He trailed off and looked down at the table.
“Are you sure you don’t want coffee? Or something else? Something stronger?” Lucinda urged. He obviously wanted to tell her something, but he didn’t want to tell her something. And perhaps he was still having that internal debate on whether to tell her something. Fine, she would wait it out. When Gabriel started sharpening his claws on Sean’s left pant leg she pulled the cat onto her lap.
Lucinda looked up through the window toward the orchard and sipped her coffee. A few tiny flakes of snow drifted down tentatively. It was almost as if the resident Great Horned Owl had dandruff, leaned over the rain gutter above the bay window, and shook his head.
Sean looked out the window. “So it is going to snow. They said on the radio to watch for a big one tonight with temps dropping fast. Snow on forsythia. I will not miss these freaky April blizzards when I’m in Rio.”
He looked at his hands again. Or through his fingers at the grain of the wood on the table. Or into his own soul? Lucinda wondered.
“Anyway,” he said slowly, willing himself onward, as if slogging through deep snow. “I’ve no doubt now that my getting this job is one of a group of favors that passed between my father and Roger Fargill, which they like to refer to as business arrangements. Plus my father wants me back in his good graces.”
“Hmmm,” Lucinda said. She sipped her coffee. With people like Sean she’d learned, the less you press, the more interesting stuff you get.
“Which sucks. But I couldn’t turn this job offer down. Plus, I figure, once I make a good go of it in Brazil and Chile, I can launch my own South American thing.”
Typical hubris of young business types. “And?” Lucinda prodded.
“Look. I’m not going to bore you with our sordid family history.” Sean grimaced. “But let’s just say my father got driven out of the Hartford business scene by a threatened high-profile sexual harassment case. Plus, he and I went our separate ways over an affair he had when I was a teenager. Mom took it real bad, as you can imagine, and I did not want his help getting a job. It’s the last thing I thought I’d do.”
He looked into her eyes. She looked down at Gabriel. Who was she to judge? She looked back at Sean after half a minute, her own feelings pushed aside, her face as neutral as she could arrange it.
“So I feel a bit of a hypocrite even working for Fargill, but I think a greater good can come of it. I hope so anyway. I’m going to be opening two offices and a tech support center. Seventy-five hundred new jobs,” he said. His face glowed for a few seconds, as if he were already there, people lining up for work. The anticipated excitement of hiring left and right.
Lucinda found it fascinating how folks viewed their occupations and what they did with their lives. Did a person have a job, a career, or a mission? Or a purpose? Harris had told her he thought everyone’s occupation was a compromise of some type or another. No black, no white, everything some shade of gray. He’d wanted to be a lawyer, and wasn’t sure what happened along the way. Not enough action sitting on his butt reading law books, he’d claimed.
“Anyway. They talk around me, Roger and my father. Other VPs. Thinking, of course, I’m on their side. Which I basically am, but they’ve crossed a line. I know some of the stuff they discuss is not exactly ethical, if not illegal. But I’ve also heard them dismiss you, in terms that are threatening.”
“Like how?” Lucinda said. “In what situation, I mean?”
“If you interfere with the terms under which Fargill gives P-H money,” Sean said. “Frank’s given Roger what I think is too much say about how academic research will be done under their grant, and Frank is promising perks to a slew of corporate types that seem out of line to me. Preferential treatment on admissions for one thing.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know much about this kind of thing with nonprofits, but it seems to me all money should be above board. I know my father would call my attitude naïve, but it’s different than just greasing the skids with corporations to get work or handing out a bribe or two to a minor government official in some foreign country.”
“How does this relate to me specifically? Why wouldn’t you go to Honor Emerson, who is Frank’s boss? Well, one of them.”
“Because Frank has indicated that if you become trouble, you will be forced to leave or will be ‘removed.’ That’s your business first, not Ms. Emerson’s.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I don’t want innocent people getting hurt,” he said. His hazel eyes seemed sincere. But what do I know? For or against?
