Open Water
Page 29
When Willis was finished cleaning the gables and blasting the gritty asphalt buildup from the gutters, he went over to Neptune’s to find Holly. The flower cottages were full up and families had their bathing suits drying on the clotheslines. He walked past the tiny kitchens and smelled fresh flounder frying. Willis thought he could identify every fish—whiting, salmon, bluefish, scrod, tongues and cheeks.
He found Holly working in the Zinnia cottage. She was annoyed because children had placed a collection of starfish in the freezer. Sand had frozen into the icy scrim and she had to defrost it.
Holly promised Willis that she would give him the grand tour on changeover Saturdays that she had refused to give to Jensen. Early that morning he had worked her across the soiled linens in the sunny bedroom of the Lupine shack. Outside the window, climbing roses were flexing on the trellis; the surf sorted lace garters across the tan shore. It was a beautiful morning. The world, all its larger schemes, interfaced his secret pleasures. Willis said, “What is that? That smell on you?”
Holly’s skin had a strange, sweet odor like floor polish. He kissed her shriveled fingertips, pale as button mushrooms from the mop bucket. “Now you’re going to get it,” he told her. She fingered the folds of the bedroom curtains luffing over the headboard—the bright pink labium of the cabbage roses, an obsession worth sharing.
Willis looked forward to learning the interior of every one of those shacks: Primrose, Dahlia, Cosmos, Myrtle, and on and on until the summer ended.
That evening at Easton Way, Holly and Willis walked down to the breakwater with Rennie’s wire scallop basket. Willis wanted to collect periwinkles from the rocks. It took scores of the tiny snails to fill a dinner plate and they were there for an hour, pinching the slimy boot of each tiny creature until it released its grip. “We have to eat these with a bent pin,” he told her.
“You’re kidding,” she said. “Sounds like a lot of effort.”
“You decide if it’s worth it.”
Willis took her back to the house and he told Holly how to steam the periwinkles with garlic and white wine. The kitchen smelled fragrant with chablis and spice and the rich steam from the tiny mollusks. Holly had retrieved the salt-shaker house from Jensen and she set it on Rennie’s pedestal table. Willis didn’t like the tiny replica with its caked nozzles, so she removed it. She would put it at Neptune’s, where she could enjoy it.
With two full plates, they sat down across from one another. Willis removed a new safety pin from its white card. The pin had a bright yellow cap like the kind used for baby diapers. He bent the pin straight and handed it to Holly.
About the Author
Maria Flook has published two collections of poetry. Her first novel, Family Night, was a finalist for the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award. She teaches writing and lives in Truro, Massachusetts.