About the Author (20 page)

I had strictly forbidden the girl to make any direct contact with me, but it was impossible not to run into her, almost daily, in town. She had acquired a huge, gas-guzzling, olive-green 1972 Impala, in which she would slither into town in the late afternoon to stock up on that evening’s supply of beer and cheap wine. Too often I would catch a heart-juddering glimpse of her as she stood outside Ernie’s, stacking cases of Bud into her trunk. Or I would be in line to make a withdrawal at the bank, and suddenly I would be assailed by the pungent sweetness of a familiar perfume. The girl would be standing directly behind me, nonchalantly humming a tuneless ditty. My nervous system clanging, I would quit the bank and return at a later time to do my business.

As bad as those glimpses were, though, they were nothing compared to the sightings that occurred when I was with Janet.

Since it was now summer, Janet was no longer off at school during the day—which should have been, for me, a cause for rejoicing. It was not. Now that Les had invaded our paradise, everything had been turned on its head, and instead of delighting in Janet’s constant presence, I very nearly dreaded it. On our food-shopping trips to Moran’s grocery store, I faced the ever-present danger that when we steered our cart into aisle 2, we would find ourselves face to face with my cocky, gum-snapping, grunge-haired little nemesis. It happened a couple of times that summer as we innocently rounded the corner from Rice/Soups/Noodles into Sauces/Baked Goods/Candy. There she would be, in some indecently tiny tank top and cutoffs, her bare feet grimy, her blond hair tawny with grease, her sleep-puffy eyes hanging just a split second too long on mine before flicking over to the shelves—and the air would grow as volatile as nitroglycerine, and the wattage on the fluorescent lights would seem to ratchet up, and it would take an eternity for me to pilot our cart, with its one sticky wheel, around Les’s. For the next ten minutes, until we got the hell out of the store, Janet’s voice would reach me as if from a very great distance, through the Niagara Falls of blood in my ears.

As the summer progressed, I could see that Les was integrating herself more tightly into the fabric of New Halcyon—or at least into a certain element of its dark underside. A denizen of the biker bars, strip joints, and discos on Cliffwood Road, she could often be seen loitering around the Snak Shak, badly hung over, with some dubious-looking young guy, or group of guys, in tow. I was disappointed, and a little anxious, to see that she had made particular friends with young Chopper Pollard, who clearly idolized Les and frequently dogged the older girl’s heels like a puppy. Noting this growing intimacy between the two, I used to wonder if Les had ever seen fit to take Chopper into her confidence about the extraordinary relationship she enjoyed with the famous novelist on the hill. So on those days when Chopper came up to mow the lawn, I would often mosey out to see her with my morning cup of coffee in hand. Knowing her to be anything but the wordly type, I always believed that I would be able to detect whether Chopper was withholding a secret from me. I never saw in her polite, sweet, forthright manner anything to suggest that she knew more than she should. And so it was that as the weeks rolled past, and the ax continued not to fall, I began to wonder, once again, if it might not be possible, after all, for Les and me to coexist in our blackmailer-blackmailee relationship indefinitely. After all, the various worries that had been interfering with my sleep all summer—Les coming to demand more money; Les spreading news of my crime around town—had not come to pass. Maybe everything was going to be all right after all.

Then, one day in late August, reality reentered the picture.

Janet and I had spent the afternoon sunbathing on our dock. At around four, we decided to canoe to the village to pick up supplies for an evening barbecue. I took the helm and paddled us down the lake into town, where we docked at the section of public wharf that ran along the edge of a cement breakwater abutting the foundations of the pub, Ales Well That Ends Well. As I was back-paddling to swing our canoe around to the riverbank, I happened to glance up onto the land. My eyes lighted upon Les.

She was sitting, alone, at one of the tables on the pub’s back patio, nursing a beer. Her head lifted when she saw us in the canoe, and a strange alertness came into her posture. Ordinarily she would glance away when Janet and I chanced to run into her in public, but not this time. As I pulled the boat alongside the dock, I noted, in a sidelong glance, that the girl had actually cocked her sunglasses off her face, the better to peer down at us. It seemed to me that she could not have drawn more attention to herself if she had started waving and shouting my name.

