CONQUISTADOR

By Dale Bailey

Dale Bailey lives in Tennessee with his wife, Jean, and a portly cat named Gatsby. He is pursuing his Ph.D. in English and teaching at the University of Tennessee.

His short story, “Touched” (Oct/Nov 1993), will be reprinted in The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction, which St. Martin’s Press will publish to commemorate our 45th anniversary. He made his first appearance in print in these pages last year, and we have several more of his stories in inventory.

WHEN THE PHONE RANG that Friday morning, Howard was staring blankly at the picture of his wife, Bethesda, that stood on his desk. Occasionally, during the long empty days, he stared at that picture and daydreamed of Bethesda as she used to be. In those dreams, he found himself stripping away the pads of fatty tissue which had accumulated about her features. He would pry them up and peel them away, one by one, hoping at last to discover the woman he had married imprisoned beneath the countless layers of flesh, like the tiny jeweled figure at the core of a set of nesting dolls. It was an endless task, even in the dreams.

And so it was that on this day, as on most days, he dreamed instead of fish. Fish of all colors and types — infinitely varied and beautiful schools of butterfly fish and leopard fish and common gold fish —drifted through his mind. Long ago, Howard had hoped to be an ichthyologist, but that dream had slowly died, crushed beneath the weight of time and circumstance. These days, he worked in data entry at a water treatment plant, a job he had taken years ago to make ends meet. Now, the report he should have been typing lay forgotten on his blotter while he dreamed of the tropical fish in his basement hideaway. If he couldn’t actually go look at them when he was at work, he often consoled himself, he could at least think about them.

When the phone rang, however, even that tiny consolation was lost. Fragile as spun glass, his fantasy shattered and his mind returned abruptly to the busy office where he worked. Outside his cubicle, Howard could hear a cacophony of ringing phones, typing, and conversation. His own phone rang again. Without interest, Howard picked up the receiver. “This is Howard. How can I help you?”

“Howard?” said the voice at the other end of the phone. A male voice, breathless with excitement.

“Yes, this is Howard,” Howard said. “Can I help you?”

“You’ve got to come down here at once. At once.”

“Frank?” Howard asked. Frank, Howard’s only friend, was the proprietor of the Finny Tribe Fish Store. But Frank had never called him at work. “Is that you, Frank?”

“Yes, it’s me. Now get down here!”

“But why?”

“I have something to show you!”

“But. Frank, I’m at work. I can’t just walk out.”

“Well, come at lunch. But come soon!”

“What is it? What have you got?” Frank’s excitement was catching. Howard could hear it in his own voice — a shrill undercurrent of hysteria.

“You’ll see,” said Frank. “You’ll see when you get here.” He hung up.

Howard placed the receiver in its cradle and glared at the report on his desk, his pleasant reverie of fish irretrievably lost. He looked at the clock. It was ten thirty-eight. Reluctantly, he began to type. Lunch seemed a very long time away.

When Howard reached the Finny Tribe, Frank pumped his arm enthusiastically. “Howard,” he said. “Have I got a treat for you.” “What? What is it?”

“You’ll see,” Frank said.

He led Howard back into the interior of the store, past displays of nets and oxygenators, past a window where dust motes turned in a shaft of sunshine, past stacks of empty aquariums that gleamed with polished vacuity in the fluorescent light. As they entered the back room, Howard inhaled deeply, savoring the ripe, moist, aquarium smell. In that place, with the hundreds of fish secure in their aquariums, Howard felt young and vigorous and alive, as if the endless weight of unchanging days had fallen suddenly away.

“Look at it!” Frank said, staring in awe at the large aquarium before them.

Howard stared into the aquarium in amazement.

Within swam a conquistador, a fish Howard had always dreamed of seeing, of owning. Muscles rippled smoothly as it powered itself through the water and its scaly hide shimmered in the muted radiance of the aquarium. It arrowed away, looped under a gnarled coral archway, and came to rest in the water before him, hovering. Elaborate fins, tapering away into filmy nothingness, billowed along its four-inch length. Even as Howard looked on in dumb wonder it shrugged the rainbow-hued crest that swept back from its slim face like the wings of an angel.

As the conquistador darted away to cruise the perimeter of the tank, Howard was swept up in its smooth trajectory. Nothing of the sort had ever happened to him before. It seemed, momentarily, as if he had become the fish. Brine pulsed through his gills and water caressed his sleek armored length as he ascended toward the distant surface, climbing, climbing, and diving again to cruise the graveled bottom. When the fish drifted into concealment behind the coral ridge, Howard returned to himself with a shock. Bubbles danced surface ward through the still water.

