“Got something to show you.”
De Mello followed Charlie down to the dock. He looked in the pot and made no comment. Charlie had always known De Mello was hard to impress. Now he knew the man couldn’t be impressed. It was a character defect.
They weighed it on De Mello’s scale, the one all the fishermen suspected was a little light. It weighed forty pounds, one ounce.
“Is that a record?” Charlie said.
“Not even close,” De Mello told him. “I’ll give you one twenty.”
“Thanks. And how much for the lobster?”
“That’s today’s price. Two ninety a pound, times forty, and rounded off in your favor. It was two seventy-five last week.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie, “but that’s for lobster. This isn’t a lobster—it’s a tourist attraction. No one’s going to eat it, De Mello. It’ll spend the rest of its life in the display tank at Jimmy’s on the Wharf or someplace like that. And Jimmy’s going to pay you five hundred.” He looked closely at De Mello to see if it was a good guess. De Mello’s face was expressionless. “At least five,” Charlie said. “So I’ll take three now.”
They settled on two fifty. De Mello took the roll out of his pocket, the roll that had a fishy smell, and counted out the bills with care. He had to be careful counting money, even if it wasn’t sticky—thirty years on a trawler had cost him three fingers and a thumb.
Charlie went home, had a hot shower, came out with his skin tingling and his senses still wide awake. Lunchtime, and a bowl of egg salad waited in the fridge. He saw himself sitting at the kitchen table, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee, alone. He put on a jacket and went out.
Snow was falling thickly now, covering the ground. A woman in black tights clicked toward him on cross-country skis, her eyelashes fluffy white. She didn’t appear to see him as she passed. Charlie went the other way, following the road that led around the pond to the Oceanographic Studies Center and the Bluefin Café next to the bridge over the cut. Charlie opened the door and felt a warm smoky breath on his face. It smelled of pine, garlic, oranges. He went inside.
Sunday afternoon at the Bluefin Café. A fire made popping noises in the stone hearth, and Dinah Washington was singing “Unforgettable” on the sound system. The seven or eight little tables in the café were all taken. Charlie sat on one of the two vacant stools at the bar.
“Hey, Charlie,” said the bartender. “What’ll it be?”
“Egg salad on rye.”
“Something to drink? I got Guinness on tap.”
That sounded perfect, but Charlie said: “Orange juice.” He didn’t like to drink in public. It was just a habit now, a long habit; but habits, in the case of Charlie Ochs, made the man. Still, on top of the weather, the lobster, the tingling in his skin, a mug of Guinness would have been perfect.
Charlie was halfway through his sandwich, lost in the sound of Dinah Washington’s voice, when a woman came into the café and took the only seat left, next to him. With his consciousness still fully awake, slapped to life by the cold wave over Straight Arrow’s bow, Charlie was acutely aware of her presence. The first thing he noticed was the melting snowflakes on her eyelashes: she was the skier in the black tights. He glanced out and saw her skis leaning against the window. Then she took off her backpack and her jacket and Charlie smelled her smell: lemon, wool, and the faintest hint of fresh sweat. He breathed it in, let it linger in his nostrils. He was thinking of doing it again when the warning went off in his mind. Charlie picked up the rest of his sandwich.
A minute before he’d been ravenous, on the point of ordering a second. Now he wasn’t hungry at all. He took a bite and listened to the music. He couldn’t get into it.
“I’ll have a Guinness and a hamburger,” the woman said. “No, make that an egg salad sandwich.”
She had a nice voice, not a work of art like Dinah Washington’s, but clear and quiet, with the suggestion of reserves of power. Or was he imagining that? Charlie wasn’t sure. It had been a long time since he’d known a woman. Not getting close to women, or anyone, was one of his habits.
Charlie glanced at her profile. A damp lock of sandy hair curled down from under her tuque around a well-shaped earlobe, still white from the cold. He guessed she was about ten years younger than himself, around thirty. So what? he thought, and picked up his sandwich again. Eat and get out of here.
