Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel

by Sally Ann Sims

  But Weld was just paying too damn good money for Bart to pass the gig up, and everything else was spent. Bart joked to John that Friday morning that it was his jerk-about-cape portfolio. John told him to count his blessings. Bart watched John’s face as it marked a shifting point in their formerly easy association of fellow underappreciated artists.

  At four-thirty, Weld drove Bart from Granite Point back to where he’d parked his van a block from The Deep End. At the end of an afternoon that seemed to run on for two days, Bart stowed his camera in the back of the van, pulled out an almost full fifth of whiskey from the wheel well of the spare tire, and trudged out to the very end of the jetty south of that oft-painted lighthouse.

  He didn’t feel like anybody’s company, although for a while he was the focal point of intense interest for the circling gulls and terns as he chose a spot among the granite boulders at the end of the jetty. They soon realized he had no food to offer and left him on the precipice of rocks, watching the passing sailboats, a lobster boat checking traps, and the occasional early humpback whale heading for the best eating spot off Cape Tilton.

  He’d chosen a place in the jetty in which to wedge himself that offered a beyond vertical support for his back to catch the ever westward-slipping afternoon sun, with enough room to almost totally stretch out his legs. The sun shone warm behind him, still fairly high up in the sky, the heat building up in the periods between the salty breezes coming in off the incoming tide. He unscrewed the top of the whiskey bottle.

  He sipped the warm liquid that cut its way down his throat. It satisfied his need to feel settled in his bones among the rocks.

  Today’s the first day of June. A year since I moved out. Two months since I was kicked out. Nowhere. Nowhere to be.

  He sipped the warm liquid that re-burned its welcome trail downward and added a little more fire to the spark in his stomach.

  Glad this week is done. Weld’s a prick. Total ass.

  He sipped the warm liquid that pooled in pleasure in his solar plexus.

  I should do an even bigger show. Bigger than Sealands.

  He watched a group of three bottlenose dolphins arcing their way north, from right to left in front of him. Where they were headed in the distance was the hazy outline of the Maine coast. He could see land, islands, jetting out into the sea in the distance to the east offshore. In some places the land, the islands, the ocean were hard to distinguish from one another.

  He sipped the warm liquid whose path had been comfortably laid by previous sips.

  I could just start heading north. Drive up the coast, end up in the Maritimes.

  He shut his eyes and lifted his face to the warmth. The sun shone on his forehead and eyelids from just behind the zenith. Lucinda’s face appeared on the screen of his eyelids.

  He sipped the warm liquid without opening his eyes.

  Take odd jobs to get by.

  He sipped the warm liquid, which blended exquisitely with the taste of salty air.

  Check out fishing villages. Gotta be tons of subjects, whole different views. I heard the water in the Bay of Fundy drops… .

  Lucinda’s face swam back in front of his orange-pink lowered eyelids. The first time they made love. Three weeks after that first day they met on the beach. They found a place back inland from the beach, in a perfect spot. After, he remembered a sweet sea breeze drying the sweat on their torsos and imagining the echoes of her wild moans in the cry of gulls. The curves from her long waist to her hips and full breasts like rare beach fruit he alone had tasted.

  He gulped the warm liquid that set him loose like driftwood on the waves now slapping the jetty.

  Yeah, head north. Find a new cove. Forget the city.

  A gull screamed overhead. He heard water gurgling in the rocks underneath him. Lucinda’s face did not appear again. He willed it back, but it didn’t reappear.

  He tilted the bottle up, but it was empty.

  Turn into someone else.

  * * * * *

  “He’s coming around,” said a woman with short brown hair brindled with gray and long-lensed binoculars slung around her back. She’d rolled up her windbreaker and wedged it under Bart’s head. A tall man with curly hair stood off to the side, not sure what to do.

  She’d fished in his pockets and found a business card for an artist with a handwritten phone number on the back. She called the number on the front, and John Pringle answered his cell at work. He was just finishing cleaning up at the president’s mansion kitchen. Frank was eating out that Friday night.