“I’d feel like crap if they did something to you, and I hadn’t acted to stop it,” Sean said, facing her. “That’s just who I am,” he added, almost apologetically. He ran his fingers through the longish part of his shiny brown hair at the crown. He must be somewhere in his early thirties, she thought, but his honesty, his guileless face framed by that Ivy League cut took off a few more years. She’d imagined he’d had the same look, minus the suit, in high school.
“Are you sure you’re cut out for business dealings in South America?” Lucinda joked. “This is child’s play compared to what you’re heading for.”
“Probably not,” Sean said, smiling. It was the first time he smiled since he approached her in the driveway. “But I’m game to try. It’s nice and far away from here for one thing.”
“Thanks, Sean,” she said. “Consider me warned.”
It wasn’t much more than she already knew, but at least now she knew she wasn’t just going crazy. He’d confirmed her suspicion of a physical threat.
“Have you heard anyone talk about Orion?” she asked.
“You mean the stars? The constellation?”
“The name. Heard any mention of it?”
“No,” Sean said. He glanced down at this watch. It looked indestructible, designed to function in high-pressure environments. “I got to be going.”
“Is that a diving watch?” Lucinda asked. “It’s impressive.”
“It’s my spelunking watch. Poking around in caves is my thing. Sometimes we even scuba dive underground.”
“Wow. You and my father, Professor Tyne, would get along. He likes caves, mountains, climbing tall trees in thunderstorms.”
“He sounds great. Unlike mine.”
“Well, thanks again.” She stood up, Gabriel thumped to the floor.
“If I learn anything else, I’ll tell you,” Sean said. He got up and swiped silver hairs off his pant legs. “Quite a cat you got there. Reminds me of my father for some reason.” He winked at Lucinda.
Lucinda chuckled. “Probably his healthy sense of himself.”
After Sean drove off, she tried playing back the conversation, but realized the Harris buzzer recorder did not pick up voices from the confines of her pocket, or she had inadvertently switched it off, or both. She laughed at her inept attempt at surveillance.
Lucinda sat down again at the table to think about what Sean had said. She wrote down everything as best she could remember, while the snow fell lazily, eighteen or more inches between flakes. They didn’t fall straight to the ground either, some sailed slowly down, some banked sideways or even up at shallow angles, some hesitated as if looking for friends, some cheeky ones zoomed straight back up from where they’d fallen. Multiple speeds, as if they were all of different weights or compositions.
She thought of everyone around her and started playing a game involving deciding which snowflake was which person in her life, the one zooming up from the ground, definitely Tori, the one looking for friends, Aden, the one going sideways, Bart, the one hesitating, herself. What am I hesitating about?
By eight o’clock, Lucinda decided to make something for dinner, and the snow, which had started out as a joke of owl dandruff, had gotten serious. It fell straight down without stopping to chat, piling up in scoop shapes on the window sills, where Gabriel sat. He looked defeated by the accumulation, his tail hung limply while he searched futil
ely for movement in the snow. The owl was silent. By midnight, shortly before Lucinda went to bed, a foot of snow absorbed all sound in its minute air pockets.
On Sunday, the temperature shot up toward the mid-fifties. The world became dripping, flowing water again, and the sound of gurgling runoff around the farm produced an air of industry about a place that did not grow anything for profit, only the fleeting pleasure of a ripe McIntosh or two come fall. In the morning Lucinda considered idly what it would take to tap the sugar maples and make syrup, but retired to the living room instead with the latest Chronicle of Higher Education. She threw that aside after scanning the front page to take up Training Level Test 1 to see what they asked for in a beginner dressage test. Holly had given her the two “test” booklets to peruse — the ones the judges used to score dressage rides. She was toying with the idea of taking the mare to a regional dressage show scheduled for next autumn at the Thelbank Steeplechase Grounds west of Boultonport.
She promised herself one day of not thinking about Frank, P-H, or Orion. She resolved to study her test. However, she soon laid the test on the coffee table and turned her mind to Bart, who was to be in Newcester on Monday for the start of his Pat Weld gig.
