Nantucket Sawbuck (8 page)

Chapter Seven

Propositions

Driving out to Eel Point on Sunday morning, Mike Henderson found himself thinking about the old Downyflake restaurant on South Water Street, near Hardy's hardware, which was gone now, too, making room for clothing stores and antique stores and even a luggage store. He had never understood that one. What does a tourist on Nantucket need with luggage? Something to stuff all the hideous Lily Pulitzer clothes and Nantucket University sweatshirts into? The Nobby shop across the street had changed, too.

It was all for different reasons, Mike understood that. The Hardy's people had just retired and cashed out. The Nobby shop had been forced to bring the building up to code after a fire. And an explosion in the kitchen had wiped out the old Downyflake. But they were all gone, along with Robinson's Five & Ten and Cy's Green Coffee Pot. Cindy complained that there was nowhere to buy a thimble on the island anymore. It wasn't just stores either; the airport had been given a makeover. It was bleak and sterile now, like the new Steamship Authority building. All the charm of the island was being scrubbed away or demolished. The Historical District Commission tried to protect the outsides of houses, but there was no law about the interiors. Why did rich people feel the need to ruin the things they loved? Maybe they couldn't feel it was truly theirs until they had marked it somehow. Mike had been part of that process for a long time. He was part of the problem. All that new trim needed to be painted, all those new floors needed to be refinished. Mike had made a pretty good living from the rape of the island.

He knew that his brother-in-law, Nathan Parrish, was planning to build a mall out in the moors near the Pout Ponds. He had sworn Mike to secrecy, but of course everyone knew about it. The island was too small and the news was too big. Mike had thought of begging Parrish for the painting contract, but the job was out of his league, and asking Nathan for favors would just brand him as a loser. You only got special treatment when you didn't need it. He hated the idea of the mall, anyway. He knew that the Nantucket he loved was fading but fast, but a Kmart in the shadow of Altar Rock felt like a death blow.

He didn't want to be part of that. And he didn't need Parrish—he had the Lomax job. Of course that was moral sleight-of-hand, too. Nathan had told him, extracting melodramatic vows of secrecy, that LoGran, Preston Lomax's company, was one of the major investors in the Moorlands Mall. Everything was connected. Pretending to be above it was arrogant and silly. He could scarcely set himself up as a moral paragon. Here he was, driving to a deserted construction site to ogle some girl in her twenties. Of course he wouldn't put a move on Tanya Kriel. She was almost half his age. It would be disgusting. It would be reprehensible. But he didn't fool himself that way either. He had stayed true to Cindy during the worst times of their marriage, but it was a circumstantial fidelity. No woman had tried to seduce him; there had been quite a few he would have gladly gone to bed with if they had made the first move. But they hadn't. So nothing had happened. Hardly something to brag about.

The thought of Tanya Kriel putting his flimsy morals to the test made him queasy. She was so beautiful: austere Nordic features and a firm athletic body that approached human perfection. Of course Cindy couldn't compete with that; Tanya was young, her presence radiated health and hormones and fertility, energy and eagerness and grace. He had never seen her make an awkward movement. She had worn absurdly short cutoff shorts all summer. She had dancer's legs, supple and strong. He would catch a glimpse of the tendons in her thighs flexing as she climbed a ladder. It felt like sunstroke. She had caught him watching her, fighting to keep his eyes on hers as she pulled her shoulders back and stretched as they talked. Now it was winter, she was bundled up and the tension had slacked off a little.

But she still stalked through his fantasies and speculations: what would he do if she did this, or that, if she touched him, if she said something unmistakable. Which of course she wouldn't. It was all pathetic and sad. Even thinking about it was asinine.

But the fact remained: He couldn't turn down an opportunity to be alone with her for a
few hours. He shrugged as he turned onto Eel Point Road. Was that really so bad? He had made love once with his wife in the last three weeks, and just twice in the three months before that. He knew it for certain; he had started marking the dates on his calendar. He was horny and lonely, but daydreams kept him going. He was in jail and Tanya was the pinup on his jail-cell wall. Nothing wrong with that.

