“Did the storm break the window?” Mrs. A asked as she looked around.
“No. It was a brick,” I replied, pointing to the culprit, sitting by the front door.
“I hope I’m not the problem,” she said quietly.
“You are not the problem,” I said firmly.
There were little crumbles of glass around the counter. The paper bags and pastry papers, pretzel rods, food wrappers, boxes of gum, and other odds and ends, all had been sprinkled with glass. I would need a day, maybe more, to clean it up.
“I don’t think we’ll open today,” I said to both of them. “Sam, you may as well go to the dock and work on your boat. I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t want to waste your time.”
“No,” he said. “I’m worried about you. I’ll stay for a while.”
Mrs. A just started cleaning. She pulled the trash pail over and threw everything away that had been on the front counter. When the pail was full, Sam carried it to the Dumpster behind the store to empty it. I spent the rest of the morning on the phone with the insurance agent, who insisted that perhaps the wind had carried the brick through the window, which made it my negligence because the window didn’t have a grill to protect it. Mrs. A washed the area down, made coffee, and we began serving the customers who were timidly creeping in, looking around in bewilderment and peppering us with questions until I finally put the brick on the counter with a note taped to it: “I came in through the window. We don’t know why.”
Business was lagging badly according to the Baconometer, but Mrs. A convinced me to keep the Galley open.
“Be strong,” she said. “People throw bricks all the time in Jordan. Pish! Bombs, too. It’s nothing. We don’t give in.”
I knew what she meant, but I was worried. I worried even more when I saw a customer stretch up in order to see over the counter to look at Vincent.
“Isn’t that the dog that attacked a salesman right in his store?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“The whole story appeared on the Wellfall Town Media Page,” she countered.
“It wasn’t my dog,” I said. “In fact, the way I heard it, a cocker spaniel stole his lunch off his desk, I heard it was bologna, but it might have been tuna fish. You know how stories change.”
“I guess,” she said, giving me the squint-eye before ordering a sandwich.
* * *
I called Larry’s cell phone.
He sounded shocked. “A brick?” he kept repeating, while Shay was in the background asking, “What? What? What? What’s wrong?”
They arrived at the Galley within minutes. Shay rushed in and I shouted, “What are you doing? Sit down!” I pulled out a chair from behind the counter and she sat, but not before she gave me a big hug. “Are you all right?” she asked, over and over. I reassured her that I hadn’t been anywhere near the brick when it was in flight, while Larry and Terrell went through the store to assess the damages.
After several minutes, Larry stood outside the front door, his hands on his hips, and was staring up at the eaves of the Galley. “That looks like a camera,” he said, pointing.
“Oh God, I forgot. Yes!” I yelped. “My new security camera. I can play the video on my cell phone.”
“I’m surprised the cop didn’t ask to see it,” Larry said.
I guessed that Officer Joe, his hands full of apple pie, wasn’t all that anxious to spend another rainy minute at the Galley. I was so nervous, shaking so hard, that I could hardly play the app on my cell phone. Larry finally took it from me. Sam and Mrs. A and Terrell and Shay and I huddled around as he played with the buttons, peering at the screen.
“Here we go,” he said. “Date and time.” He fiddled some more and the camera app buzzed on and started replaying the previous night. He handed the cell phone to Sam.
“Whoa! I know who that is!” Sam yelled as soon as the video began. He gave the phone back to me and I watched it intently. A white car pulling up in front of the Galley, a man getting out carrying something dark that I guessed was the brick, his arm swinging back, and the object flying into the store window. The glass collapsed like a fainting movie star while the man jumped into the car and sped away. But not before the motion detector lights were switched on, illuminating his face.
“Bingo,” Sam said.
I stared at the screen and replayed it. The figure, the car, the brick. I recognized the man right away. “You’re right,” I said, handing the phone back to Sam. “Bingo.”
It was the car salesman.
* * *
It took a full week for the new glass to be delivered and installed and when it was finished it looked almost like the old window; The Galley was painted in the middle with old-fashioned gold lettering outlined in black. And the same logo, a cup of steaming coffee sitting on a saucer under one part of the lettering and an old-fashioned rolling pin sitting at an angle on the other side. My eyes welled up when I saw it. The window was shiny and new, the old glass gone. Glass that my great-grandfather had wiped clean daily, that my grandmother had complained about washing, before the ritual was passed on to me by my father. Forever gone.
“You can start again,” said Mrs. A. “Modernize.”
“You should have put your store hours on one side,” Larry suggested.
“And your name in the corner as the proprietor,” said Terrell.
“Leave her alone,” said Shay. “This is hard enough for her.”
* * *
The salesman, Frank Biljac, was arrested within a few days and charged. The complaint was going to be presented as a hate crime, Larry said, an important case for this little town, which hadn’t had a lawsuit since the 1960s. We had the police report; we had depositions; we had the white brick; we had statements; we had the law on our side.
We had everything but a lot of customers.