Collateral
“Monday was a waste, water gushing all over the place. Not the kind of image Pat wants,” Bart said, curling his forefingers to form quotation marks in the dusky light of the bar. He kicked back the rest of his mug of beer and peered out the front window at the lightening gray. The bottom of the sun appeared in a cloud-free band of sky just in time to set.
On Monday Bart met with Pat at his house in Boultonport to get input on what he wanted for the high-end “collateral” Bart was hired to “image.” In other words, as Bart translated for Rob, the bartender, “He needs some killer pix for a brochure and the web.” The corporate lingo made Bart want to gag, but he’d already blown through the $20,500 he’d cleared from the Sealands show and he didn’t have enough photos (or “product” as Pat would say) for another one. Yet.
“This guy’s not bad,” he said to Rob, indicating the marine oils and gouaches on the walls behind the dark wooden booths.
“John Pringle. Lives around here. Out near Clipper Point,” the bartender said.
“These are John’s?” Bart said, surprised. He stood up in the booth and leaned in toward one of a jetty.
“He’s gotten pretty good. Can’t you turn up the lights, Rob? I can’t see.”
“This is a bar, not an art gallery,” Rob said, pulling glassware, mostly mugs and rocks glasses, out of a dishwasher and placing it overhead on a wooden rack. “Bring a flashlight next time.”
Two men shuffled in wearing rain slickers and pants, trailing a metallic, fishy scent. That’s why I like this bar, Bart thought. It’s a real workingman’s bar. Rob was already pulling draughts for them.
Bart nodded to the men on their way to a booth. They nodded back. Same gray eyes, same bulbous noses, thirty years apart. Other than the two fishermen, Rob, and Bart, the place was empty. A few lights popped on in the alley while Bart watched the street. A grizzled stray dog, a Lab mix with a tumor at the base of his neck, peered through the front window beside the door. His long toenails clicked against the windowpane.
“Hey, Homer,” Rob called. “Got your hambone.” Rob removed a huge bone from the small refrigerator under the bar and went to the back entrance of the bar, returning empty handed. Homer disappeared from the front window.
The Deep End was two alleys over from the touristy streets by the harbor with their real estate offices, art galleries, candy shops, and kite shop. Rob lived upstairs in an apartment with his 15-year-old daughter, Melissa. She spent most of her nights at the Newcester Community Theatre ushering townspeople and swooning over the amateur actors, consisting mostly of the realtors, the two town barbers, and the kite shop owner. Rob’s wife had taken off to Nova Scotia with a lobsterman when Melissa was twelve.
Bart felt a kinship with Rob, though they never discussed their common bond of spousal infidelity. Bart had done a bit of serious drinking here two winters ago, when it had felt good to have someone to blame his unhappiness on. Now he wasn’t so sure Lucinda was the culprit.
Bart thought of Janice Minot. Her tiny waist and large appetite — for food, for clothes, for art, for him. After the heady excitement of the first two weeks of dating had worn off, half of the twenty thousand was gone. After two months, she’d kicked him out of her apartment, claiming his drinking frightened her. She hadn’t really kicked him out, her approach was to stack his stuff neatly in the hall and change the lock while he was out hustling galleries for another show. She’d kept the blue mitten photograph.
Bart held up his mug. John walked over to his booth, took the mug, and returned it full.
“This is it for you tonight, Bud,” Rob whispered as he put the mug down in front of Bart, who was re-examining the jetty painting. The way John did foam spewing over rocks was fantastic, thought Bart. The two fishermen looked over at him, and Bart raised his mug to them. They nodded. Bubble-popping foam remained over Bart’s upper lip after he took a big draught. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and examined the wave foam closely.
After Rob cut him off, he decided to try to find John Pringle. Ask him about how he painted that foam. Outside the bar, he turned left, east, toward the harbor. He passed Homer, snoozing under an awning halfway down the street, his thick tail thumping the bristle door mat as Bart tossed out a friendly, “Hey, Hom!” If he went north from the harbor he should be able to find that funky shack on Clipper Point he vaguely remembered. He felt fuzzy and warm, but good, although he was getting hungry.
