by Tim Weed
“You too. Thanks for lunch.”
“You’re very welcome. I hope you’ll come again.”
“I’d like that.”
Kevin stepped down into the skiff, and Phil steered them back to the fisherman’s wharf in silence, with the wind sifting his white hair and a peaceful expression on his dark-skinned, boyish face. If he’d noticed the chemistry between his wife and his employee, it didn’t appear to have bothered him.
Kevin was a perfectionist on the care-taking projects. His focus was craftsmanship: measuring twice before cutting, beveling and sanding exposed corners, taking care not to leave shavings or sawdust or spots of paint or plaster. So far he’d seen the interiors of more than a dozen houses, and from each he’d borrowed a small souvenir. Nothing major; just a simple, finely wrought object that was not likely to be missed: a soapstone rhinoceros; a pewter crab; a piece of scrimshaw, if he judged that the homeowners had enough of it. On the windowsills of his Hyannis walkup, he kept a large and growing collection. He’d made a point of writing down the original placement of each piece, so that he could return them before summer if that became necessary—but he doubted it would. Even if a few of the knick-knacks were missed, there was a parade of workers going through these houses in the off-season—plumbers, electricians, cleaning maids, landscape crews, decorators—so there was no real way to trace it back to him, or to Phil. He thought of the objects as tokens of the homeowners’ gratitude for his flawless, anonymous work. A small price to pay, really, considering that he was risking his life twice a day just getting to and from the island.
Often, as he worked, he found himself thinking about Ursula—her dark, expressive eyes, her full lips, the pressure of her grip on his forearm. He’d never been much of a womanizer (not for lack of trying), but he had been married once, and he knew enough about women to understand that the electric current of desire crackling between them had not existed in his imagination alone. What he was unsure of was whether he’d received an actual invitation under the radar, or whether she’d merely been engaging in some heavy flirtation.
Soon enough, that mystery was resolved. On Wednesday, five days after the lunch on the houseboat, she happened to sit beside him on the morning plane. She’d been to Providence, she said, visiting Phil and his brother. They were making progress on the deck, but Phil would be gone for at least another week. Kevin politely pretended to listen, but as the plane taxied down the runway he was consumed by the usual terror. Ursula chattered away, seemingly oblivious to the turbulence and to Kevin’s white-knuckled silence. As they touched down, she invited him out to the houseboat for lunch, and he accepted, gritting his teeth and smiling to hide the strain the flight had caused him.
She met him at the fisherman’s wharf with the skiff and they rode out to the houseboat. At first there was an awkwardness between them, but after a few beers he began to relax. Before long, the conversation turned frank.
“Kevin,” she asked, casually, as if she were offering him another beer, “would you like to fuck?”
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. She took him by the hand and led him to the cabin. Her fingers were strong and rough with calluses; life on a houseboat must not be easy, he reflected, especially during the long Atlantic winter. There were books stacked all over the dimly lit room, which was cluttered and smelled of rosewater. She undressed in silence, then knelt on the bed with her face pressed into the pillows. The half-globes of her buttocks glowed palely in the gloom. He fumbled with his belt to ease the pressure in his jeans, but something made him hesitate.
“Come on,” she urged, her voice muffled and hoarse, almost angry-sounding.
“What about Phil?” he asked.
She sighed heavily and turned to face him, breasts dawning in the murky light like enormous, strawberry-nippled moons.
“Your loyalty is admirable,” she said dryly. “But don’t worry about Phil. He knows what I’m up to.”
“He does?”
“Well, not exactly what I’m up to. Let’s put it this way. We have a kind of unspoken agreement. Is that okay with you?”
Kevin thought for a moment. She made it sound so easy, so harmless. Why shouldn’t he oblige her? He undid his belt and his jeans slid to the floor.
On the evening flight home, he surveyed the sweep of an ocean that was glassy and calm, pink-hued and glittering in the late April sunset. It was such a beautiful sight, he forgot his usual panic. He felt better than he had in years. It was if he were being rewarded for not giving up, for working hard, for making the effort to get his life under control. Two months ago he would have been gripping the armrests as the plane hurtled through the dark, too wracked with dread to appreciate the stars outside the window. Now spring was here, the sun was retiring in all its red-gold glory, and he felt, for the first time in his life, that his destiny was finally in his own hands.
