Safe Harbor

by Judith Arnold

  “And then what am I supposed to do?” the customer asked.

  “Go back to the doctor. He has to monitor your blood pressure. If it’s improved he may want to change your prescription.”

  “What if it hasn’t improved?” the man inquired, pulling the bottle from the bag and squinting at the printed instructions on the label.

  “Then the doctor may renew this prescription. Or he may try something else. Now, if you have any problems—dizziness, drowsiness, blurred vision, anything like that—you call the doctor right away. Don’t stop taking the pills, but let him know.”

  “Okay.”

  “And give my regards to Lucille.”

  “Okay. You take care of yourself, Shelley.” He turned and headed for the door, nodding at Kip as he edged past him in the narrow aisle.

  Shelley smiled at Kip. The moment his eyes met hers he experienced a jolt of delight. She wore a lavender blouse, a floral-patterned skirt and her white pharmacist jacket. Her hair was brushed back from her face, which was devoid of make-up. She looked fresh and full of energy, not like someone who had already put in a good four or five hours of work.

  Talking to her in the cupola last night had been cathartic. After he’d run out of words, they’d remained up there, their legs spanning the room, their backs nestled into opposite corners. They’d spoken little. Her nearness alone had been enough to buoy him.

  After a while she’d announced that it was time for her to leave—”Some of us have to go to work in the morning,” she’d reminded him. He’d walked her down the stairs and outside to her car. Beside the driver’s side door he’d kissed her cheek and then gathered her into his arms, savoring her strength, her comforting warmth.

  He had male friends—one or two holdovers from his youth still living in the Boston area, a few classmates from Williams with whom he kept in sporadic touch, a couple of buddies back in San Francisco. But what he felt for Shelley transcended any other friendship he’d ever known. He treasured her ability to listen, her refusal to judge him, her unwillingness to lay out a timetable for his recovery.

  If he had admitted to his other friends that he wasn’t handling Amanda’s death well, they would likely have said, “Buck up, dude. Let’s sweat it out on the squash court.” What Shelley had said last night was a confirmation, an affirmation. What she’d said assured him that she understood, that she accepted him as he was, without attaching conditions or pressuring him with expectations. He’d told her he was a mess and she’d told him it was all right to be a mess. Having her back in his life was a miracle.

  Returning her smile, he sauntered down the aisle to the counter.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “Great. I’ve decided to fix up the house.”

  “Does it need fixing?”

  He nodded. “Here and there, bits and pieces. It’s time for me to add some calluses to these yuppie hands of mine.”

  She chuckled. “We’ve got a wide variety of skin creams in stock if you decide you don’t like dry skin.”

  “Do you take a personal interest in all your customers?” he asked, thinking not of himself but of the elderly man who’d just left the pharmacy.

  Shelley’s chuckle evolved into a laugh. “You mean, like Ed Burkholtz? He’s not just my customer—he’s my neighbor. I told you, everybody knows everybody on the island. The year-rounders are one big happy family.”

  For a brief, irrational moment Kip felt like an outsider. He had no right to be resentful; he was an outsider. He should be glad a member of the big happy family was willing to treat him as a welcome visitor.

  Footsteps on the plank floor alerted him to the arrival of another customer. Glancing over his shoulder, Kip observed a clean-scrubbed man about his age, clad in the crisp shirt and starched trousers of a Coast Guard uniform, entering the pharmacy and moving directly to the rear of the store. The man’s auburn hair was neatly combed above an open, square-jawed face; he removed his sunglasses to reveal sparkling green eyes. “How’s my favorite drug dealer?” he greeted Shelley as he approached the counter.

  She acknowledged him with a wary smile. “Hello, Jack,” she said, then noticed the amiable curiosity with which the man was eyeing Kip. “Jack, this is Kip Stroud, an old friend of mine. Kip, Jack MacRae.”

  Jack extended his right hand and Kip shook it. “An old friend, eh? Did you boat over from the mainland?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say,” Jack said, turning back to Shelley with a hopeful grin, “could I earn some points with you by risking my life to rescue him?”

