The Lace Reader

by Brunonia Barry

  “It’s okay. Give me an hour.”

  “I’ll give you two,” he says.

  I fire him a look.

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he says. “I don’t get off work until seven, is what I meant. Then I have to pick up the boat.”

  “The boat?”

  “Did I forget to tell you that the restaurant is in the middle of Salem Harbor?” He grins.

  “I think I would have remembered that.”

  “Sorry…the restaurant is in the middle of Salem Harbor.”

  “I’ll dress accordingly.”

  He looks at what I’m wearing, and, to his credit, he decides not to comment.

  Firecrackers suddenly pop and snap. Everyone has come out. Across the park one of the proselytizing Calvinists is watching the house. Or maybe I’m being paranoid, and he’s just looking this way because he’s seen Rafferty’s car and, like everyone else, he’s trying to figure out what’s going on at Eva’s house now.

  I’m on time. Rafferty is late. He’s apologetic, says it’s pathological. He has called for a reservation at least, but now he’s afraid they’re not going to hold it. When we get to the middle of the harbor, not only is there no reservation, there is no restaurant. It’s gone. Rafferty pulls out his cell phone, has to wait a minute for service. I can tell he doesn’t like to wait.

  “Yeah, this is Rafferty. Has anyone reported a missing restaurant?”

  I can hear laughter on the other end of the line.

  “I’m serious, the Rockmore is gone….” More laughter. “Well, where the hell did it go?”

  “Uh-huh…Forever, or just for tonight?” He nods into the phone. “I see.” He hangs up, turns to me.

  “They moved the restaurant to Marblehead for the evening.”

  Now I am intrigued.

  “Something about the harbor illumination.” He thinks about it. “Do you still want to go?”

  “Do you?”

  “Sure, why not?” he says. “A free meal’s a free meal, right?”

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” I say, quoting Eva. And even though I agree, I still wish I hadn’t said it out loud.

  “True enough,” he says. “But this isn’t lunch, it’s dinner.”

  “Good point,” I say.

  “Hang on,” he says, and I take him at his word, grabbing the gunwales as he roars off, ignoring the five-mile-per-hour limit.

  We pass the tiny lighthouse at Winter Island. We turn to starboard, toward Peach’s Point, cutting close to Yellow Dog Island. It’s getting dark. May is down on the ramp, securing it for the night. In the grove of pines is a meditation circle. Or tai chi. We get closer to the rocks than most people would dare, as close as I would if I were piloting the boat, which is impressive because it means that Rafferty knows these waters well. One of the women in the Circle hears the engine, looks up at us, annoyed by the interruption. She recognizes Rafferty first, then me.

  “That ought to start a few rumors,” he says, loud enough to be heard over the engine.

  It takes half an hour to get to Marblehead—not because of the distance but because of the crowds. By the time we reach it, there are so many boats tied up to the floating restaurant that it is hard to find a spot.

  The Salem police must have called for Rafferty, because they seem to be expecting us. The owner is waiting, and helps us tie up. “I thought you knew about the move,” the owner says to Rafferty by way of apology. “We do this every year.”

  When we go inside, the owner holds the chair for me to sit down. I can feel people looking at us; I don’t like the feeling. I sit as quickly as possible, but I can still feel their eyes. A wave of paranoia spreads over me. I turn to see who’s looking, to send it back, but the light is fading and it’s difficult to see.

  “Something wrong?” Rafferty asks.

  “No,” I answer, glancing around. I am feeling watched again, but I don’t want to seem paranoid.

  “Would you rather sit on this side?” Rafferty asks.

  “No, this is fine,” I lie, picking up the menu, trying to cover.

  He follows my lead, looks. “I hope you like fried food.”

  I order a fisherman’s platter and a side of onion rings. Plus a Diet Coke, which I can tell amuses Rafferty.

