Calendar Girls

by April Hill

  I also learned that howling for mercy at the top of your lungs can leave you with a seriously sore throat. And it doesn’t get you a hell of a lot of mercy, either.

  When he finally let me up from the table, I gathered up my stuff and made my way to the door with as much dignity as I could manage with tears of embarrassment running down my cheeks, and my other cheeks throbbing. The sky had gone solidly gray, now, and it had begun to pour. The rusted bike was leaning against the stonewall where I’d left it, sitting in a puddle of mud. My heart sank. Even if I had been able to sit on the damned seat, I wasn’t going anywhere. The bike’s front tire was completely flat.

  “If you want me to leave,” I growled, “you’re going to have to drive me into the village.”

  He glanced out the window. “It’s raining.”

  “Of course, it’s raining, damn it!” I screamed. “It hasn’t stopped raining since I got to this fucking island. You people are probably used to driving around in a fucking deluge!”

  O’Flannery shook his head. “It’s a nice walk to town, and it’ll give you some time to rethink your career choices. Then, again, you could stay here until the rain stops and the fog lifts. Late tomorrow morning, from the look of it. These early spring fogs can hang around for hours. Actually, now that we’ve straightened out a few things, I’d like to talk to you for a bit.”

  “About what?” I snarled.

  “Oh, I thought we might discuss a few issues such as personal boundaries, journalistic integrity and responsibility—the sort of things you apparently have a problem with. What have you got to lose? The accommodations are free, and if you don’t invoke the ‘F’ too frequently, or call me disagreeable names, you might even reach morning without being spanked, again.”

  “No thank you, Mr. O’Flannery. The place I’m staying is already paid for, and it has indoor plumbing, “

  He grinned. “Indoor plumbing is included in my five-year plan, but until then, you’ll find an umbrella by the front door.”

  I groaned in defeat and came back inside, then sat and watched while Connor O’Flannery deleted every picture I’d taken of his charming home from my camera. I would have complained, or made another speech about freedom of the press, but he’d left the spoon on the table, in plain view, and I had a feeling its presence was intended as a message. By this time, the fire he’d started in the big stone fireplace was leaping at the grate, and the tidy little cottage felt warm and cozy. Something told me I was still in for a long, miserable night, though—trying to explain myself. Explaining yourself to someone else is hard enough when you know for sure who you are, and at this point, I had absolutely no clue who I was—or what I was.

  * * *

  O’ Flannery was already up and dressed when I finally rolled out of his soft feather bed the next morning. I greeted the day with a groan, and when I touched my rear end, it was still sore. A quick glance in the bedroom mirror didn’t reveal any lasting impressions from yesterday’s encounter with the wooden spoon, however. He had made and I had quickly accepted a very gentlemanly offer to sleep on the couch, while I took the bedroom.

  I found him in the little kitchen area, making a pot of coffee that smelled wonderful, and when he motioned for me to sit down at the table, I complied—carefully. After what had happened the previous evening, I wasn’t about to start another argument. The table was set for two, and the wooden spoon was still right where he’d left it, after walloping the proverbial shit out of me. My host’s gentlemanly attitude apparently came and went quickly, like the Irish weather.

  “I’ll drive you into town after you’ve had breakfast,” he announced, setting a steaming mug before me.

  “I’m not hungry. I would like to talk to you, though.”

  He sat down across from me. “I’m listening.”

  I took a deep breath and launched into the brave speech I’d spent half the night composing in my head.

  “The simple fact is, there’s no way you can stop me from writing a story about you. Not legally, anyway. Am I right, or not?”

  He nodded. “I’m in the public domain,” he conceded. “I tried not to be, but it didn’t work. And while I hate to rain on your parade, I should tell you that you’re not the first gossipmonger to hunt me down. There’ve been several, over the years.”

  “Did you spank them, too?” I inquired sweetly.

  “No, I bribed them. That’s the best thing about certain classes of people. They’re easily bribed.”

  “You haven’t offered me a bribe,” I commented smugly.

