by Ann Angel
“Are you even paying attention to me?” he asks.
“No.” I have the painted plate in my hands, examining it up close. It’s nice, professional looking as far as I can tell. And it’s familiar. “Wait a minute. I know her. Well, not her, but her paintings. They weren’t on plates; they were on canvas. My uncle’s café had them up all over, watercolors of the coast all around here, and they were for sale.”
“Yeah, those were Celeste’s. She never got ’em back, either, when your uncle bugged out, so I guess you owe her, too.”
“They’re probably still there, buried inside the café building. I don’t think he got away with anything before the bank locked him out.”
“Eh, same result. She doesn’t have her art, so technically I’d say your family has purchased the whole batch. They had price stickers on them, right? Case closed.”
My family. Case closed. How many cases has my family closed?
“How come your legal rulings never come down in my favor?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Warren, but your case has already been closed. We can hear no more motions.”
“Yeah? Can you see any?” I say, and manhandle myself in an obscene manner to register my contempt for the court.
“Your crudeness does not alter the fact that you have been found liable for the outstanding bill or returning said works to the artist.”
“Well, then, I guess I’d better start making some serious money.”
“Yeah, you are a very serious monkey. You should lighten up sometimes.”
“Grrrr. What did you call me in for, Charlie? You got a job for me or what?”
“Nah, I was just lonely.”
I growl again, “Grrr,” even though it never has any effect on him. “You should be lonely.” Then I pivot to storm out.
My storm, however, gets downgraded almost instantly as the door opens and she comes in again.
“Hiya, Celeste,” Charlie Waters calls, very rushed-like and uncool just to beat me to hello even though I am easily fifteen feet closer to greeting her than he is. Very, very uncool.
“Hiya,” I say weakly and waving like a simpleton when she’s only three feet in front of me. On the way past, she’s smiling like a sunrise and she touches my ribs lightly with her fingertips. The sensation prickles all up down and around, as if she’s got a thousand fingers and I have a thousand piano keys for ribs.
I waved at her. It’s no wonder, Warren, honestly.
“I was thinking about what you said earlier,” Celeste says to Charlie as I stand like a stupid sapling, rooted right in the middle of the shop.
“Hold on a second,” Charlie says to her. “Warren, shouldn’t you be getting on that job?”
“What job is that?”
“Unearthing that buried treasure. Take the bike, too. Having a nice cycle for yourself will be healthy.”
He didn’t have to say that. I came here on the bike, after all. But since the bike was one of the many items Bread & Waters loaned me when I needed to establish my new life, he probably felt a little reminder was in order. I also got a phone and some basics like a microwave, space heater, and electric blanket for the room I rented when the café went under and took my accommodation with it. The new place isn’t bad, right in town and above a bait-and-tackle shop that is out of business in every way but the smell.
“I’ll get right on it, sir,” I say, leaving Charlie alone with Celeste in the shop.
And get right on it I do. Because while Charlie Waters Jr. clearly seems to have some kind of plan that involves keeping Celeste around and keeping me away, I might have another kind of plan. I have to do what he tells me because I am his, after all, but I can control how fast I get it done and get back.
I pedal hard on the cobalt-blue mountain bike I was allowed to choose from the four he had in the shop. It could have been pawned when the owner realized that Lundy Lee is flat as a coin and doesn’t need mountain gear of any kind. I selected it half as a gag, expecting Charlie to say no and stick me with one of the other rickety bikes. But he didn’t. He took care of me right. Like he does.
The town seems spooky motionless as I tear through it. It can seem practically abandoned at certain times when you are just walking through it, past the Laundromat and the tiny pharmacy and the liquor store and the bakery that tells you with a great big sign that WE’RE OPEN! Even though they never are. But when I am speeding through on two wheels, it is entirely possible to believe that the last ferry came and emptied this place of humanity a decade or two ago.
I love it here. That’s why I stayed even when I had no job and no room and no family once my uncle’s café closed down. He and Bobbi came here like a lot of people taking advantage of the boom times predicted by new ferry routes this summer. The one existing ferry running between Lundy Lee and the big island twice a day was joined and would eventually be replaced by some sleek and fast new thing that was going to do a schedule of landings on many of the vacation islands in these waters.
It was a sparkling bright idea. It’s what brought me here, essentially, to serve the spenders who would return the Lee to former glories it probably never had. Except it turned out nobody was all that interested. My father expected me to come back after the summer or after “Dum-Duminic” went bust, whichever came first. He might still be expecting me. Or not.
Uncle Dom’s bride, Bobbi, at least made use of the service, hopping on one of those boats when nobody was looking and as far as I could tell nobody was caring.
And so the rusted tub of an old ferry, the Lucky Buoy, just continued on, chugging in and out of the old harbor twice daily as if to mock all those fancy ideas anybody might have had about moving on up and scuttling the old Buoy anytime soon. It is steaming into port as I pass out of the town center again and head up the Tidal Road, along the marshy grasses to the locked-up premises of the Crabbit Café.
