FOR DONNA
Special thanks to Bill Eidson, Sr., Catherine Eidson, Frank Robinson, Richard Parks, Nancy Childs, and Shelah Feiss for their help with this book. And to my family and friends for the wonderful way they helped me celebrate the first.
1
We were standing at the Fort Adams dock in Newport, Rhode Island, waiting for the launch out to my boat. The lights of the Newport Bridge formed an arc like a cold white rainbow to my left and the sea breeze upon my face was soft and refreshing. All of it should have been very pleasant. Would have been pleasant if I was not about a half hour away from cheating on my wife, Ellen, for the first time in our ten years of marriage.
Ellen was not the kind of woman men would typically think of cheating on. She was the kind you see in a photograph, and think, My God, if only she were mine. Since she was a fashion model, this was an experience I had often enjoyed.
And perhaps I had been foolish enough to let that image be the basis for my love.
* * *
I had indulged in a bit too much scotch, and that was my excuse, I suppose, for being there on the dock with my arm around Rachel’s waist. I did not love her. But I certainly liked her, and she was undoubtedly beautiful. She was an account executive at my advertising agency, and the impropriety of sleeping with an employee was also ringing alarm bells in my head. This is not right, was what I thought. What I said was, “We should have brought some wine.”
She laughed. “Don’t blame me. This isn’t some client excursion. You’re responsible for the liquor and entertainment on this cruise.”
I was too keyed up to chatter, so I looked for the shape of my white sloop, the Spindrift, in the dark.
“What’s with the oars, anyhow?”
“The dinghy,” I said shortly. “Outboard was quirky last week.”
Rachel took them from me and leaned them against the handrail for the ramp. She put her arms around my neck and touched her nose to mine. As I kissed her, I made comparisons … the taste of her mouth was different from my wife’s, the shape of her lips. Her scent was of baby powder, Ellen’s perfume. A bit of me watched from a distance; watched me make the comparisons and judged me none too favorably.
Rachel and Ellen were about the same age, early thirties, but were otherwise as different as possible. Rachel was blond, fair- skinned. A tall woman, well-proportioned, athletic. She knew how to laugh, and she could tell a joke well. I loved to watch her in presentations, and so did the clients, both male and female. She was one of those extremely competent people who seem to do everything with a certain grace, from outlining a multimillion-dollar media plan on the chalkboard to brushing a tendril of hair away from her eyes.
Ellen, on the other hand, was a dark beauty. Tall, with a great sense of style, her clothing loose and yet sophisticated. Her sense of humor was razor-sharp, with much more of an edge than Rachel’s. She had a quirky ability to pull random ideas together. If her underlying bitterness made her difficult, it made her interesting to me also. It gave her that much-vaunted air of mystery.
I heard footsteps on the ramp. A man’s hand brushed down the rail and the oars started to fall. I let go of Rachel and caught one, but the other clattered on the deck.
The young man who had knocked the oar down bent quickly and handed it to me. “Sorry,” he said, grinning. “Looks like I arrived at just the wrong moment.”
I frowned back. His grin faltered, and I realized I was being churlish—he had no way of knowing Rachel and I were having an affair. He turned toward the parking lot and glanced at his watch, which appeared to be a Rolex. “The launch should be here any minute, right?”
“That’s right,” Rachel said.
He was blond, fresh-looking, and handsome. He had a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. I had the impression I should know him. With unpleasant clarity, I saw how I was setting myself up for a divorce. I could not place this young man, I probably didn’t know him, but the mere fact he was seeing me with Rachel, this way, made it real that I was cheating on Ellen. The launch pilot would most likely recognize me, and if he was on tomorrow, he would see my wife joining me on the boat too. I was making myself beholden to all of these people, trusting them to keep my secrets.
I walked away from Rachel and the young man. She started to follow, then stopped and turned around. After a moment, I heard her starting up a conversation with him. I was grateful for her tact, and found myself thinking she deserved better than an affair with a married man—that when I asked her to join me, I was only thinking of myself.
Two hours ago, my partner, Nick, and Rachel and I were in the Ritz Carlton bar in Boston celebrating the kickoff of a new campaign with Carl Tattinger, the ad manager from Textrel. I had excused myself, saying I planned to call Ellen and have her meet me at the boat. Her answer was terse: “Not tonight. I’ll be there by noon tomorrow, if at all.” She sounded bored, sullen. The lump of anger between us had been festering for close to a year, for reasons that I had been frustratingly unable to nail down. When I hung up, I thought, Have I ever loved her?
When I returned to the bar, I found my year-long flirt with Rachel becoming real, or so it seemed. Nick asked me if I would be meeting Ellen, and I said, “Who knows?” in a tone made a bit too truthful by alcohol. There was an awkward silence. Nick made the mistake of filling it by telling me I should not drive all that way after the few drinks I’d had. With false cheeriness, I said, “Right, Granddad. I can still make the ten-o’clock launch.”