  “He took the ferry,” Shelley told Jack. “He isn’t a boater.”

  “Damn. Those ferries are so safe. I’ll have to find some other way to become your hero.”

  Shelley’s smile relaxed slightly. “I’d rather you never had to be a hero, Jack. The only time you Coast Guard guys get to be heroes is when someone is in trouble.”

  “Yeah. Life sure is boring when everybody’s safe.” His grin conveyed that he was joking. He acknowledged Kip with a nod and said, “Nice meeting you.” Then he pivoted back to Shelley, effectively shouldering Kip out of the way.

  Realizing that Jack wanted to talk privately with Shelley, Kip wandered over to the DVD section of the store and spun one of the cylindrical racks. Behind him he heard a muffled exchange of voices, Jack’s deep and warm and Shelley’s muted and laconic. Peeking discreetly around the rack, Kip saw Jack leaning on his elbows on the counter and gazing intently at Shelley, who stood perfectly straight. She neither bowed toward him nor shrunk from him. Her smile seemed frosty to Kip, her gaze restrained.

  Kip spun another circular rack and then glanced toward Shelley again. Her smile had become gentle; she was shaking her head no. Jack spread his hands palm up and murmured something. Shelley’s smile widened, and she shook her head again.

  Jack pushed away from the counter. He was smiling, too, but his shoulders appeared stiff to Kip. “Well,” he said, “I’ll count the minutes ‘til my next shore leave.”

  “Shore leave!” Shelley guffawed.

  “Ah, you hard-hearted wench. Have a nice visit,” he called toward Kip as he strolled down an aisle to the front of the store and exited the building.

  Kip watched Jack’s departure, then gravitated back to Shelley’s post at the rear of the store. “Is he your boyfriend?” he asked.

  Shelley’s smile faded and she rolled her eyes. “Only in his dreams.”

  “He seems like a nice guy.”

  “Yes, he does.”

  Kip frowned slightly. The normal response would have been, “He is.” Shelley’s words implied that what Jack seemed and what he was were two different things. “What’s wrong with him?” Kip asked.

  Shelley let her gaze meet his for a second, then marched to her computer and began tapping on its keys. “Nothing he can help,” she answered dryly. “I’m just not interested.”

  Now it was Kip’s turn to lean on the counter. Like Jack, he rested his elbows against it and propped his chin in his hands, not to be closer to Shelley but simply to see her, since she was half-hidden behind the computer. “I’ve got to admit, I wondered how a single woman managed to have a social life on an island like this,” he said. “I guess there must be guys back on the mainland.”

  “I guess there must be,” Shelley agreed, her gaze riveted to the computer monitor and her mouth shaping a grim line.

  Kip scrutinized her thoughtfully, taking in her wistful gray eyes, the determined set of her chin, her proud posture and the nimble speed of her fingers as they skimmed the computer keyboard. While far from model-perfect or glamorous, she was a remarkably appealing woman. Her face had an intriguing complexity to it and her body was lithe and leggy, not fragile in a fine-boned way but strong and healthy and capable.

  In another frame of mind—in another lifetime—Kip would pursue her. He’d court her and seduce her and fall in love with her. Such passion was out of the question for him now, of course, and given his history with She
lley a seduction attempt would be way out of line.

  But if he were just a man, not an old friend or a new widower but simply a man, he would have gotten in line right behind Jack MacRae, eagerly awaiting his chance to become Shelley’s hero.

  “Are you dating someone else?” he asked, still curious as to why she was “just not interested” in a good-looking, good-natured, obviously smitten guy like Jack.

  Shelley pressed her lips together and stared obdurately at the screen. “No,” she said after a long minute.

  “Maybe you think it’s none of my business,” he persevered. “But...we got together for dinner last night, and I was going to ask if you were free for dinner tonight—” The sharp look she gave him silenced him for a moment. Belatedly he concluded, “If you’re seeing someone else I shouldn’t be monopolizing your evenings.”