* * *
While we waited for justice, Mrs. A was eager to learn all the workings of the Galley and had been quick to pick up the routine. She made coffee exactly as ordered. She made sandwiches, now wearing food gloves and comfortably using the slicer for the cold cuts. She decorated the tops of salads with parsley and kale and rings of red, green, and yellow peppers and carrot curls that made the food look more inviting. She even made suggestions, like putting two small bistro tables under umbrellas outside the store, and then she personally ran to the town clerk’s office and got the permits as well as upgrades on the local gossip, though she didn’t gossip. She wiped the new window into sparkling submission, and the front door, too. She even took over the task I least liked, ordering from my suppliers and keeping them all honest when the orders were delivered. She turned cartons of potato chip bags upside down to make sure the bottom hadn’t been slit open and a dozen bags taken out without my knowledge. She counted the boxes of eggs and made sure there were none broken; she checked the sell-by dates, sniffed the meats, and checked the cheeses for mold. She was almost replacing Shay, but not in my heart.
* * *
In time, Mrs. A was making tabbouleh, the tomato salad she had made for me, and om ali, a sort of bread pudding, as well as special Middle Eastern pastries. She and I held bake-offs with customers voting for their favorite desserts. We started adding international cuisine to the old reliable Cape Cod cuisine, and a few other exotic dishes here and there that Mrs. A thought up.
But we still didn’t have a lot of customers, not nearly the amount we used to have. The town, it seemed, had divided up. There were those who supported a patriotic American, that being the car salesman, poor guy, who had been nearly mauled to death by some kind of wolf-dog hybrid, maybe a werewolf, which had been sneaked into the dealership by a terrorist intent on stealing a fleet of trucks to send overseas. The rest of the town was supporting a frail widow who was working day and night to make ends meet to pay for her dying mother’s hospital care and who simply tried to buy a car with her fiancé, a decorated war hero. Though the war hero part was true, the rest of it was all ludicrous. There were stor
ies about events that never happened, interviews with neighbors who had never really trusted me because everyone knew that my grandmother was a World War I spy who sang secret messages across the bay to aid the enemy, though no one could get straight who the enemy actually was then. A collection was taken up for me even though I was financially stable and tried to return the money, eventually donating it to the Humane Society. A collection was taken up for the car salesman, too, but no one ever heard what happened to it.
A court date was set and everyone was ready for an epic battle.
Chapter 31
The moon was in its third quarter, split nearly in half, like my life, like the Galley, like my heart when I was with Sam. We were sitting together on the big porch swing on my back deck, one of his arms around me, the other around Vincent. The dog and I had come home from a day at the Galley to find him patiently waiting there for me, stretched out on the big swing, his leg propped up on the seat of a nearby chair, as he sipped a lemon soda. He had rolled his jeans up, and his prosthetic leg gleamed in the sun. There was a pizza on the table and a cooler ready with cold sodas next to the swing. “I made you a gourmet dinner,” he had said, grinning. “So you’ll go boating with me.”
“You are not going to butter me up with pizza,” I said, opening the box and taking out a slice from the mushroom half. Vincent stood at full alert. Sam leaned over to pull off a plain slice and handed it to him. “Or my dog,” I added.
“You need to relax,” he said, patting the space next to him on the swing. “You need to sit it out for a day and let someone take care of you for a change.”
I sat down. He put his arm around me and handed me a soda from the cooler.
“I never didn’t want someone to take care of me,” I said, then realized I had gotten myself into a grammatical complexity. “I mean, I like being taken care of. Sometimes I even crave it. It just hasn’t worked out for me.”
“Sometimes I feel like you push people away.”
“Sometimes I think I do,” I said remorsefully, then added, “Sometimes you do, too.”
“Luckily we don’t do it at the same time,” he said. “So let me take care of you.” He started nuzzling into my neck. The stubble on his face felt comfortingly scratchy.
“How?” I asked, giggling. “How will you do that?”
“Well, I made you dinner. I fed your dog. I brought dessert.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled bag of M&M’S. “And I am offering you a tour around the bay. We can go right after we eat.”
My heart was beginning to pound just from the suggestion. “I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“Plus,” he added, “I want to give you the honor of naming the boat. Maybe you can come by after work tomorrow. I don’t think you’ve even seen it since I finished it.”
We had a date.
* * *
Of course Mrs. A knew where I was going after work. It seemed there was very little she didn’t know about what Sam and I were up to. Sometimes it left me discomfited; it seemed he was always reporting back to her. I knew he had been making the boat his big project and that his mother was very relieved he found something to occupy his time.
“It could lead to some kind of career,” she enthused to me that afternoon after I mentioned that I would probably need to leave early to see Sam’s boat. “A lot of people need their boats overhauled. Give it a good name when you see him later.”
Sometimes I felt like I was dating his mother.
* * *
“Hey!” he called out when Vincent and I reached the pier after work. “Come on up.”
We climbed the steps and I couldn’t help but feel a little resentment that he had taken over my space. The pier had always been my personal spot, a sort of annex to my living room where I could sit for hours and listen to the water and think. Now it was lit like a Hollywood sound stage from the two floodlights that were plugged into the electric outlets on his slip. The same lights I could see from my bedroom window at night when he was working. He had them focused on the boat, spotlighting it.
He grabbed me up into his arms when I got near and gave me a long, hard kiss, then made a wide sweep of his arm that took in the boat. “What do you think?”
