High Season (33 page)

Jamie brushed a strand of Coffin's hair back from his forehead. “I'm not even faking it, really.”

“Of course not.”

They said nothing for a while. Sunlight streamed in through the
bedroom window. Coffin ate soup. Jamie picked at the chenille bedspread.

“I'm thinking of getting rid of the taxidermy,” Coffin said, nodding at the stuffed seagull on the wardrobe. “Tossing the goat, selling the rest of it on eBay, maybe. People collect it.”

“Good God,” Jamie said. “They do?”

Coffin speared a Jell-O cube with his fork and held it, jiggling, up to the light. The Jell-O seemed to glow from within, a mandarin orange segment suspended like a jewel in its green heart. He ate it.

“I don't know,” Jamie said. “I kind of like them. I think you should get the goat repaired. Its eyes follow you around the room, you know—like a Velázquez painting.”

“You sure? They're pretty creepy.”

“But in a good way.”

Coffin popped another cube of Jell-O into his mouth. “Delicious. The hospital doesn't do the fruit.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Jamie said, picking at the bedspread again.

“What doesn't?”

“Why didn't Billy just go to the cops—or the media? What is he, some kind of Libertarian?”

Coffin frowned. “He had prostate cancer a few years ago,” he said. “They thought they got the tumor in time, but they didn't. It metastasized.”

“That's not good,” Jamie said.

“He says he's got a brain tumor the size of an avocado. Inoperable. Apparently it's making him pretty crazy.”

Jamie dabbed at Coffin's mustache with the napkin. “Soup,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“I'm confused about Phipps, too,” Jamie said.

“How he ended up handcuffed to the Pilgrim Monument, you mean?”

Jamie nodded.

Coffin grinned. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. As the Reverend Ron might have said.”

“You have a little crush on her, don't you?”

“The nurse? Estelle? Absolutely.”

“I was talking about Lola.”

“Not at all,” Coffin said.

“Liar.” Jamie lay on her back beside him, looking up at the ceiling. “She's like a superhero or something, don't you think? I mean, when's the Lola Winters action figure coming out?”

Coffin grinned and shook his head. “Stuck a gaff hook in Billy, pulled me out of the drink, pulled
Billy
out of the drink,
and
drove the boat back to MacMillan Wharf, all while wearing handcuffs at the tail end of a ketamine trip. Make that the
Sergeant
Lola Winters action figure.”

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“How are you feeling?”

“Lucky. A little spacey from the drug, still. My ankles kind of hurt. . . .”

Jamie sat up, reached under the sheet. “How about Mr. Happy? How does he feel?”

“Suddenly much better, thanks,” Coffin said, closing his eyes.

“Now that you've cheated death, don't you think that you should fully immerse yourself in life? I mean, you owe it to the universe.”

“Oh, absolutely. . . .”

Jamie skinned off her shorts and pulled the sheet back. “My,” she said. “They don't call him Mr. Happy for nothing.”

“Hello,” Coffin said. “You shaved. Everything.”

“Waxed. Corinne and I went to the day spa in Chatham yesterday. It hurt like a motherfucker. It's kind of retro-cool; very 2002. I was going to surprise you.”

“I'm very surprised.”

“This would be a good time to say you like it.”

“I like it.”

She knelt at his hip, bent forward, took his erection into her mouth.

“Frank?” she said after a while.

“Yes?”

Jamie looked over her shoulder, chin cupped in her hand. “I might be ovulating,” she said, raising her left eyebrow.

“Good,” Coffin said.

“That's it?” Jamie said. She turned and sat up. “Good? That's all you've got to say?”

Coffin pulled her into his arms, kissed her, and rolled on top of her. “It's very good. It's
extremely
good.”

Jamie opened and raised her legs, crossing her ankles behind Coffin's back. “You want to make a baby?” she said, looking into his eyes. “You've thought about this?”

“Yes.” Coffin slid downward, kissing a warm trail from her throat to her clitoris.

“Remember what I said about wanting a boy?”

Coffin smiled. “Of course.”

Jamie rolled onto her belly, raised her hips. She smiled. “Know what I call this pose?”

“Downward-looking yoga instructor?” Coffin said, kneeling behind her. Jamie's hair looked like spun gold, fanned across the bed.

“Downward-
facing
yoga instructor,” Jamie said. “Goofball.” She groaned a little as Coffin pushed into her, slowly, from behind.

__________

 

Later, the afternoon light fading to dusk, Captain Nickerson climbed the bars of his cage in Coffin's living room. “Thar she blows!” he shrieked.

 

A week later, Coffin sat by his mother's bed, holding her hand while she stared at the television set.

“Dr. Phil,” she snorted. “What a moron.”

“He
is
kind of an idiot,” Coffin said. “How can you watch this crap?”

“You know old Mrs. Sousa?” his mother said, flipping channels rapidly. “She's so daffy, she thinks she's on a goddamn cruise. They stopped trying to talk her out of it. The rest of us are stuck in this shithole, and she's on a cruise. Is that fair?”

Coffin touched the safe-deposit key in his pocket. “You don't have to be here, Ma,” he said. “We could put you in a better place. Chatham, maybe. There's a really nice nursing home there. Would you like that?”

“Chatham? With a bunch of senile Republicans? Thanks for nothing.”

Coffin tilted his head and looked at his mother. “How about Key West? Down by Uncle Rudy?”

“Ha!” his mother said. “Like you've got that kind of money.”