It wasn’t a bad place, in a nice sunsetty spot here on the tidal river. But even with tourists, Dom would have had a tough time, since he didn’t know anything about running a restaurant and didn’t seem to want to know. The café was open for only five weeks before the curtain came down on the whole thing, but still, as I stand on the porch that runs the whole length of Crabbit Café’s west-facing, marsh-scented frontage, I feel sad. I hate it when somebody tries. When they try something and it just refuses to work for them.
It is all of two minutes before I am inside the café. Despite the lockdown, I knew I would be able to shimmy my skinny self through the small screen window leading to the pantry. Once inside, I go straight to where the artworks are lined up like dominoes alongside tables and chairs neatly stacked for whatever the next stage of this kind of awfulness is.
I flip through the selection of more than a dozen watercolor coastal scenes, and I think I like them well enough despite a sort of sameness that connects them to one another and to probably every other local-artist watercolor all the way up and down the coast and across the sea. But these are good, I think. I don’t know art, but I know I like Celeste.
I grab one, scurry back out the window with it, and am on my bike pedaling double speed back to Bread & Waters.
The Lucky Buoy is still steaming into port as I pass that way again. It hardly seems to have moved, which I have noticed before, watching for what seems like days for it to make the journey between first sighting and docking. I watch the whole thing whenever I can. Only now I can’t.
When I hit the last street that leads directly to the shop, I see, from a couple blocks away, Charlie and Celeste sitting out front in a couple of folding chairs that once belonged to somebody else. Abruptly, though, she bounces up and starts marching away. Charlie gets up and follows her a few feet, gesturing like he’s conducting an orchestra. It’s not a truly serious pursuit, as he slows and stops and laughs almost as quickly as he started.
“What did you do?” I say as I pull the bike to a stop in front of him.
“What? Nothing,” he says. “I was sharing.”
“What
did you share, Charlie?”
“My dad. I was telling her stuff about my dad. Anyway, I don’t know what her problem is, because everybody else laughs.”
“What stuff, Charlie? Not the penis stuff, right? Tell me it wasn’t that.”
“Right, like I’m going to hold back the real quality material when I’m trying to impress a girl as beautiful as that. Of course the penis stuff.”
As briefly as I have known him, Charlie Waters Jr. is my best friend. He is a kind and gentle guy; I know this. But even I have concluded that when his mother left him, then his father left this earth, and young Charlie was left behind that counter, where he appears now to be embedded, well, gaps were also left. My friend has gaps.
“I did mention, Charlie, that probably a lot of people won’t be quite as okay with hearing about your dad’s penis as I was after, what, knowing you for an hour?”
“I don’t recall you saying anything like that. What is that you have there? You got a painting? How did you . . . Only one?”
“Yeah,” I say, and take off with it in the direction of Celeste.
As I am gaining on her, it comes back to me with fresh amazement, when Charlie first told me the story he has just told her. “The last time I ever heard my parents speak to each other, I just caught the tail end of an argument in their bedroom. So all I picked up was him saying, Well, it’s my penis and I’ll do what I like with it. And so naturally my first thought was What does he like to do with it? Kept me preoccupied for weeks.”
“Celeste?” I call when I’m about ten feet behind her. She keeps walking, ignoring me. “Come on,” I say. “I have something for you.”
“Oh, excellent,” she says. “Now you’re going to start. What’s wrong with this place?”
“What? Oh, no, I didn’t mean anything like that. I got one of your paintings back. From the café.”
She stops short enough that I struggle to stop the bike in time. The front wheel bumps slightly into the side of her leg.
“Jeez, I’m really sorry about that,” I say. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” she says, looking at her painting under my arm like I am returning her beloved missing cat. She reaches and takes it, holding it up high and then at different angles to the light, checking for damage. Looking at it myself in this clear afternoon light, I’m thinking it looks a little less professional. Like I could have done it. And I royally suck at that kind of thing.
“It’s beautiful work,” I say, and if the universe wants to judge me for that, let it judge me quietly.
“Thank you,” she says, looking away, getting blushy. I guess she’s not used to glowing reviews. “How did you get this? I thought the Crabbit was all padlocked up.”
“Well, I know the place pretty well. I worked there, you know.”
“Of course I know, Warren. I saw you work. I watched you work.”
My frickin’ name and everything. I am not sure if there is a word that covers this sensation, of a combined shiver of thrill and jolt of unease, but there should be.
“You watched me work? I never saw you there. And I would have remembered you.”
“I skulk. It’s an artist’s thing, skulking. See and don’t be seen.”
I am nodding enthusiastically. You are being seen now is the thing I will not say, because one Charlie is enough for one day. “Very good,” I say. “Well skulked.”
“Thanks,” she says. “Listen, you want to go for a beer? North Star Bar or Compass Inn, your choice, my treat.”
See? See? Right from the get-go, I just knew I would be getting and going in Lundy Lee in a way I had never done anywhere. Not that I was setting the bar particularly high there.
“Um, Celeste, I’m too young to go for a beer. Sorry if I misled you or anything. Maybe I look a little older than I am. . . .”
