama: a braided bullwhip, handcuffs, black leather chokers studded with chrome spikes. He lifted the bullwhip and gave it a crack in the air.

When Greenfield showed up, he stood in the middle of the warehouse, silently taking in the scene. He scuffed his cowboy boots on the floor. A long blue cigarette hung from his lips.

“Don’t put RB in the movie,” Ramage said.

“Why not?” Greenfield said. He looked at Ramage, and then up at the skylight, washed with gray.

“I just prefer it.”

“I was never going to anyway.”

“He’ll say you promised.”

“I can’t get caught up in all that,” Greenfield said. “You’re the foreman, you’re in charge of the cheap seats. You tell him.” Greenfield looked up at the skylight. “I still haven’t quoted Citizen Kane, ” he said. “You know Rosebud was Hearst’s pet name for his mistress’s clit? You know that? Orson Welles knew that. Rosebud, Rosebud. It was an inside joke. It drove Hearst crazy.” He shaded his eyes against the gray light. “I’d like to get at least one shot of all this from above.”

RB was in back of the warehouse, dressed in slacks and a rayon shirt. The smell of pomade hung in the air around him, and he stood alone, rocking back and forth on the heels of his work boots, apparently the only shoes he’d brought with him. Ramage stepped next to RB, and for a full minute went unacknowledged.

Finally Ramage said, “I talked to Greenfield. There might not be time to get you in.”

RB hesitated, then resumed his rocking.

“It’s an orgy,” he said. “Everybody climbing all over everybody else, can’t tell one person from the next. I get in there, who cares? It’s all equal.”

“You can’t just walk on.”

“Won’t nobody know the difference.”

Four strands of rope were anchored to the corners of the room, and Desiree waited, shackled at the ankles and wrists, crouched quietly in the convergent center. Enough slack played in the rope for her to crawl a few feet in any direction. Her sunken reflection swam below the surface of the polished wall, surrounded by a vague wash of white faces. The wall did not reflect the crews’ eyes or mouths; black hollows bloomed in their heads like the holes in a skull. An assistant took a powder puff and dabbed away the glare from Desiree’s forehead. The chalky cloud caused her to sneeze.

The set was cleared, and Ramage left RB, who insisted on staying there on the sidelines until Greenfield called him in. Ramage went to sit on the fire escape. Rigo was planted in front of the peephole, peering through it as if it were a telescope, subdued and quiet, his open mouth pressed against the plywood. With RB out of the way, this was his chance, his opportunity. Then Ramage looked, too. Through a tangle of cameras and booms, he watched Desiree tug at one of the ropes binding her ankle. A hooded man cracked the bullwhip and the tasseled tip snapped against the back of her thigh. The contact was accidental, outside the choreography, and she lurched forward, trying with her bound wrist to protect herself. She howled, and then someone in the crew moved, standing in Ramage’s line of sight.

Ramage left Rigo and climbed the fire escape, making his way up a ladder that curled over the parapet and onto the roof. The skylight was made of green tinted glass and reinforced with chicken wire. Ramage shaded his eyes against the dull glare. Twenty feet below, the full cast was assembled, the orgy well under way, a swarm of white bodies that gradually came apart as men and women, pairing up, crawled across the orange carpet. They moved silently, dividing like cells and then joining again, their skin pale and colorless under the burning lights. The hooded man loomed over Desiree from behind, holding on to her hair like it was the reins of a horse. It was hard to imagine what exhaustion, what wasting away of power, would bring the orgy to an end. Everything was eternally available, everything equal. Ramage sat up and looked out over the town. Nothing moved, not a car, not a pedestrian. It felt as if some vast Sunday had devoured the day. The sea was flat and the waves rolled evenly along the shore.

After an hour, a raucous cheer rose from the set, and Ramage went downstairs, entering the warehouse ahead of Rigo. Greenfield bowed first toward the cast and then toward the crew, sweeping his hand along the floor. “Thank you one and all.”