“Maybe money's not a problem, Ma.”

His mother stared at him for a moment, the room's fluorescent lights sparking her bright black eyes. “You don't have the balls,” she said. She turned back to the television and flipped through several channels, stopping at a soap opera.

Coffin took a pamphlet out of his shirt pocket and unfolded it. “Look,” he said. “Palm trees. They've got tennis courts and a pool.”

“What the fuck would I do with tennis courts and a pool?” she said. “You only want me to go to Florida so you'll be rid of me,
you little prick,” she said. She pointed at the television screen. “Look at that girl, that dumb blond with the big tits. You'd like to fuck her, wouldn't you?”

 

“We've got company,” Coffin said. He and Kotowski were walking slowly along Herring Cove beach, toward Hatch's Harbor. It was sunset, and the western sky was a shade of orange that Coffin couldn't name, streaked in fuchsia, dry-brushed with deep purple strips of cloud. Race Point lighthouse glowed pink in the backlight, foghorn honking its plastic bugle at precise intervals, even though there was no fog. The bay was dappled in color, sunset reflected and broken up in the mild chop, magenta on turquoise on quicksilver, kaleidoscopic. The small waves sloshed at their feet. In the distance, near the parking lot, a few tourists stood at the water's edge, but otherwise the beach was empty. The evening was surprisingly cold for early October.

“We do?” Kotowski said, leaning into the wind a little. He wore green rubber flip-flops and corduroys with patches on the knees.

Coffin pointed. A dark, wedge-shaped head bobbed in the water, ten yards out. “Harbor seal,” he said. The seal watched them for a long moment with big, liquid eyes, then ducked under the waves.

They walked together awhile and didn't say anything. The waves sloshed. The foghorn honked. Forty or fifty gulls stood on the beach ahead of them, bellies gleaming pink, reflecting the sunset.

“So you're having a freaking baby,” Kotowski said after a long silence. “One little brush with death and you run right out and spawn. How predictable. How embarrassingly unironic.”

“She's only a month pregnant,” Coffin said, cupping his Zippo against the wind as he paused to light a cigarette. “No guarantees. Besides, irony's passé. Haven't you heard?”

“So say the sentimentalist hicks,” Kotowski said. “Babies are
noisy little crap machines, Coffin. They eat, they piss, they shit, and they cry—that's pretty much it. They have all the personality of a sack of wet kitty litter. What the hell are you going to do with a
baby
?”

“You can try to make me feel bad about this all you want,” Coffin said, “but you're wasting your time—and you're going to be an uncle, almost.”

“What a disgusting development,” said Kotowski. He turned on Coffin. “You used to be so full of interesting phobias and neuroses. You were practically psychotic. What happened to all of your anxiety about fatherhood? Your angst about how damaged you were? I feel like I hardly know you anymore.”

“Oh, please,” Coffin said. “I have a panic attack if I cut myself shaving, and I'm still having terrible nightmares. I'm much more mentally ill than you.”

“Hmph,” Kotowski said. “Nightmares. Big deal. I have pathologies that don't even have names yet.” He picked up a flat stone and tossed it sidearm into the harbor. Instead of skipping, it disappeared into the water with a hollow
plonk
.

“The one about the dead children is the one that really gets me,” Coffin said. “I dream about them all the time.” He plonked a stone into the water, too, then managed to skip one a few times.

“The father killed those kids, right?”

“Right. He couldn't stand it that his wife and kids were living with another man. The boyfriend came home from work, found them all dead, and blew his own head off.”

“Well, it's obvious, isn't it?”

“What's obvious?” Coffin said.

“The connection.”

“If you say so.”

“The father killed his kids—it's the worst thing a father can do,” Kotowski said. “You dream about it because you're afraid that
could be you. Or worse, in a way—you could be the boyfriend. Deep in your subconscious, you still think you're cursed.”

“Nice try, Sigmund Fraud,” Coffin said.

“Come on,” Kotowski said. “It's perfect. Your father's all mixed up in it, and the girl was in the bathtub, which mirrors your thing about water.”

“I don't have a thing about water. I have a thing about boats.”

“Whatever,” Kotowski said. “If I wasn't an artist, I'd have made a great shrink.”

“Your patients would all sue you. You'd last about two days before you told them all to do the world a favor and commit suicide.”

The two men walked slowly up the beach, skirting the flock of sleeping gulls. The sunset throbbed its lurid colors at them. A sleek head popped up in the water, just beyond the small breakers. The seal watched them for a long time, until they were blurry dots, arguing loudly in the distance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many thanks to Mark Wunderlich and James Cancienne, Justin Tussing, Daniel Hayes, Judith McGarry, and Anna Keesey, who read and gently critiqued earlier drafts of
High Season.
Thanks to Henry's grandparents—Gloria Loomis, Richard Goldin, and Alice Goldin—for your manifold generosities. To the board members and application committees of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Corporation of Yaddo—who did not, I'm pretty sure, intend to provide support for the early work on this book—checks are in the mail (but don't get too excited). Much gratitude also to Dr. Samuel Asirvatham, who fixed my heart rhythm and made this bigger, richer life a possibility. Thanks to Maria and Kelley for liking the book, and for all of your help in its final shaping. Stupendous love and devotion to Allyson Goldin Loomis, my editor-for-life and the real fiction writer in the family. There is no greater happiness than lounging with you in the Kolodnys' pool, sipping Citron on the rocks, and trying to figure out who done it.