Seventeen Against the Dealer

by Cynthia Voigt

  “I’ve already put hours of maintenance into it,” Dicey protested.

  “It’s a gamble,” he advised her, not looking up from the sanding he was doing. “You gamble the risk of losing what you’re owed against the pleasure of not being taken advantage of.”

  Dicey thought about it. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m willing. It makes me mad.”

  “Do you have a contract I could look at, to figure out penalty prices?”

  “Contract? No, we just agreed.” Dicey considered that. “What do I need a contract for?”

  When he didn’t answer, she felt pretty stupid. “Nobody has contracts,” she said.

  He didn’t say anything. Cisco’s saying nothing said a lot.

  All she wanted to do was build boats, and it seemed like every time she turned around something got in her way. She didn’t know what she was doing that was so wrong. She felt like she was always, over and over again, cutting a path through to where she wanted to go, and as soon as she cleared out what she thought was the final part of the path, she’d see something else, sprung up to get in her way.

  CHAPTER 11

  Dicey got back to work, and so did Cisco. Before long, he was talking again, about space, and the stars, whether there was time in black holes and whether space was endless, about the chance of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. “If you consider man intelligent life,” he said.

  Dicey grinned. It was only the first coat, so they worked fast, and carelessly, covering the insides of the two rowboats. “My little brother is talking about maybe being an astronaut,” she said.

  “Then he’s got more courage than I do.”

  Their brushes made soft stroking sounds, laying paint onto the wood.

  “Either that or he’s a real dreamer,” Cisco said.

  “Maybe both,” Dicey said.

  “Maybe, but it’s an unlikely combination, you have to admit it. What about the other one?”

  “The other what?”

  “Brother. You said you had two, didn’t you?” Cisco was crouched low inside his boat, his eyes moving quickly between her and his brush, keeping an eye on her, keeping an eye on the job.

  “He’s in college.” Suddenly, Dicey had the feeling she was telling him more than she was telling him. She didn’t know how that worked, but she wasn’t sure what was going on, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about not being sure.

  “Yeah? What year is he?”

  “Freshman.” The questions seemed innocent enough.

  “Yeah? Where’s he go?”

  “Yale.”

  “Yale? Yale in New Haven?” She nodded, without looking up. “You’re lying,” Cisco decided, which didn’t seem to bother him.

  Dicey didn’t say anything. He could believe what he wanted.

  “Okay, you’re not lying. So he must have a scholarship, so he must be incredibly smart.”

  Dicey didn’t say anything.

  “Tell you what, Miss Tillerman. I’m impressed—here I am working for a blood relative of a member of the social and intellectual elite.”

  She didn’t know why he took it that way and then, looking at him, she saw that he wasn’t taking it that way. “No you’re not,” she said.

  “Okay, you’re right. But I am impressed with this brother of yours. He must be quite a kid. Unless your grandmother is rolling in money.”

  “What is it you’re trying to find out, Cisco?” Dicey asked carefully.

  “Nothing,” he told her. “Nothing. I’m just talking. Talking’s a good way to help the hours pass when you’re working at a rote job. Or singing. Do you sing?”

  “Not without accompaniment.”

  “I used to play the guitar,” Cisco said.

  “What happened?”

  “I hocked it—I needed the money; it may have been Melbourne.”

  “What were you doing in Melbourne?”

  “Looking for work, like always. The job I got there—I usually do come up with a job—usually paid work,” he pointed out, but it was a joke, not a complaint. “In Melbourne I was a short-order chef. Okay, I was just a cook. I’ve done about everything, I’ve been about everywhere. I’ve been about everything.”

  Dicey decided, looking at his face, at the laugh lines and the age lines and the set of his mouth, that she believed him.

  “But do you know that some scientists are working on the theory that there’s a second sun in our system?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Dicey said.

  “Because we can’t see it? But that doesn’t mean anything, you should know that. The evidence of our senses is unreliable, philosophers have proved that, and psychologists. These scientists hypothesize a second sun from the way meteor fields act. They’ve even named it, which is pretty funny if you think about it, naming something you think might be there. Nemesis, after the Greek goddess.”

  “I don’t remember any Greek goddess named Nemesis,” Dicey protested. “I’ve heard the word—it’s the force that brings you down, isn’t it? Like doom?”

  “Nemesis was an honest-to-God goddess,” he told her. “Interesting that she’s female, isn’t it?” And he was off again, telling her something, talking about the Greeks and their sense of fate, and the Norse gods, with their Götterdämmerung. When he wound down, Dicey said to him, “How did you learn so much?”

  “I read a lot,” he answered.

  Then why, she wondered, did he just wander around picking up odd jobs? Why didn’t he do something seriously? She knew if she asked him that he wouldn’t tell her, even though she also knew he knew what she was thinking.

  They worked, and talked, all afternoon. Cisco suggested, when the first coat of paint was drying, that they go ahead and sand the next two rowboats. They could just set them out on the floor, he said. That way, they wouldn’t have to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for paint to dry. They could use the time. Unless Dicey needed to take a break?