Our eyes had locked. He let me know he was not too happy about being left in the politician role with Tattinger, and I let him know I was not too happy about his putting me on the spot in front of a client. Tattinger made a comment about how if Rachel and I were killed in a car crash, the deal was off. Nick’s eyes still glinted, but he laughed along heartily enough. I knew I would hear about it come Monday. I offered Rachel a ride home and made a fast exit. Outside her condo on Beacon Street ten minutes later, Rachel agreed to sleep with me aboard the Spindrift.
She interrupted my thoughts by stepping in front of me and giving me a soft, quick kiss on the lips. I was conscious of the young man standing only a few steps away, of being watched. “I’m sorry about the shabby aspects of this,” I said. “Hustling you off to the rental car agency in the morning, and all.”
She put her hand on my chest and started to say something, then looked over my shoulder, her expression curious.
I turned toward the parking lot, and saw a man coming down the ramp. I glanced over at the young man with us on the dock. His face was white, and he crossed his arms over his chest.
I looked back at the other man. He was big, bigger than me. I’m six feet tall, and weigh just under one-eighty. A little of it is flab, but not much. From what I could see in the poor light he was a good twenty pounds heavier, and none of it was soft. He was wearing a green Lacoste shirt, and “wiry” would be the adjective I would have used for him if he had not been two inches taller than me. His close-cropped hair was kinky and dark. He looked to be in his mid-thirties. His teeth gleamed. “How’s it going,” he said genially to me and Rachel. He had the trace of a southern accent. “You’ll excuse me and my friend for a moment.” He jerked his head up toward the parking lot. “Come on up, Cory. We need to talk.”
Cory shook his head. It seemed to me he was affecting nonchalance. “Can’t. Waiting for the boat.”
The man lowered his eyes and glanced away, mugging an expression of dismay, of embarrassment. “Now Cory, we don’t want to discuss our business in public, do we?”
I looked out over the water. I could see the red and green of the bow lights of a small boat headed our way. Rachel followed my glance and met my eyes. “Getting tense over there?” she said.
“It looks like the launch to the rescue,” I said quietly. “You think we could get a boat to the Jacobsen presentation next week?”
She laughed.
Green Shirt looked our way suddenly, and I automatically met his eyes. In the instant they locked, I felt sympathetic to the young man. Green Shirt was no lightweight, and he was ready to find insult where none was intended.
I glanced at the boy. He wasn’t really a kid, he was at least in his mid-twenties, but he had an open appearance that made him look younger. He looked frightened, but was trying not to show it. “Leave us alone,” he said to the man. “We’re waiting for the launch. I’ll call tomorrow and explain what’s going on.”
I stiffened at the “us.”
The older man turned to look at me and Rachel and widened his eyes. “Are you three together? Am I bothering you?”
I wished for sobriety now. Something was starting, something I recognized back from my days as a street kid in San Francisco.
“Huh?” he said. “Am I bothering you?”
I met his eyes, but did not answer. “Oh shit,” Rachel said under her breath.
“What’s that?” He cupped his hand over his ear.
She turned her back to him and me and looked out at the approaching launch. I did not get the impression that he noticed the boat.
He stepped down from the ramp onto the dock. He looked at Rachel’s back, and made a face at me, pursing his lips as if he had just sucked on a lemon. “Frosty.”
I said, “Why don’t you go up to the car, Rachel.”
“You stay right there, lady.”
The young man moved toward the edge of the dock, slipped off the duffel bag, and reached inside. He said, “Come on, Cra—”
Green Shirt hit him with a backhand so fast I could barely see the blur. He swung a hook into the young man’s stomach hard enough to lift him right off the dock. I hesitated a half-second, then moved quickly, feeling that my balance was good as I put my left foot behind my right, lining up for a kick to his thigh that I figured would knock him into the water. But he spun around outside me and buried his fist over my kidneys. It put me right down. I lost my dinner instantly. Soft, I thought. Drunk and soft.
“Disgusting,” the man’s voice said. I tried to stand, and he kicked me in the chest, knocking the breath out of me. I fell back against the ramp. “Stay there, hero. I’ll be right back to find out why you’re so brave.”
Rachel came up behind him and tried to push him off the dock. He gave her a short vicious jab with his elbow, then locked his heel behind hers and shoved. She fell to the deck heavily, her blue eyes wide.
“Stay down,” I croaked.
Green Shirt went over to the young man and hit him across the face with his forearm. It put the kid on the deck again. Green Shirt kicked him in the groin. “Now then, Cory, you pretty boy, your education is just about to start.”
“Don’t.” The young man rolled quickly for the duffel bag, reached in, and came out with a small handgun, little more than a derringer. The older man did not hesitate for an instant; he kicked the boy’s hand as if it were a football set up for a field goal. The gun splashed into the water.
“Cute,” Green Shirt said. He grabbed the bag, rummaged through it disgustedly, then threw it into the water too. “Now about that education—did they teach you this kind of stress at Thorton? I bet they didn’t.” He bent down and grasped the young man’s right hand.
