Bunker 01 - Slipknot (17 page)

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to get back aboard and search for evidence like Dow’s black book. Besides, this was Green Haven, Maine. It might work.

I remained standing in the
Sea Hunter
’s tiny bathroom until enough time had elapsed to allow me to have emptied my bladder and washed my hands, had I actually needed to do so.

Although the head was far from spotless, in comparison to where I had spent my entire workday, it was immaculate.

Catching a glimpse of my reflection in the small round mirror mounted on the inside of the door, I jumped in fright. My face had a number of dark smudges, including what looked like running mascara but was a product of tears through soot. On top of my head, clinging to where my hair parted, was what looked like a wad of chewing gum that I knew to be a blob of hard grease. The closeness of this confined space reminded me of the
Desperado
’s bilge. I smelled like Homeless Joe, the shopping-cart-pushing hobo who wandered all of Dade County. I hoped that George would forgo the description of my present appearance when remembering me to his brother.

I thanked George and left him on the dock holding his transistor up at different angles to the sky and adjusting both earpiece and tuning knob. He was so preoccupied with the Red Sox that he probably would not have noticed if I had scooted up and pressed an ear to Ginny’s office door. But rather than push my luck, I hurried home, anxious to get out of the foul-smelling clothes and into a hot shower.

I’d never anticipated that my new life would be glamorous in any way. I’d known that by accepting my present job, I would be starting below the bottom rung of a ladder I had not yet developed a desire to climb. But today’s job-related activ-s l i p k n o t

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ities had been a catalyst for major disillusionment. I trudged up the hill toward my tiny apartment. The lingering smell of scorched popcorn was actually welcoming after the stink of the bilge. At least that hadn’t changed—I still couldn’t cook.

No sooner had I latched the door behind me than there was a single firm knock. Before I could say “Come in,” the door opened, and in came Henry Vickerson, toting a lovely paisley satchel. “Hi, Mr. V.,” I said, amazingly cheerfully, given my tolerance level at this point.

“Oh my Gawd! You look like you’ve been hauled through a knothole! And you stink! Where have you been?” he asked as he opened a window for some air.

“Work. Tough day.” I was more discouraged than I let on.

I was virtually at the brink of tears.

“Oh, you poor dear. The missus sent me up to invite you for dinner—mussels au gratin—sure looks good. Oh, and to deliver this.” He held out the pretty satchel for me to take.

“We found it hung outside the door. Thought it was for us.

We read the card. Sorry.” He pulled an envelope from his breast pocket and handed that over, too.

“That’s all right.Thanks.” I wondered how they’d thought it might have been for them when my name was clearly written on the envelope.

“Get cleaned up and come on over. We’ll have a drinky-poo while we wait.” He left without waiting for an answer. I suspected he and Alice had already had a drinky-poo or two.

A fitting end to a totally miserable day, I thought: cheesy mussels and the company of two very kind but toasted old folks who couldn’t mind their own business.

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Roses? Roses! I reached deep into the satchel and carefully pulled out the flowers. What on earth? God, I prayed they were from Lincoln. Laying the dozen plump red roses on my table, I reached back into the bag and retrieved a bottle of chardonnay. I could barely breathe. Had I ever received roses before? Not that I could recall, and knowing now how it felt, I was certain it had never happened before. And wine, too! This was too much. Please let them be from Lincoln, I thought. I couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer. My hands were shaking as I slipped the card from its envelope. The outside of the card was the most gorgeous watercolor of Green Haven’s waterfront. The inside was nearly filled with neat printing in black ink. I read and shivered with excitement.

“They are not long, the days ofwine and roses;
Out ofa misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.”

Jane,

I am looking forward to getting to know you. Thanks
for accepting my invitation to the star show. Should we
meet in the Clearing on top ofSpruce Hill? Seven? As
promised, I’ll bring dinner and hope to hold you
responsible for dessert.

