“And who’s behind this construction?” Mitchell asked.
“Elite seals.”
“Lenny, have you ever talked to an engineer in your whole life? Factually I know you have, but based on that explanation it’s as if you have no idea about infrastructure, architecture, or sea animals. Reality is not a system of tubes.”
“You dromedaries are content to ignore the threat. But when the waters have risen up to your neck, you’ll be kicking yourself, Mitchell.”
“I’ll be too busy dog-paddling to kick myself.”
Old Spots had gotten riled. “Listen, fur-ass. I’m telling you the sea is coming for the city. I know animals in construction, and a huge tank is feasible. I know what I know.”
Mitchell felt compelled to wind the pig up a twist more. “This is neither here nor there, but dromedaries are camels, and I’m, I mean, we’re related to camels, but…”
The pig wasn’t listening.
“Never mind. What position do you think I should be taking about floorless buildings?”
Old Spots glanced down the hall before closing the door behind him. He enjoyed behaving as if life were a thriller. “Now, I know you and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I think, as land animals who work for the state, and as just, well, honorable animals, we’ve got to protect our kind. I’ve been hearing that rents are rising because developers are investing in these luxury tank projects. They’re hiding the sea all around us. It’s a plot.”
Since the hurricane, many land animals had taken to blaming the sea for every woe. They complained about waves and storms. The Post found ways to link the seas to everything from avian flu to volcanic eruptions. If you listened to right-wing radio, the sea was somehow the source of fleas and mange, mold and bad dreams. There were all sorts of crazy conspiracies.
Old Spots was convinced that there was a secret sea organization bent on destroying first New York, then eventually all dry land. He believed that various land mammals were in collusion with a cabal of whales, dolphins, and seals working to annihilate everything he loved. Whenever he wanted to criticize some cat, goat, or bird, he insinuated that they were an agent of the sea. Mitchell could not convince the pig that this was a bigoted idea.
“But oceans already cover seventy percent of the Earth.”
“Those extremists won’t be happy until they’ve gotten it all.”
“How do you think they’re going to ‘attack’?”
“Excuse me, did you forget Hurricane Sparky?”
“That was a natural disaster.”
Old Spots snorted. “It’s those extremist SERFs,” he said—the Sea Equality Revolutionary Front. “They’re planning to flood the subways and the sewers, forcing us to swim like rats.”
“Why would sea creatures even want that?”
“They hate our legs and our free society.”
“Hum?”
“It’s all connected, see? They want us all drowned. These buildings don’t have any floors because…” Old Spots paused for emphasis. “They’re huge aquariums full of fanatical sea creatures. When you and I are walking down the street, we’re being watched by sharks and stingrays and whales and those fucking dolphins. They’re right there plotting our demise while we go about our business, like suckers!”
Mitchell laughed and Old Spots frowned. The sad thing was that the reality of New York real estate was already so fantastical that anything felt plausible. More and more development had less and less to do with need. There was already a complex designed to look like a forty-story pair of pants. There was another everyone called the Swiss cheese block. Another building was designed like a tall, narrow zero, hollow in the middle. In this landscape of architects’ follies, an aquarium tower didn’t sound that outrageous.
Mitchell pictured this cartoon building. A super-tall high-rise where dolphins darted up toward the rooftop surface to servant creatures who sprinkled expensive fish food.
The pig barreled on. “Now imagine if one of these slick maniacs decides to pull the plug or break a hole in the wall of their watery tower. Boom. Downtown Tribeca, flooded. Central Park, a wetland. Thousands drowned. Pandemonium.”
“A little extreme, no?”
Old Spots snorted. “It’s our job to imagine worst-case scenarios. You have to think like those gutterpups. You may like to believe that you’re here to prop up some nanny-goat-state nonsense, but I want you on my side, because when we’re all dog-paddling for our lives it won’t be about rich versus poor, it will be about legs versus fins.”
“Umm…”
“Look, boss, no offense, but in my position, I may be privy to some intel you don’t get down here in Housing.” The pig smirked.
Mitchell hated him.
It wasn’t that Old Spots was stupid. It wasn’t even that there was nothing to worry over. Mitchell could see that the city was crumbling and the oceans were seething. It was that Old Spots transformed questions into a cudgel. He only wanted to see the most fragile punished. The pig was blaming the world’s problems on fish, when fish were getting poisoned and eaten, and eaten and poisoned, by all the creatures on land who’d built their industries on sea exploitation. The pig was right and wrong in Mitchell’s eyes, and yet they could only communicate across a chasm of difference. What was being shared? Mitchell didn’t know. Everything got twisted.
How can you be so naïve? they wondered at each other.
“I’m sharing this with you because I think you’re not a complete nose bag,” Old Spots offered.
“Your faith is inspiring.”
“I’m trying to get your head in the game, Mitch.”
There was a knock. Old Spots turned to the interloper. “What’s shaking, Shaggy.”
“Pardon?” Alfonzo said.
“Be good, chief.” And with that the pig departed.
“Thanks for stopping by, Leonard!” Mitchell called out.
“Should I be offended?” Alfonzo asked his friend. “I’m confused.”
“Oh, buddy, you saved me,” Mitchell hummed.
7.
Alfonzo slumped into Mitchell’s office. “I’m in trouble.”
“Your haircut?”
“Be. Nice.”
“Not to take the pig’s side, but he does have a point.”
“Brother, don’t.”
“I mean, I’m no barber, but I could take a whack.”
It was Mitchell’s philosophy that friends should tease each other about trivial foibles but then also fight to the death to protect each other from real external threats. The herd was sacred, but within the group there was a nice, consistent padding of emotionally distancing banter—that was his style.
“Remember when you sold your wool to pay for textbooks?”
“Thank you for bringing up a humiliating moment. You know you could have talked me out of it.”
“Whatever, it grew back and your baldness provided months of comedy.”
“I’m glad my poverty was so funny. But I didn’t come to rehash the history of my grooming.”
They tapped this vein of banter often. Another precept of Mitchell’s philosophy of friendship was that one must revel in repetition. Everyone was repetitive. The longer you knew someone, the more times you had to listen to him sing his hit songs. Everyone had a finite repertoire. Some friends sang of heartbreak, others of aggravation. Sometimes you sang together, other times you listened to them solo. That was conversation. Alfonzo’s core sonic theme was self-recrimination. He had the habit of letting any one moment of disappointment become an opportunity to tally all shortcomings. One snappy chorus went something like “I’m a failure and this is a disaster.” Mitchell knew all his friend’s songs by heart.