“No!” The young man tried to scramble away on his back.
Green Shirt took the young man’s forefinger and snapped it to the side. The young man shrieked and curled into a ball. Green Shirt grinned over at me. “Like that?” He turned his attention back to the young man, grabbed him by the hair, and slapped him across the face. “No, no. No fainting, you fuck-up, you pussy. You’ve got some explaining to do.”
“Help him,” Rachel said.
“Be quiet.” I worked on getting in a full breath.
The launch was drawing closer. The pilot was standing up, looking at the scene. It was a woman, alone in the boat. “What’s going on over there?” she yelled.
“Help us!” Rachel cried. “Call the police!”
“Shit!” Green Shirt turned toward the launch. “Get the hell out of here, lady, unless you want some of this!”
I rolled up onto my feet and grabbed one of the oars leaning against the rail and swung with all my might. Green Shirt apparently heard me, and twisted inside of it, so that the blow had less power when it landed against his heavy biceps. He snapped off a quick right punch toward my face, and I ducked. The blow rocked me, but hitting my forehead apparently did him more damage, because he swore and grasped his right hand. I shoved the oar in his face as if it were a rifle butt. I was vaguely aware that Rachel was yelling something as I hit him again, this time in the side. He staggered back and swept his arm down to make an effective block as I pivoted the oar to his groin. I feinted to his left shoulder, and when he rolled it forward, I snapped off a hard blow to his head, then shoved him into the water with the blade of the oar.
Rachel pushed me toward the eastern edge of the dock, and that’s when I realized the woman in the launch had brought the boat up. “Come on,” Rachel urged. “Come on, Riley!” She and I grabbed the young man by the arms and dragged him into the launch.
The launch pilot apparently recognized him suddenly, and said, “Cory, is that you? Are you hurt?”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” he said, cradling his hand. “Move this tub, Linda.”
“Riley!” Rachel cried, turning. Green Shirt was pressing himself up onto the dock with apparent ease. His eyes met mine, and he grinned suddenly, with bloody teeth. I was chilled with my handiwork; all his attention was now focused upon me. He swung a leg over the side of the dock, and I leaned over the launch pilot and slammed the throttle down. She swore and twisted the wheel around. I grabbed the oar again and turned. Sure enough, he was already halfway to us, ready to jump into the boat. I shoved the blade at his face just as the stern of the launch banged against the dock. It worked to the extent that he was too off-balance to jump. But he parried the oar away with his arm, then yanked it out of my hands. In a quick fluid motion, he drew it back and threw it like a spear. I ducked. The oar splintered the cockpit coaming behind me.
“I’ll remember your face, hero,” he called, just loud enough for us to hear over the engine noise.
2
The pilot thought we were responsible for getting Cory hurt. “His hand—something’s broken. Cory, are you all right?” She was young, dark-haired, and very angry. I’m sure the smell of alcohol on me didn’t help. To me, she said, “What happened back there?”
Looking back at the dock, I saw Green Shirt was striding up the ramp. “You did the right thing to pick us up.”
“Of course I’d pick up Cory. Who are you? What did you do—start some idiot brawl, and he had to pay for it?”
She cut the throttle and went to the stern to bend over him, saying, “Let me take a look at your hand.” I took the wheel and shoved the power back on. I flicked off the running lights.
She stormed back. “Get your damn hands off the wheel.” She tried to reach past my arm to the light switch.
I pushed her away gently enough with my forearm. “Look, I want to get out of sight of that guy on the dock. I don’t want him watching the lights of this launch go right to my boat, understand?”
“I don’t need you to crack up the launch. Now move it.”
Rachel was sitting beside the young man. She was apparently feeling his hand gently for the break. I said, “Have you got anything to say about this, Cory?”
He snapped, “Leave him alone, Linda.”
“Maybe we should call the police,” Rachel said.
“No,” he said quickly.
“I don’t want to spend the evening with the police either.” I reached into my coat, took two twenties from my wallet, and offered them to the launch driver. “Here, take the wheel if you want it and take the long route to my boat over there—see it?”
The pilot stared at my money.
“Please. I apologize for the rudeness.”
“I don’t like being bribed.”
“You didn’t have to come up to the dock, with all that was going on.”
She shrugged and put the bills into her anorak. I went back to Cory. Rachel still had his hand in hers. His eyes were closed. His good looks and helpless expression irritated me.
“Let’s talk, Cory,” I said.
He opened his eyes. “Let’s not.”
“Who was that guy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Some pissed-off Georgia boy.”
“Bullshit. He knew your name, you knew him. I want to know if I’m ever going to need to deal with him again.”
“What’s the problem?” He looked at me as if I were very stupid. “You paid your bucks to Linda. He’s not going to be able to tell which boat you get on. And you could probably tell, he’s not the yacht-club type. You won’t be running into each other socially. Just forget it.”