Friday morning Kevin knew Phil was back, because when he came out of the terminal, the blue Ford wasn’t in the parking lot where he’d left it the previous evening. Ten minutes later the foreman pulled in—the battered old pickup misfiring, his crazy white hair flickering in the breeze through the open window. Kevin watched him carefully for some indication of a change in their relationship, but the older man was as easygoing as ever. It was a relief. On some level, Kevin had been preparing for a confrontation.
While they waited for coffee at the pharmacy, Phil asked about the caretaking jobs. “Have you run into any of the homeowners? They usually start showing up around now.”
Kevin was surprised. “This early?”
“Quick trips, usually. They sometimes like to air out the houses, get psychologically prepared for the season.”
“Well, no, I haven’t run into any yet. I’ll start knocking on doors, though, before I go barging in.”
“Good idea. And I hope you haven’t been moving anything around at the Overlocks’. Furniture or anything. Mrs. O. is seriously anal about her décor.”
Kevin’s heart skipped a beat. “I don’t think I have,” he said. “But maybe I should go back and check.”
Phil waved his wallet dismissively as he paid for the coffee. “Don’t bother. She’ll get over it.”
When they pulled into the site Beekman was already there, leaning against the door of his Hummer with his arms crossed, his face a mask of irritated ill humor.
“Uh-oh,” Phil said, revving the engine a few times before cutting it. He glanced at Kevin and mimicked Beekman’s uptight expression with such cartoonish accuracy that for the rest of the day, Kevin had to laugh out loud whenever he thought about it.
He didn’t see Ursula for almost a week, so he had to assume that it had been a one-time deal. In a way, this was a relief. Despite what she’d said, it just didn’t feel right to be having sex with the wife of a man he considered a friend, and one who’d put so much trust in him. But he couldn’t help thinking about her. He would relish the opportunity to see her again, but he wasn’t about to push things. Not with Phil back.
The foreman kept him on caretaking duty, which he continued to enjoy, and everything might have continued on a more or less even keel had he not found the note stuck in the door of the Riegles’ house, where he’d been re-grouting the bathtubs in all three guest suites. “Will be here 2:30,” the note said. It was not signed, but it was heavily scented with rosewater.
Grouting was an unpleasant, undignified job, and it was a relief, as well as a pulse-quickening thrill, when he heard the front door open and close. He wiped his hands on his jeans and went downstairs.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.
“Never mind,” she replied, all business. She led him up to the master bedroom and they did it there, with her on top, on a king-size canopy bed with a sweeping view of the harbor and the candy-striped lighthouse in the distance. He fantasized that this was their house—his and Ursula’s. Just another lazy afternoon in the life of the very rich.
“Does Phil know you’re here?” he a
sked afterward. He stretched out languidly on the bed, still naked. She stood in front of Mrs. Riegle’s full-length mirror, reap-plying her lipstick.
“Stop worrying,,” she replied without turning around. “It’s only sex, you know.”
She came by the next afternoon, too, and they undressed each other hungrily. Afterwards they took a proprietary stroll through the house together, ending up in Mr. Riegle’s den. They stood at his desk, admiring the model of a tall-masted frigate. It was large for a model, and whoever had built it had spent years on the details: decks and masts carved in teak, a tiny mahogany ship’s wheel, furled sails of realistically weathered fabric, moveable gun ports with tiny brass cannons. Kevin had noticed the piece before, and he felt gratified that Ursula seemed to appreciate it as much as he did. The craftsmanship that had gone into every millimeter filled him with awe. “How much would you say it’s worth?” he asked.
“No idea,” she murmured, gazing at it. “Quite a lot, I bet.” She sat in the desk chair to examine it more closely while Kevin poked around the den. On a bookshelf he spotted a piece of scrimshaw he hadn’t noticed before: a fine arctic scene etched with polar bears, an igloo, and a whaling schooner anchored beside an iceberg.