  Dicey didn’t. It was full dark by the time they ran out of unpainted surfaces, and the two boats on the racks had second coats of paint drying, while the two on the floor had first coats applied. They rinsed out their brushes and set them into a jar of turpentine. “Now,” Cisco said, “let’s make a phone call.” He seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Dicey gave him the number, and the dentist’s name, and stood there listening. Working at this rate, two boats a day might get done. She was tempted to hire Cisco, she really was.

  “I’m calling from Tillerman’s Boatyard, where you have an overdue account,” Cisco said. He listened. “That’s as may be,” he said, “but it is still an overdue account. So that, if the check isn’t in our hands in two days, we’ll be putting your boat back into the water.” Cisco’s light voice was cool, unconcerned, and oddly threatening. He looked around at Dicey, the phone to his ear, and raised his eyebrows twice at her, and then he winked. She muffled a laugh, as his cool voice, entirely belied by his mocking face, spoke into the phone. This was like a game Cisco was playing. “Yes, we can extend that to four days. We will, of course, send you notification of where your boat is—when we have the time—should your check not arrive.”

  Cisco hung up, grinning. “How much money do you have on you, Miss Tillerman? I’ve got”—he reached into his back pocket for his wallet—“ten dollars here. I feel like a pizza. Don’t,” he warned her, “try that old joke, about not looking like a pizza. I expect better of you. How much do you have?”

  “Nothing. I almost never carry cash. Just checks.”

  “Okay,” Cisco said, “I’ll swing for the whole thing, as long as you don’t drink scotch. Will you join me?”

  Dicey shook her head. “I’ve got to get home.” She put on her jacket and wrapped a scarf around her neck. She hung the wooden shutter over the glass of the door. Cisco watched. She turned out the lights and opened the door, motioning him through. It was going to be a cold walk to wherever home was, she thought, climbing into the truck. “Can I give you a lift?”

  He reached ove
r to catch the end of the long scarf Gram had knitted for her. “D’you know how Isadora Duncan died?” he asked.

  Dicey had no idea.

  “A scarf. A long scarf like yours. It caught in the wheels of the car she was riding in. Which was a Lamborghini.”

  “Ah,” Dicey said. She didn’t even know who Isadora Duncan was, but she wasn’t about to get Cisco talking again. “Listen, thanks for all the help. Really.”

  That seemed to be what he was waiting for. He gave a gentle tug on the scarf and then stepped away from the truck. She pulled the door closed. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t do more than grin at her, his teeth white in his shadowed face.

  He was a strange one. He drifted through the world, showing off all the things he knew. But he was a good man to work with, and she was sorry she couldn’t hire him on, at least to finish Claude’s boats. With Cisco working, too, she could get eight or maybe even ten boats done in a week, and then the money would be in and the time would be free and Dicey could get to work.

  She almost stopped the truck and turned it around, to go back and ask him. She had no idea where he was staying in Crisfield, so if she was thinking seriously of hiring him—but she couldn’t, she reminded herself. To do that would be to spend money she hadn’t earned yet, the money from Claude; she’d already done that once, buying the tools with Mr. Hobart’s check, and that wasn’t any way to do business.

  Cisco would say—she could almost hear him—that was just the way to do business, and probably cite seventeen examples to prove it. Well, she was glad she’d run into him, and she wished him well along his way.

  * * *

  But he was there at the shop the next morning, when she rode up on her bike, his breath floating like frost on the cold air, where he waited for her, leaning against the door. Behind him, over the shop, the sky glowed yellowy orange in front of the rising sun.

  “Hello,” Dicey said. “But—”

  “Come on,” Cisco cut her off. He was looking pretty pleased with himself. “I want some cocoa, and I feel like burning off some energy on manual labor. You didn’t think I’d split before that guy sends you the check, did you? He’ll send it, I’ll put money on that.”

  Dicey just stood there. She knew she worked well with him, she didn’t mind his constant talk—in fact, it was interesting and she could probably recite back to him almost everything he’d said, from Henry II on; so why was she reluctant to open the door for him?

  Impatient with herself, she dug the key out of her pocket and unlocked the door. “I didn’t think about it at all,” she told him.

  “You know, Miss Tillerman, in all respect, I’d say you don’t think much as a general rule.”

  Dicey, taking off her jacket, hat, and scarf, shook her head. “You’d be wrong. I’m always thinking about what’s next. I’ve got today all thought out.”

  He shook his head, and loaded wood into the stove. “That’s not thinking—that’s planning, or scheming. I mean, think about things.”

  Dicey looked around the shop, feeling good about all the work they’d gotten done yesterday, and were going to get done again, since he was back. At this rate . . .

  “What is there to think about?” she asked.

  “You’re kidding.” He turned around, without straightening up, so he looked like some dwarf-character out of a fairy tale, twisting his face to look up at her as he bent over to put logs into the stove. “Just the little things. Life. Time. Love. Death. God. The nature of man. The nature of political structures. Power. Just the odds and ends of the world you live in.”

  “Who was Isadora Duncan, anyway?” Dicey demanded.

  Cisco threw back his head and laughed, a sound like pebbles being tossed against rocks by the waves. Dicey couldn’t help it, she could hear how she sounded to him, and she joined in his laughter.