  “There’s this guy washed up on a jetty? I guess?” she said in a staccato voice. “Your card was in his pocket. Anyway, we got him to the beach because the tide is rising. I was looking for Great Black Backs when I saw his legs floating with the rest of him still sort of sitting. No wallet.”

  “Is he blond, green eyes, sinewy? Hole by the base of his left front jeans pocket?”

  She checked his pants. “Yep, all four.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Stay there and try to keep people away if you can.”

  “He’s breathing ok but I don’t know whether he’s really conscious. Although he reeks of some kind of alcohol. Shouldn’t I call an ambulance?”

  “I’m on my way,” John said. Another emergency run to the hospital would not enhance Bart’s sodden reputation. As long as Bart was breathing, John would take care of it. Good old John on cleanup detail.

  At seven o’clock, John laid Bart out on the couch. As far as he was concerned, this was it. Bart’s eyelids were moving slightly and he was mumbling something. Then he smiled for a second. Ten minutes later he opened his eyes.

  “Someone really wants you alive,” John said. He put a hand on Bart’s left ankle. He’d lost his left shoe somewhere.

  * * * * *

  “Vanessa posted bail?” Lucinda said, incredulous.

  “It wasn’t Harris who hauled him in for questioning. It was his partner,” Tori said. She shot Pogo’s rump with four more squirts of fly spray, then put the bottle down in the aisle by his stall and stretched her back. She’d just taken him out for a gallop on the beach.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I was to ban his butt from Salt Marsh. Whether or not Thea goes through with pressing charges, he’s not to set foot in this stable again.”

  “That’s a huge relief for a lot of us,” Lucinda said, looking into Tori’s eyes. She knew Tori knew just how huge.

  “Lucinda, I really regret ever, ever sending you to him for lessons. I didn’t realize you and Bart were that shaky.”

  “Hey,” Lucinda said. “I’m a big girl. I’m perfectly capable of screwing up my own marriage without blaming other people.” Maybe out of this fiasco, Jay would go back to Europe for good, but she doubted it.

  Tori smiled. “I’m glad you think of it that way. It’s not the end of the world. You know what my first marriage was like.”

  Dennis Wheaton of Savannah, Tori’s first husband, had taken off with a real estate agent to California after he torched his and Tori’s remodeled lavender Victorian for insurance money. She was off Southern men when Martin walked into her life, and she’d never looked back.

  “I’ll be losing a spot of business without Parnell, but it’ll bounce back. We’ll be attracting other big names with the P-H merger, I predict,” Tori said.

  “What’s going to happen with Kildaire?”

  “Holly’s going to ride him until Caitlin vans him down to Florida.”

  Tori led Pogo back into his stall. She swung the door shut from the inside, latched it, laid her forearms on it, and placed her chin on top. When Pogo stuck his head over the door right next to Tori, Lucinda laid a hand on his convex profile above the nostrils. A good strong head. He flipped her hand off. It was late Sunday afternoon, and Lucinda and Tori were alone except for Ramsey, who puttered in the bulk feed storage area on the second floor.

  “And what about Vanessa’s geldings? They just got here.”

  “I’m not sure yet
. Vanessa does whatever she damn well pleases. Whenever she damn well pleases. Her daddy’s already paid up six months in advance for the two of them for board. Said he doesn’t like to fuss with ‘a lot of rinky dink bills.’” Tori smiled at the memory of that whopper of a check. “And if her boy toy isn’t here, she’ll latch onto someone else, I expect.”

  “She really posted his bail?” Lucinda asked. “The whole thing?”

  Tori motioned for her to come closer to the stall, as if Ramsey could hear through the ceiling. “Yes,” she whispered. “Pocket change for her. And she’s ranting about how there’s no way that he’s guilty.”

  “I imagine he’s used his powers of persuasion on her,” Lucinda said.

  “No doubt.”

  Pogo nudged Tori’s shoulder with his muzzle and then nuzzled her ear. She slipped out of the stall and latched the door, after handing over the last hunk of carrot he knew she had.

