Plankton We Have Heard on High

LANKTON WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH

  by

  Foghorn Jollypox

  and

  Nero Newton

  Copyright 2011 Foghorn Jollypox

  I should have known something was wrong by the way Allison reacted when I first spotted her.

  Peering in the big front window of the restaurant, trying to see through the sprayed-on fake snow, I caught sight of her at one of the farther tables. She had on sunglasses, though the interior was far from bright. She was holding something – phone, glass, napkin, I couldn’t tell what – right in front of her mouth, so I wasn’t able to read her expression.

  I was late meeting her for dinner – late because she had called at the last minute and asked me to stop back at our apartment and pick up our camera. Now, when I gave her a wave with my gloved hand, she simply swept her arm in an exaggerated and angry-looking come-on gesture. This took me by surprise. I didn’t think I’d arrived all that late. As I walked in the door, rattling a string of bells against the glass, I reached for my phone to check the time, but was distracted by the sight that met me.

  The name of the restaurant was either Nudibranch Descending a Staircase or Spotted Eagle Ray and Child; I can’t quite remember. But whatever the name, the interior of the place was spectacular, larger than I ever could have imagined from the outside. Realtors use the expression “cathedral ceiling,” but the ceiling here was actually as high as in a cathedral, with a dome and all, and even an oculus letting in the last of the daylight far up at the center. So high that it gave me a moment of dizziness to stare up at it, and I had to quickly lower my gaze to keep from stumbling.

  The area where I’d spotted Allison was much farther into the establishment’s recesses than it had seemed from the outside. She was two rooms away, and I would have to negotiate a very crowded floor in order to reach her. The room where I now stood was bright, with white surfaces, a glowing fish tank that took up the entire length of wall behind the counter, and white-painted metal tables that stood on a mottled gray and green carpet. It seemed that this first area was the combination piano bar and coffee house. The next section, visible through a broad arched opening in the wall, was the main dining room; and the space beyond, quite dark, seemed to be the bar. Allison must have decided to get a drink before dinner. Fine with me; I felt like one or several myself.

  For a moment I wondered if this was a sort of “theme” place whose patrons dressed up in this or that retro fashion. Women in particular seemed to be wearing a lot of bold colors and even feathered hats, somewhat 1920s-style. Come to notice it, plenty of the men were also rather floridly attired, not in drag exactly, but loud and bright.

  There seemed to be far more waiters than necessary for the number of tables. They sometimes appeared in small processions, bearing multiple goodies to a single location.

  Damn, I hoped Allison wasn’t pissed off at me just for being late. If so, it would have meant that she was in one of her rare petulant moods. Rare, but hard to break when they do occur.

  Of course, there was also that other issue. We were due to leave in a couple of days to spend the holidays in Cozumel. I was just as excited about the trip as Allison was, but she had convinced herself that, deep down, I actually wanted to stay in town and do a real Christmas. She was wrong, but because I’d always been the more traditional of the two of us when it came to holiday spirit, she’d lately been reading into my every action some sign of reluctance to fly off to the tropics. In fact, the opposite was true. Maybe over a couple of drinks, we could finally clear it all up tonight.

  I looked for her again, but now there were too many people milling around for me to see anyone sitting down, so I began making my way back toward the bar.

  Just then the piano player, who’d been rattling out jazzy instrumental versions of Christmas carols, began singing in a powerful voice that was gruff, yet oddly tuneful.

  I smiled after hearing the words to the song because, at that moment, I realized that the situation with Allison already had been cleared up.

  Away in a mangrove, no crib for a bed,

  The leatherback hatchling retracts his sweet head.

  The gulls in the bright sky can’t reach him down here,

  No damage will come to his carapace dear.

  So that was it. Allison had chosen this place because it married the holiday and marine themes; she’d done it as a joke to make light of any conflicted feelings I might still have about not doing a traditional Christmas.

  Cetaceans are lowing, the hatchling awakes…

  A clamor of dropped dishes drowned out the rest of the singer’s words, which I didn’t really mind because the whole gimmick was a little too cute for my taste. Still, I appreciated what Allison had done.

  Passing among the tables in the piano bar/coffee shop, I got some strange looks from several of the seated patrons. One woman shuffled all the way around in her seat to look me up and down, her elderly lips pursed, drawing her ivory cheeks in hollowly. I noticed then that the feathers in her hat were set into some kind of shell whose bone-white color and gloss exactly matched that of her face. I must have done a double take because she suddenly spun back around, leaving me staring at the back of her lavish fur coat, which almost perfectly matched the mottled gray-green of the carpet.

  I trudged on, squeezing among the increasingly numerous tables, and finally made it to the second area, the dining room. Here was another hugely vaulted ceiling, a fish tank even longer than the one in the coffee bar, and yet another piano player. This guy’s voice was rougher than the last one’s. I could see him sitting at his baby grand, crooning away, and noticed that he looked like the late actor Lee Marvin at his most grizzled. Because he wore black, his head seemed to float in the dimly lit room.

  The clamor of voices and of utensils clinking on plates was greater in here, and the player’s voice was frequently drowned out as he sang:

  God rest ye merry, trilobites,

  Let nothing you dismay

  That North Atlantic Drift has come

  To speed us on our way,

  And steer us clear of sulfur vents

  When we have swum astray…

  The air was warm and close, and I began to feel slightly lightheaded, which didn’t help my attempt to move through the room. There seemed to be no aisles between tables – not through the center of the room, not even at the periphery, where the tight arrangement of tables went right up to the walls. The gloom and the haphazard layout conspired to leave me quite disoriented, and I had to keep looking around to find the archway that led into the bar where Allison had been waiting for me. There were still too many people standing or shuffling about for me to see anyone seated back there.

  I also kept getting distracted, in rather a pleasant way, by the voice of the singer. He actually had a hell of a range; it made me think for a moment of the alien opera singer in that Fifth Dimension movie. Was this guy’s voice really moving through a preternatural number of octaves, or was I imagining it?

  Then I saw her again. The milling crowd had parted, giving me a brief view of her seated alone at a table that could have held five or six people. She still wore the sunglasses, yet despite that, and despite the dim lighting, I could see her eyes. She definitely looked worried, even panicked. She was looking around, searching for something – possibly for me – but didn’t seem to see me.

  I headed straight for her, feeling on the edge of panic myself.

  In my headlong charge, I ran right into one of the tables, startling its several occupants so severely that they all leapt immediately to their feet and scuttled backward with amazing speed.

  I stumbled, regained my footing, and looked around to apologize, but the pe
ople I had disturbed were now turned around and simply walking away from their meal, heading in different directions, weaving through the crazy maze of tables.

  I didn’t have time to ponder the diners’ strange behavior. Something was wrong, and I needed to get to Allison.

  At last I made it through the final arch and into the bar. I spotted Allison’s table, but she was gone. The table was still unoccupied, even though all the rest back here were full. I called out her name again and again, scanning in every direction. A few people glanced my way, but no Allison.

  She had to be in here. I didn’t think it possible that she could have gone back out through the archway without my noticing it; there hadn’t been that many people at the entrance when I came through. She had to have gone further into the place.

  I pushed on through the bar, looking for a back exit, or maybe another archway into yet another room. The sparse