Oblivious to Les’s surveillance, Janet hopped out of the canoe and tied the bowline to one of the dock rings. The girl watched the whole time, and she continued to watch us as we ascended the staircase that led up to the street. Only when we reached the top of the stairs, which passed just a few feet from the pub’s patio, did Les turn away to gaze off in the direction of the Halberts’ A-frame, around the bend downriver.

Janet noticed nothing. But trolling Ernie’s aisles for hamburger buns and soda, I dreaded returning to the canoe. I could not imagine what the girl was up to. Was she hoping that Janet would see her? Was she trying to provoke an encounter? Fifteen minutes later, when we arrived back at the dock, I was relieved to see that the girl was gone. All that was left of her was an empty beer bottle on the table and a scattering of coins left as a tip. Yet even before I could register my relief, I saw (as I stepped along the dock behind Janet) a small scrap of paper fluttering between the interwoven canvas straps of one of our canoe seats. I knew immediately that this had something to do with Les. I dodged past Janet on the dock, scrambled into the boat, snatched up the piece of paper, and stuffed it into my breast pocket. Janet came up to the edge of the dock and looked down at me, puzzled. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Wrong?” I said, quickly. “Nothing. Just want to get home before we lose the light.”

Later, when we were back home—Janet in the kitchen working the egg and spices through the ground beef for our barbecued burgers, me out on the lawn preparing the coals—I dared to fish that evil scrap of paper from my pocket. It was a torn corner of an Ales Well That Ends Well place mat. Les had scrawled on it in faltering ballpoint:

At breakfast the next morning, I mentioned to Janet that I might take a bicycle ride to meditate on a complicated plot point.

Janet seemed to give this announcement greater consideration than I had expected her to. After a pause, she said, “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” I said. “Just for a ride.”

“Do you want company?”

“I thought you said you wanted to paint today,” I countered. “Besides, I need the alone-time. I’ve hit a sticky point in my novel.”

“Will you be back for lunch?”

I said that I would.

I hurried on my five-speed through the flicker of sharp-edged tree shadows, down to the main road. I rode for five minutes, following the highway, then ascended a final, thigh-burning grade. At the summit was the entrance to a driveway marked Blakeson/The Yellow House. After a glance fore and aft, I veered in and coasted down the driveway to the faded and peeling yellow house. Les’s Impala was parked out back. There were no other cars.

I propped my bike on its kickstand and walked around to the front of the house. I gave only the most cursory of knocks on the unlocked screen door. No answer. I entered.

It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the interior gloom. When they did, I was amazed, but not exactly surprised, to see the state of squalor to which she had managed to bring the house. Broken glasses, dirty dishes, pieces of clothing, and scraps of newspaper littered the floor and furniture. Hanging in the air was a sour reek of beer and wet cigarette ash.

I called her name. Silence.

I made my way up the stairs. Past a turn on the landing (where a blue wasp lay dying on the windowsill) I reached a hallway carpeted in frayed sisal matting. Three louvered wooden doors gave onto the bedrooms. Two of these proved unoccupied. The third and largest room, at the front of the house, contained a double bed. I immediately recognized Les’s tousled hair on the pillow. I called out to her from the doorway. When she failed to answer, I walked over to the bed, lifted a corner of the sheet, and touched it against her lips. After a snuffling attempt to brush away the persistent fly, she opened her eyes.

“I hope we’re alone,” I said.

She coughed for some time, sat up, then rasped, “Yeah, yeah. I made sure to kick everybody out last night. They weren’t too happy about it, neither. These dudes like to party.” She vigorously ground her fists into her eyes as she went on: “And poor little Chopper. She’s been sleeping over quite a bit lately, if you get my drift. She
really
didn’t want to go. But I had to kiss her and send her on her way.” With that she threw back the bed sheet, stood, then strode naked across the room to the adjoining bathroom. She left the door open as she plopped herself down on the toilet.

“Look,” I said over the sound of her gushing stream, “why don’t I wait for you downstairs while you . . .” I gestured in her direction.

“Cool,” she said. “I might be here a minute. Beer and pizza—know what I mean?”