The icy touch of departing magic rippled through Howard, along his cheeks, his arms, down unsteady legs. Bemused, he stared at the tiny models perched atop the ridge: a diver in an old-fashioned diving suit, an overturned pirate’s chest spilling gaudy wealth into the water.

“A conquistador,” Howard whispered into the stillness. “Frank, I’ve got to have it. Can you hold it for me?”

“I don’t know. It’s pretty rare, and —”

“Just for a day or two. Till Monday evening. That’s all.”

“Howard, I —”

“Frank, I’ve never asked you to do anything like this before. Never. One weekend, that’s all I ask.”

“Till Monday, then,” Frank said. “Hell, Howard, can you even afford it?”

Howard looked down at the tiny label affixed to the lower right hand comer of the conquistador’s tank:

“I don’t know,” he said. And he thought of Bethesda, sitting at home as she always did. He supposed he did know, but he could never say as much. “I’m going to try.”

ALL THAT long weekend the conquistador haunted Howard’s dreams. Saturday afternoon he whiled away in the undersea glow of his basement hideaway. He cleaned his largest aquarium, installed a fresh filter and air pump, and mixed new water, carefully adjusting the heater to 75 degrees F. Eyes blind to the elaborate waltzes of the tropical fish in their glass prisons, deaf even to the maudlin television sentiment that filtered through the ceiling, he spent the day transported by a recurring vision of the conquistador.

Sunday he passed in a daze, ticking off Bethesda’s list of chores with the plodding inattention of a somnambulist. Finally, on Sunday evening, his mind awash in a flood of tropical brine, a whole school of conquistadors performing synchronized swimming routines before his unbelieving eyes, he made his way upstairs to face Bethesda. She sat in the BarcaLounger, her feet propped up, watching a rerun of Gone with the Wind on the wide-screen television. in one fist she clasped a can of Diet Coke. With the unrelenting rhythm of an automaton, her other hand made regular trips between her mouth and a bag of Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn.

She cocked an eye at Howard, staring mutely at the television from the far corner of the couch. “Hello there, stranger,” she said. “What’s up?”

Howard cleared his throat and launched unthinking into it. He hadn’t mentioned the fish to Bethesda before, but all weekend he had attempted to be more attentive to her needs than he had in recent years. If he’d failed it had been only because of the icthyic visions which had washed over him with almost tidal regularity since Friday afternoon. Now, when he’d finished, the last words tumbling from him in a plaintive rush, Bethesda said, “Howard, how much is it?”

“Twelve hundred dollars,” Howard said.

“Twelve hundred dollars! Howard, are you out of your mind?” She stabbed the remote with her blunt finger and the television turned off abruptly. She turned to look at him.

Howard stared back at her, searching her wide heavy face for some vestige of the woman he had married. In those days, when Bethesda had been just Beth, it had not mattered that they shared few interests. It had not even mattered that Bethesda possessed few skills to contribute to their union, that Howard alone would have to be responsible for their living. For Howard, it had been enough that this cheerful, statuesque, even voluptuous woman had taken an interest in him. These days, however, Howard rarely thought of Bethesda in such flattering terms. These days, he usually just thought of her as fat.

“Howard!” Bethesda said. “Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” Howard said. “I heard you. And no, I am not out of my mind.”

“Then what makes you think we can afford a twelve hundred dollar fish?”

“We can afford it, barely. We afforded that!” He jabbed his finger at the gigantic television.

“We’re still paying for that! Don’t you think this fish thing has gone far enough? You never come upstairs with me anymore.”

“Well, you never do anything. You just sit in this house and watch television.”

“Well, you just sit down there and stare at your aquariums, Howard. Anyway, you must have at least twelve hundred invested in the fish you already own. Not to mention the equipment.”

Howard stood up and paced to the window. Pulling aside the curtain, he stared out into the night, but all he could see was the reflection of the den -as if the house went on forever, an endless prison of joyless rooms. As if there was no other place on earth. “It’s extremely rare,” he said. “I’ll probably never get a chance for another one. If they repossess the television, we can always get another one, Bethesda. Always.”

Howard turned and looked into her small eyes, recessed in the countless folds of flesh that had accreted about them over the years. He was surprised to see that they were slick with tears.

“Oh, Howard,” Bethesda said, “it’s not that. I just don’t understand why you can’t ever pay any attention to me.”