“What’s his name? What ‘business’ did you have?”
“You’re not listening.”
“I’m listening, I just don’t like what I’m hearing. We risk our butts for you, and you decide to be coy.”
His lip curled back. “So what? I didn’t ask for your help.”
I felt the anger bubbling in me, pushing out from my chest into my arms. I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him half up. “Well, you got it. What’s your full name, Cory?”
“Hey!” He pushed back ineffectually with his one good arm.
“Riley, let him go,” Rachel said, her face chalk-white. “Come on, your adrenaline’s pumping, let him go.”
“Cut it out,” the girl said, with a frightened edge to her tone. “I’ll call the cops, so help me.”
I saw it from her point of view: I was possibly drunk, and to her mind, violent. And she weighed about 110 pounds and thought she had to maintain order.
I let go. He fell back onto the seat.
“That’s it, I want you off,” she said. “We’re going to your boat.”
“Take the long route.”
She threw the crumpled twenties back at me, and they flew over the stern. “I’ve had enough of you.”
Cory went to stand beside her.
I spent the next few minutes straining my eyes toward the parking lot, but it was impossible to make out much detail. I thought Green Shirt was probably gone, but I really had no way of knowing.
Rachel pointed over my shoulder.
I turned, and the Spindrift was there, trim and perfect in her way. I reached for Rachel’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Cory stood in front of me, looking at my boat. I pushed past, anxious to be free of him. He backed off quickly, eyes wide suddenly. He thinks I’m going to hit him, I thought. In spite of myself, I found myself feeling a little sorry for him. I said, “You’d better see a doctor. That’s an ugly break.”
He nodded. “Sure. Thanks.” He gestured with his chin toward the stern of my boat. “That’s yours?”
“Right.”
“The Spindrift. She’s a beauty.”
Rachel and I climbed aboard, and the girl slapped the throttle down. I watched him watch us as the launch motored away.
Rachel said, “When did you learn to fight like that? Better yet, why did you mix into that one?” We were in the main cabin. I had just washed my face, and rinsed the taste of vomit from my mouth.
“First question, in the army.”
She cocked her head slightly. “That’s right. Nick said something about it … what was it? I know, you’re the tough guy in the agency because you were in the Rangers, and he was in the National Guard. The Rangers are one of those special groups, right? Did you go to Vietnam?”
I nodded.
“How did I not know that about a man I’m about to go to bed with?”
“I didn’t know it was a requirement. In any case, your second question, when I told you to go up to the car, he told you to ‘stay right there, lady.’ I figured if he was willing to throw around orders like that, and willing to start beating on this Cory, then he might do the same to us when he got around to it.”
Rachel winced as she took off her blazer. “I thought maybe it was because you were drunk. Because my feeling was that he was a pro, and he would have mopped that Cory up, and then taken him up to the parking lot to continue their ‘business’ in private. That we would have been left alone.”
“Could be. Could be that he would have killed Cory.”
“Maybe you were showing off for me.” She seemed to force a laugh.
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
Her mouth twisted, but she said, lightly enough, “I would hope I have that much to hold against the bruise I’m going to have in the morning.”
I failed to answer, thinking about Cory’s reaction to my boat’s name, and wondered if he was threatening us—pointing out that he knew how to find me and I didn’t know how to find him. If so, it worked to the degree that I excused myself from Rachel to go on deck. I waited up there for about fifteen minutes, waiting for my night vision to return somewhat.
I saw the lights of a car leaving the Fort Adams parking lot. Of course, I had no idea if it was Green Shirt’s or not. It was too far away and the angle was wrong for me to make even a guess at the make of the car. Another left a minute later, and then another. A few more came and went within the next five minutes. Proving only that it was a busy parking lot. I went below.
Rachel was sitting at the navigation station. An open bottle of scotch and an empty ginger ale bottle were sitting on the counter. She raised her drink. “No ice, but don’t worry about me, boss. I’ve been thinking about our theories: drunk or not drunk; showing off, not showing off.”
“And?”
“There may be some truth to each of them, but I don’t think they carry as much weight as the real reason.” Rachel’s face was slightly flushed and her jaw was set. “You’re pissed off. You’re so angry at Ellen that getting in a fight is the best thing you could do. Even better than taking me to bed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, it is. But it’s true. I saw the anger on your face, the release you had in that fight, and afterward in the launch with that boy. This whole ride down, I’ve been chattering to keep up the pretense this was a romance, because I wanted it to be, but I could see you were hardly noticing me personally. I was just your escape, how you were getting back at Ellen.”
I could have told her she was wrong, and almost did. Maybe she would have been happier had I made the effort. As it was, I slept in the bow that night, and she slept in the main cabin bunk. She took the first launch back in the morning, after an awkward breakfast of a shared apple and instant coffee. Luckily, another launch pilot was on duty.
I watched her motor off, as I had watched Cory the night before, and thought that perhaps I had made it through the night unscathed.