“What are you doing?” Ursula had looked up in time to see him slipping it into his pocket.
“Don’t fret,” he said casually. “They’ll never notice it’s gone.”
She stared up at him from the desk chair, wide-eyed.
“Seriously,” he said. “I mean look at this place.” He gestured around the den, at the cherrywood paneling, the customized porthole windows, the model frigate and the antique grandfather’s clocks and the built-in bookshelves lined with vintage model airplanes. “Do you think anyone this rich is going to miss one little toy?”
“Please tell me you haven’t been stealing from Phil’s summerhouses.”
He felt his face redden. “I wouldn’t exactly call it stealing.”
She continued to stare up at him, horrified. After a moment, she said quietly, “Do you have any idea what this could do to Phil? He’s been caretaking on this island for decades, Kevin. He’s built a reputation. People trust him. If somebody discovers something missing—”
“There are dozens of workers coming through,” Kevin put in. “There’s no way they could—”
“Are you sure about that? It seems to me that Phil would be the most logical suspect.”
“Okay. Okay.” Kevin held up his hands, feeling his defensiveness threatening to slip into anger. He removed the scrimshaw from his pocket and set it back on the shelf. “But if you’re so worried about Phil’s welfare, how come you still haven’t told him about us?”
It was her turn to blush, and suddenly he understood that what he’d been afraid of all along was true. “There’s no ‘agreement,’ is there? Phil wouldn’t be okay with what we’ve been doing, would he?”
Her eyes blazed defiantly for a moment, then seemed to lose their focus. Kevin stared at her, incredulous. For her to object to his pocketing a little piece of scrimshaw on the grounds of the damage it could do to Phil seemed laughable in comparison to what else they’d been doing. Not that he was innocent, either. A part of him had known all along that this wasn’t going to be as straightforward as she’d made it sound.
“Listen,” he said. “No harm done, okay? Let’s just forget it happened and go about our business.”
They went downstairs together. He walked her to the door, where she paused and gave him a worried look.
“What?” he asked.
“You haven’t been . . . ‘borrowing’ anything else, have you? From the other houses?”
“Of course not. This was just a whim; a one-time thing. I was just being an idiot. I have no idea what I was thinking.”
“Good. Because Phil’s worked so hard. It’s not as easy as you think to make a living on this island.”
“Don’t worry,” Kevin said, unable to keep a note of irritation out of his voice. “I’ll make sure Phil stays out of trouble. He’s my friend too, believe it or not.”
She gave him a sad look. “With friends like us, who needs enemies, right?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “But from now on, that changes.”
She held out her hand, and they shook on it. But the look that passed between them was full of mistrust.
The next day was Friday, a gusty, rainy day. The morning flight was especially rough, as if Kevin’s personal demons had been gathering strength while his attention had been diverted. His heart pounded; he held onto the seatback as the Cessna bucked and shivered through the unsettled air. As they began the descent, the plane hit a pocket and dropped suddenly, causing the other passengers to gasp. Even the pilot looked tense: white-knuckled hands gripping the stick; crew-cut head with its big earphones straining forward to see better through the gloom. Kevin’s whole body ached, and he worried that he was going to have a stroke. The minutes stretched on like hours.
At the terminal, he went straight to the lavatory and stood in front of the mirror for a long time, not caring what all the men coming and going thought. He needed to pull himself together. It was doing him some kind of grievous damage, this twice-daily encounter with his own terrifying mortality.
Phil was waiting out front, the Ford idling. Kevin looked for the angelic smile, but the windshield was beaded over with rain, and all he could see of Phil was the brown oval of his face and the blur of white hair. When he climbed in, he could feel the difference. There was no greeting, no eye contact.
At the rotary they turned right, toward the Beekman compound.
“No coffee today?”
“I’m taking you off caretaking,” Phil said coldly.
Kevin nodded and stared out the window at the drenched moorland. He felt his weight pressing down into the cracked vinyl seat, as if the Earth’s gravitational field had suddenly been turned up a notch. There was no need to ask what had changed.