The next morning at work, Howard hunched over his desk with focused intensity. Documents washed across his working space with the metro-nomic regularity of waves, but he typed them without his usual frustration, taking refuge in the numbingly mindless activity of his fingers. He was a rock. All thoughts of the conquistador had been banished from his mind and if occasionally, during that long morning, he did think of the fish, he glanced at the photograph on his desk and recalled Bethesda’s eyes as they filled with tears. At first that was enough to do it. It was okay, he would tell himself. He was resolved. He was a rock.

By noon, however, the endless flow of his imagination had begun to erode that rock. When he returned from lunch he found himself occasionally immersed in oceanic fantasies through which the rainbow-hued conquistador darted with ease. At three o’clock, he discovered to his horror that he had sketched its frilly-necked silhouette across the final draft of a report for a corporate client. By four, the rock of his resolve had been reduced to a smooth wave-tossed pebble.

The Finny Tribe was closed when Howard arrived that evening. The security light were already dimly aglow in the quiet interior and the Closed sign was suspended in the window. It mocked him cheerily —Please call again! — as he plodded across the lot to rap halfheartedly at the door. He was just turning away when the interior was flooded with light and the neon sign in the window sputtered to life.

“Howard,” Frank said as he opened the door. “So you’ve come back. I thought you would.”

Without another word, Frank turned and led him into the watery half-light of the back room. For a long moment they stood in reverent silence before the conquistador. The fish passed through the water with thoughtless grace, its rainbow-hued frill pulsing with vitality. It hovered momentarily above the plastic diver poised atop the coral mountain. Then its caudal fin flexed and it darted into concealment, its wake upsetting the placid diver. The diver drifted slowly through the water and came to rest on the graveled bottom of the tank. Atop the ridge, the pirate’s chest disgorged its Midas banquet.

That delicate magic traced icy patterns across Howard’s cheeks, fleeing.

“Good God, it’s beautiful.”

“So it is,” Frank said. “And rare. I know at least two other collectors who would die for it.”

In the tank, the conquistador slipped from its hiding place. Cruising scant centimeters above the brightly graveled surface, it approached the body of the fallen diver, hovered for a moment, and shot away. It threaded its way through the drifting fronds of an underwater forest, its scales coruscating in the watery light.

“I’ve got to have it,” Howard said.

“Howard, I can’t hold it any longer. I’d love to, but I just can’t.”

“You don’t have to hold it.” The words filled the quiet room. A long moment stretched out and in that silence it seemed to Howard that he could hear the muted surge and fall of blood booming through his body. He thought of Bethesda, her narrow eyes filling with tears, and he tried to pull those words back, felt his tongue and lips shape themselves about the syllables of a retraction —

But then the conquistador exploded out of the shadow-decked forest and ascended through the water in a long arc, its crest flattened by speed, light scintillant along its polished scales. It drove itself to the surface of the tank and dived again, vertically, pulling up at the last breathtaking minute to come to rest, suspended like a living jewel in the water before him.

Howard gasped. It was beautiful. She was beautiful. She. And in the pronoun he detected the quiet ring of possession.

“Miranda,” he said. “I’ll call you Miranda.”

A few minutes later, Howard slid his Visa — charged to the limit —back into his wallet. Carefully, he lifted the plastic bag where Miranda was suspended like an angel in a tear drop and lowered it into a paper sack. The last thing he noticed as he left the Finny Tribe that Monday evening was a small sign taped discreetly to the cash register. It said:

Sorry. No Returns on Fish.

When he got home, headlights ripping cone-shaped swaths through the web of shadows draped across the front yard, Bethesda was waiting at the door. Cold light leaked about her bulky figure and into the gathering night as Howard walked to the house, the paper bag containing the conquistador clasped carefully in his hand.

As he mounted the concrete steps, Bethesda stepped back into the harsh radiance of the den. The door swung shut behind him with a sound like the clap of a prison gate. Inside, A Current Affair was playing on the television.

“Howard,” Bethesda said. “I was worried.”

Howard was still for a long moment. That vein at his temple began to pulse once more. “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping past her toward the hall and the door to the basement.

Bethesda looked at the bag Howard carried. “You bought the fish, didn’t you?” she said.

Howard looked at his feet, his face flushing with heat. He pulled the door open with his free hand. “No,” he said. “I bought another fish. It was only fifty dollars.”

“Howard. You better not have bought that fish.”

“Don’t worry,” he said as he stepped down to the top stair. He pulled the door closed behind him and stood there for a long moment, alone.

His heart hammered. During the long years, they had slowly drifted away from each other, but they had rarely fought. Until now, they had politely, if without real interest, shared their home. Until now, Howard had never felt compelled to lie to Bethesda. He had the sense of some irrevocable marker reached and passed. Some turning point.