  He shook his head. “Please try not to take this as a compliment, Miss Allman, but I had a feeling you wouldn’t go for it, though I’m not quite sure why I think that.”

  “Maybe it’s because you’ve finally realized that I do have principles,” I suggested.

  “Let’s not get carried away. I seem to remember apprehending you in the act of breaking into my home, rifling through my personal papers, and taking a lot of unauthorized photographs.”

  I made a face. “Okay, I’m sorry about all that. What I did was wrong. But I seem to remember being punished for those infractions. Very severely punished.”

  “If you really want to write, you’ll need to watch your adverbial usage, and your accuracy,” he said. “What happened yesterday wasn’t severe. Memorable, perhaps, but nowhere close to severe. Now, with regard to your story, you’re right. I can’t stop you. I won’t even try. But I think you’ll find that I’m no longer particularly newsworthy. No one cares.”

  “They would if you wrote another book,” I said, a bit too eagerly.

  He chuckled. “That’s probably the best reason I’ve ever heard not to write another book. Anyway, go ahead and write your article, if you still want to. I won’t help you, but I won’t interfere, either.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I grumbled. “As I’m sure you know, no one on this damned island will talk to me. Not about you, anyway.”

  “I appreciate their loyalty, but I’ll do what I can to let everyone know that they’re free to talk to you, if they wish. You’re about to find out how dull I really am. Next subject: I know that by now, Wiley has fired you for going off on your own, and my spies in the village tell me that you’re short of cash. Which means that if you decide to stay on, you’ll need a job. I would prefer that it be an honest job, but that will be up to you, of course.”

  “I have a job,” I said firmly. “An honest one. As of last week, I’m a free-lance writer. And a damned good one.”

  He smiled. “And modest, too.”

  “I can’t afford false modesty,” I grumbled. “I’ve already wasted a lot of years letting other people define me, and I may be running out of time.”

  “Does that pay well, then, being a highly principled free-lance genius?”

  “Go to hell, O’Flannery,” I shot back. “And if you make a move toward the damned spoon of yours, I swear to God I’ll sue.”

  He thought for a moment. “I could use a part-time sternman,” he said. “Would you be interested?”

  I made an instant decision to capitulate, and to take the offer. Stubborn and proud wasn’t going to put a roof over my head, and all I really needed to collect the information I needed was two weeks, maybe less.

  “Of course, I’m interested! Okay, so what’s a sternman? No, forget that. I don’t really care. I’ll do it, whatever it is. Just tell me what it pays.”

  O’Flannery laughed. “With an approach like that, you should find job hunting a breeze. Every employer’s dream candidate. All right, then. A sternman—or woman—rigs the lines, places the pots, and hauls them back out of the water— full of lobsters, if our luck is good. Since you’re as ignorant as they come about fishing, I’ll give you a choice—minimum wages or a share of the catch. I’d go with the wages, if I were you. Lobstering is a risky business.”

  “Very generous,” I argued, “considering the fact that lobster sells for like, what? Twenty bucks a pound or more?”

  “At the seafood c
ounters in upscale American grocery stores, perhaps. Not here.”

  “Then why do you do it?” I asked sullenly. “Go out in the cold and fish for the damned things?”

  He waved his hand, indicating the cottage’s tidy interior.

  “All this splendor and elegance doesn’t come cheap, you know. If you take the job, you can even stay here. I’ll be taking my bedroom back, though, and letting you sleep on the slightly threadbare couch, so you’re not tempted to regard all this as some sort of charity on my part. A night or two on a lumpy sofa should convince you of that. You’ll be paid when you’ve completed your first full week without being sacked or drowned, and until then, you’ll pay for your keep by helping out around the house. There’s usually not a great deal that needs doing, but I tend to be a bit fussy when it comes to neatness.”

  “Yeah, like I hadn’t noticed that, already.” I glanced around the spotlessly clean room, then pointed to the wooden spoon. “You shouldn’t leave that thing lying around like that, though. The Bible tells us that sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, you know, and besides that, it’s probably unsanitary.”

