Professional Amateurs
Uneasiness crescendoed. The auspices were terrible. Bengt and Ella did a spot where they were supposed to eat Stipe-Schneider peaches and then kiss, but Ella slapped him instead. Right at that moment Octie broke a string and it twanged into her eye. Right into the white. Burst like pudding. Ella drove the hydrofoil to the mainland while I held Octie’s hands and told her that in the kingdom of the blind the one eyed are the best violinists. Meanwhile, Bengt stalked up and down the beach. His pride stung. The spot was successful, but, like so many others, it was just a big joke on the once-mighty Bengt Marc engineered by the crafty Ella. Joyous love had been their trademark, now it was all bitter irony.
After their third commercial for a divorce lawyer, Bengt decided on his move.
IV
Meanwhile, I had a confidence problem. With Octie hurt and no more parties at the manor house, my muse had gone away. The blank staves looked like barbed-wire fences and all the melodies flushed out of my head. I tried giving up paper and using touchscreens and that didn’t work either. Confidence helped a little. I’d pop a tablet, or three, and for an hour music bled out of me, then stopped. More tablets, more music, but in decreasing proportions.
One terrible night I was lying awake, shaking from a confidence overdose. My heart felt like a threshing machine and the ideas of all the horribly wonderful things that I could be doing refused to leave my racing brain. Octie slept soundly next to me in a red velvet eyepatch.
Above the clatter of my thoughts, I heard a faint rotoring sound. The sea lions bayed. Something scared me and I got up and put on my tunic and slippers. I heard the front door open, then close, and I went upstairs.
Bengt’s hat was gone from the rack by the door. Our dumb waiter approached to ask if I needed anything but I waved it off. Then, on second thought, I called it back and asked it if anyone had left the house.
“Master Bengt did, Master Arnaud.”
Was he holding anything?
“A sample bottle.”
Diamondback island, being perfect, was circumnavigable on foot in forty-five minutes. Small enough for all areas to be accessible but large enough to afford a sense of privacy and partition.
I made it around in fifteen. Nothing at the telescope hill, the lemon orchard or the bathing grotto. I found Bengt on the black sand beach. He was a black shape against a night sky yellow with the lights of London. There was another, shorter black shape near Bengt, one who heard my footfalls on the sand. A rotorcar was parked where the waves broke on the shore.
“Ah, you again. You should’ve talked to me earlier. Could’ve saved yourself a lot of disappointment,” a gruff voice said.
It was Mr. Plot. He tipped his hat to me, put his hand on Bengt’s shoulder, and then climbed into his rotorcar. It rose almost soundlessly, a testament to modern engineering, and glided off towards the Tower.
I dashed at Bengt. He’s taller than me, but with him unprepared and my running start I managed to slam him to the ground and get my hands around his neck. He didn’t struggle, just cried quietly and I felt the anger go out of me and get replaced with something else.
“Baby says: over. Oh, Arny, it’s all gone. Ella will be gone. And that means me, too. And your music and this island. All gone. I’m free. Finally free.”
“What did you do?” I asked “What did you do?”
