Mac gets out, kisses me, and throws my bag in the back. He takes one of the cups. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to a bakery with curb service.”
“What’s with the Elky? It looks fabulous.” I climb in, waving at Tyler and Ellen, watching us from the window.
“I decided it was time for a complete rehab. Before it got to the point of no return. New clutch, new brakes, shocks, and tires.” He hands me three tapes. “Had the tape deck fixed, too.”
“Did you rob a bank?”
“Nope. I’ve been saving everything I made at Norwegian Woods. Anyway, it’s cheaper than buying a new truck.”
I pop in one of the tapes and we head across the Aurora Bridge with the haunting sounds of the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider” trailing out the open window.
By nine-thirty we’re sitting in a line of cars that stretches halfway back to the road from the Anacortes ferry landing, foraging in the white bakery bags for the last crumbs of Jen’s short scones. When the Elky is wedged snugly into a lane on the car deck with all the Jeeps and station wagons and vans and four-by-fours, we climb the stairs to the second deck. The passenger cabin is a forest of Gore-Tex-covered tourists. Groups of teenagers laugh too loudly and knots of children chase each other through the aisles, screaming with pre-weekend glee. We head for the cafeteria.
The coffee looks like black water, so I decline. Mac pours artificial creamer in his till it turns a sick, gray color. I get a small plastic bottle of orange juice and we go outside to stand by the rail. It’s quieter on deck; most people are keeping warm inside, and there’s something about fog that always makes people whisper. The ocean is flat and glassy, and the ferry seems to sit motionless on a cold, gray mirror while the seascape rolls by like a movie. Islands appear suddenly out of the mist and then vanish. Gulls float beside us, like bird marionettes, till they tire of watching us and peel off into the fog.
Every once in a while we spot a house, tucked into a cove or perched on its own island, connected to the outside world maybe by a sandbar at low tide or by the owner’s boat, tied nearby. Or in one case, by a spiffy yellow float plane parked at the dock.
I shiver through my sweatshirt and parka, and Mac puts his arm around me. Just then a woman in a short-sleeved T-shirt walks past us, carrying a baby wearing only a diaper and a little undershirt. They both seem oblivious to the damp cold.
“Must be aboriginals,” he says.
“I think it’s good to acclimatize early in life. In France they say that when a baby is born, his father should dip a finger in good red wine and put it in the baby’s mouth so he’ll know what the good stuff is supposed to taste like.”
“What else do they do in France? Take the little boy babies and put them in the crib with the little girl babies so they’ll know about that, too?”
“You’re perverted and sick. And I like that in a man.”
As we drive up Horseshoe Highway from the Orcas ferry landing, we submerge briefly in pools of dense fog collected in the hollows. At first I think it’s raining, but it’s just water dripping from the trees that line both sides of the road. When we reach Eastsound’s collection of little shops and businesses perched on a cliff over the water, Mac guides the Elky into a parking place.
We get turkey burritos at a little walk-up window and eat them while we wander around the two or three streets that make up the village of Eastsound. By now it’s nearly noon, and the fog has burned off, leaving the sky a thin, watery blue. We stand for a minute at the wooden guard rail watching the waves lap at the foot of the bluffs.
I unzip my jacket in the heat of the sun, feeling the wind in my hair. “This is so beautiful. I wish I had my camera.”
“Personally, I’m glad you don’t,” he says.
“Why?” I shade my eyes with my hand to look at his face.
“When you’re busy taking pictures, you forget what you’re doing. You forget to live in the moment. And you end up with some dumb souvenir of a nonevent.”
I stare at him. “Oh, bug off, McLeod. Sometimes you’re such an elitist curmudgeon.”
His laugh is contagious. “Look who’s talking about elitists. The croissant police. Ms. No-Ketchup-on-your-hashbrowns.”
After a quick pass through the organic grocery, we head for the cottage, skirting the Crescent Beach oyster beds, and turning left onto Terrill’s Beach Road, then right on Buckhorn. In a few minutes tantalizing glimpses of water appear on our left.