Stupid of me, really.
3
I was disappointed when noon came and went without Ellen arriving on the launch. Having told myself that the strange incident on the dock had given my marriage a reprieve, that I had a second chance to set things straight with Ellen.
I did quiet work on the boat, oiling the teak and polishing the chrome, before motoring up to the Fort Adams dock to place a call. My second oar was still there, miraculously, and I put it in the cockpit. I walked slowly up to the phone, looking at the people who were scattered over the lawn, looking for someone with kinky black hair and vengeful eyes. I didn’t seriously expect to see my assailant, but I realized it would probably be some time before I would feel comfortable waiting for the launch at night.
I kept my back against the wall while I dialed the number. She picked up the phone without saying anything, a recent habit I found irritating.
I said, “Are you coming with me or not?”
“I told you I’d be there by noon or not at all.”
I paused, and then said, “Look, Ellen, pretty soon we’re going to go too far, or one of us might.”
“What does that mean? Have you already done that?”
“No. I haven’t.” The truth, but only technically.
She paused, then said in a conciliatory tone, “Go sailing yourself, and I’ll meet you for dinner at the Rhumb Line at seven. How’s that?”
“It’s a start.” I hung up.
Outside the harbor, I set sail, and began an easy series of tacks to the Texas tower about four miles away, just outside the mouth of Narragansett Bay. The modifications I had made to the Spindrift—self-tailing winches, an autopilot, roller reefing on the big genoa, plus a pedestal-mounted boom for a self-tending working jib—were indicative of my changing marriage. More and more, I was sailing alone.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was losing everything I had fought to achieve since I was a teenager.
I had learned to sail while growing up in San Francisco. Jerry Caldwell, one of my mother’s “friends,” took an interest in me, telling her one day that some time on a sailboat in the bay might give me a different perspective from the Tenderloin district. I was recovering from a bad beating I had taken earlier that week from shoving one of her other friends.
I told Jerry to stuff his boat.
My mother had just poured her first glass of wine for the morning. She cracked me across the face and said she was going to be “busy” that afternoon, and she’d just as soon I was out of her hair.
I went.
He was a nice guy, Jerry, and he was remarkable in his willingness to take me out on his little sloop a number of times over the next few summers, long after he had stopped coming around to see my mother. I did gain a different perspective bounding along under sail. But clearly, he did not want to learn what it was like growing up without a father, with a mother who was a hooker. The one time I started to talk with him about it, he cut me short: “I don’t really want to hear about it, Riley. Look, let’s just enjoy the sail. Make your own decisions about what you want in life, then just go get it. Words are a waste of time.”
Over time, I decided he was right. After all, other than his willingness to use prostitutes, this well-ordered man, with his sunburned face and hearty manner, seemed to have a clean, successful life.
So I made my decisions.
I hit the road when I was seventeen and thumbed around the country for a year, until, on my eighteenth birthday, I enlisted in the army. And my plans crystallized in Vietnam, over many nights lying belly down in the mud, the smell of the rotting jungle cloaking me like a blanket: I wanted a wife, children, my own business, with a partner I liked. Things in order. Clean. Money in the bank. No living with an alcoholic mother in a cheap residential hotel, no fighting with hard-eyed pimps who wanted to cut her for drinking her earnings. I would send her checks as long as she was alive, I told myself, but have no other contact. I began implementing that part of the plan late in my tour, and sent her a letter explaining that the checks would be coming automatically, and to expect no more from me.
She took too many pills on top of a bottle of burgundy one night just weeks before my discharge. They sent me home for her funeral. I found the empty check envelopes in her top drawer, tied in a bow, as if they were letters.
I looked around the dingy little room, and found nothing I wanted to keep. Closed the door, and left for Boston University, vowing to forget her and Vietnam. To let go of the constant fear, the fear that made me expect to find explosives tied to everything, from a package of cigarettes on the ground to the bodies of my dead friends. And to let go of the cold anger that had helped me succeed in becoming a Ranger, that helped me when the reconnaissance patrols turned into search-and-destroy missions, when both the M-16 and I were set to automatic. I had learned not to talk of such times with my fellow students—of any times in Vietnam, really. I simply put my head down and worked. I had a lot of catching up to do.
Ellen and I first met in Newport, through Nick. He and I were both in our mid-twenties, and trying to make names for ourselves at Santachi & Bright. Nick was in the creative department, I was an account executive. One day he hauled me in to help tape a radio commercial, saying I had just the right authoritative growl. He was a muscular man with enormous energy and a quick sense of humor. His antics started me laughing, and he was pleased to find I had “natural talent” for radio mimicry. Pronouncing me a man who “has some uses after all” to the rest of the creative staff, he helped me bridge the usual distance between the suits and the creatives.
I was pleased when he invited me to join him in Newport one Saturday for a sail, to take a look at his new boat and meet his latest love, Ellen. I was delighted with his Lightning—a beautiful wooden daysailer with blue-green decks and varnished trim.