  “I know how that can be,” Lucinda said.

  “Better Vanessa than you. Their hearts are similar in color. Midnight black.”

  There were getting to be too many connections between Vanessa Weld and her own world, Lucinda thought. Daughter of P-H’s biggest donor, who’d hired Bart. Vanessa’s taking up with Jay. And didn’t Aden mention that Warren’s ex-fiancé was a close friend of Vanessa’s?

  Lucinda wondered what other connections lay uncovered when her phone rang from her purse in the tack room. She sprinted the short distance to answer the call.

  The caller ID offered only a phone number with no name.

  “This is Lucinda.”

  “I think I have something of yours,” a voice said.

  “Oh? Who is this?” she said, warily. Was this the voice of Orion? It sounded familiar.

  “John Pringle,” the voice said. “I’ve got your husband.”

  Lucinda sat down like a dropped rock. Luckily, underneath her was a saddle pad over a tack trunk. She leaned back against a wall hung with bridles and show halters, not feeling the ridges and joints of metal bits poking through her shirt.

  “Where?” she whispered. Her throat contracted.

  “I’ve got him tied up at my place.”

  Lucinda said nothing. What?

  “I’m just kidding, Lucinda. Is something wrong? Is this a bad time to talk?”

  “No, John. Sorry. I’m just a little distracted.”

  “Is that Orion thing still going on?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Aden told me. We’re sharing notes, remember?”

  Orion seemed as far away as the constellation by the same name.

  “How’s Bart?”

  “He’s ok, now. Well, as well as you could expect. Some birder found him washed up on a jetty drunk as a skunk on Friday. I’ve been drying him out all weekend.”

  “Can I talk to him?”

  “You better come in person. Look. I don’t like to get wedged in between a husband and wife, but seeing as how I’m cleaning up after him and we go way back, I think I have a small say. And I say it’s decision time. He’s got to go to rehab or he’s going to kill himself. It’s as clear as air.”

  Silence. She knew it was getting bad, but actually seeing Bart’s life unravel was surreal.

  “Hello?” John said.

  “I’m here. Has he threatened to kill himself?”

  “No. Not that way. I’m talkin’ death by drink. Drink and do something stupid. He’s already tried it twice. At least. We don’t know what the hell he was doing in the city. I don’t think I can keep him here much longer. Says he has to get the shots ready for Weld. But I know he’ll be back at The Deep End or go off the deep end soon enough. I’ve seen folks at the end of this cycle way too many times.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I’m at 213 Salty Dog Street.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No the street’s really called that,” he said, chuckling.

  “Thanks, John. See you in a bit.”

  Lucinda said a quick goodbye to Tori and told her she’d call later and then hurried over to Newcester. This might be her big chance to really talk to Bart since he was too fuzzy the other night, but God knows what state he’d be in.

  John opened the door, smiled with relief at the sight of her, and led her to the living room. Then he hunkered down in the kitchen, occasionally stirring a large simmering pot and flipping through a food-stained cookbook, to stay out of their way.

  Lucinda approached Bart cautiously. He was on the couch staring at an art magazine, glancing only briefly at a page before flipping it to the next.

  “Hey,” Lucinda said.

  He tossed the magazine onto a lamp table and looked up at her.

  “Hey,” he said. “I’m surprised you even came.”

  “We’re still married, Bart,” she said, sitting next to him. “And I still love you.” Do I?

  “Doesn’t look like I love me,” he said, the corners of his mouth twisting up sourly.

  “That’s for you to answer.”

  “Well, I almost killed myself this time,” he said. “I don’t think I can make it any more clear. Stupid ass.”

  “And?”

  “And, it scared the shit out of me.”

  His hands were shaking. She touched his left one. It was cold. She curved her palm around his fingers.

  “You haven’t had anything since Friday?

  “Not a drop of anything except John’s coffee. But I sure could use one or three or ten… . Hell! I don’t trust myself anymore.”

  “Well, that’s a start. So what do you want to do?”