The woman took the New York Times Magazine out of her backpack and turned to the crossword. It was half-done, in ink. Charlie could see the title: “Tools of the Trade.” The woman took out a ballpoint, quickly filled in seventeen down, nineteen down, twenty-two across. She tapped her pen on twenty-six across a few times. Then her beer came. She took a drink—not a gulp, but a lot more than a sip. It left a golden mustache of froth on her upper lip. Charlie had a mad vision of leaning over and licking it off. He went cold, and at that moment understood as never before how stunted the life of Charlie Ochs had been. At the same time, he had no intention of doing anything about it. Get out, he said to himself, and motioned for the bartender. The bartender came over and Charlie opened his mouth to ask for the bill.
“I’ll have a Guinness,” he said. The words came out, unbidden.
Charlie sat hunched over the remains of his sandwich, staring at the caraway seeds in the rye and knowing that if he didn’t get up, his habit-shell, his carapace, might crack at last. But he didn’t get up. He listened to the woman’s pen tap-tapping on the page. Then beer came, froth quivering over the frosted rim. Charlie reached for it, picked it up, drank. It was wonderful, the mad, sensual power of the earth, in a glass. Charlie looked over toward the woman, a look, not a glance, saw her tapping the pen, still over the clue to twenty-six across. The answer was one of those long ones that relate to the puzzle title. Charlie read the clue: “Lord Acton’s power saw.”
He said: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Said it right out.
The woman snapped her fingers. “ ‘Saw’—saying,” she said, and rapidly filled in the empty spaces. “Of course. God, I’m a dunce.” She turned to him with a big smile.
“No, no,” said Charlie, or something like that. “I hope you don’t mind me—”
“Hell, no,” said the woman, looking directly at him, taking him in. Her eyes, the color of the sea on a day just like this, were up to the task—more than up to it, dangerously so. This realization zipped through his mind, almost unnoted. “Two heads, after all,” she added.
“Yeah,” said Charlie. “Two heads.”
She took a drink. “Are you at the center?”
“Nope,” said Charlie. “I’m a lobsterman.”
He waited for her to say, “You’re well educated for a lobsterman” or more probably, “I guess that leaves you time for reading,” or at least to see some version of that thought flicker in her eyes. But the woman said: “Bugs? They’re my favorite thing in the world.”
“To eat?”
“To watch. I spent three summers in a bug lab. Tanks from floor to ceiling. I got to like them. They’re so crafty, in a clumsy kind of way, and so futile. It was like watching the Cold War on multiscreen TV.”
This was a cue Charlie tried to ignore but couldn’t. It was like asking a comedian to keep the punch line to himself. “Maybe you’d like to meet Dick Nixon.”
“Dick Nixon?”
“Of the crustacean world.” He knew he was being incautious but couldn’t stop. Maybe she would say no.
She said yes.
They went outside, into wind and flying snow. Charlie waited for her to flinch, cringe, shiver. She did none of those things.
He took her over to De Mello’s and showed her the monster. De Mello had it in a tank of its own. “God in heaven,” the woman said.
Her name was Emily Rice. She’d arrived after Christmas to do postdoctoral work for six months at the center. Her specialty was the physics of beach erosion. She was living with the chairman of the ocean geology department and his family, looking for a temporary place o
f her own.
“You want to stop beach erosion?” Charlie said.
“Can’t be done. Not in the long run. But at least I’d like to find ways of not making it worse.”
They watched Dick Nixon. Dick Nixon watched them. After a while De Mello shooed them out.
The wind had died down, but snow was still falling. They walked back to the café through a quiet white world. “Is it like this all the time?” Emily said.
“Never.”
Emily gathered up her skis and poles. Charlie thought of offering to help her carry them but wasn’t sure how she would take it, and said nothing. The chairman of the ocean geology department lived up a wooded hill a few blocks behind Charlie’s house. They walked around the pond together. Emily carried her burden easily; Charlie sensed long muscles working smoothly under the black tights.
“What else do you know about Lord Acton?” Emily asked.
“Is there anything else?”
Emily laughed; a lovely sound. “He must have spent his whole life waiting for a chance to stick it in a conversation,” she said.
Charlie laughed too. He realized he didn’t laugh often, and realizing it, stopped.
