The Fourth Bear

if they didn’t, “but in any event it’s a modern benchmark of success, you know.”

Jack couldn’t avoid a smile, and Huxtable gave up on him, striking up a conversation along similar lines with his other neighbor.

In the end neither Huxtable nor Sphincter won. The first prize went to Jennifer Darkke’s Share My Rotten Childhood. Lord Spooncurdle gave a pleasant after-dinner talk. He made several obscure puns about cheese making and wondered why no one laughed.

That night Jack lay awake in bed, staring at the patterns on the ceiling. He was thinking about Goldilocks and the Gingerbreadman, the NCD, his career and the psychiatric assessment—and just how noisy Mr. and Mrs. Punch’s lovemaking was next door.

“How long have they been at it now?” asked Madeleine sleepily, pillow over her head to block out the thumping, groans and occasional shrieks that penetrated through the shared wall.

“Two and a half hours,” replied Jack. “Go to sleep.”

10. Porridge Problems

Most illegal substance for bears: The euphoria-inducing porridge (“flake”) is a Class III foodstuff, and while admitting a small problem, the International League of Ursidae considers that rationed use does no real harm. Buns (“doughballs”) and honey (“buzz” or “sweet”) remain on the Class II list and are more rigorously controlled, except for medicinal purposes. Honey addicts (“sweeters” or “buzzboys”) are usually weaned off the habit with Sweet’n Low, with some success. The most dangerous substance on the Class I list is marmalade (“chunk,” “shred” or “peel”). The serious pyschotropic effects of marmalade can lead to all kinds of dangerous and aberrant behavior and are generally best avoided as far as bears are concerned.

The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records, 2004 edition

The day broke clear and fine. A light breeze in the night had cleared away the haze, and the morning felt crisp and clean and sunny—the sort of morning that is generally reserved only for breakfast cereal commercials, where members of a nauseatingly bouncy nuclear family leap around like happy gazelles while something resembling wood shavings and latex paint falls in slow motion into a bowl.

No one was bouncy in the Spratt household that morning, but Jack dragged himself up and was out of the house at eight, telling Madeleine he was off to see the counselor first thing. She’d replied, “You’re a lying hound. Good luck on the Goldilocks hunt, and invite Mary and Ashley around for dinner one evening.”

Twenty minutes later he was driving down the unpaved road to the lake where Mary lived. There were many flooded gravel pits dotted around the area, but only one had people living on it. Several boat-minded individuals had settled here in the thirties and begun a precedent that couldn’t easily be broken. Until Mary started living on the lake, Jack hadn’t known that residential moorings existed here at all. It was quiet at the lakeside, and the houseboats, moored on the ends of pontoons to stop them from running aground, barely moved at all in the placid waters. The first boat was a converted Great War naval pinnace, her decks covered in plastic and in a constant state of conservation. She had been a Dunkirk little ship, so the enormous effort being expended in her rebirth, thought Jack, was quite justified. Beyond this was a Humber lighter, sunk at its moorings three winters earlier and abandoned by its owners. Next was the Nautilus, an ancient riveted-iron submarine designed by its owner, an eccentric and reclusive millionaire by the name of Nemo, who was spending his retirement in the rusting hulk writing his memoirs and redefining the classification of sea creatures after a lifetime’s research. The Nautilus was resting on the gravelly bottom with its large viewing windows on the waterline. No one knew how he’d gotten the submarine into the lake, and he never gave anyone a straight answer when they asked.

Mary lived on the next mooring to Nemo in an old Short Sunderland flying boat, an ex-civilian version that she had bought from a bankrupt theme restaurant in Scotland, dismantled and shipped to the lake on the back of two flatbed trucks. She spent her spare time converting the inside to a comfortable home and had recently managed to get the number-three engine started, the only one still in position. Madeleine and the children had come down for a barbecue that day and cheered as the old radial burst into life, belching clouds of black smoke, frightening a flock of geese and straining the old airplane at its moorings until Mary feathered the prop.

“Anyone home?” shouted Jack through the open door.

“I’m on the flight deck!” said a voice that echoed down through the flying boat.

Jack stepped inside the hull and picked his way over the heaps of building materials and rolls of insulation that were piled up inside the cavernous hull. She had as yet converted only the prow. Jack climbed the spiral staircase to the navigator’s office that Mary used as a kitchen.

“There’s some coffee on the stove!” she called out. He helped himself and joined her on the flight deck, a large room roofed in sun-clouded Plexiglas. Mary was sitting in the left-hand seat with her feet up on the remains of the instrument panel.

“Good morning,” said Jack. “How’s the acting head of the NCD?”

“She’s fine,” replied Mary with a smile. “How’s the NCD’s unofficial full-time consultant?”

“He’s all right.”

Jack sat down on the copilot’s seat and balanced his mug on the throttle quadrant. They were at least twelve feet above the water level and were afforded a good view of the lake. To the left of them they could see Captain Nemo hanging up his socks on a makeshift washing line strung between the conning tower and tail of his rusty craft, and to their right was the lake, a full mile of open water, the glassy surface interrupted only by the marker buoys for the dinghy racing. It was quiet and peaceful, and Jack could see why people would forgo the luxuries of land-based dwelling for a life on the water.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” murmured Mary. “I wouldn’t live anywhere else for all the money there is.”

Jack took a swig of coffee. “I think you’re right. Me, I’d worry about the kids falling in the drink.”

“If you brought them up to regard water the same way as they regard roads, I don’t think you’d have a problem.”

“I suppose so.”

“Everything okay at the office?” asked Jack.

“Fine. We were sorting through the statements for the Scissor-man’s pretrial hearing after you left. The prosecution has asked for more witnesses and the thumbless victims of previous scissorings to try to create a cast- iron case against him.”

“Anything else?”

“I think Ashley was serious about that date.”

Jack shrugged. “So? It only has to be a drink or something.”

“Do aliens drink?” she asked, not really knowing much about Rambosians, never having really considered them at all. “I mean, what if he tries to kiss me or something?”

“Then call it off. After all, you’re something of an expert when it comes to wriggling out of dates.”

Mary smiled. “I am, aren’t I? So… what’s with this early visit, Jack?”

“I bumped into Josh Hatchett at the Deja Vu last night.”

She made a face. “What joy. I hope you wished him all the worst.”

“He has a missing sister.”

“If I were his sister, I’d post myself missing, too.”

“And we’re going to find her.”

Mary stared at him. “We’re going to help the person instrumental in your enforced sick leave and effective demotion? Who got you reprimanded over the Scissor-man case? Are you nuts?”

“Yes, yes and quite possibly, in that order. Look upon it as a long-term strategic operation to bring about a quantum change in press relations as regards the continuing effectiveness of the NCD.”

“We’re cozying up to Josh to get better press coverage?”

“More or less. I think it might be an NCD case. Her name’s Goldilocks.”