Blue Moon (6 page)

Jimmy had wondered whether Doc was a magic man. His stories had put a spell on Jimmy, made him itch to go to sea—itch so bad he’d toss all night with his skin burning. All because Doc had conjured for Jimmy the pure beauty of a ship on the sea and the peace of endless distance. Because of Doc, Jimmy joined the merchant marine.

When Jimmy Keating had told his parents he’d be leaving them for a few years, his mother had cried. But his father, Eddie, could understand Doc’s power. Once, lobstering in January, Eddie had gotten frostbite in his fingers. By the time he’d made port, four of them were turning black, and he’d been sure he would lose them. But Doc had made him soak them in cold salt water, then salt water he’d heated in the kettle, then cold water again, until finally Eddie’s fingers turned white. They’d never really gotten back to being normal finger-colored, but at least he hadn’t lost them. And so Eddie had staked Doc some money to open an icehouse.

Now Doc’s pier was tumbledown, a ramshackle mass of splinters and concrete. It was the last abandoned pier on Mount Hope’s waterfront. Wind whistled through, and it sounded like a person talking. Jimmy would stand there, all alone. He could almost hear Doc’s voice; it was the only place on land he could go to achieve the peace of an empty horizon.

“You and Beverly ever think of moving to Florida?” Jimmy asked.

“Never,” George said. “Who needs swamps and funny red fish? Besides, we’d miss the winters up here.”

“Right,” Jimmy snorted.

“Seriously, Bev is a Christmas freak. She’d never leave New England. She’d miss the snow and the fireplace, all that cozy shit. She’d miss the kids.”

“Same with Mary. Mary could never leave the girls.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Jimmy said. “But we’ve got the business.”

“The girls could run it, but you want to keep your hand in.”

“That’s right,” Jimmy said. He thought he’d spied a fin up ahead, but it was just a rogue wave. A few puffy clouds were forming in the north.

They cruised along in silence, taking it easy. Sure felt good to be on the water, Jimmy thought for about the fifth time since they’d left the dock. “Sure feels …” he started to say.

“What?” George asked.

But Jimmy didn’t answer. All of a sudden he realized that he was trying to trick himself into having a good time: the summer day, the beers, the boat. But anytime lately he wasn’t actively trying to rip the head off some insurance guy, or juggle the ledgers, robbing Peter to pay Paul, he worried that he’d return to Mount Hope and find that the whole dock had washed away. Everything out to sea: his father’s fish business, the restaurant, his wife and daughters, his mother, everything. Keating’s Wharf would be as abandoned as Doc Breton’s.

Jimmy Keating squinted at the horizon with extraordinary concentration. He refused to look down. He had the weirdest feeling that if he looked straight down into the water below, he would see his lobster tanks and his father’s oak desk floating by.

“I’m thinking about selling my boat,” George said.

“This one?” Jimmy asked, surprised. George had been saving for this sportfisher his whole working life; he’d just taken delivery in March.

“No, the
Rover Mar.”

Keating wondered whether George was feeling him out. Did Keating have any use for a seventy-five-foot Desco with a six-cylinder Gardner diesel? Frankly, he had always thought the boat more suitable for southern waters.

“Billy’s been talking to me. He’s looking to buy,” George said.

“Holy shit. Our Billy?” Jimmy asked, bowled over.

“Yeah. But it’s just talk,” George said. “You know how young guys are. They’re always dreaming about going off on their own.”

“Billy works for me,” Jimmy said, cut by the news.

Jimmy had known Billy since he was five years old and used to play with Cass after school. Billy had followed Cass around starry-eyed for years. They seemed polar opposites: Cass, fair and slender; Billy, dark and stocky. Mary used to call them “the batteries,” the charge between them was so obvious. Sometimes Jimmy would watch Billy drive Cass away in his Camaro, and he would wonder how it felt to fall in love. Jimmy knew love, he knew devotion. But when he watched Billy and Cass, he knew that he had missed something in life.

Jimmy had three terrific daughters. He hated to categorize them, but he couldn’t help it. Nora, his eldest, was Miss Independence, with a temper if you crossed her; Jimmy had given up hoping she’d get married. Bonnie rolled with the flow. Her life with Gavin and their kids seemed to make her happy. Keating wouldn’t give two cents for Gavin’s fishing talent, but he was a decent son-in-law. What more did he have a right to expect?