“You don’t,” she says, reaching and placing a hand on top of my hand on the handlebars. “I know how old you are. You just don’t seem to know where you are.” She starts towing me and the bike along toward Lundy Lee’s entertainment district.
“How do you know how old I am?” I ask her. “What else do you know?”
She half turns toward me and puts a great thin long artist finger up in front of lips that are suddenly bunched up in my direction, giving me the shushing of a lifetime. If I were somehow granted another lifetime, I’d spend it on another shush just like that one.
“What would life be without a sequence of secrets?” she asks, giggling like she knows every last one of them. “If you told everybody everything, where would that leave you, huh?”
“I don’t know where that would be,” I say. “Other than it’s someplace I’ll never go.”
“Ha,” she says, and spins around as we idle up in front of the North Star Bar. She notices my sudden paralysis and gently pries the bike from my grip. She leans it against the front window and takes me by the hand. “Let us go inside, then, young man, and drink to someplace you and I will never go.”
I have never been more frightened in my life. And I have been frightened plenty.
“That grin makes you look a tiny bit insane,” she says as we hunker down in the little snug almost directly next to the parked bike on the other side of the window.
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m still new at this. If I wasn’t the only guy in here with teeth, it wouldn’t be so noticeable. I’m sure I’ll blend in soon enough.”
“I’m sure you won’t,” she says, examining her painting again with surprising intensity.
The waitress, doubtless attracted by my teeth, comes and stands next to us. That’s all she does.
Celeste, seemingly familiar with this type of thing, speaks without looking up from the picture. “I’ll have a Manhattan, sweet.”
The waitress stares, as if the volume was off when Celeste spoke.
“Right, then,” Celeste says. “Double Jack Daniel’s and ginger ale.”
That seems to unlock something. The waitress turns and looks me over intently.
“He’ll have the same,” Celeste says firmly.
I am stunned to see the waitress almost instantly pivot to take the order to the bar.
Celeste looks up and fillets me with a sweet, sinister smile.
I can feel the mentalness of my grin even before she has to tell me this time. The drinks arrive, and the thunk of how the glasses are delivered to the table is an attention grabber. Celeste stares at the waitress as she leaves, but then we both hold up and clink glasses.
“How come?” I say as she savors her cocktail with eyes half closed.
“Company,” she says.
I sip my drink. Even with a load of ice, it stings my eyes, my tongue, and my throat.
“Unbelievable,” I wheeze in a voice that sounds like hydraulic brakes. “You would never be short of company.”
She’s sticking with the one-word sentencing. “Lonesome,” she says.
I look at her face, at her soft melty eyes looking back at me over the rim of a stout squat glass that no longer holds any Jack Daniel’s or ginger ale. And I can’t figure it. I can’t, no matter how I angle, see this face spending any time at lonesome.
She flags down the waitress.
She stops the waving, folds her hands on the table between us, and says, “Your aunt and uncle were very fine people.”
I nod at her. “But not really, though.”
She nods back. “I suppose not. But they were very fair with me.”
“That’s good to hear. I’m not aware of any of my people ever being fair with any other people before.”
Two more drinks thunder down onto the table even though my first one is only half gone — and so am I.
“Well, that hardly makes them unusual, does it?” she says, picking up her drink and clinking with mine while it’s still on the table.
“You don’t think people are fair?”
“No.”
I pick up my original drink, find that the melting ice has made the drink more agreeable and that the
drink has made me more agreeable.
“That’s sad,” I say. “I’m sorry, Celeste.”
“Why? Are you responsible? Because if you are, well, I have been looking for you for a long time, buster.” She puts down her drink and puts up her dukes, and if I fall any more in love than I am right now, it’ll probably set off the smoke alarms.
“Charlie is fair with me,” I say. “Always has been, right from the beginning.”
“So,” she says, “you’re in love with Charlie, yeah?”
“Wwwhaat?” I say, and hop up from my spot. But the height of the table in relation to the bench seat I was sitting on is such that I can’t get all the way up like that and so am jammed with the table edge pressed into my thighs. I stand-like, awkwardly for several seconds, trying to hold on to indignant when absurd has already won the day.
I have no idea how a thing like this is supposed to play out, and Celeste is in no rush to help me with it. She smiles and sips as I think of a next line, until it’s not necessary.
“Oh, Jesus,” she says.
Charlie is standing there on the sidewalk, looking in and taking up most of the window with an awkward goofiness that’s making me look pretty suave even right now. Celeste is staring at him as he leans on the glass with one hand as if he was just hanging out, nothing and nobody on his agenda. I take advantage of the diversion and slide back into my seat.
“This town could use more girls,” she says.
“It could,” I say. “It really could.” I wave Charlie in to come sit with us, and as he scurries toward the door, Celeste gets agitated. She finishes her second drink awfully quickly.
“I need to go now,” she says. “Thank you for the painting. I sure would love to retrieve the others. Have you got a phone?”
“Yes,” I say, taking it out of my pocket and displaying it proudly, like I am the first person in town to have one.