And then the bag vibrated in his hand, reminding him of the fish. Of Miranda. Howard took a deep breath and descended into the darkness.

Down there, he gripped the plastic bag tightly and let the paper sack drop to the concrete floor. Miranda nosed at the bulging perimeter of her prison. Aqueous light sparkled along her rainbow-stained flanks. His eyes shining, Howard lowered Miranda, bag and all, into the newly prepared aquarium to begin the process of acclimating her to her new home.

Then Howard eased off his shoes and lowered himself onto the sagging couch in the precise center of the room, consciously ignoring the television which blared from above. A warm glow of contentment suffused him. His eyes roamed about the aquariums, drinking in the quiet vision of the myriad fish, secure in their glass prisons.

Later, after slowly intermixing the water in the bag and that in the surrounding aquarium, he released Miranda into her new home. As soon as she was free, Miranda flexed her tail and darted away to probe tentatively about the perimeter of the aquarium. Smiling, Howard settled back onto the couch to watch. She was frightened now, but she would soon grow used to her new home. It was just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, he sat there and watched her, asea in the flickering luminescence of the aquariums. Icy fingers caressed him, numbing, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, his arms were transformed into great translucent fins, fanning out into the water around him. His legs knotted together, twining into a powerful tail. Scales sprang up from beneath his skin, and gills billowed open along his cheeks. Through the azure water he dove, deeper and deeper, as cleansing brine pulsed through his gills. Deeper he dove, and still deeper, and finally there were no other fish. There was no one. Through the deep water, sunlight fell, splintered into a thousand sparkling diamonds by the current, and he coasted silently through sun and drifting shadow, unthinking.

There was only the steady blare of the television filtering through the ceiling to remind him.

HE WOKE to silence, pinned in a shaft of light that fell into the dim basement from the open door. All around him, tropical fish turned and turned.

Miranda was suspended in the large aquarium directly before him, gills swelling.

Bethesda said, “You bought it, didn’t you?”

Howard gasped. Fragment by slow fragment, his sleepy eyes pieced his wife’s form out of the darkness.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” She moved through the darkness to stop by Miranda’s aquarium. Her hand floated into the shaft of light from upstairs, gesturing.

Startled, Miranda darted away to conceal herself behind the knot of coral. At the same instant, Howard came to his feet. His heart pounded; his fingers curled into talons.

Bethesda retreated uncertainly. “Howard?”

He pulled to a stop, gasping. “I — I’m sorry. I thought you were going to hurt Miranda.”

Bethesda stepped toward him again, and the light fell half-across her face, bisecting it. “Miranda?”

Howard lowered himself back to the couch. “Miranda. The fish.”

“Oh.” Her voice was ominously quiet, quieter than he had ever heard it in all the years they had been married. “You bought the fish today, didn’t you, Howard? The one you wanted.”

Howard said nothing.

“You knew we couldn’t afford it.”

“Bethesda,” he said. “Bethesda, I didn’t have a choice. I’ll never get another chance.”

“I see. Well, you can take it back.”

“I won’t take it back. I can’t.”

Bethesda was silent for a long time. “You know what’s worse than just buying the damn fish, Howard,” she said at last, her voice heavy with the promise of tears. Tears, and something else — some resolve Howard had never before heard. “You know what’s worst of all? You lied to me.” She sobbed once, briefly, and fell silent again.

For a long time there was no sound in the room but the quiet gurgle of air filters, of bubbles rising slowly surface ward in the aquariums. Finally, thinking she had gone, Howard opened his eyes. But she was still there, by Miranda’s tank, one side of her face submerged in shadow, staring at him, the one eye he could see cold with anger. That sense of having reached a turning point, an irrevocable crux, came back to him.

Bethesda’s face grew colder still, as if she too had found something within her she had not been aware of before. She said, “It’s late, Howard. Come to bed.”

And Howard followed her upstairs. That night, he was swept away by a tide of dreams. Transformed beside his sleeping wife, he cruised the dark waters of sleep. Perhaps he heard Bethesda get up in the night, but later, remembering, he was never certain. If he did, he must have thought she was going to the toilet, must have rolled over, pulled his pillow close, and drowned himself in dreams again.

The next morning, he woke at six. As always, he made his way into the adjoining bathroom and relieved himself, his eyes closed, half-asleep.

When he opened his eyes to shake himself clean, he found Miranda floating in the garish yellow water of the toilet, belly up. The brilliant colors had fled from her underscales. The light from the fluorescent bar above the sink glinted dully in one black eye.