However, it was Ellen Carson who held my attention. She had taken off her shorts and halter to reveal a surprisingly supple body within a white bikini. Beyond her obvious beauty, her sexuality was so undeniably strong that I felt cotton-mouthed. From my upbringing, I had no illusions that lust meant love, or so I told myself. But it was as if I contracted a fever from her. I tried to ignore my attraction. After all, she was with Nick. As the day went on, more and more of her attention focused upon me, and I could see the interest in her eyes. “I hope I see you again,” I said at the end of the day.
“You will, I’m sure.”
For the next week, I dreamed of her every night and thought about her all day long. Then she broke it off with Nick, and called me to say she had.
I stopped by his office and told him I intended to ask her out. His smile was rueful. “We weren’t married, and you don’t need my blessing.” He put the tips of his thumbs together and framed me with his two vertical forefingers as if lining up a photo. “You two are a set of bookends. Both complex, moody, pains in the ass. You’ll drive each other insane.”
Ellen and I were married within the year, and Nick was my best man. And he was right, it wasn’t easy. But in the balance, it was a good marriage for a long time. Sexually, we had been almost obsessive about each other, until this year. In other ways we appeared well matched. She was a model and I was in advertising. We liked to do the same things, traveling, sailing, skiing, and reading.
Nick and I became partners right about the time we both turned thirty, and shortly after, Ellen broke off from full-time modeling and took a job as an assistant manager at a small Newbury Street art gallery. I made the presentations, bringing the clients in, managing the accounts. Nick really delivered on the creative side, and we overstepped the profit line on my five-year plan by almost 10 percent. And it was an ambitious plan.
During that time, Nick and I first bought a boat together, a nice little J-24. But it was quickly apparent we needed more room, and more boat. So when Nick married a cheerful woman named Susan, we all agreed it was time to buy our own boats. I moved to a Soveral 30; Nick a Pearson and a dive boat. We spent many a weekend rafted together on the Elizabeth Islands, Martha’s Vineyard, Block Island.
After two years, Susan walked away smiling with a substantial hunk of Nick’s savings. He hunkered closer to us for a time after that, including the Virgin Islands vacation where we first saw the Spindrift, a custom-made forty-two-foot sloop with breathtaking lines that had seen hard service—very hard—as a bareboat charter. Belowdecks was a shambles, but the hull was hand-laid fiberglass and the decks teak. Nick and I flew back three weeks later and sailed her to Boston. We sold off the Soveral and Pearson and worked on the Spindrift evenings and weekends for a season before bringing it down to Newport. Ellen sometimes tried to get him to open up about Susan, but after a time I encouraged her to let it go, figuring his message was clear. As my friend Jerry had said, it’s only what you do that matters, not what you say.
The agency continued to prosper, and he eventually asked me to buy him out of the Spindrift and bought himself another boat, a beautiful Hinckley. It was just as well, for right about then Ellen and I needed more time alone.
Things had started to crumble when Ellen turned thirty and still refused to consider having children. I had been pressing for some time, but she said that she had not achieved any of the things she wanted. Over the past two years, she had started a number of creative activities—acting lessons, pottery, dance. She gave nothing enough time, throwing herself furiously into one project and then into the next, working with joyless determination, and then moving on when she didn’t achieve immediate results. She started taking more modeling assignments. Though never for my agency—that was a separation of church and state we thought best.
The past few months or so had been worse. There was an essential sadness about her that I did not know how to reach. I came home one day to find her crying in our bedroom. She shoved me away when I sat beside her, saying she didn’t want to talk. This time I insisted, and finally she told me, pulling out a copy of New England Monthly to show me an ad she had done for a Providence-based jewelry manufacturer. In it, she was sitting across from a white-haired man, apparently her husband, and she was trying on a necklace as the young waiter poured champagne. The headline read: “Show her, shower her.”
“And?”
She pointed to the husband. He had to be at least fifty. “The client said they wanted somebody ‘who has seen what life has to offer.’ That they weren’t trying to suggest I was some cute little chickee for this man, but his long-term mate, that I deserved the necklace for sticking with him through the lean times.”
I kept my tone light, but I felt more than mildly irritated. “That’s advertising, Ellen. Besides, you’re only thirty-two. That’s not old by anybody’s standard, except maybe a teenager’s.”
“I’m not crying because I’m vain … or maybe I am, I don’t know. It’s just that I look around, at you, this house, the money, the boat, we’ve got it all, but I feel so empty.” She brushed her tears with the back of her hand. “I’m going to be old. I know I’m not yet, but damn it, time is just passing by … and when my looks go, I don’t know what I’m going to have left.”
She was twenty minutes late to the Rhumb Line. I was reaching for my second draft ale. Her entrance caused a discreet commotion, as the men looked her way and automatically smiled, as the women judged her cheekbones and clothing and could not find her wanting. I watched her with a long-absent flush of pleasure. She was wearing the sapphire earrings I had bought her the first year the company turned a profit, pleated pants, and a mannish striped shirt.
