Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel Read Free Book Online Page B

person one would address as Mister , which furthered my notion that the hermit was formal and old-fashioned.
    The man whistled as he navigated the bunker of copiers. “You must be Georgia,” he said in a deep, softly articulated voice. We shook hands. To Frankie, he said, “Little man! How’s it going?”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “But may I ask who told you I was coming?”
    â€œRiggs said a new runner would be stopping by. You’ve got to explain something to Charlie for me—on the nautilus, I subbed vermillion red for the carmine red he requested.” He searched behind the counter, then pulled up an oversize brown bag. “It’s a little brighter, a little orangey , but I think it works better with the dark water. Make sure to let me know if he doesn’t like it, and I’ll do it again.”
    â€œWho is Riggs?”
    â€œCharlie’s lawyer. He called yesterday.”
    â€œAnd what is vermillion red?”
    He smiled. His teeth were very bright and straight, the teeth of a more sophisticated man. It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive—he was—but it was the offhand kind of attractive that’s composed mostly of confidence and cool, with physical attributes an afterthought.
    He said, “Look here,” and pulled from the paper bag a stack of prints. He sorted through them gingerly, touching only the corners. The topmost piece, which Henry tipped toward me as he searched, was two things at once: a page from some kind of reference book, covered margin to margin in very small type; and also, superimposed over the type, a precisely drawn portrait of a multicolored jellyfish—or was it a man-of-war? Each tentacle was a different shade of yellow or green, its tendrils rendered painstakingly, some entwined and some jagged, some thin as noodles, some stubby and muscular. The dome of the creature was a soft emerald in color, its crown delicate as a snowflake. It appeared midswim, pushing itself across the page. Henry slipped another picture from the stack: a candy-striped nautilus (I didn’t know what the creature was called at the time), its one visible eye cold but frantic, the rectangular pupil stamped and goatlike. This creature, too, was superimposed over a reference book page.
    Beside the stack of prints, Henry placed a paper bag. “The originals,” he said, pushing them toward me.
    I opened the bag and leafed through. These portraits were black and white, drawn on oversize book pages in what looked like charcoal pencil. My understanding was that it was Henry’s job to add color to the drawings by hand, then print them on heavier stock using his equipment. Without color, the jellyfish was ruthless and astringent, masterfully depicted and beautiful in its way, but also cold, without the colored version’s hint of playfulness.
    â€œThis is the vermillion,” Henry said, pointing to the nautilus’s striped shell. “You see? Orangey.”
    I closed the bag of originals and carefully picked up the jellyfish print. Frankie rose on his toes to peer over the edge of the counter. I signed to him, What’s that?
    Fish , he signed, one hand swimming in the air in front of his face.
    â€œJellyfish,” I said. “We’ll look it up.”
    We kept a big book of American Sign Language and consulted it daily, sometimes three or four times in an afternoon. We were constantly running up against the limits of a vocabulary acquired on an as-needed basis.
    Henry looked back and forth between us. “You like fish, little man?” he said to Frankie, who gave an exaggerated nod. “Check this out.” He thumbed through the prints, then pulled out a drawing of a giant octopus attacking a clipper ship. The ship’s bow was consumed by the water and its stern hovered tenuously above it. Each of its three masts was wrapped in a ropey lavender tentacle lined with fleshy pink suckers. I caught the