Mac turns in at the sign announcing “Madrone Cottage,” and we bump up the gravel driveway. The white clapboard bungalow is just as I remember it from that day—has it really been nine months since then? The only difference is the way its new white paint glows against the backdrop of wet, green conifers.
Mac unlocks the door and we go inside. It’s like a half-remembered dream of a grandmother’s house—the knotty-pine paneling, the well-worn maroon couch, two green chairs. The battered trunk that serves as a coffee table. Book shelves overflowing with paperbacks and board games.
We carry our bags through the tiny hall that seems to slope downhill and into the bedroom with its iron bed, piled high with quilts. My memory of that first visit overlays everything like a fine layer of dust. The first time we made love was in this room.
Mac, obviously untroubled by sentiment, drops his duffle on the floor by the unfinished pine chest and empties his pockets onto the scarred top. “I’m going to check out the shed.”
I go into the kitchen and stand at the sink, looking out into the woods, wondering what happened to Minnie, the scruffy yellow mutt that hung around here with Mac.
While he repairs the damage to the shed roof, I pull out my bag of organic whole wheat flour. In Seattle I’ve always used a pinch of commercial dried yeast to get a chef started. Up here the air seems so pure, it’s probably teeming with microorganisms, and I want to try making a completely natural starter. I don’t think there are a lot of chemicals in the tap water, but just to be on the safe side, I picked up a bottle of spring water. The laid-back dude at the store assured me that this brand truly was from a spring and not just designer tap water. I stir a half cup of the water into three quarters of a cup of flour, cover the bowl loosely, and leave it on the counter.
Then out to the porch, curling up on the love seat with a Ruth Rendell paperback that I found on the bookshelves. I whip through the first chapter, but a gradual drowsiness comes over me and I stretch out on the love seat, dangling my feet over one end.
The stillness is mesmerizing. I hear the wind in the same instant that I feel it washing over my face. Grace notes of a few birds. Dust particles suspended in a shaft of sunlight. A bumblebee hovers somewhere outside my line of vision, and I don’t even have the energy to turn my head. A doe walks calmly out of the forest to graze less than fifty feet from the house.
The sound of footsteps crunching on gravel wakes me up. My feet are numb and tingling; the sun is behind the trees. Mac comes up on the porch, laughing that slow laugh he has.
“Catching up on your beauty sleep?”
“All the better to keep you awake all night.” My mouth is dry. “What time is it?”
“About five. I’m heading for the shower.”
I yawn and drag myself up to a sitting position, try to rotate the kink out of my neck. “What shall we do for dinner?”
“There’s a great little wine bar down on the bluff. I propose we have some wine and contemplate the options.”
The sun is inching toward the sea when we walk up three wooden steps, past a planter exploding with blue petunias, red geraniums, and white lobelia. There’s no sign, but Mac says it’s the place. Inside it’s quiet.
“Hi. Two for dinner?” The voice belongs to a tan blonde with metallic blue eyes.
“Actually we just wanted a glass of wine,” Mac said. “I thought this was a wine bar.”
The blonde smiles. “It used to be. Alex bought it about a month ago and it’s a café now. We don’t have our sign up yet. But you can still get a
glass of wine. Have a seat at the bar and I’ll call him.”
When Jean-Marc’s clone walks out of the kitchen, I almost fall off my stool. The initial resemblance is uncanny, but upon closer inspection, there are obvious differences. He’s slightly taller than Jean-Marc and his face is more mobile, ready to smile or frown; his eyes are just as dark, but less guarded, more expressive. The body could have been made from the same mold, stocky, muscular. His black hair is pulled into a ponytail—something Jean-Marc would never dream of—and he’s wearing a white chef’s coat over his jeans.
He holds out his hand to Mac. “Alex Rafferty.”
“Mac McLeod. This is Wyn Morrison.”
“Shawn said you guys were looking for the Orcas Wine and Spirits Company. I bought them out a few months ago, but I kept the wine. I’ve also got a lot of imported and domestic bottles from my restaurant in Seattle. What’s your pleasure?”
