Open Water (41 page)

It was the first time Munro had ever implied that Willis had any place or station in this world.

“Sure,” Willis said. “That’ll be fine.” From the moment Rennie drifted away, Willis had lost his bite, but he had regained his equilibrium. Other than a plague of vacillating cold-turkey symptoms, he felt calm. It didn’t matter if Munro wanted the upper hand, and said, “Look here, little brother.” Willis was Teflon. Munro’s burden was lighter now that his mother was taken care of. Rennie was “safely dead.” It means different things to different people, Willis thought.

Willis faced two charges; the first one reflected his violation of the Federal EPA Ocean Dumping Act, a provision of the Clean Water Act. Munro’s attorney was informed
that the charge would most likely be dismissed due to the sensitive nature of the case and the actual low-risk effects resultant of the crime. People buried loved ones at sea several times a year despite the Clean Water Act, and the EPA took a humanitarian stance. The second charge was “larceny of an item worth more than two hundred fifty dollars.” Willis had been charged with the theft of the
Crouton
, not Fritz. The restaurant’s management wasn’t willing to drop charges. They claimed to have lost revenues during the period their mascot was missing.

Munro told Willis that Showalter had repoed his totaled truck without raising an eyebrow. Munro chuckled and told Willis, “Showalter visits Fritz in the hospital, mornings and evenings. It’s all in the family.”

Willis nodded at this news. He tried to remember any early mannerisms or clues that could have revealed a love connection in Fall River. He thought of the chewed InstyPrint pencil Fritz wore tucked behind his ear all winter, the Burberry scarf Fritz appeared in one day, as if he’d collected it from a bus seat. The cashmere muffler was so out of place on him, it had to be from a wardrobe in someone’s lovesick dream.

When Willis completed the detox program in the upscale hospital, he’d be released on his own recognizance to await his EPA hearing and his court date for larceny of the
Crouton.

Holly went back and forth between Willis’s glamorous setting on Ocean Avenue and Newport Hospital, where yellowed linoleum tiles were glued waist level along the hallways. Fritz was recuperating from a cracked sternum, broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and general malnutrition. His poor diet was a side effect of Fritz’s nervous condition and had nothing to do with his accident. Fritz pushed down the
scooped collar of his cotton johnnie and showed Holly where doctors had wired his breastbone together.

“They used staples?” she said.

Fritz told her, “This isn’t fingertip embroidery.”

Holly sat beside Fritz, the TV buzzing at the end of the bed. It was a singles game show. Fritz had a perverse hunger for these blind-date panel discussions.

She looked at Fritz. His skinny shape looked worse in the hospital bed, like a hat tree under the sheet. The thin thermal hospital blanket didn’t look warm enough, his knobby knees erupted through the fuzzy crossweave layer.

Showalter appeared at the door with a box of doughnuts from Store 24. Fritz introduced Holly.

Showalter lifted Fritz’s pillow from behind his head and wedged it back straight. Then Showalter folded back the lid of the doughnut box and she and Fritz marveled at the pastry selection. They shared the greasy wheels of sugared dough, and waited for the TV show’s conclusion.

W
illis stood on an extension ladder, starting at the third-floor gable with the Rent-All pressure cleaning gun. The tool had a stiff recoil and five weeks ago he would have been too gooned to hold on to it. He swiped at the bees, hating to dislodge the ancient wisteria vines that were in full flower, but the house wanted restoration. It screamed for it. He hoped to paint the Victorian to the specifications of the Newport Historical Society. They gave him a chart of authentic nineteenth-century colors for the clapboards and another chart for the contrasting trim. He wanted the new paint to match the first coat put on at the turn of the century when the house went up.

Munro had decided to rent the house during the tourist season. Summer rentals paid for themselves. He wouldn’t have to let go of the waterfront property. Munro told Willis he could add a kitchenette upstairs and close off the third floor for Holly and himself. Winters, they could have the run of the whole house. Munro wasn’t concerned about Willis’s court appearance scheduled for the end of August. People were sympathetic to the story of a local cancer victim and her loving son who only needed to borrow a rowboat for the evening. The whole town looked forward to the
proceedings. Already the
Newport Daily News
had run two feature stories; one of the headings read:
RESTAURANT MASCOT DOUBLES AS FUNERAL BARGE
, and public opinion remained on Willis’s side of it.

Willis was gaining some color working out in the sun. His cast was finally removed, the chalky husk sawed up the middle. A fluffy down was growing back on his bare arm where the hair had been rubbed off.

Earlier that week, Willis had called the Coast Guard to ask about finding another Fresnel lens. They invited him to come over to the station at Castle Hill, where they had a mint specimen displayed on a pedestal. The lens was a peculiar notched barrel the size of a watercooler. Willis fingered its cool planes. A recruit told him that these antique Fresnels were getting few and far between. Willis might be able to find one, but he should get working on it right away.

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.

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.