Flood Bugs

Excerpt from the upcoming novel, Flood Bugs.

Chapter 1: MMM.

            Meredith Mercedes-Mullen held her microphone at attention and waited in her rubber boots for this new cameraman to start recording. She knew somewhere back in New Raleigh Vans-Winkle was wrapping up his weather update with a tide prediction for the storm tonight and signing off with a goofy joke so bad a viewer might forget the one he had made yesterday.

The green Recording light was about to go on and she took a breath.

“Congratulations, by the way.”

Meredith gasped at the smiling Puerto Rican grandmother she was about to interview, seated beside her at the half-submerged dinner table. The old lady smiled and gestured towards her barely-showing belly.

“We’re recording,” muttered Ty-something.

Meredith paused and then touched a fingertip to her earpiece. She heard the second half of her pre-recorded lead-in,  “…with Meredith Mercedes-Mullen on location in Burgaw. Meredith? Are you with us?”

“I am, Chuck. And for today’s Channel Five Deep Dive segment somebody better pinch me because I swear I’m in Venice, Italy. Once, the most romantic city on earth, then lost, and now, recreated in North Carolina as the Little Venice Restaurant here in Burgaw-by-the-Sea, courtesy of the Maggi-Antonio family. I’m with Clarita Maggi-Antonio now, and … Como estas?”

“I’m great, thank you.

“Perfecto, can you tell us a little bit about the Little Venice restaurant?”

“Well, it’s a Dining Experience.”

“Hmm?”

“A Dining. Experience. We consulted with some of the authentic first-wave climate immigrants to bring some of this endangered, if you will, cuisine to the table. We added a Puerto Rican touch of Maggi chicken stock to all our dishes, thanks to our sponsors. And you’ll encounter other purely Venetian touches that made the place so romantic, once upon a time.”

“Is this what I think it is?”

“That is my husband, Neftali.”

“I meant the… is that a gondola?”

“The plan is to have one gondola out front, you know, getting the customers in. And to have another one for inside, where customers having dinner can pay for a romantic song.”

Meredith could imagine it. “Like most of our viewers, I never got to see Venice before it went all the way under. What’s something authentic a diner would find here in Little Venice?”

Dressed in a red and white striped shirt, black pants and a white hat, Neftali poled the gondola casually back and forth in the background of the camera shot while Clarita composed her response.

“Our signature dish is bigoli in salsa, which is a kind of pasta with anchovy sauce —”

“Yum.”

“And another very authentic dish from Venice is our risotto al nero di seppia, or risotto cooked in cuttlefish ink.”

Mercedes felt saliva rush to the back of her mouth and looked around for somewhere to throw up.

Clarita went on, “To keep ingredients as fresh and local as possible we source the anchovies from the Caribbean climate refugees doing some interesting fish farming near Old Wrightsville. Instead of cuttlefish ink, we use fresh squid from the pelagic sea mount by buoy—”

Meredith turned to her left and vomited off-camera. Clarita put a hand on her arm. Ty-whatever kept filming, and after Meredith wiped her mouth with the back of her hand she cleared her throat and said, “Cut.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Good thing we’re on mandated delay. I’m sure they’re scrubbing it now.”

Doubtful the climate refugee soundbyte would come through either, since next week’s segment was going to be about them and the network censored reporting their whole gray-area existence. Clarita held out some napkins, but she waved them away. “I’m OK. Roll. Fascinating! I wonder if you could walk us through the typical dining experience here at the Little Venetian?”

Clarita led them through the dining room, narrating and captioning the small but important details of her life’s greatest accomplishment. Glassware and chandeliers from a blower’s collective in Asheville. Egyptian cotton from an unclaimed cargo container reclaimed on the Outer Bank Sandbar. Ty- walked backwards to get the shot, and Meredith’s afternoon morning sickness followed her tall rubber boots like stubborn phantasms in the floodwater.

Along one entire wall Clarita had commissioned a mural, the perspective of which was dizzying, looking up at the undercarriage of a Pegasus and at a tower beyond, swirling with angels and clouds.

“That’s a replica of a real Venetian ceiling fresco, ‘Bellerophon on Pegasus.’ It’s a myth about loyalty and dreams, which we thought was appropriate for us and the Little Venice. There were rumors Bellerophon’s father was actually Poseidon, which we thought fit in with the whole,” Clarita gestured at the floor, “ocean theme.”

Ty- scuttled sideways like a crab to get the good light coming in from the door a moment before Meredith realized Clarita was leading them outside.

“Would you like to see something else from Venice?”

Meredith realized she hadn’t said her catch phrase yet this episode. “Let’s take a Deep Dive!” she replied.

Clarita motioned for Meredith to step outside and when she blinked into the flooded street she was consumed in a terrifying gray cloud. A second later the pigeons were down the block, wingbeats clapping like applause and their flock-shape bending geometry. They careened around a corner and disappeared. Meredith checked to see if Ty- had gotten the shot and she hoped he had because he now was zooming in on what she hoped was an outro shot, a single downy feather floating on the brown water surface.

She hadn’t seen Neftali, but now Meredith noticed him, smiling, inside a jon boat crammed with empty bird cages.

“Back in Venice the tourists would let the pigeons land on them and take pictures,” Clarita explained.

Neftali was holding something out to her and Ty- was rolling and so Meredith took a deep breath and accepted the plastic container. He gestured for her to shake it, and what sounded like dog food rattled around inside it. Around an old bank the swarm of pigeons poured back into the street and despite herself, her unsteady hand shook and repeated their call. It was very unlike her but she shut her eyes and felt a soft weight settle over her. When she opened them she saw her outstretched arms, covered in pigeons, pigeons on her shoulder cooing softly in her ear, a pigeon searching for the best flat spot on Ty-’s camera with the green light on.

Clarita was beaming and Meredith realized that she was the perfect outro shot.

“This has been Meredith Mercedes-Mullen and you just took a Deep Dive to Little Venice. Tune in next week when we Dive into a growing problem with our local Climate Refugees.”