“A cabernet or merlot,” I say, looking out the window. “What a fabulous view.”
“Isn’t it? Sometimes it’s downright distracting.” He turns to a row of bottles behind him and studies them for a minute. “Try this Hogue merlot. I think you might like it. If not, we’ll open something else.”
“You have a restaurant in Seattle?” Mac asks.
“Had.” The little half smile is devastatingly familiar. “I sold it and moved up here lock, stock, and bottles.”
He sets two glasses on the bar and pours the deep purple wine in both.
“How’s business?” Mac swirls the wine in his glass, sniffs, and tastes it.
“So far so good,” Alex says. “It’s fairly quiet right now, but I wanted to have the bugs all worked out before the invasion of the tourists. I hope you’ll come back for dinner sometime. You guys live here?”
“Just visiting.” I look over at the hostess station. “Have you got a menu?”
“We don’t have printed ones yet. There’s one on the blackboard by the door.” Mac gets up to go read it, and Alex turns to me, leaning on the bar. “Do I know you from someplace?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to stare at you like that. You just look incredibly like someone I used to work for. Where was your restaurant?”
“The Union Café. The north end of Lake Union, near Gasworks Park.”
Mac comes back and parks himself beside me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “Since we’re here, we might as well have dinner.”
The café is charming—small, but with enough elbow room so that you’re not involuntarily eavesdropping on the next table. The other walls are painted a dark terra-cotta, setting off the plain, crisp white table linens, and candles are everywhere, flickering off mirrors and glassware. A perfect example of maximum effect with minimum furnishings. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the whole back wall is windows overlooking East Sound.
The blonde returns to bring us a wine list and recite the menu, and tell us our waiter will be right over. Mac stares out the window at the sky, shot through with gold and pink. Then abruptly he says, “I think I could live here.”
“You mean on Orcas Island?”
He nods. “It reminds me of—”
Our waiter suddenly appears, smiling toothily and asking us if we’ve chosen a wine.
“Probably red,” I say. “We liked the Hogue merlot.”
“If you liked that, there’s another merlot I think you’d really like. It’s a Canadian wine. Okanagan Valley, in British Columbia. It’s called Burrowing Owl. It’s a bit pricier, but in my opinion it’s worth every cent.”
I’m about to tell him that his opinion doesn’t count, since he’s not paying for it, but Mac smiles and says, “Okay, let’s try it.” He doesn’t even ask how much.
When the guy goes to dig up the Burrowing Owl, I look at Mac. “Did your Great-uncle Sylvester kick off and leave you his entire estate?”
He looks sheepish. “I’m practicing to be rich and famous. Besides, I have a bright, shiny, new credit card. Just begging to be run through somebody’s machine.”
He looks out the window again while I sit there and fret about how much the wine’s going to cost. Alex brings the bottle himself, and two red-wine goblets.
“Great choice,” he says, twisting the corkscrew. That’s restaurantspeak meaning, Thanks for paying this month’s rent.
The wine is truly magnificent—round and rich and mouth filling. After one glass I’m so mellow I recall that thing Ben Franklin supposedly said about wine being constant proof that God loves us. I sit there, watching Mac, waiting for him to say more about what the island reminds him of, but he’s apparently already past that. I want to reach over and touch his face. In the reflected light of the candles, his eyes remind me of a piece of rock I once found on a hike. My father said it was a silicate. I just knew that I loved the way the tiny gold facets emerged with geometrical precision from the dull gray rock.
He’s got that little patch of perpetual sunburn on his nose, like lifeguards always have. His mouth…God, I love his mouth. Kissing it. The thought of where it’s been on my body and how it feels makes me dizzy.