The boat had been completely transformed. Its old weather-beaten pink was gone and it now was a sharp navy and white. Its brass fittings had sprung to life, glittering from polish; there was neat black lettering on its side, the Hull Identification Number, allowing it to move legally through the waters.
“She’s beautiful,” I said. “I can’t believe it’s the same boat.”
“I just spent the last three days tuning up the engine,” he replied. “Bought a few parts and now it’s purring. Next step is to name her and then we go on our maiden voyage. Would you give me the honor of naming her?”
I knew it was an honor but really had nothing to offer. “Well, ‘Vincent’ is taken,” I said teasingly. “How about Bob?”
“Why would I name a boat Bob?”
I loved that he fell into my trap. “Because it’s what they do,” I said triumphantly.
It took him a minute. “Oh, funny.”
“How about Miss Phyllis?” I said. “After your aunt.”
“My aunt?” He made a face. “Actually, I wanted something nautical. After all, I was a Navy SEAL.”
And then it occurred to me. I did have a name. I was keeping it for a special moment and a special time, but this seemed right. “I am going to give you the name of something that has a lot of significance to me,” I said. “I give it to you as a gift.”
He stood almost at attention and looked at me expectantly. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”
I took a deep breath. “The Wentletrap.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Because it’s shaped like a spiral staircase,” I said, “that you can climb to the stars.”
I could see he was turning it over in his head, sounding it out. “I know it’s a kind of shell,” he started slowly. “Climb to the stars. Even with my leg.” He squinted his eyes as though to picture the name on the side of the boat. “Yes,” he finally said. “I like it. The Wentletrap.” He took another moment. “I really like it! Maybe I could get someone to paint a picture of one on the hull.” He took my hand. “Come inside the cabin and take a look around. In fact, I can offer you a cold slice of leftover pizza.”
What is it with men and pizza?
“No thanks,” I said. “I don’t do boats. I’m going home to go over some papers Larry gave me about the broken window.”
He took my hands. “I want to ask you something,” he said, his face growing serious. “That guy you are always talking about—Larry—are you and he . . .” He drew in a deep breath. “Does . . . he mean something to you?”
“No,” I said, incredulous that Sam would even think like that. “I just met him. He’s my lawyer.”
He nodded. “I hope you’re leveling with me. I mean, I was crazy sick thinking about him and you for the past few days.” He gave me a quick kiss on my cheek. “I’m going down into the cabin,” he finally said. “Come with me. I’ll just turn the engine on, so you can hear how it sounds.”
“I don’t do boats,” I said, moving away from him toward the dock steps. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to have dinner that isn’t pizza.”
“Please,” he said, still hanging on to my hand.
“No. I can’t.”
“Is it because of that guy?”
“No!” I felt a quick flash of anger and pulled my hand away. “Don’t you get it?” I shouted back at him. “I won’t go on your boat because it’s a boat!” I was immediately sorry I yelled. He looked crushed.
“But you have to come with me on its maiden voyage,” he said. “That goes with naming it.”
“Then find another name from someone else. I don’t even swim anymore.”
“Listen, I can’t go alone,” he said, suddenly serious. “If I get into trouble, I may not be abl
e to get out of it.”
“Your aunt Phyllis should really go on its maiden voyage,” I replied. “After all, it was her boat.”
“No,” he said. “It has to be you.” He lifted my chin up to kiss my lips. “You, me, and the bay,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay. I will help you forget everything you remember. And you can help me remember everything I’ve forgotten.”
I wanted to say yes more than anything, but I was bound by anchors to a memory that wouldn’t let go. I turned my face away. He took it in his hands and turned it back, so that I was looking at him again. Then he kissed me tenderly.
“One trip,” he said softly. A light breeze ruffled his hair; it fell across his eyes. He looked so earnest, so sweet.
“Let me open your heart,” he said. “It’ll be okay. I’m a Navy SEAL. What can go wrong?”
Chapter 32
Of course we went home together. My home to be exact, since its main appeal was that it offered privacy from his family. As we walked along the beach back to my house, Sam leaned on me a little since the deep, wet sand has always been a challenge for him. He had a strong grip around my waist, pulling me close to his side while he nuzzled my neck and ear and face. He was eager to spend the night with me. How good that felt. I thought of nothing but bringing him into my bed, eager to be with him, too.
We locked Vincent out of the bedroom and I could hear him settle happily in the kitchen, banging the lid off the trash pail. Hardly the kind of sound that made for a romantic evening.
“Garbage,” I moaned.
“Stop worrying,” Sam said to me. “I’ll clean it up.”
We were in bed together. He had removed his leg and laid it next to the bed like a metallic blue sentry and it made no difference in how we moved toward each other. He pulled me close and then held me tight in his arms while pressing his lips hard against mine. I was lost in the warmth and urgency of his body. I wanted to remember every touch, every breath, every word. I wanted to trace my fingers along the fierce outlines of his tattoo with intimacy. These things can be taken from you in a flash and I was acutely aware of that. I closed my eyes and we kissed for a very long time, until our eagerness overruled us both and we made love.
And All the Phases of the Moon Page 19