  Her expression softened slightly. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.

  “Meaning...you’re free for dinner?”

  “Meaning...” She sighed. “I told you last night, Kip.”

  She had told him a great many things last night. She had told him about how her father had lied and cheated and destroyed her family, and how her mother had maneuvered herself into a loveless second marriage, and how Shelley had striven hard to make a place for herself on the island, far away from the people who had hurt her. She’d told him that she was in debt, and that the island was blissfully quiet in the winter. She’d told him she would never become dependent on a man.

  But she hadn’t told him she wasn’t dating anyone.

  Once again, the thump of footsteps behind him signaled the arrival of customers. If he wanted to interrogate Shelley further, now was not the time. “So,” he ventured cautiously, “can we have dinner tonight?”

  She shut off the computer and turned to him. Her eyes were hard and sharp, cutting deep into him. But he couldn’t interpret the emotion in them. “As friends,” she said.

  Was that it? Did she think he was trying to romance her? He’d stripped his emotions bare last night, and let her feast her eyes on his scars. He’d exposed his damaged heart and his tattered soul. She ought to know better than to think he was a wolf on the prowl, coming on to her in search of a few casual thrills.

  “Of course as friends,” he snapped.

  “Fine. Six o’clock?”

  “I’ll pick you up,” he said brusquely, then rotated on his heel and stalked out of the store.

  Not until he reached his bicycle did his anger begin to dissipate. He unlocked the chain, wrapped it around the seat support bar, straddled the bike and pushed away. He pedaled hard, his eyes monitoring the treacherous curves in the road while his mind journeyed in its own direction, sorting out his emotions.

  He had been alone over a year. Many people seemed to believe that a year was long enough, that he ought to be ready to jump back into the world of mature adult relationships. That he ought to be horny.

  Maybe he was. But he couldn’t separate sex from Amanda in his mind. He couldn’t separate sex from love. He couldn’t just think of it as a physical release, no strings attached, no feelings involved.

  He didn’t blame people for assuming the monkish life he was leading was somehow unnatural. Shelley should have known better, though. She should have known better than to think he was putting the moves on her, for God’s sake. She shouldn’t have had to demand a guarantee that if he took her out for dinner tonight he would be doing so as her friend and nothing more. She should have known.

  She did know, he refuted himself. Her cryptic response to him in the pharmacy had nothing to do with where he was coming from or what he was going through.

  It had to do with what she was going through. He wasn’t sure how or why, but it had to do with her.

  ***

  HE ARRIVED AT HER ADDRESS at a little past six. He’d left his house in plenty of time, stopped in the front yard to cut a few late-blooming roses from the front hedge for her, and driven over to Spring Street. The house bearing her number wasn’t clearly marked, though, and he’d driven past it twice before he spotted the faded, paint-flecked numbers fastened to the shingles above the front door.

  It was a squat charcoal-gray building, much too small to contain apartments. Yet there were two mailboxes beside the door, and two doorbells. He parked on the unpaved shoulder, got out, walked up the overgrown path to the porch and rang the bell with “Ballard” printed beneath it.

  In less than a minute Shelley opened the door to him. She was dressed in a simple white dress that set off her summer tan, and white leather flats. Her smile at seeing Kip was so sincere he all but forgot about the unresolved tension that had stretched between them that afternoon.

  “Hi,” he said, extending the roses. “These are for you.”

  “Oh, Kip—they’re beautiful!” She took them carefully to avoid pricking herself on the thorns, and dipped her nose to the blossoms to inhale their fragrance. “Come on in,” she said. “I’ve got to put them in some water.”

  He entered and followed Shelley up a narrow flight of stairs. Her apartment occupied the entire second floor, but given how small the house was, her home was microscopic. She’d done the best she could to decorate the living room, though, adorning the window with feathery lace curtains, hanging bright landscape prints on the dreary dun-colored walls, arranging what furniture she had to look cozy rather than crowded.