Fondly, Lincoln

Dessert? I read the card over and over and hoped I was not misinterpreting. Oh my God! How long had it been since a man had asked me for “dessert”?

11

hurrying in and out of the steamy shower, being sure not to pass by the partially drawn shade in my various stages of stripping and dressing, I suddenly suffered a minor anxiety attack with the realization that my date was under twenty-four hours away. Before joining the landlords for their latest epi-curean experiment, I thought it prudent to write a short to-do list for tomorrow. I had always adhered to a strict policy of not letting my personal life interfere with work. Come to think of it, this had been less than challenging as of late. I vowed that I wouldn’t let the anticipation of getting together with Lincoln distract me from my job.

A bit ambitious, I thought as I put down the pen, grabbed the chardonnay, and headed to dinner. The paperwork required before submitting today’s surveys would eat up the best part of tomorrow, and I had a lot of other things to accomplish. I hoped to get aboard the
Sea Hunter,
if I could find the boat unoccupied before she headed offshore for another cod trip; I assumed this would occur shortly after my date. The Duster needed gas, and I needed directions to Spruce Hill and a new outfit. Considering the last two items

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on my list “work-related” was a stretch, but the roses and poetry had softened me from my usual rigidity to something somewhat more malleable.

Alice’s timing was perfect. She and I entered her living area from opposite ends, as if on cue. Now that I was armed with the chardonnay and a mood made absolutely buoyant by fond anticipation for tomorrow’s romantic interlude, I was sure to find my landlords’ quirks, obsessions, and strange habits far less bothersome this evening. Alice was fresh from the dispensary with her nightly battery of pills and seemed delighted to have my rapt attention as she tucked medications one at a time into the center of her bowled tongue. After washing each pill down with a swig of an iced tawny-colored liquid I suspected was Scotch, she was careful to show me her empty tongue. I resisted the temptation to praise her.

While Alice rattled on in graphic detail about her past twenty-four hours of health issues, Henry rearranged the boats competing in the fireplace mantel’s regatta, making room at the rear for a new trinket. Alice paused before taking her last pill to proclaim the genius of her current doctor. The accolades were more than glowing, and I wondered, after witnessing the breadth of chemicals he had prescribed, what had become of Hippocrates’ theory of natural healing. Nice, though, that Alice Vickerson revered doctors so. Such a con-trast to my mother, who had a general distrust of the entire medical profession. I had warned her that her rejection of doctors would someday come back to haunt her. In my opinion, I had been correct. Perhaps doctors could not have saved her—then she could have gone to her grave saying, “I told s l i p k n o t

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you so.” As the Vickersons bickered about something in the margins of my consciousness, I recalled the only time my mother had taken me to a doctor. As she’d stormed out of his office, dragging me along by a wrist, she’d shouted something about a hypocritic oath. Humiliated, I’d vowed at the age of seven to remain healthy. So far I had.

As Henry handed me a glass of wine, I realized that he and Alice were waiting for my reply to something I had tuned out.

“I am sorry. I guess I am tired. What were we talking about?”

I asked.

“That hideous ball of rust he’s placed on my mantel!” Alice snapped down the cover of her pill separator. “I say he should throw it onto the beach where he found it and hope the tide is charitable enough to take it back. What do you think?”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is a relic,” Henry said in a tone that implied I should have known.

“A relic of what?” I asked at the risk of exposing my ignorance.

“See!” Alice shouted.

“It is a relic. That’s all that matters,” Henry defended the ball of rust. “Possibly Native American.”

“But it’s rusty! Where was the Indians’ foundry?”

“A relic is an object of religious veneration.” Henry pushed his glasses up snug against the bridge of his nose. “A trace of an earlier culture—it is a keepsake to be held dear.”

“Have you been reading the dictionary again?” Alice asked.