  Obviously suppressing a smile, he picked up the spoon and tossed it into the sink. “Thank you. I’ll try to remember that. After you’ve finished breakfast, you can do the washing up. The spoon in question goes in the middle drawer alongside the even larger wooden spatula, an equally useful implement when needed.”

  “Okay, then,” I said, ignoring the spatula remark. My last spanking was too fresh in my mind—and other locales—to fully appreciate spanking humor. “I’ll take the job, and promise to do my best not to get sacked, as you put it.”

  “Good. A bit later, I’ll put the bicycle in the back of the truck, and drive you into the village to collect your things.”

  I nodded. “Before we go, I’d like to ask you one personal question—if you don’t mind, that is.”

  “So, now, I’m expected to contribute to the destruction of the privacy I’ve been guarding all this time?” I was relieved to see that he was smiling when he said it.

  “It’s not that sort of question,” I insisted. “Just something I’m curious about.”

  “Ask. I may or may not answer.”

  “How can you live the way you do now? “ I asked. “After how you were living in New York, I mean?”

  “No mystery. I don’t like New York, and I hate Los Angeles.”

  “There’s about a million places in between, you know.”

  “I don’t like those, either.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re not here.”

  “And what’s so great about this place?”

  “It’s not New York or Los Angeles, for one thing, and this house is completely paid for. It’s been completely paid off for close to two hundred years. I grew up on Inishbofin, and didn’t leave for the first time until I was thirteen. Until twelve years ago, when I finally came back for good, I rented the place out.”

  “What about your fans? Don’t you think you owe them something?”

  “Such as?” He smiled, again. “That’s two questions, by the way.”

  “Well, the way fans probably look at it, you owe them another book, at the very least. Everybody believes that you’re writing a sequel to…”

  “Everybody is wrong.”

  “But there’s no indoor plumbing, here, or electricity.”

  “I’m pacing myself on fixing it up,” he said.

  “You’re doing it all by yourself?”

  “That’s how my great, great, great-grandfather did it. You may have to add another great or two, actually.”

  “What about bathing?”

  “I’m not a savage, Miss Allman. The cooper-lined tub in the bathroom was put there by my great-grandmother, and there’s a five-gallon tin with holes drilled in it hanging by the back door. In real estate parlance, the house has two bathrooms. Two and a half, counting the privy.”

  “I saw your apartment in Manhattan once,” I confessed.

  “Did you, now?”

  “I called your real estate agent, claiming that I was Leland’s wife, and pretended that we were in the market for a loft. I got most of the tour before the office checked my ID and ran my credit. Then, the woman showing me the place got a phone call, and asked me to leave. She wasn’t polite about it, either, and told me I was about a million and a half bucks short of the asking price, which I think was supposed to be a joke, since the price she’d quoted me was one million, four-ninety-nine thousand. You should have held on to it, you know. You could get four mil for it today, easy.”

  He yawned. “You can start work in the morning. I get up at three.”

  “Three in the morning?” I asked weakly.

  “Did I forget to mention that both lobsters and lobster fishermen are morning people?” he asked, grinning.

  “So is selling your soul,” I said wearily. “And I’ve been doing that since college. So now, I’ll try my hand on the high seas.”

  “Be careful what you ask for. It’ll take some time before you get your sea legs. You’ll probably be spending a lot of your time in the head for a few days—or leaning over the side.”

  “You make it all sound so breathlessly romantic,” I grumbled. “I’ll have you know I’ve done some time on the ocean. I went on an eight-day cruise with my fiancé, Todd—to the Bahamas. And I wasn’t sick even once.”

  “Amazing!”

  “Now, you’re making fun of me.”

  “Yes, I am. Just remember to bring a change of warm clothes.”

  “And a box of Dramamine?”

  “No. I’m not paying you to sleep on the job—or to fish you out every time you fall overboard. You can work seasick, but not drugged.”

  “Oh, come on, Captain Bligh,” I protested. “Dramamine’s not a drug. It’s a…”

  “Yes?”

  “So, tell me again. Exactly what does a sternman do?”