“Guzzling port in red leather chairs,” Emily said.
“That’s the ticket,” said Charlie, and heard her laugh again.
They came to his house. “This is my place,” he said.
Emily studied Charlie’s house. A real estate agent couldn’t have picked a better moment to sell it. Snow covered the roof, the pots in the yard; icicles hung from this and that. Charlie’s house looked like a postcard exemplar of rustic comfort. Charlie knew it began and ended at rustic.
“It’s a dream,” Emily said. “Have you lived here a long time?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re from here?”
“No.”
Charlie waited for her to ask where he was from, formulating an answer. But that wasn’t what she asked. She said: “What’s it like inside?”
Charlie’s heart beat a little faster. All he had to say was “Want to have a look?” and she’d come in. But that moment Charlie remembered where he’d first heard Lord Acton’s aphorism, more specifically whom he’d first heard it from, and everything changed. Maybe her question about where he was from had something to do with it too. “Messy,” he said.
Emily turned to him and smiled. “Well, thanks for showing me Mr. Nixon. We’ll probably run into each other.”
“Yeah,” said Charlie. And: “You’re welcome,” to her back as she walked away. Then he was alone in his house, every drab detail suddenly obvious, the whole small and stifling. “Christ,” Charlie said. He sat down, and thoughts of Rebecca drifted into his mind. To make them go away he picked up his sax and started blowing.
It began as “My Romance” but soon changed key and sped up and was probably nothing at all, certainly nothing good, but Charlie got involved in it and forgot about Rebecca, about the drab and the stifling, about everything except the keys at his fingers and the reed at his mouth, didn’t notice the fading light outside or hear the knock at the door. At first. Then he did hear something, and stopped playing abruptly. The music died on a vulgar note. Charlie listened, heard the knock.
He was halfway to the door when he had a thought, probably inspired by memories of Rebecca, was suddenly afraid of who might be waiting outside. He made himself answer the door.
It was Emily. She had the New York Times Magazine in her hand. “Was that you playing?”
“If you want to call it playing.”
“Oh, it was great,” she said. She looked up at him. “I thought you might know ‘Marilyn Monroe’s screwdriver.’ Twelve letters. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no,” Charlie said. “That’s all right. Come in.”
Emily stepped over the threshold. “You call this messy?” she said; a little loudly, as though to mask some embarrassment.
There was a silence. “ ‘Marilyn Monroe’s screwdriver,’ ” Charlie said, to break it. The answer didn’t come to mind. “Can I get you something while we think?”
Emily took off her jacket. She was wearing an oversized sweatshirt with a purple W on it, and the black tights. There wasn’t much space in the hall, and as Charlie reached for the jacket, he accidently touched her breast. She reddened.
“Coffee, maybe?” he said.
“No thanks,” she replied. “I’d never sleep tonight.”
The last phrase took different shapes in Charlie’s mind. “There’s Scotch,” he said. “And red wine.”
“Wine sounds nice.”
Charlie went into the kitchen, returned with two glasses of wine. They sat on the old corduroy couch in Charlie’s sitting room.
“Marilyn Monroe.”
“Her screwdriver.”
“Do you think it has something to do with Joe DiMaggio?”
“Joltin’ Joe?”
Silence. They thought. Charlie remembered the picture of Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grate, dress blown high. He said: “Do you like jazz?”
“I don’t know much about it. But I like music.”
“Such as?”
“Barry Manilow.” Silence. “Especially early Manilow,” Emily added.
“Right,” said Charlie. “Before he went experimental.” She laughed, and he walked over to the record player. “Maybe you’ll like this.” That’s when he put on Ben Webster. The huge sound, dark and potent, filled the house.
“God,” Emily said after a cut or two, “it’s so … intimate.”
The word hung in the air, hung there with other words like screwdriver and tonight, floated on the gorgeous sound. It was a small couch. Charlie could easily reach out and put his hand on Emily’s shoulder. He did. Then they were in each other’s arms.
And later they were upstairs in Charlie’s bed. Once begun, Charlie had to struggle to hold himself back. It had been so long, and Emily’s warmth and heat were almost too much for him. He rose into a little tunnel-shaped world where the climate was tropical and there was only her and him and the air smelled like red wine and moaned in their ears. Then came a tremor that passed from her to him, and slowly Charlie slipped back down to the big world.