  I feel the eyes again, then hear someone’s thoughts: Hey, when did crazy Sophya get back to town? I move my chair to get out of the range of vision. Rafferty moves his chair slightly, blocking my view of the back deck, acting as if it weren’t calculated. It does the trick. I start to relax.

  “You ready to order?” the waitress asks, placing a red plastic basket of rolls in front of me.

  “Is the scrod haddock or cod?” Rafferty asks.

  “It’s neither,” the waitress says. “It’s scrod.” She shrugs, looking at him as if he’s crazy. I can read her. She is thinking how much she wants to go home.

  “I’ll have the swordfish,” Rafferty says.

  The waitress heads toward the kitchen.

  “So.” He turns back to me. “Eva told me you’re a writer.”

  Here comes the small-talk portion of our program. All right, I’m Eva-trained. I can survive this. “No,” I say. “I’m not a writer. I’m a reader.”

  I can tell he doesn’t understand.

  “You read for a living?”

  “If you can call it a living.”

  “Lace?”

  “Not lace, no.” I sit back in my chair, moving away from the thought. “Scripts.” I hold out the basket of rolls. He takes one.

  “Movie scripts.”

  “Yes.”

  “Cool,” Rafferty says. It isn’t a word he would normally use. If I read it in a script, I wouldn’t buy it.

  “And you live in Hollywood?” He looks around for butter, doesn’t find it.

  “Sometimes.”

  He regards me strangely.

  “I move a lot….” This was tough. “Am I under interrogation for something?”

  He laughs out loud.

  “I moved up from New York,” he volunteers. This is good Eva stuff. Offer something about yourself to get the conversation going. It isn’t soup, but it’s a start.

  “Cool,” I say.

  He grins. “Date much?”

  Now I have to laugh. “Not very,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “I meant me, not you.” His face goes red.

  We both start to laugh.

  “Oh, man,” he says. “At least one of us is supposed to be good at this.”

  It finally occurs to me that this is a date. I don’t know what I’d thought. That it was an afterthought of some kind, a kind gesture. Date much? The truth was, I didn’t date, ever.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”

  My mind races, searching for something to say. Come on, Eva, I beg, give me something I can use.

  “How long ago did you move up here?” I ask. The voice is weak, barely my own.

  He knows I’m trying and looks grateful.

  “Two years ago,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask, realizing how it sounds.

  We laugh again.

  “I like to sail,” he says.

  “That makes sense,” I say. It does. I’m starting to relax.

  “You sail?” he asks.

  “Not well,” I answer.

  “Liar.” He laughs.

  He knows more about me than I thought he did. I realize that Eva must have told him. I almost tell him then that Lyndley was the really good sailor in the family, far better than me, but something keeps me from saying it. “It’s been a long time,” I finally say.

  He nods and sits looking at me. I realize then that Rafferty is someone I cannot read. Not that I would ever try. I spend most of my time trying not to read people, hoping to avoid the intimacy of invading their private thoughts. Rafferty can be read, but only if and when he allows it.

  “What?” I finally say.

  “I was thinking tha
t you look a little like Eva.”

  “Really.” He can tell that I don’t believe him.

  He nods. “To me you do.”

  “You were good friends,” I say, realizing that I am only slightly more comfortable with that idea than I was the other night.

  He grins. “Eva always liked to help the underdogs and strays.”

  “That she did.”

  “Maybe a bit too much sometimes.” A shadow crosses his face.

  “What does that mean?”

  He quickly covers, forcing a smile. “It means that she befriended me when I was new in town, and she fed me like any stray, and then she couldn’t get rid of me.”

  “Fancy sandwiches?”

  “Right.” He laughs.

  “Good food for a stray.”

  I am relieved when the harbor illumination begins, the crews lighting flares around its perimeter.

  As soon as it gets dark enough, the fireworks start. They’re good. Better than I remember. With each burst you can see the people on the shore: miles of them in lawn chairs on the sprawling front yards of the neck or lining the town docks or the yacht clubs or way over by Devereux Beach. The harbor is so thick with boats that you could almost walk across it. They are tied double and triple on the moorings, bumpers out. With every show of light, the boat horns blast their approval and people onshore cheer, their voices carrying across the water.