  She exited into the kitchen. Through the doorway Kip saw her pull a glass vase from a shelf, fill it with water and place the roses in it. She carried the vase back into the living room and set the bowl on the scratched coffee table in front of the loveseat. “There,” she said brightly. “They really liven up the room, don’t they.”

  “I’m not sure how long they’ll last,” he warned. “It’s the end of the season.”

  She fussed with one of the flowers. “However long they last, I’ll enjoy them. Thank you, Kip.”

  Her gratitude seemed a bit profuse for a few cut flowers. It dawned on Kip that maybe this was her way of apologizing for having acted suspiciously toward him earlier—just as, perhaps, bringing the flowers had been his way of apologizing for whatever he’d done to piss her off.

  He wasn’t used to playing games with her, trying to outguess her or read her mind. He and Shelley had always been frank with each other in the past. “Are we okay?” he asked, shoving his hands in his pockets and eyeing her dubiously.

  She lifted her eyes from the roses and bravely met his gaze. “We’re fine,” she declared in a hushed but definitive voice.

  “I said something wrong this afternoon,” he insisted.

  “And I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

  He laughed uncertainly. “The trouble is, I don’t know what I said that was wrong.”

  She offered a crooked smile. “I’ll answer any question you want, Kip, but maybe we should head for the restaurant first.”

  He nodded, handed her the white envelope purse that was lying on the end table beside him, and ushered her out of the gloomy little apartment. “Any question, huh,” he murmured as they descended the stairs to the front door.

  “Within reason.”

  “Like...how come a single professional woman lives in such a tiny place?”

  “Because she’s trying to save money,” Shelley answered without hesitation. “Because she’s paying off loans and trying to save up to buy a house, and because from June through August even that tiny place has an astronomical rent. On September first it dropped fifty percent, but during peak season my landlady can get top dollar for that hell hole.”

  “It isn’t a hell hole,” Kip argued, suddenly ashamed of himself for having denigrated it. “It’s just small.”

  “It’s ridiculous. I can’t even open the bedroom closet door all the way. My bed blocks it.”

  He helped her into the Saab, closed her door and climbed in behind the wheel. “I made reservations at Winfield’s,” he told her, and smiled when she nodded her approval. He started the engine and cruised down
the road before asking, “Are you still in debt from your father?”

  He almost expected her to retract her offer to answer any question he asked, but she didn’t. She shot him a cryptic look, then faced forward, directing her gaze at the windshield. “No. Not directly,” she said. “It’s a college loan. I went to the University of Texas, which wasn’t too expensive since I was a state resident at the time. But it still cost real money.”

  “Were you able to get any scholarship aid?”

  She issued a bitter laugh. “I probably would have qualified for some, but I couldn’t bring myself to fill out forms that asked how come your parents couldn’t pay your schooling costs. I couldn’t bring myself to write, `My father’s in jail and my step-father’s a jerk.’ So I took out loans and flipped hamburgers and pieced an education together as best I could.”

  She fidgeted with her purse. “I won’t ask anymore,” he promised.

  “I don’t mind talking about it,” she said. “But if you mind listening—”

  “No.” That wasn’t quite true, he admitted silently. He did mind hearing the corrosive undertone in her voice when she talked about her father. He did mind thinking about what the demolition of her family cost her, not so much in money as in spirit.

  By the time they reached the restaurant, she seemed more relaxed. The hostess led them to a table with a view of the setting sun. They occupied themselves with the business of ordering, and when Kip finally found himself able to concentrate solely on Shelley she appeared mellow.

  “My mother says hello,” he told her.

  “Oh?”

  “I phoned her this afternoon. I told her you were on the island. She was happy—for me even more than for you.”

  “She’s worried about you, isn’t she,” Shelley guessed.

  “Yes.” He paused when the waiter arrived with the Bordeaux they’d ordered. After Kip tasted the wine, the waiter filled their glasses and vanished. “I think,” Kip said as he lifted his glass and examined the ruby wine in the dusk light pouring in through the window, “my mother believes you’re going to cure me.”