She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned down to kiss my cheek, then stopped. “Phew, beer. Well. You certainly got some color today. How was the sail?”
And so it went through most of dinner. Brittle conversation. As the evening passed, I tried to tag exactly where it had gone wrong, when we began playing old tapes from behind mechanical masks. Thinking how I had created circumstances where I couldn’t even tell my wife that the night before I had fought with a man who was possibly a professional leg breaker. She was talking with forced gaiety about a customer at the gallery, and I had a false smile on my face—and then I just could not continue it any longer.
“Ellen, we’ve got to talk about what’s going on.”
She set her wineglass down and looked at the tablecloth. I continued quietly, “I want to reassure you that I love you, and I want you to reassure me.”
“Keep it down.” Two red spots had formed on her cheeks. In a furious whisper, she said, “Where’s it written? I’ve said all I’ve got to say. There’s nothing more.”
“Our marriage isn’t working. Maybe we should see somebody.”
“Who? A shrink? I’m not crazy.” She grabbed her handbag. “I’m sick of you analyzing me, trying to figure me out.”
“I don’t do that. I should do more, for God’s sake.”
Her tone turned self-mocking. “Don’t you understand? What you see is what you get. Is that so bad?”
What is this? I thought. “Ellen, I know I haven’t been the most communicative man, and you’re no picnic in that department either—”
“Let’s go.”
I looked at my watch. “Calm down. We just missed the nine-o’clock launch.”
“I reserved us a room at the Treadway Inn.”
“Why? The plan was to be on the boat together.”
“That’s your plan maybe. Mine is to leave myself room to breathe.”
4
The next morning, we took the launch out to the Spindrift. Our familiar routine took over as I checked the oil, opened the hatches, and flipped on the power to the depth gauge and wind indicator. Ellen packed the lunch into the icebox and put the cushions into the cockpit. “You oiled the teak,” she said. “It looks good.”
I went along with her attempt to return to at least a surface kind of balance, not just because I didn’t want to argue any longer, but because I was feeling more and more hypocritical. I wasn’t going to tell her about my near-affair with Rachel, so what right did I have to insist that Ellen be honest about whatever was bothering her lately?
I kissed her cheek. “Let’s go sailing. The breeze is up.”
“Let’s.” She kissed me back on the lips. “And let’s be friends again, okay?”
I pushed the starter button. Black smoke chugged from the stern, and I waited until the engine settled into a dull roar before giving her the word to drop the mooring. I slipped into reverse, and the engine pitch changed suddenly.
There was a thump under the waterline, and the gearshift shuddered under my hand. I slipped the engine into neutral. “Did we clear the mooring?”
“Sure did.” She pointed over the starboard bow as the orange float bobbed into my view. Ellen slid the aluminum boat hook open like a telescope to its full twelve-foot length and leaned over the side to catch the marker. “Damn it!”
She had dropped the pole. It floated alongside the boat, out of easy reach. Her face reddened. “Damn it! I can’t do anything right anymore.”
“Take it easy,” I said, and used the dinghy oar to push the hook end of the pole deep into the water so that the handle stood in the air at right angles. When I slipped the oar blade off the hook, the buoyant pole shot into the air, and I caught it and leaned out as far as I could for the float.
“Joe Cool,” she said.
I missed the float by a couple of feet. “Looks like I can’t do anything right, either. We caught something, but we’re still drifting.” I went back to the stern and leaned over. I couldn’t see a mooring line, or lobster pot float. The wind was snapping the burgee overhead, and we were slipping past the stern of an unoccupied white ketch. Below us was a low gray racer with a thick mooring cable. I didn’t want to drift on top of that with whatever was fouling my prop. I hurried back to the bow with the boat hook and snagged a stern cleat on the ketch. I pulled us close and Ellen attached a short bow line. The Spindrift swung into the wind, more slowly than usual, I noticed.
I lifted the hatch to the engine compartment to make sure the shaft wasn’t showing any damage, and that there was no major leakage around the stuffbox. None. I slapped the hatch back down.
Ellen took the bag of snorkeling gear from the cockpit locker while I stepped below quickly and pulled on my bathing suit. Back on deck, I slipped on the fins, put on the mask, and took a few breaths out of the snorkel, while Ellen unsnapped the stanchion lines. She looped a line around the starboard winch and handed me the free end to take down in case I needed to haul off a stuck mooring buoy. She strapped my dive knife sheath onto my right calf, and leaned over to kiss me on the forehead. “My hero,” she said, her smile genuine.
I swung over the side.
The harbor water was none too clean. I lay on the surface and peered under the Spindrift. Visibility was only about six feet, less in the shadow of the hull. There was a dark mass underneath the prop. It was bunched up against the prop. There was a faint patch of yellow. It was huge, whatever it was. I took a deep breath, jackknifed under the boat, and moved upside down along the hull. The thing began to take shape. It looked like a cloth, a bundle of cloth, until the Spindrift rolled slightly in the wake of a passing boat.