“You’re so strong,” Emily said. “I’ve never been with such a … not that I—”
“It’s just steroids,” Charlie said, rescuing her.
The second time was slower, more connecting, more … intimate, like Ben Webster. Downstairs, where the automatic repeat button had been accidently pressed, the dead man kept playing, prodding them to fall in love, or at least keep jazzing, in the true meaning of the word.
· · ·
Charlie awoke, not at first light as he always did, like an alert creature on the savannah, but somewhat later. Emily lay sleeping on her side, face slack, mouth a little open, unglamorous, beautiful. He could smell her breath: red wine and sex. He sniffed it in deeply.
Charlie got up and went to the bathroom. He glimpsed his face in the mirror and saw a difference. What? It was the same face, broad and weathered; but there was something positive, even eager, in the eyes.
Charlie scraped the frost off the window. Snow lay thick on the ground and the sun was shining. A boy walking toward the school bus stop threw a chunk of ice at a tree and hit it smack on. He was wearing a jacket that said “Little League All-Stars—South Shore Champions.”
Charlie watched the boy till he was out of sight. And he wished he hadn’t done it—hadn’t babbled the fucking power saw, hadn’t taken her to see the monster, hadn’t played Ben Webster. What had he been thinking? Wishing to undo something was a physical sensation—it twisted inside him.
“Charlie?” she called.
It was too late.
Charlie went into the bedroom. Emily was sitting in his bed, quilt drawn up to her chin, smiling at him. “Charlie,” she said. “I like that name.”
“It’s just a name,” Charlie said.
5
Six weeks later Cosset Pond froze over a
lmost to the cut, ending Charlie’s lobster season. On a clear cold day, he and Emily went skating, swooping around the motionless boats like dolphins. Sky and ice were blue, sun gold, blades silver. The whole pond was theirs. Charlie skated faster and faster, could barely keep himself from whooping aloud. I’m like a goddamned kid, he thought, and went into a long glide, out past the last boat, its white hull marked by hockey pucks, and almost to the line where the ice turned black and thin. There he dug his edges into a quick, sure hockey stop and looked back in time to see Emily spin, lose her balance, wave her arms at him comically, fall. He skated back and helped her up. She tucked her face into his shoulder.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. A vapor cloud rose from her mouth into the blue.
“But I thought—” Charlie began.
“No method is perfect, Charlie,” she said, her face still against him: he could feel the vibration of her words in his skin but couldn’t read whatever expression was in her eyes. He waited for her to raise the subject of abortion, but she didn’t, and he didn’t see how he could be the one to do it. Charlie wasn’t a goddamned kid; he was old enough to know what her silence meant. She wanted the baby. Did she want it whether he was in the picture or not? Charlie, watching their breath rise like cartoonist’s balloons empty of dialogue, was afraid to ask the question.
“That’s great,” he said.
Then Emily looked up, studying his face in the same probing way she had studied his house. “Do you mean it, Charlie?”
· · ·
But she had seen the house on its best day; Charlie didn’t mean it, not at first. He pretended. Then, after a week or two, the baby crossed some frontier in his mind that separated concept from reality. He didn’t know anything about babies, had never even held one, yet suddenly he knew just how a baby’s hair—his baby’s hair—would feel. At that moment he knew he wanted to be in the picture too. This was wrong, but he had lost the will to do anything about it. A long-stuck brake had been released. Charlie, at last, was on the move.
And picking up speed. First, Emily got a two-year grant from the center to study relationships between water temperature and sand particle movement. Next, she was hired as a consultant by a Wall Street arbitrageur who wanted to save the beach in front of his summer house. After that she began interviewing high school girls who wanted baby-sitting jobs. She also sketched some plans on sheets of graph paper, and Charlie soon found himself building an addition to the house—and knowing the mental state of nesting birds in the spring: happy confusion. He was happy, happier than he’d been in twenty-two years, happy as the safest citizen in the land.
Revolution Number 9 Page 3
