“So it’s like this,” Jeffery says. “Here we are all together in the Burrow and yet how often do we have a chance to sit down and talk? Not often, right? I mean we do have the chances, and a lot of them, but we never do it. What do you say we make a point of all of us getting together once a week, here in the kitchen, and we can have a meeting where we can discuss the ideas of the day, and how everybody is feeling, and other various concepts that might occur to us, you know — like life after death, and things like that? That is, if we all agree to do it. Or we could even have an agenda, so after we’ve finished one subject, at the end of the meeting we could vote on another one to talk about the next week, which would give us a whole week to prepare our thoughts and the like. Or, for that matter, we could do it in rotation, where people choose their own topics, and then when we’ve finished with those everyone chooses again.”
The toaster oven pings, and Madeline puts a couple of slices of hot toast into bowls and pours on a little warm milk. She gives one to Viktor and keeps the other for herself.
“So what do you think,” she asks Jeffery, “is Louis ever coming back?”
Strictly speaking, the ducks Raymond keeps in his room are not actual decoys at all, but only duck interpretations, or duck tributes, carved from wood, because it’s not the act of carving them that makes them decoys; it’s the humans who place them where they might attract ducks and lure them for a landing. You could do that with handkerchiefs, or painted rocks, for that matter, and people have done it with those, too. Decoys don’t kill ducks, Raymond thinks, people kill ducks, and Raymond would never kill anything.
Also, Raymond thinks, the reflection of a person in a mirror can never be the same as the actual person being reflected, because the speed of light has to be taken into consideration. No matter how close you stand in front of the mirror, it still takes just a tiny moment to go from there and back again. Everything takes time. Raymond knows this, and tells himself to be patient.
Something big is going to happen soon. He’s sure of it.
Exits are important. And just because the exit from the Burrow happens to be the same as the entrance, doesn’t mean it’s any less speciaclass="underline" a door leading to a concrete walk that is cracked in a few places, and runs from the street to the front door. The grass on either side of it is tall, ankle high, full of dandelions and burdock, and even a few stalks of bamboo, which, come to think of it, is just another kind of grass. Nobody seems to know whose job it is to keep it cut.
Embedded into one part of the walk, near the street, is a series of bicycle tire tracks that must have been made by some kid years ago, a kid who had been passing by after the cement had been poured, before it hardened. So the kid ran right over it, and maybe the workmen had gone home for the day, or maybe their backs were turned, or they were around a corner, sitting in the shade, having lunch, sandwiches and coffee poured from metal thermoses, swapping stories, exchanging complaints, and didn’t see him. How old is that kid now? Does he have kids of his own? Is he still alive? Does he even remember that day?
Near the exit a weed of some unknown variety is poking up, but nobody knows its name.
And not just light, but the electric impulses traveling along neural tracks take time as well. So it always has to be the case, Raymond thinks, that, like the heads of those guillotined aristocrats back in the days of the French Revolution, we are always dead a micromillisecond before we realize it.
And by then of course it’s too late.
VII
How fucked up can one person be? Don’t answer that, thinks Junior, having, for one thing, spent his entire adult life monikered with that stupid kid-name, Junior, and not even a real kid-name, like Rusty or Chuck, but one laid on him by his stupid in-absentia dad, who only stayed around long enough to knock Junior’s mom up and then leave him with a name that is a constant reminder of his presence. Junior to what? To whom? As if he could ever find a Senior.
For God’s sake, Junior thinks, people take more care in picking out the names of their pet dogs or cats. Especially cats, whose owners seem to get some special thrill from bestowing a name that announces to the world how clever they, the owners, are: Cleopetra, or Drepuss, or Picatso, or Mister Snuggles. But even dogs get better names than he did: Pal, or Duke, or Brutus, or Mauler — names with something substantial about them. He could be a Mauler, for example. But Junior? What is Junior if not someone who is young, a person who will be forever second, will remain a permanent child, or, at best, a permanent young adult, a father’s heavy thumb atop him?
There has got to be a way to even things out.
Sometimes, late at night, Raymond shuts his eyes and pictures Madeline’s pubic hair, shy and silent as the red cellophane grass in the basket his mother would leave on the breakfast table on Easter mornings. Sure, there were chocolate bunnies, and colored eggs, and marshmallow ones, but it was that grass he liked the very best, shiny and fragile and mysterious all at once.
Oh, Madeline, he thinks.
Come back.
Also: Is there such a thing as an Easter duck?
Of course there is.
He had one once, a duckling, and it died.
It is late at night in the Burrow, and Madeline and Viktor lie awake listening to the sounds of grinding from outside, from deep beneath the earth. They notice that the sounds are getting louder, though not so loud they are unbearable, or anything even close to that. Unable to sleep, Madeline is trying to decide whether or not to go back to her own room and her own bed, but along the way she finds herself returning to a question that’s been on her mind for a while. Namely, this fan club business — she wonders whether she should get a leg up on becoming a celebrity herself by first joining a celebrity entourage, to see how the whole business works.
“It seems to me it’s a two-part problem,” she tells Viktor, who is just starting to doze. “The first part is simply whether to join or not to join. But then,” she continues, “assuming the answer to the first part is in the affirmative, the second question to ask is which entourage a person should join, because, predictably, as the number of celebrities grows, so do the number of possible entourages. Should a person become an early adopter, or wait to be sure the celebrity of their choice has real staying power?”
Viktor grunts.
“Here’s how I see it,” Madeline continues. “Regarding the first part, the part about whether to join or not, the obvious advantage of joining an entourage is that a person who is in an entourage always has somewhere to go and something to do, some personal appearance or new release to look forward to — some behavior of their celebrity to either praise or defend — at least as long as the celebrity is alive. And then, even after the celebrity dies, a person in an entourage can visit their particular celebrity’s grave, leave flowers, attend memorials, and collect souvenirs of their celebrity with other members of the entourage.