“Say no more.”

On the veranda overlooking the lake, I sat on one of the wicker chaise longues and waited for Les to finish her toilette. A sailing race was in progress. The boats had rounded the first buoy, just off the end of the point, and were tacking back toward the opposite shore, their sails plump. The lazy summer scene was a very poor objective correlative to my current mood of leaping anxiety and jangled suspense.

“
Amigo
!”

I turned. In deference to her gentleman caller, she had now wrapped her nakedness in one of her white bed sheets. She threw herself into one of the high-backed wicker armchairs that faced me across the veranda. A fly sewed the air around her head.

“That was a very stupid thing you did,” I told her.

“Making it with Chopper?” She waved a hand dismissively. “She’s just lonesome. I do think she’s falling in love with me, though, so I gotta watch it.”

“Actually, no,” I said. “I wasn’t talking about Chopper. I was talking about that little note you left for me in the canoe. Anyone could have seen you do that.”

“You mean
Jan
could have.” She clapped a hand over her mouth in mock horror at having said the name I had forbidden her to say. “Oops! I mean
, you-know-who
.”

“Let’s get to the point,” I said. “What was so urgent? I suppose this is about money?”

She flipped her hair, then pulled one bare leg up under her. “Yeah, in a way. But not
your
money.” She offered a sly little smile.

“Please,” I said. “I haven’t got all day.”

“You’re pretty good with a canoe, aren’t you?”

I hadn’t been expecting this question, but my vanity was stirred. I was, I must explain, a superb canoeist, having learned the art as a child, at summer camp. “Quite expert, since you ask.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I was watching you when you came under the bridge and you were doing all that fancy-ass shit with the oar.”

“The paddle.”

“Right. Well, I’ve been looking for someone who can handle one of those things. A canoe.”

“Really?” I said. “Planning a trip?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Something like that.” She began to chew at the edge of her thumbnail, regarding me all the while. Her bed sheet had fallen open a little now, exposing one of her breasts to the edge of the dark aureole. I kept my eyes on her face. I could tell that she was bursting with some news. But I could never have guessed what.

“Okay, listen,” she said, bolting forward in her chair and slapping the armrest. “
How
would you like to go in on a dope deal?”

The laugh that burst from me was genuine, though it was triggered more by the earnest tone of her speech than by the content, which was too ridiculous even to stir my sense of humor.

“I’m serious,” she said, unperturbed. “I been looking for someone who can handle a canoe—
and
who I can trust. You’re the man.”

Clutching her sheet around her, she jumped up and hustled indoors. When she returned, seconds later, she was hastily unfolding a rattling, multicolored map. The sheet billowed behind her, revealing her entire nakedness: the surprisingly full breasts, the shaded rib cage, the complicated protrusions of her sculpted pelvis, and the wispily fleeced pubis. She’d obviously been sunbathing in the altogether. She shooed my legs from the end of the chaise longue—I quickly swung my feet to the floor—then plunked herself down beside me, opening the map on her bare knees. She bent avidly over it.

“See,” she said, moving her head close to mine, inundating me with the aroma of her not very clean-smelling hair, “it’s this river here.” She pointed to a spot on the map where a hairline of blue ink wiggled from a blot of blue like the tail on a spermatozoon. She was showing me the Ghost River, which drained out of Lake Sylvan at its northern end, by Sayer’s Cliff. The river meandered northward, then petered out over the Quebec border.

“All we gotta do is follow the river,” she said. “Well, no, actually, the guy admitted it’s harder than that. We gotta walk some of the way. With the canoe. Because there’s some rapids or something. But he said it’s not too bad, and there’s a cabin on the way where we can rest. Anyway, he said it’s the best way to get some shit over the border. They don’t patrol that river—it’s so small and kinda wild.”

She grinned at me eagerly and shook the hair off her face. “He’s from Montreal,” she added, as if this would answer any lingering doubts I might have about the plan’s feasibility.

“Lesley,” I said calmly. “I am not running
drugs
across the Canadian border with you. So put your map away.”

“He said it’s a two-man job,” she said, ignoring my protest. “I couldn’t paddle a boat to save my fucking life.”