  * * *

  Dicey didn’t mention her odd itinerant worker at home. There hadn’t been much occasion to talk to anyone, for one reason. Generally, by the time she got home for dinner everyone else had settled into the evening’s work. They saw one another, enough to be sure everyone was all right; but work was what Dicey thought about. That was another reason for keeping silence about Cisco. It was almost as if she was holding her breath, to see every day if Cisco would turn up again. If she talked about him, named him, it would be as if she was laying claim to him. Dicey figured, someone like Cisco, laying claim was a pretty sure way to scare him off, and she wanted to keep him around, if she could, for a while. The difference that second pair of hands made, in getting work done—it was almost as if she held her breath, afraid that like some magicked creature out of a story he would disappear if she counted on his being there.

  It wasn’t smart to talk about good luck. If you talked about it, it turned its back on you. So Dicey put aside the plans for Mr. Hobart’s boat and concentrated on getting Claude’s job done. With Cisco’s help.

  With Cisco’s help, it would be only two or three more weeks, she thought, riding her bike through town on the first light of Wednesday morning, if he continued showing up. But for once he wasn’t there waiting. He hadn’t arrived by the time she stoked the fire and settled down to painting. Then, once again, he stepped out of a gray morning, as if he’d been there all along, had been working with her for years. She guessed he just liked to pick his own time. She guessed he liked to do just exactly what he felt like. She wasn’t paying him, so she couldn’t make any demands, and she guessed that was the way he liked it. She could see why he’d never settled down to anything, except maybe the particular day’s work, to which he settled down energetically.

  And talking. The man’s talk was like constant rain, the words falling and falling. It was lucky, Dicey thought to herself, that he was so interesting, that he knew so much, otherwise he’d drive her crazy with his talk.

  As he said, he’d been everywhere and done everything, and he liked showing off to her. She didn’t mind. She heard about paintings in a museum in Florence, Italy—“Firenze, that’s its real name. Like the way Peking is really pronounced Beijing, only the Brits when they had their empire established Peking as the transliteration. Oh, but the colors, Miss Tillerman—that’s what those Renaissance Italians knew. The books talk about perspective and neoclassicism, but for my money, it’s the colors. Of course, I don’t have any money,” he pointed out.

  Dicey looked up in the middle of one of these monologues, in the middle of the afternoon, as they were putting the final coat of paint on boats eleven and twelve, to ask him, “Is there anything you don’t know?”

  He took the question seriously. He stopped talking to think about it. “Molecular biology,” he finally said, “but I’m going to get some books the next time I’m in Baltimore. Or London.”

  Dicey lowered her head, to hide the expression on her face. She didn’t mind the touches of vanity in the man. But he’d mind knowing that she saw them.

  “And languages,” he said. “You’d think I’d be good at languages, but I never can get the hang of them.”

  He was there Wednesday, and Thursday, too, and Dicey waited for him to show up on Friday. There was a set of finished rowboats to be taken back, exchanged for a set of unfinished boats. When they’d done that, she promised herself, she would write out a bill for Claude, for the first third of the job. That meant five hundred dollars. If she mailed the bill out that afternoon, then Claude would have it next week, and the week after that she’d have the money. While she waited for Cisco to show up, she attached the trailer to the back of the pickup, then backed it around to the shop door. By the time Claude had paid the first bill, she’d be about ready to send him the second. She already had two boats finished from the second ten, so that in a couple of weeks after that, by the middle of February—her mind raced on over the month, until it arrived at four clear weeks to work on Mr. Hobart’s boat.

  She decided not to waste any more time waiting for Cisco, and started moving the boat herself. When Claude’s check came, she might just pay
Cisco something, no matter what she’d said. A hundred dollars, she decided. She thought maybe she’d tell him she was going to do that, but then she thought she’d wait, and just hand it to him.

  If, she thought, working the boat through the doorway, he ever showed up again. The sun shone pale white behind a thin curtain of clouds, a little pale circle of light that seemed no stronger than the moon. The temperature wasn’t bad, only down to the high thirties, so she didn’t need gloves. Maybe he wouldn’t show up again, Dicey thought to herself, just as he came into view, walking carefully around the puddles accumulated at the roadside.

  She stood up to greet him, glad of his help. But that morning he hadn’t come to work. She saw that right away. It wasn’t that he’d changed his clothes, because he hadn’t. His face looked different, that was what she could see, as if he had swallowed some secret. She couldn’t tell if it was a good secret or a bad one; she suspected that his face would have looked that excited, his eyes that eager, whatever kind of secret he had learned.

  “I came to say so long,” he said.

  Dicey nodded. He waited, but she didn’t have anything to ask him. It wasn’t as if he was being paid for his work, and she had no business thinking he ought to stay.

  “I’m going up to Atlantic City,” he said.

  “Oh,” Dicey said.

  “Now, don’t you go all moralizing on me, Miss Tillerman,” he said, as if Dicey had even thought about that. She hadn’t. His life was his business. “Here, I’ll give you a hand loading this.”

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Do you want to stake me for some?” he asked her. “That way, you’d get a percentage.”