Then my body recognized it before my head could accept it, and I was scrambling up the hull back to the surface. I took some water down my throat on the way, and my mask was skewed half off before I hit the surface.
“What is it, Riley?” Ellen’s voice was alarmed. “Riley, what’s the matter? What is it?”
“Wait,” I said, coughing water.
“Riley!”
“Wait.” I had to think. It was the boy. It was Cory. And the rope around his chest was what was fouling my prop.
5
I needed to know more.
“Riley, answer me!”
I readjusted the mask and dove back under the boat.
It was him, all right. I hugged the rudder to keep from having to touch him, but nevertheless his knee brushed mine. I think it was the Rolex on his wrist and the blond hair that let me identify him in an instant. Because otherwise, this thing hardly looked like the handsome boy who had been on the dock the night before last. His skin was unnaturally white in the gloom under the boat. The fish had been at his eyes.
I went up for air to find Ellen above me. “What’s wrong? What’s under there?”
I dove back down. He was stuck against the rudder and keel on the starboard side, facing outward. His hair waved over his sightless eyes, each strand seemingly distinct. Something silvery glinted in his wide-open mouth. I kicked over to the port side and looked at the prop. Heavy line was tangled in the blades and around the shaft. Lines were tied to him in two places: one around his chest, the other to two cinder blocks around his ankles. The line around his chest had fouled the propeller and when I followed it up, I saw the bitter end was tied to the swim ladder on the stern of my boat. So when I backed the Spindrift down, she had gone over him, then the line caught in the prop.
I stared at the knot on the swim ladder. It was a bowline, a knot that someone had carefully tied.
Someone—I assumed the guy who had beat him that Friday night—had killed him and tied him to my boat as a message to me for interfering.
I swam back to the surface to explain it to Ellen.
I asked her to get me a towel.
She crossed her arms. She sounded more frightened than demanding when she said, “What’s under there?”
“Please, honey, get me the towel.”
Her lips compressed, but she hurried below and came back with a coarse blue towel and tossed it to me. I wiped my face and hair, and wished I could just keep my head in those blue folds and never tell her the truth. Finally, I put it across my lap and said, “It’s a body, Ellen. There’s a young man’s body down there.”
Her hand flew to her mouth, and she looked down at the cockpit sole reflexively. “Oh, how awful! We didn’t—we couldn’t have hit anyone—I was looking—”
I put my hand on her arm. “No, it wasn’t a swimmer, nothing like that. I’d say he’s been dead for a while. A day, last night maybe.”
She took my hand in hers. “How can you be sure?”
“I can’t. That’ll be up to the police. But I’ve got to explain something to you first.”
She sat down and seemed to shrink into herself. Her expression became wary.
I took a deep breath. From here, I thought, she and I will never have a chance to get it back the way it was. “Ellen, I know this man. I’ve seen him once before, this Friday night, in fact.”
She drew back slightly. “You knew him? Who?”
“Nobody you know. But I helped him out of a bad spot, a fight, on Friday night.”
She shook her head, half smiling, apparently deciding this was some bad joke on my part. She said, “Riley, come on. You weren’t in a fight. You didn’t say anything, not last night or this morning.”
My mouth tasted coppery. “I know. That’s because I had something to hide.” I told her about the guy with the green shirt. About him breaking the boy’s finger. About Rachel.
She hugged her knees up to her chest. Goose bumps formed on her arms and legs in spite of the heat. When I was finished, she said, in a remote voice, “Was she a good fuck, Riley?”
“She’s got nothing to do with this. We were just there.”
“Tell it to the boy down there. Maybe if you had gone to the police he’d still be alive.”
“He didn’t want to go to them either. It was his fight. He was obviously mixed up in something. Gambling, drugs maybe.”
“And now we are too.”
“Yes.”
She said with soft intensity, “I hope she was good, Riley.”
“I told you we didn’t have sex.”
She laughed, a short pained bark. “You poor bastard,” she said. “It wasn’t even worth it.”
The harbormaster was the first to arrive, and after hearing my quick explanation, he called the fire department for a rescue team, and then stripped to his shorts and went over the side with mask and fins. When he came back up, he climbed into his boat and said, “No sense rushing around. He’s been under there at least the night.” Ellen paled and went below.
His radio squawked, and he climbed back into his boat and answered it. As the fire department rescue team arrived, he yelled to them, “He’s dead, no doubt about it. Borenson’s at the dock now. If I know him, he’s going to want me to photograph the body just as it is. Stick it out here while I go get him.”
We waited. The fire department boat was about thirty feet long, with swirling lights. It puttered fifty feet ahead and maintained its distance. Other boats began to mill near us, attracted like moths by the lights. By the time the harbormaster returned with the police, two windsurfers were tacking between the fire department boat and the bow of the white ketch.