  The sounds make me jumpy. I can feel someone’s eyes on me. I am being watched again.

  I’ll bet she’s doing him.

  “You okay?” he says to me. It’s obvious I’m not. Sweat runs down my face. My hands are shaking.

  She’s doing the cop.

  I don’t know who I’m reading. I don’t want to know.

  “Seasick?” The boat is clearly moving.

  “No,” I say. I’ve never been seasick. A creeping sense of panic travels up my spine and across my shoulders.

  He picks up on it, looks around. “We can leave if you want.”

  “No,” I say. “I’m all right.” I am trying to calm myself. Working every trick my shrink ever taught me. Breathe. Use the senses. Smell, touch—anything to stay in the here and now.

  I feel myself beginning to calm when a fight erupts.

  I hear it before I see it. The sound builds slowly amid the bigger blast of fireworks, but it is distinctive and different, a slamming. I don’t realize what it is until they come to get Rafferty and he goes with them to break it up. I don’t know if they come to get him because they’ve forgotten they’re not in Salem, where he would be the logical authority to summon, or because he’s the only cop in the place. The Marblehead police boat is all the way at the other end of the harbor. With the boats so dense, it would take them ten minutes to get over here, and by then the damage would be done.

  The fight is perfectly timed, starting just before the fireworks finale. In the extended light show, I can see Rafferty holding one of them, a big guy; the other, a yacht-club type, stands bleeding from the mouth. It’s an old story, the townie versus the preppy, except that these guys are far too old for this. The preppy looks vaguely familiar, someone I once met at cotillion, maybe. I cannot see the townie’s face. They’re no longer throwing punches, but the words are still flying. Rafferty has to tighten his grip on the townie, who’s ready to take another swing. Rafferty holds him for a full minute before he finally lets him go.

  The preppy sits back down at his table. One of his friends pours some ice out of his glass, into a napkin, hands it to the guy to put on his mouth, but he won’t take it.

  Instead he is looking in my direction. They are all looking.

  “You’re a fucking moron,” I hear the townie say, lunging for the guy again. Rafferty catches his arm before it connects.

  I recognize that voice and watch as my childhood boyfriend, Jack, throws some money down on the table and takes off, jumping into his boat, the way a cowboy in an old western would hop onto a moving horse.

  Rafferty says something to the preppies, who go back to their designer beers.

  When he gets back to the table, Rafferty grabs a napkin and wipes himself down.

  “What was that about?” I ask, trying to keep my voice calm but knowing, paranoid or not, that I was somehow part of it. It was about me. My shrink would say that not everything’s about me. My shrink is full of Eva clichés. Usually my shrink would be right. But not this time.

  “What’s it ever about?” He’s trying to cover. His pants are beer-soaked, and he swears under his breath as he mops them off. “Let’s get out of here,” he says.

  On the perimeter of the harbor, the flares are still glowing red, but they are starting to go out, and the glow is intermittent now around the shoreline, leaving big gaps of darkness in between.

  Whatever ease we had with each other is gone. Rafferty ignores any speed limits, which is fine with me. All that either of us wants to do is end this evening as soon as possible.

  I can hear the sounds of religious music, the sizzle of a bad microphone, as we pass Winter Island. Rafferty speeds up.

  We don’t speak again until we are in the police car in front of Eva’s house.

  He turns off the engine and turns to me.

  “I’m sorry I took you there,” he says.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  “I know Jack LaLibertie is a friend of yours.”

  “Was,” I say.

  “I know you two have history,” he corrects himself.

  I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. I am clearly uncomfortable.

  The police radio pops and echoes.

  “Hey, Rafferty?” the voice from the radio says. “You find the restaurant?”

  “Leave me alone, Jay-Jay,” Rafferty says. “It’s my night off.”