Our dinners are beautiful. Mac has medallions of New Zealand lamb with a Dijon crust, and sumptuously artery-clogging scalloped potatoes. I go with seafood, since we’re on an island, even if it’s not local. But it’s so fresh it might as well be—a fat tuna steak, grilled with garlic and herbs just to medium rare. The salad of spring vegetables is local—tiny, perfect squashes, new potatoes the size of your thumb, sugar snap peas and haricots verts—everything fresh and sweet, tossed in a warm hazelnut vinaigrette. Even the bread for each dinner is different. He has buttery whole wheat dinner rolls and I have a chewy peasant bread, rubbed with garlic and bearing the marks of the grill.
Instead of dessert, we opt for a cheese plate to go with the rest of the expensive-but-worth-every-penny wine. With it comes a little bowl of partially frozen red grapes.
When the check comes, he barely looks at it, just pulls out his virginal MasterCard and tucks it inside the folder. I reach for my wallet.
“Wyn,” he says, “don’t do this, okay?” His eyes are a warning all by themselves. So I say, “I was just getting my lipstick.”
As we’re climbing into the truck, he looks at the sky.
“I want to show you a place I found when I was here last summer. It has an incredible view.” He slams the door, cranks the truck, and we take off down Horseshoe Highway.
“Can we see it at night?”
He just smiles and turns left past a sign that says PRIVATE ROAD: LOCAL TRAFFIC ONLY. “Are we supposed to be here?”
“Will you relax? You’re such a good girl.”
“And you’re an anarchist.”
“Was your father very strict?”
I ponder the question. “He never laid a hand on me—I barely remember him even raising his voice. I just never wanted to disappoint him. He could say my name a certain way…”
The road changes from gravel to dirt and gets narrower.
“What was the worst thing you ever did? That he found out about.” The truck hits a king-sized pothole and the top of my head smacks the roof. “Oops, sorry.”
I grip the armrest with one hand, massage my head with the other. “Let’s see. Once when I was about ten, CM’s big sister, Katie, dared us to shoplift a lipstick from the drugstore. We did, but then my mother found it and wanted to know where we’d gotten it. Being pathologically honest, I told her. She told my father and he made us go back and confess to the store manager. One at a time, so we didn’t have each other for moral support. I was absolutely petrified. I thought for sure we were going to jail.”
All I can make out now is a black tangle of trees and headlights disappearing into the dark, but he drives fast. “McLeod, how the hell can you see where you’re going?”
“I don’t need to see. This road is in my unconscious memory.” He grins. “So what happened?”
“The manager said he wouldn’t call the police this time. He was probably laughing his but
t off. Then I went out and CM went in and confessed. The poor guy was probably hoping there were no more gang members involved in the heist so he could get back to work.”
When it seems as if there’s nowhere to go except back the way we came, he turns onto another road that’s hardly more than a trail, so narrow that an occasional tree branch slaps the window as we bounce along. Finally he pulls to a stop in a little clearing encircled by tall evergreens and we get out. He unrolls a piece of thick foam rubber in the bed of the pickup, unzips his sleeping bag, and spreads it on top of the foam.
“Always prepared.”
“I’ve slept a lot of nights in this truck.” He jumps up in back, holds out his hand.
We settle in with our backs against the cab. “I thought you said this place had a view.”
“Look up,” he says.
“Oh…my God.”
It’s like looking through a big porthole at every star in the universe. You can actually see part of the Milky Way’s river of light. We sit silent; my impulse is to hold my breath because even that seems loud enough to disrupt the moment. A shooting star gleams briefly and vanishes. Another trails it.
“What did you start to say at dinner? About what this place reminds you of?”
He lays his head against the back window. “It reminds me of going to summer camp in upstate New York when I was a kid. I think it’s the light.”
“What about it?”
“When you’re surrounded by mountains like this, it gets light in the morning before you can see the sun, and then at night, the sun disappears but it’s still daylight. I always felt like it was never going to be dark. Like Alaska in the summer.”
I shiver, and he draws me close against his side. “Cold?”
“Not really. It’s funny, how I used to hate the cold. It could never be warm enough for me. Now it makes me feel more awake. A lot of things seem different to me now. Like I never thought I’d live anywhere but southern California. I never seriously imagined owning a bakery.”
Baker's Apprentice Page 11