  “Die.”

  She opened her palm and his fingers slipped out.

  “Look, Bart. I’d offer to support you in this, if you want to get straight. But I don’t think you want me to. I think you resent me.”

  He began to open his mouth but quickly shut it, staring at his hands. Then he nodded slowly, and his head fell forward into his hands.

  “You’re right,” he said between his fingers.

  “So go to rehab or AA or something. You don’t have to be with me, but don’t be alone.”

  “Are we over for good?” Bart mumbled, pulling his hands away from his face. It was an unspoken question he’d grappled with for months.

  “I thought that was for you to decide. Until today.”

  Lucinda rose from the couch and walked to the window overlooking John’s second-floor deck. He’d hung a spider plant in which a pair of house finches was nesting. The female adjusted a piece of grass in the nest lining while Lucinda watched.

  “Now I see it’s something we decide. But not until you’re dry. Sober,” she said. It sounds odd coming out, Lucinda thought. My husband is an alcoholic. “You can’t make any decisions in this state. Well, any important ones that are really going to stick.”

  She sat next to him again on the couch.

  “Stay tonight with Martin and Tori. Spend tomorrow doing whatever you have to do to get Pat the work you promised. Then either call me, go back to the Bentleys’, go to an AA meeting, or check into the rehab place in Thornbury. We’ll cash in some of the retirement money if we have to.”

  “I don’t have retirement money.”

  “I know, Bart. It’ll be my money. Or pitch in with what you get from Pat. Where the money comes from isn’t important.”

  “I don’t want to spend other people’s money. Your money.”

  Lucinda knew where this was headed — parsing details to smoke screen the big picture. She’d cut it off before he got his head, unlike many times before.

  “Just go for a week to get yourself started, maybe you can do the rest with AA. I don’t know, Bart. How bad it is. Only you can figure it out. But you absolutely have to do something because I love you. Whether we stay together or not.”

  He looked down again at his hands, then up at her.

  “I still love you too, Cinda. Screwed up as I am. God awful lonely.”

  She had a quick glimpse into his eyes before h
e looked down again. They looked starved. She watched the side of Bart’s troubled face, her own tears starting.

  “Bart,” she whispered. “Then take care of yourself and come back to me.”

  Hold the Story

  Frank tossed the printout on his tempered-glass desk. It hadn’t been stapled so it slid across the empty surface, fanning out, with one sheet drifting to the floor and landing on the toe box of Honor’s navy pump.

  “This kind of stuff is too limiting,” he said. “He’s been in this country how long? Outsiders always think they know better.”

  Honor leaned forward. “Ignoring your personal attack on Bomi, I need to tell you this, Frank. Every college and university worth its salt has a watertight version of this.”

  She slid the Gift Acceptance Policy document back together and plucked up the sheet resting on her shoe.

  “It’s going to be approved once we get university status. Wouldn’t you rather have input on it now?”

  Frank swiveled his executive chair away from Honor toward his computer monitor, watched three new e-mails pop up, then swiveled back.

  “Is there something in particular you don’t like? About this version?” Honor asked.

  “For a start,” Frank said, “we’ve gone past the stage where there’s time for all the corporate action to be vetted by Lucinda. That’s why I have Warren in the setup he’s in.”

  “Yes, why is that? I’ve never seen such an odd jag like that in a college org chart. When he should clearly be reporting to Lucinda.”

  “It’s his ship to pilot,” said Cliff, pacing in front of the window, stopping at the end closest to Frank’s desk. “Let the results talk.”

  Frank stood and leaned on his hands on the desk. Honor met his gaze and then walked back to the conference table so she could see Frank and Cliff simultaneously.

  “Gentleman, I’m just looking to understand your strategy. No need to set up the blockades,” Honor said. “Or call in the dogs.” She smiled and settled into the armchair positioned at the end of the table. She flashed on her younger sister mediating with her two teenage boys about homework versus sports practice.

  “We have to be leaner, decentralized. Have executive decision-making out among the movers and shakers,” Frank said.