He was almost to the Pringle shack, or what was most likely the Pringle shack — there was a pier post mounted with the number 2 ½ — that seemed like John — when he heard a high-pitched yell from the other side of the house. Distracted by the piercing voice, he placed his left foot down on the edge of the docklike walkway, twisted his ankle, lost his usually great balance, and fell sideways, hitting his head smartly on the pier post.
* * * * *
Billy appeared around the corner of the shack as the stars began to pin prink the blue-black sky, the padding of clouds having blown out in the last hour. He approached the man lying prone cautiously and felt for a pulse on his neck. He checked his pockets — nothing worth taking. Then, feeling sorry for the guy, Billy pulled him up into a sitting position so at least his left cheek was out of the mud, anticipating the yeasty spike of beer stench from the man’s mouth that he inhaled when he settled the man back against the post. It would either be beer or whiskey — Billy had seen, and smelled, his share of the motionless heaps of passed-out men. The guy was still out cold, his head hanging forward over his chest. Breathing, but out. Billy poked him in the ribs but there was no response. The front door of another small house across the street opened, and Billy bolted like a wild animal.
“I’m eventually taking out this whole jumble of matchsticks,” said Chester Mulholland, emerging from a house slightly larger than the Pringle place, indicating with a sweep of his right arm the semi-gentrified shacks in front of him. “My goal is a mix of retail and historical interest.”
“Great,” said a voice behind him. The second man ducked through the doorway like he was emerging from a tent. “You could do a lot with… hey that’s a man!” Martin Bentley said. “By the post there!”
“So it is,” said Chester, rather uninterestedly. “Another refuge from The Deep End, no doubt.”
“Well, let’s give him a hand,” Martin said, hurriedly crossing the narrow road. “Let’s just… .Bart!” Martin said, trying to make sense of seeing his friend this way.
Chester looked from Martin to the man he was calling Bart. The only Bart he knew was a photographer. Chester hadn’t seen Bart Beck in a while, and this man didn’t look like Lucinda’s husband.
“You know this wino?”
“Yes, and he’s not a wino. Well, technically he’s not, Martin thought as he did a
quick check over for anything broken, like his father had taught him. “Help me get him up. Put him on my back seat.”
They struggled to get Bart up and then dragged him to Martin’s Lexus, which was parked only a short distance from the Pringle place. They laid him on his side.
“Out cold,” said Chester.
“His head’s bruised. He might have tripped and hit his head on something. Trip-and-fall hazard, this neighborhood. That rotting dock, these low doorways,” Martin said, just to yank Chester’s chain. “That walkway in particular.” He pointed to the front of John Pringle’s former studio.
“Better get him to Cape Tilton General,” Chester said, taking more interest. “Look, I think he’s starting to come around.”
“Right,” Martin said, folding Bart’s legs at the knees so he could shut the car door. “We’re off. I’ll call you about the blueprints.”
“We’re gonna get crap from the historical society.”
Martin hurried to get the car started. He had more important things to worry about.
Breakfast Rainbow
“We’ve got him!” Tori cried into the phone.
“You’ve got who?” Lucinda said. She was at P-H late. A date with the RaiseSmart software and nursing a brain-drilling headache.
She didn’t like the things she was seeing in the donation fields. Bomi had just left her office, and she was still absorbing what he had said. Don Keegan being encouraged to mind his own business was just one. Bomi was thrilled with the redrafting she’d done on the Gift Acceptance Policy, and he was going to review it carefully with Honor. But the kicker was that there was money missing. A lot of money missing.
“Your husband.”
“You’re kidding?” Lucinda said. She caught her breath while her heart thumped urgently. The headache had vanished.
“He’s only slightly bruised,” Tori said. “We called earlier but your phone was off.”
“What do you mean, bruised? Wait! I’m on my way. Are you at home?”
Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel Page 21