When Cass was little, Jimmy would have called her his most carefree daughter, his tomboy. Back then he would never have believed her to be the most complicated. He pictured Cass’s life in a fast-forward blur: the braces she’d hated so much she took them off herself instead of waiting for the orthodontist (one thousand dollars down the drain); the summer she’d swum one hundred miles for charity; her eighth-grade dance with Billy, of course, the last time she ever got home before curfew; sneaking out to be with Billy; the punishments he and Mary meted out; more sneaking out; Jimmy threatening to send her to a convent; her suspension from school for stealing a marijuana cigarette during Drug Awareness Day; Billy’s mother calling every night to ask if the Keatings had seen her son; Cass’s graduation, thank God; six months at the University of Maine; the day she came to work for Jimmy; her wedding day; having the kids. Cass, his spark plug.

Except for the six months at Maine, Cass and Billy had been inseparable; she had quit Maine because she missed him. They’d gone through a phase of dating other people, but in truth Billy had courted Cass her whole life. It had amazed Jimmy when they’d settled down, knocked off the craziness. They had three beautiful kids. Josie had a problem, Jimmy knew. It broke his heart, the way
she tried so hard to get her mouth around sounds that came automatically to everyone else. But it hurt him worse to see how it affected Cass. She hardly ever left Josie’s side; she was like an interpreter assigned to a foreign princess.

“I hope to hell Billy’s not having a midlife crisis or something,” Jimmy said. “Buying a new boat is a major step.”

“Look, I shouldn’t have said anything,” George said. “It’s just talk. The kid has big dreams.”

“Hell, that’s nothing new. He married my daughter, didn’t he?”

After four nights of noticing this guy come in alone and drink his Scotch at the bar instead of outside on the terrace, where the single girls hung around, Nora Keating knew he was watching her. His eyes would follow her until she looked him dead on, and then he would smile. At first her suspicious side took over. Maybe he was in the restaurant business. Maybe he planned to open a place across the bay or on one of the islands and he wanted to figure out Lobsterville’s formula for success.

But on Thursday, when she finally said hello to him, his expression turned so happy and open, Nora felt herself blush. He looked about forty-five, taller than six feet, blond, with sensitive blue eyes. Very sensitive. He looked like someone whose feelings got hurt easily. She’d noticed the first night he came in that he didn’t wear a wedding ring and his finger didn’t have a telltale indentation or white ring line.

“Hello,” Nora said, passing by.

“Hello,” the man said, and he gave her such a wonderful, open smile, she had to look twice. Nora couldn’t be sure, but she thought he had a southern accent.

She told the Conways, sitting on barstools, that their regular table was ready. Abe Conway struggled to his feet, then stood by for Eileen. He held his arms tense, waiting to catch her, like a fireman holding a safety net under the window of a burning house. Nora wished her mother would tell them they were too old to sit on barstools. Mary could crack a joke about it, and no one would get upset. All it would take was one fall for Eileen to break her hip
and wind up in a nursing home. Not to mention the potential for a lawsuit against the restaurant. Never mind that the Conways were her grandmother’s oldest friends; when medical bills started pouring in, people changed their friendly tunes fast.

Leading the Conways through the crowd, Nora did something she had never before allowed herself to do and would have fired any Lobsterville employee for doing: instead of walking the Conways to their table, she stopped short beside the bar and told them to go on ahead. “You know the way,” she said to Abe. “You don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not. Thanks, darling,” Abe said, palming her five dollars, as usual. Nora slipped the bill into the pocket of her tight black skirt. She did a U-turn and walked back to the blond man.

“Will you be having dinner with us tonight?” she asked.

“’Us’?” the man said, giving her a flirtatious grin.

“Here at the restaurant,” Nora said, deadpan. You can’t judge a book by its cover, she thought: he looks nice, but he’s just another wise guy.

“Because what I was thinking was, maybe if you haven’t had your dinner, we could have it together,” the man said with a definite southern accent.

“I’m working,” Nora said.

“Oh, I figured that,” the man said. “Four nights now I’ve come in here after a long day of meetings and seen you running your head off, and I’ve thought, that lady needs to sit down.”