He spent the next few weeks pounding nails. Phil had arranged for him to take a taxi to and from the Beekman compound, the excuse being that both of them could get to work earlier that way. But Kevin knew the real reason: Phil could no longer stand the sight of his face. The older man was hardly ever on site, and when he was, their conversation was limited to curt exchanges about window installation or the next delivery of shingle pallets.
Back on the mainland, he ate Lucky Charms and frozen pizza and watched endless hours of sports on cable TV. The days felt repetitive and unreal, a series of waking dreams punctuated by the terror of the morning and evening flights. He missed Ursula—her company, not just the sex—and he missed the vicarious fantasy-life of caretaking. He was certain that he smelled bad, though he showered both morning and night. Mornings were especially difficult. Often he was too full of dread about the coming flight to finish shaving or brush his teeth. It drove him to drinking again—only a pre-breakfast swallow or two from a flask he kept in the medicine cabinet, for now, but if experience was any guide, the habit would quickly begin to take on its own momentum. Above all he felt ostracized, as if something he had done, or something he was, had cut him off from the mainstream of humanity. Maybe it was simply his selfishness. Maybe that was the hidden quality people recognized after they’d known him for a while; the quality that prevented him from being considered a “good fit.”
Finally, one morning in early May, he could take it no longer. He called one of the West Indians on the crew to say that he had the flu and wouldn’t be coming in. He gathered up all the scrimshaw and other well-made objects and packed them in newspaper in a duffel bag left over from his two-year stint in the Coast Guard. Having everything together in one place revealed the true extent of his problem: the duffel was as heavy as a bag of driveway gravel. He drove down to the ferry dock.
The ferry was crowded with tourists and returning islanders; it was a Friday morning and the summer season was fast approaching. Once the big boat was underway, he climbed to the main cabin and got in line at the bar for co
ffee, with the heavy duffel slung over his shoulder. It was a long line, looping around through the booths and tables on the interior deck. He stood in it for ten or fifteen minutes, inching forward toward the bar. But the line seemed to stall, and glancing down at the nearest booth he was surprised to see Mr. Beekman. Kevin looked away quickly, but it was too late; he’d been noticed.
“Shouldn’t you have taken a flight?” Beekman demanded suspiciously, folding the newspaper he’d been reading and putting it down on the table. He regarded Kevin over half-moon reading glasses, a quizzical frown on his broad red face. “Aren’t you missing a whole morning of work?”
Kevin felt the heat traveling up his neck and spreading to both his ears. He opened his mouth to say something, but no words came.
“Why don’t you answer me? What kind of game are you playing, fella?”
Kevin let out his breath in an unintentionally vocal sigh.
Beekman shook his head wonderingly, and took out his cell phone. “I’m calling Phil. You’d better have a damn good explanation for this.”
Without stopping to think, Kevin snatched the phone out of the CEO’s doughy hands, let it drop to the floor, and ground it to rubble with the heel of his work boot. Beekman’s jaw dropped; his face darkened to a dangerous shade of purple. In the nearby booths, conversations trailed off.
“You’re going to regret that move,” Beekman assured him, but Kevin was already walking away, the scrimshaw clinking faintly in the duffel at his back. Fuck Beekman, he thought. Fuck them all.
But his rage was already bogging down in despair. Phil had been his friend, sort of, hadn’t he? Kevin didn’t have many of those. In fact, he was hard-pressed to think of a single one.
Out on the upper deck it was a breezy morning, warm for May, with a soft light filtering through a diffuse Atlantic haze. Looming over the southeastern horizon was an oblong blue cloud, and below that, a thin horizontal gap and a platinum stripe of sunlit water. As he watched, the cloud lifted, the gap widened, and the bright line on the surface of the ocean faded to burnished silver. He leaned against the railing, hawked, and spat, watching his saliva hit the water and disappear in the ferry’s churning wake. He couldn’t get Beekman’s purple, Bavarian-peasant face out of his mind. The man was a captain of industry. When he gave orders, people jumped. But he didn’t seem any more intelligent than Kevin, or Phil, and he certainly wasn’t better looking. Why was it that some people got to run the world, while others had to lick their boots?
