“Have you ever thought,” Jeffery says to Raymond, “that we could be some kind of an experiment?”
They are hanging out in the kitchen, late, as usual. Raymond is drinking a diet cola. Jeffery is eating cheese balls and sipping coffee. “I mean,” Jeffery says, “that we get practically free rent, the food arrives on time and we don’t even have to ask. Plus the place is full of mirrors. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe those mirrors are there so people can watch us through them?”
Raymond looks into his can of soda. What is he looking for? Jeffery thinks.
“I never thought of that,“ Raymond says, raising the can and taking a sip. “But what kind of person would want to spend his life watching someone else’s life? I don’t think it’s anyone either you or I would care to know.”
The so-called trivial incident the madman (Plaidman, the Captain thinks) was referring to happened at the very end of the Captain’s consultancy at Mellow Valley, at which time the more or less tragic implication of that episode’s plot — the inability to sustain oneself through agriculture, and that, for all practical purposes, there was no real difference between being lost on land or at sea — had finally been revealed. They had finished shooting early for the day, and by that afternoon the Captain had had more than a few glasses of wine — out of boredom, he supposed. Then, after the teen (named Scooter? Junior?) stomped off to sulk over some mild remark the Captain had made, and the rest of the crew fell silent, the Captain got up from the table to find the wretched boy and coax him back.
Thus it was that the Captain found himself outside. Once there, however, and slightly confused by more glasses of wine than he was used to imbibing, plus a misleading series of “Off Limits” signs, he had turned a corner to see the actresses who played Judy and Heather (!) in a state of complete undress, sharing a communal moment in “the women’s shower area,” beneath a powerful stream of water that poured in a delicious torrent onto their shoulders, backs, and breasts, and descended to their pubic deltas — in Heather’s case especially — in a drop that took him back to, of all things, his very first sight of Malabata Falls, a nearly inaccessible and barely known spot (except to a handful of travelers) that surely would have been one of the Wonders of the World if only it were more easily reached. And the spot was remarkable not only on account of its terrifying roar but also for the myriad colors of orchids and bromeliads, including rare hanging pineapple plants, their diamond patterns reflected in the crystal waters at the bottom of the falls like a necklace of many-colored jewels that, having momentarily become undone, eternally plunged between their owner’s luscious breasts, surrounded (the falls, not the breasts) by the screech of wild monkeys and the squawks of brightly colored parrots, some of which had been trained by the cunning natives to swoop out of practically nowhere and snatch away bills of any denomination from such visitors careless enough to be counting them out of doors.
Yes, all this and more flooded back into the ocean that was the Captain’s mind even as he stood, blending the sight of the one cataract with the other: the falls and the water cascading down the two beauties — especially Heather — rubbing and scrubbing the sweat of that final day’s shoot from their bodies, seemingly oblivious to his presence until the very moment their shouts of “Help!” and “Pervert!” drew him back from his reverie, during which he had apparently forgotten he was still holding up to his eye the video camera he had brought along on his search for the overly sensitive, sulking teenager just in case he came upon some native wildlife — a snake or billy goat, to name but two examples — in the process.
And even worse, it turned out that in his ignorance of modern media technology he was not just holding the video camera, as he had thought, but in his excitement his finger must somehow have been pressed against RECORD the entire time, so that it might have easily appeared to those who came running at the girls’ frantic cries — as indeed it would have to himself had he not been on the other end of the lens, so to speak — that the whole scene had been somehow premeditated by him instead of being merely the grotesque accident it was, an accident made even more ironic because until that moment the Captain’s sole moral compass had been the Code of the Sea.
The result? More screaming. People running from everywhere. A headlock, a punch, a badly aimed kick or two, and then, shouts—“Get Him!” and “Captain Perv!”—followed by four days in the local jail and charges, later mercifully dropped.
And then, to make matters even worse, for some reason the show was canceled before the episode even got a chance to air.
NOTE: CONCERNING THE APPAREL OF THE TECHNICAL STAFF
Actually the much-complained-about “special hat” referred to earlier is called a Phrygian cap and has a soft conical dome with the top pulled forward. It is associated in antiquity with the inhabitants of Phrygia, a region of central Anatolia thought by many to be the birthplace of Western civilization. In the western provinces of the Roman Empire this cap came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty, perhaps through confusion with the pileus, the felt cap of emancipated slaves of ancient Rome. Accordingly, the Phrygian cap is sometimes called a liberty cap; in artistic representations it signifies freedom and the pursuit of liberty.
Oh, and the Captain forgot to mention: the sexual offender label was dropped on the condition that he be banned for his entire life from getting anywhere near the production set of any television show whatsoever, including nature programs.
In Raymond’s dream there is a knock on the door of his room and, when he opens it, there is Louis, just standing there, wearing a blue cardigan sweater and still in his slippers. Louis looks sad, as if the sadness is coming not from anything that happened, but from deep inside. He shifts his weight from side to side.
“Come in,” Raymond says. “Would you care to have a seat?”
Louis stays where he is, framed in the doorway, the dark hall behind him. “No thanks,” he says. “I just came to say good-bye.”
And before Raymond can answer, Louis turns and walks down the hall, in the direction of the Burrow’s door, but when Raymond rushes after him there is no one there. He’s simply gone, as if the hall has swallowed him.
Or: Ballerina Mouse wakes to realize in the end that she has only been dreaming, and she has no bad foot, nor does she have the slightest interest in being a ballerina. She can’t imagine where that came from. What she likes is cheese, and not much else, truth be told, because, after all, she’s only a mouse.
Definitely not.
Do I have any children in this world? The Captain asks this question from time to time, not urgently, but more as speculation. Certainly, it’s possible, maybe even likely, given the number of ports he’s visited and the number of women with whom he has had intimate relations. But if he did have unaccounted-for children, a person would think that, sooner or later, one of them would have shown up at the front door of his mansion, being as he is a celebrity now, and easy to track down. “Hello,” such a hypothetical boy would say. “My name is Captain Junior.”