  “Someone just filed a missing-persons report.”

  “I’ll see it tomorrow.” He reaches for the dial.

  “It’s Angela Rickey.”

  “Shit,” he says, picking up the phone so it won’t broadcast the details. “Not again.”

  I don’t know what this is about, but I can tell it’s important. I start to reach for the door handle. He holds up his hand to stop me. “Get a warrant signed,” he says into the mike. “I’ll come by and pick it up.” He covers the mouthpiece.

  “This was a disaster,” he says to me.

  “It was okay.”

  “Let’s give it another chance.”

  This surprises me.

  “Tomorrow night,” he says. “We’ll go sailing.”

  The radio is still blaring. “All right, all right,” Rafferty says to it. “I’m on my way.”

  He turns the volume down and looks at me. “I’ll pick you up at Derby Wharf. Seven o’clock, sharp.” He turns back to the radio before I have a chance to say no. He picks up a napkin, dabs at his pants. “Shit,” he says again.

  To clear the lace: the presence of joy.

  To clear the Reader: meditation or prayer.

  To clear the Seeker: breath alone.

  —THE LACE READER’S GUIDE

  Chapter 14

  ANN WAS READING HER FIFTEENTH head of the night when Rafferty caught up with her. It was almost ten. She conducted her readings in the back of the store, where she blended the essential oils. She kept a cauldron back there as well, but that was just for looks. Behind the velvet curtains that sectioned off the fortune-telling booths, it looked more like a chemistry lab, with beakers, tubing, and Bunsen burners for brewing the oils and other potions she sold.

  Ann caught sight of Rafferty as he entered. She motioned for him to wait while she finished up with a mother and daughter who had come in for a reading.

  “I’ll need some kind of personal item,” Rafferty heard Ann say to the older woman. “A ring, a set of keys, something like that.”

  “Give her your ring, Mother,” the younger woman said.

  “Your mother is the one who needs to decide what to give me,” Ann said. The older woman thought about it for a
minute, then reached inside her handbag and pulled out a scarf. Awkwardly she handed it to Ann.

  “Thank you,” Ann said, then closed her eyes and held on to the scarf, breathing slowly, taking it in. When she opened her eyes again, she handed the scarf back to the woman, who put it into her purse.

  “What happens now?” the older woman asked.

  “Now I will do my reading,” Ann said, standing up and moving behind the woman’s chair. She placed her hands gently on the woman’s head and began to massage.

  The woman sighed. “This is lovely,” she said, finally, closing her eyes.

  Rafferty watched in fascination.

  When the older woman’s breathing slowed, Ann began to move her hands in a different fashion, stretching the woman’s face into bizarre expressions as she felt for bumps, dents, and other imperfections that would predict her future. Rafferty’s eyes went to the phrenology chart on the wall. This bump determined longevity, that one indicated artistic leanings.

  Rafferty stopped observing them when Ann started to read. Though the daughter was taking notes, this was a private moment. Instead of listening, Rafferty browsed the store, stopping to look at little packages of herbal sachets and spells: rose and vervain to help you sleep, yarrow and ginger to find lost love. There were sachets for prosperity, for protection, for health, even one for winning elections. Ann kept a huge section of incense. The scent was overpowering. Rafferty moved quickly by it to the even larger section of self-help books. He picked up a few and flipped through the pages. Then he moved on to the crystals. Rafferty ran his hand through a bin of rose quartz, then through another of obsidian.

  He was elbow deep in fire agates when Ann finally caught up with him.

  “Those are good for potency,” Ann said, and Rafferty quickly pulled out his arm.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist.”

  She led Rafferty into the back room, brushing a cat or two off the futon bed she kept there. A lunar calendar hung on the wall. It was the same one he’d seen at Eva’s house, except without the Red Hat symbols. It was the Red Hats who had reported Eva missing. They were her regulars. When she hadn’t opened the tearoom on their scheduled day, they had driven directly to the station to report her missing.