“Wish I could,” Nora said, but she didn’t smile. She never minded acting friendly toward the customers; she considered it part of her job. But something about this one put her on guard. At the same time, she wished that she’d worn sheerer pantyhose and that she hadn’t canceled her facial last Saturday. “Do you have business in town?” she asked.

“In Providence,” he said. “But I decided to stay down here. I wanted to see a little of the New England coastline. Sure is beautiful.”

“Isn’t it?” Nora said. She reached into the pocket of her white linen blazer for a cigarette. He took a pack of Lobsterville matches from an ashtray on the bar and lit it for her.

“Since you let me light your cigarette, you have to tell me your name.”

“Nora Keating,” she said, exhaling.

“I’m Willis Randecker,” he said.

“And where is Willis Randecker from?”

“From Savannah, Georgia,” he replied.

“A long way from home,” Nora said. Sometimes, talking to handsome men, she came out with phrases that sounded like song lyrics. She recognized this, and it embarrassed her. But Nora had a sexy voice, as throaty as Mary’s had been before she’d scorched the sex appeal out of it with too many Lucky Strikes, and Nora knew she made the phrases sound inviting and suggestive.

“Look, Nora,” Willis said. “I don’t want to be too forward, but you should really consider quitting. I was a smoker myself for many years, and it took a heart attack before I wised up. I shouldn’t even have lit it for you, but I’m not the type of guy who lets a lady light her own cigarette.”

He’d made her feel self-conscious, but she wasn’t about to let him know. She held the cigarette in the air between them, at about shoulder height. Her hands were her best feature. She thought that a cigarette between her fingers emphasized their length and elegance. Sometimes she stared at her hands because she thought they were beautiful; she knew it was vain, but they reminded her of the kind of hands Lauren Bacall must have. Nora’s hands were the only part of her body she liked.

And then Willis did the strangest thing: he took the cigarette right out of Nora’s hand and stubbed it out in the ashtray. Nora couldn’t look at him. She knew she should be mad, but she wasn’t. If she looked at him, she might start to cry.

“Gosh, I shouldn’t have done that. I know how rude I must seem. Something came over me, that’s all I can say.” Willis was shaking his head, wiping his brow. Still, Nora didn’t speak. She felt as if every hair on her body were standing on end. She glanced at her wrist, but all her wrist hairs were lying down.

“Nora?” Willis said nervously.

“When did you have your heart attack?” Nora asked. She could feel the blood pulsing at her temples.

“Two years ago last December fourteenth,” Willis said. “I smoked three packs a day, I ate bacon and eggs every morning. Used to put salt on my toast in the morning. Hell, I salted everything. Apples, peanut butter and jelly, pecan pie. Everything. Then, whammo. I knew what was happening to me the minute I felt the pain. Unbelievable pain, Nora, up and down my arm.”

“But you …” But you survived? was what Nora had been about to ask.

“I changed my life,” Willis said. “First thing I did was quit smoking. That was so strange. All my life, since I was twelve, I’d lived for cigarettes, one after the other. It got so I wouldn’t go to a movie because they wouldn’t let you smoke in the theater.”

“What else did you do?” Nora asked. She wasn’t used to talking to strange men without holding a cigarette in her hand; she couldn’t believe it, but for the moment, the desire to smoke had left her. She felt light as a feather, ethereal. She imagined she was hovering above the bar, like someone having an out-of-body experience.

“I changed my diet entirely, lost twenty pounds. Now I season my food with lemon juice instead of salt.” He grinned suddenly, and Nora noticed a wide space between his two front teeth. He pulled from his pocket a yellow plastic squeeze lemon.

Nora laughed. “You don’t need that here. We serve all our fish with fresh lemon.”

“Not every place does,” Willis said.

A comfortable silence unfolded between them. They might have been sitting alone on the balcony of Nora’s condo instead of here in the crowded bar. Nora knew she should relieve her mother at the reservations desk; the sauce chef had to leave early tonight, and Nora had to smooth things over in the kitchen. But she couldn’t move. She felt at peace, staring into Willis’s blue eyes. She caught a glimpse of Bonnie coming toward her.
Leave me alone
, she wished. And when she turned to say she’d be with her in a minute, Bonnie had gone.

“That girl a friend of yours?” Willis asked.

“My sister,” Nora said.

“She works here, too?” Willis asked.