I began to laugh. Alice quickly joined me, and Henry

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came along reluctantly after summarizing with “Women.” A closer inspection of Henry’s relic led to more hilarity when I commented on the threaded hole in its center. Although the piece was an interesting item, and somewhat mysterious in that I couldn’t decipher from what type of equipment it had fallen, it really wasn’t that old; in fact, it was hardly rusty at all.

Before I knew it, we were eating dinner and successfully avoiding the topic of my date, which they should not have known about but did in some detail. I held a mussel the color of a Cheez Doodle on my fork and admired it. Not caring much for the taste, I complimented the eye appeal of the dish. “This is really pretty, Mrs. V. Thanks for feeding me again.”

“Yes,” agreed Henry. “This certainly is a bright meal, sweetheart. The cheese, carrots, and squash are all the same color. Very nice indeed. And so . . . orange.”

I started to laugh once more. This time Henry roared, and Alice clucked a couple of times after pledging to serve the dish again on Halloween. We all struggled to clean our plates.

Henry was the first to put down his fork in concession.

“Ahhh . . .” He rubbed his belly until he had our attention.

“What’s for . . .
dessert
?” He winked at his wife, and they both laughed harder than ever as I sat and blushed.

When they pulled themselves together, Alice wiped a tear from her cheek, cocked her head to one side, and shrugged in what I considered a slight apology. “Well, Jane,” she said softly, “love makes the world go ’round.”

“
Money
makes the world go ’round!” Henry corrected.

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“Money isn’t everything,” Alice quipped.

“Money is the root of all evil,” Henry countered.

“Love conquers all.”

“ ‘Did you ever hear of Captain Wattle? He was all for love and a little for the bottle,’ ” Henry sang, and shook the ice cubes in the bottom of his glass, signaling Alice to mix him another drink.

Amazing, I thought. Even their foolish, intoxicated Ping-Pong proverbs could not irritate me tonight. I had a date to prepare for. I declined another glass of wine, opting instead for a wee dram of single malt alone in my apartment. I thanked them and excused myself.

“Shall we wait up for you tomorrow night, dear?” Alice asked before I closed the door.

“No, thank you, Mrs. V. I’ll tell you all about it over coffee the next morning.”

“You’d better!” they shouted in unison.

that had been a surprisingly fun evening, I thought as I propped my feet up on a box marked miscellaneous that I had yet to unpack since my move north. My new arrangement must be sort of like having parents—but better. How many moms and dads would keep their daughter in single malt and tease her about the possibility of “dessert” on a first date?

And I wouldn’t have the responsibility of caring for them when they grew senile or were no longer ambulatory. I’d be long gone by then, I was sure. In the meantime, I found their weirdness growing on me and hoped I was endearing myself to them. One of my lesser reasons for relocating here from a

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city had been the stories I’d heard about the generosity and welcoming spirit of the people. The Vickersons were holding up their end by treating me like what I imagined was family.

The last drop of the small glass of single malt I served myself was sweet and slightly nutty. I smelled a hint of toffee.

How that conservative pouring had transformed from the brazen, smoky, burning first sip to a shy malt sweetness that clung to the inside of the glass fascinated me. Like people, I thought, all single malts are distinctly different. Like single malts, I thought, people are ultimately a product of their environment. Scotch was the liquid existence of the only thing I remembered from high school French class—
gout de
terroir
—taste imparted by environment. People embody that concept, too, I thought as I yawned and closed my eyes. Water, air, soil, shape and age of the still, temperature . . .

Maine must be a great environment. I liked the people a lot. I wondered if this was as close as I would ever get to Scotland.

The home of single malt and golf—paradise.

Catching myself drifting off, I forced my feet to the floor and my butt out of the chair. I was backlit by the soft yellow bulb in my bedside reading lamp and figured whoever was manning the telescope would see I was in my nightshirt and tucking into bed. The knee-length oversize cotton gown that I had slipped on behind the closed door of my bathroom could hardly be considered part of a burlesque show. But I knew the importance of maintaining certain habits and routines when surveillance was suspected. I couldn’t let on that I knew I was being watched.