  “You’ll find out tomorrow. Think of it this way. You’ll be making an honest living for a change. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “I could drown, or be swept overboard and eaten by a great white shark,” I suggested sweetly.

  He shook his head. “Wrong waters, wrong season. And besides, chumming for sharks is illegal. They’re trying to encourage tourism on the island, and nothing discourages divers and tourists like losing body parts. It makes sense economically, though. Shark steaks bring an excellent price.”

  “I feel much better, knowing that my being eaten alive will help the local economy.”

  He chuckled. “That’s the girl. Always look at the profit side of a venture. You might make a lobsterman, yet. Excuse me, lobsterperson.”

  Suddenly, I thought of the picture of the giant lobster, with its two giant claws. “Do lobsters, like…bite?”

  O’Flannery sighed at my ignorance. “No, they, like, pinch.”

  “Hard?”

  “I knew a chap once who lost a finger. Just the pinkie, of course, and it took a bloody great lobster to do it, but then the poor fellow developed blood poisoning. After that, things went downhill quickly.”

  “Are you making all this up,” I asked suspiciously. “To impress me?”

  “Why? Are you impressed?”

  “Maybe I’ll go into the village and ask around for a job. There must be something I can do to make money.”

  “I understand that Jimmy Riley is still looking for help.”

  “And what would I be doing for this Jimmy person?” I asked warily.

  “Jimmy runs that little fish market you pass on the way into the village. You’ll be scrubbing blood off the floors, and scraping fish entrails out of that rickety old freezer of his. The smell can be a problem, of course, and it’s hellish when the wind changes, but I understand that he pays quite well. No takers, so far, though. With me, you’ll get healthy exercise and fresh air, at least.”

  And so, I became a lobster fisherperson.

  * * *

  The first day at
sea began well enough, considering that I was half asleep, and threw up for two hours straight, but after that, things took a turn for the worse. The Skipper, as I had begun to call him, had already made rude remarks about my clothing choices. But when my feet began to hurt and I decided to work barefoot, he drew the line, and tossed me a pair of the ugliest boots I’d ever seen.

  “Who belonged to these?” I asked, sniffing cautiously. “Sasquatch?”

  He answered without turning from the wheel. After the rain, he explained, the sea was unusually rough, and maneuvering around the marked floats to find our own traps was getting harder by the minute. “Those boots belonged to my last sternman— a big Norwegian named Olaf. A hard worker, but his sanitary habits left a lot to be desired.”

  “And you expect me to wear these?”

  “Put them on,” he repeated, shouting over the wind. “Without boots, you’re likely to slip and fall overboard. It happens fairly regularly.”

  “So, I’ll be extra careful,” I shouted back.

  “Stop arguing and do it,” he ordered. “Now!”

  So, I put on the damned boots. Twenty minutes later, when they began to hurt my feet, I took them off, again. Twenty-six minutes after that, I slipped on a sliver of bait while trying to haul in a trap, and got my arm caught in the cable. My first scream brought the Skipper to my rescue.

  “That trap cost me almost fifty bucks,” he announced grimly. I had already noticed that O’Flannery’s speech was a curious mixture of excellent English, his native Irish, and American slang.

  I looked over the side. “Well, you have lots of others, and there’s nothing that can be done about it now,” I said cheerfully.

  “Sure, there is,” he said, equally cheerful. With his left hand, he pushed me down over the wheelhouse, and yanked my jeans down to my ankles. I was still trying to scramble to my feet when his palm cracked across my rear end with a thwack that was clearly audible over the sound of the wind and the engines. Not content with the first thwack, he added several more, harder and lower. I felt a second tug, and when I threw my free hand back in self-defense, I discovered to my horror that my panties had gone south, as well. I was essentially immobilized over the small wheelhouse, wearing nothing but a Save the Whale shirt and leopard-print thong that was underwear in name only, and down around my ankles, anyway. I was still digesting the significance of all this when he delivered two resounding smacks to my now completely bare behind—one smack across each chilled cheek. My first shrieks were probably due to outrage and shock, and not to the actual, physical pain of what was happening, but the howls that followed were entirely different in nature, and in volume.