Stanley Elkin - Mrs. Ted Bliss

So the shoe was on the other foot. What, he was doing her a favor? Leading her into direct sunlight, dragging her beneath its spooky field as if under some cruel astrological influence. She no longer cared that he was too used to his character, or that he’d always had partners, projecting her anger where if properly belonged — Rage to Bliss to Yellin like a double-play on her husband’s radio.

The more she thought about it the madder she got. The nerve of that guy! Snatching the book away like I’m not even here, like I’m invisible. To hell with him. To hell with him!

And gathering up her metal detector, her trowel and shovel and hoe, and taking her fine paleontologist’s brush made off down the beach on her own, passing by groups of discrete populations — couples from the hotels stretched out on bath towels; women older than Dorothy on beach chairs of bright woven plastic, indifferent as stylites, their skin dark as scabs; men, the ancient retired, chilly in suits and ties; girls in thong bathing suits, their teenage admirers trailing behind them like packs of wild dogs; kids, overexcited, wild in the surf, their parents frantically waving their arms like coaches in Little League; waiters, kitchen help, and housekeepers on smoke breaks; small clans of picnickers handing off contraband sandwiches, contraband beer; lovers kneading lotions and sunblock into one another’s flesh like a sort of sexual first aid. Mrs. Ted Bliss, like some fussy fisherman, as inconspicuously as she could moving past these people toward a yellow patch of empty beach, for all her stealth reminded that she must appear at least as idiosyncratic (though not nearly so fashionable) as the girls in the thong bikini bathing suits, at least as idiosyncratic (though, again, not nearly so fashionable) as the superannuated gentlemen in their tight shoes, suits, and ties — a little old “fucking beekeeper” lady and her electric broom.

Somewhere in a narrow clearing between low and high tides she set up shop, took a last look at the directions to see how one turned on the machine, flicked its toggle switch, and opened the store.

“What are you doing?” a little girl of eight or nine asked about ten minutes after she started.

“Looking for buried treasure, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss.

“Did you find any?”

“So far,” said Mrs. Ted Bliss, “they’re not biting.”

“Oh,” said the kid, “may I try?”

“Be my guest,” Mrs. Bliss said.

“Really? No fooling?”

Mrs. Bliss handed the metal detector to the little girl.

“What do I do?”

“Make little half circles.”

“Like this?”

“Looks good to me.”

“This is fun,” the child said in a few minutes without really meaning it.

“Take your time, darling.”

Mrs. Bliss watched the little girl, self-consciously comparing her to her own children when they were her age, to her grandchildren, their children, her sisters and brothers at that age, ultimately to what she could remember of herself when she had been nine. Drawing a blank here, recalling as through the vague narcotic muffle and babble of an interrupted dream only the interest she’d had in detail, the remarkable sum of unrelated parts, a sort of silly wonder and flawed attention. She was sorry she didn’t have an orange in her purse, or candy, or gum to give the kid, anything, really, to keep up her flagging interest. Suddenly, inspired, she reached into her change purse, found a quarter, put it back, and took a dollar out of her billfold.

“Here,” said Mrs. Bliss.

The look on the little girl’s face changed from the curiosity and enthusiasm she’d shown when she’d initiated their conversation to that of suspicion, almost alarm.

“It’s your treasure,” Mrs. Bliss started to explain, but before she was sure the words were out of her mouth or, if they were, whether the child had heard or understood them, the kid dropped the metal detector’s long handle down on the sand and ran off.

“What was that all about?” said Junior Yellin, coming up to her.

“Oh,” Dorothy said, “oh.”

“What’s up? What’s wrong?”

“I scared her. I tried to give her a dollar.” Mrs. Bliss was almost in tears.

“You scared her? You tried to give her a dollar? To hell with her. She can go to hell.”

“She thinks I’m a witch out of some fairy story,” Mrs. Bliss said.

“Let her go screw herself she thinks you’re a witch. She’s a son of a bitch. So what did you find?” She was thinking about the little girl. She didn’t understand what he meant. “Hey,” Junior said, “she threw it on the ground. What does she think, it’s a toy? It’s an advanced piece of machinery, it isn’t a toy.”

“It’s a toy,” Mrs. Ted Bliss said.

Yellin looked around to see if anyone were watching. “Look,” he said, “look inside.” He was wearing a sort of creel. He raised its lid. Inside, dark at the bottom, Mrs. Bliss saw that he carried a kind of loose, unset metal jewelry.

“You found these?”

“Shh. Yes. And more, but people were getting curious so I kicked sand over the area and came to look for you. I took coordinates. I could find the spot again anytime I wanted to.”

She’d forgotten the little girl. “What do you think it is?” she asked.

“A battle, what else?”

“A battle?”

“A battle, a shoot-out, a fistfight with guns.”

“On the beach?”

“On the beach? The beach? Dorothy, darling, this is the hallowed ground of drug lords. Just look at these shell casings, will you; look at all these bullets. I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, millimeter and NRA-wise, but I’m telling you, kid, this stuff has all the markings of Uzis, AK-forty-sevens, rubber landing craft on moonless nights. Cocaine-wise, it must have been the Bay of bloody Pigs. I was a butcher, I know.”

“It’s ammunition?” Mrs. Bliss asked nervously.

“It ain’t arrowheads.”

“But what do you do with it?”

“What, are you kidding me? We could open a smuggler’s museum. We don’t have enough yet. Anyone can see it’s just the tip of the iceberg, but we can always come back. I mean, I know where the mother lode is. Hell, Dorothy, there must be a couple hundred dozen mother lodes up and down all these beaches. And let’s say I bring some of my Land Rover chums in on this. And you’ve got an in with the DEA guys. Working together with our friends downtown and if we put in a little research on the mainframe, we should be able to establish the like provenance of these drug wars, the circa and circumstances. I mean, face it, what’s a tourist do with his time after he’s checked out South Beach and been to Little Havana? He wants the big picture on the culture his next stop has to be the Dope Runner’s Museum. What do you say? I’m offering you the ground floor. What do you say, what do you think?”

What she said was nothing. What she thought was that he was crazy. Yet a part of her couldn’t help but admire him. Even to stand in awe of his nutty energy. Who, she wondered, was the true baleboosteh? Not Dorothy, who could not remember when she had given up clipping coupons out of her newspapers and junk mail, or ceased to bother with all the heavy hospital corners of slipcovers, blue water in the toilet bowl. Not Dorothy, who often as not these days let a pot of coffee stand overnight and warmed it up the next day. Not Dorothy, who no longer always bothered to bring back to her condominium the doggy bags and uneaten rolls from restaurants but who, when she did, let the rolls stand out on the kitchen table and warmed them in the toaster oven the next morning to eat with her breakfast, just as she put the contents of the doggy bag not into her freezer but in the refrigerator so she could make her next meal out of the merely day-old leftovers.