Later that day, looking back, he was proudest of the fact that he had remained calm. He did not even speak. Kneeling he fished Miranda from the polluted water and rinsed away the golden droplets which clung to her frilly collar. Then he went on about his morning — showered, shaved, scrubbed his teeth, even set the alarm clock for nine-fifty, as he did every morning so Bethesda wouldn’t miss Wheel of Fortune.

As a sole concession to the anger that boiled within him, he removed from its place above the living room mantel Bethesda’s prized photograph of Elvis Presley — signed by the King himself following a concert in Vegas. Not that Bethesda would notice, not immediately anyway. She passed her days in the den watching television, pausing only for trips into the kitchen for popcorn, Ding-Dongs, and Eskimo Pies. The living room was reserved for entertaining, closed off, inviolate, furniture still enveloped in plastic. Nonetheless, watching the thin line of blue flame curl up from one comer and devour Elvis Presley’s bloated face gave Howard at least a temporary measure of satisfaction.

He buried Miranda in the back yard, struggling to suppress tears as the spade bit into the chill morning earth. Then he went on to work.

At lunch, he drove down to Macon’s Sports Emporium and bought a Louisville Slugger, paying cash. He tried not to question what he was planning to do. He tried to be as cold and emotionless as a robot, tried to pretend that someone had removed all those warm, fallible, human viscera and replaced them with shining cogs and gears and coils of copper tubing. Tried to pretend that his heart was an iron pump, unfeeling, that machine oil coursed through his veins.

Later, at home, while Bethesda took her evening bath, he walked to the car and removed the bat from the trunk.

Bethesda glared at him in shock when he kicked the door open. Her mouth gaped. Her eyes widened.

“Howard! What are you doing?” She raised her hand to cover her breasts, and water lapped over the edge of the tub. “Why do you have that bat?”

Howard glanced at the bat, clenched tight and half-upraised, and returned his gaze to his wife. Bethesda shifted her weight in the tub. Water sloshed over the tiles. Her heavy features twisted into a helpless, frightened mask.

“Howard?” she said, almost whimpering. And her eyes filled up with tears.

When Howard saw those eyes, saw tears spill across her wide cheeks, he knew he could not do it. It did not matter that things were irrevocably changed, that they had passed some turning point. He let the bat clatter to the floor.

“Get out of the water,” he said.

“What?”

An image of Miranda came to him, her flanks shimmering with aqueous light as she darted gracefully through the water. Bethesda — bloated monstrosity of a woman — had no business in the water. When she wallowed about, it sloshed and splashed, spilled over the edge of the tub and gathered in the recessed borders between the tiles. She looked like a great pasty-white slug, her flesh quivering and jiggling gracelessly as she shifted in the tub. She was an affront.

“I said, get out,” he repeated, and when she didn’t move he strode deliberately across the small room, kicking the abandoned bat aside. Clutching her water-slick arms, he heaved her out of the tub. Water sloshed across the tiles, soaking his pants as he propelled her out of the bathroom, down the hall, and through the den to the front door. Fat pinched and folded across the back of her thighs. Her feet left wet tracks in the carpet.

“Get out,” he said. Holding her with one hand, he jerked the front door open.

“Howard!” she screamed. “I don’t have any clothes on!”

Howard didn’t reply. He thrust her out into the night, across the concrete stoop and down into the tiny yard below. As she struggled to maintain her balance, she turned to look up at him, her expression shocked and subdued. He slammed the door in her face.

Silence filled the house. Howard locked the door.

Even as he reached the basement stairs, the silence burst like a pustule and noise erupted into the night.

“Howard! Let me in! Let me in this minute?

Howard shut the basement door and descended the stairs. He sat on the couch and Bethesda’s voice came to him, as incoherent and meaningless as the noise of a distant radio.

About him, the tropical fish soared and plunged, visions of beauty behind glass walls. He concentrated on the transformation, trying to conjure up that exquisite pain as gills tore open across his cheeks, as scales pushed up from beneath his flesh, as his legs knotted themselves into a muscled tail.

Once, for an instant, he thought he felt that icy numbness, and his heart rose within him. In the flickering half-light he peered anxiously at his arms, waiting for them to billow out around him like sails, at his feet, waiting for them to fuse into a scaly tail. But nothing happened and when he shifted his weight, the numbness departed.

“Howard!” he heard Bethesda scream. “Howard!”

Howard glared wildly about his basement hideaway, saw all the tropical fish turning and turning in their glass prisons, and closed his eyes. Safe, he thought. Secure as a fish in a tank.

From upstairs he heard the sound of breaking glass.

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