He parked in the wide circle in front of the house. Tanya's Ranger was parked at the other side of the driveway. He killed the engine and stepped out into the sharp northeast wind. He looked around. In the spring there would be about eighty thousand dollars worth of new plantings here, saplings and hedges and flowers. Now it looked raw and unfinished. He could smell the ocean. The harbor was a dark iron blue; the exact color of Tanya's eyes.

He braced himself and opened the front door.

She was standing just inside, naked, and after the first shock of seeing her he could feel reality filling the gaps of his ardent but inadequate imagination: This is what she really looked like. Her nipples were darker, her stomach softer than he had guessed. There were no tan lines. She must have sunbathed nude all summer. She was absorbing the force of his undivided attention nervously. She was actually blushing.

“Did I make a mistake?” she asked him.

“No,” Mike said, “but I'm about to.”

He stepped up to her, ran his hand across her ribs and up to cup her breast. At the first touch he could feel the combustion inside him, chemical fire, instantly out of control. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this way. Maybe he never had.

She took a step toward him and they were kissing.

His clothes came off and they found their way to a pile of drop cloths. The thought scampered across the dark road of his mind that she had planned this carefully; but he was glad. It was good to lie down with her, on her. Her hands were moving over his stomach and his chest. He knew the concept of skin hunger but he was beyond that. He was ravenous. He was starving.

So was she. So they devoured each other.

After the first time, Tanya said “They delivered the beds yesterday. Let's get comfortable.”

They slipped upstairs to the king-sized mattress in the master bedroom. There was a drop cloth draped over it, but it slipped out from under them somehow as Mike grabbed the big oak headboard for leverage.

It would have been perfect, except for a small catastrophic detail: Kevin Sloane, the youngest member of Mike's paint crew, had left his iPod on the job, and he chose ten-thirty on Sunday morning to retrieve it. He recognized both of their trucks and when he slipped into the house, he heard them going at it upstairs. He found them easily and snapped picture after picture on his smartphone. Finally they noticed him. Mike jerked stiff, paralyzed. Tanya just stared. The moment had outdistanced their ability to react. There was nothing to do anyway.

They were busted.

Finally Kevin spoke into the shrieking silence. “Looks like I'm getting a big raise,”

Then he turned and walked out of the house. It was going to be a really big raise.

And that was only the beginning.

Chapter Eight

Fiona Donovan

I'd been saving Fiona Donovan since the first day I met her.

Today I was going to have to save her from herself.

When I pulled into the parking lot of the Faregrounds Restaurant, she had a man's head caught by the edge of her passenger-side window, the glass up to just under his chin, immobilizing him against the frame. Another eighth of an inch and he'd be strangling. She could probably decapitate him if she closed the window all the way, but I wasn't going to wait around to find out. I trotted over to her old Jeep Wagoneer.

I heard her voice first, that lilting Irish accent. “Now do you understand your attentions aren't welcome?”

“I urgh—” was all he could get out.

“Roll the window down, Fiona,” I said.

She spoke to her victim. “I need a better answer than that. Try to speak clearly.”

“Yes,” He gagged. “Yes!”

She released him as I walked around to the driver's side. The man stumbled backward and fled.

“Was that the man from Ram's Pasture?”

“One of his friends. Acting on the lad's behalf.”

I had met Fiona in October, hiking at Sanford Farm. Some drunken carpenter had been stalking her and they were in the middle of a shoving match when I came around a bend in the path. I grabbed him and shoved my badge in his face.

“This is a public park,” he said. “I got a right to be here.”

“Sure, you can be here. You just can't talk to this woman.”

“You can't stop me.”

“Yes I can. Consider this a restraining order.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Then he started trudging back toward Madaket Road.

She stuck out her hand. “Fiona Donovan.”

“Henry Kennis. Chief of Police.”

We shook. Her grip was strong. “And they say you can never find a policeman when you need one,” she said.

“Well, on Nantucket we don't have that problem. We're working toward a one-to-one ratio, cops to citizens.”

“That will be cozy.”

“I hope so,”

“Well I can do my part. Let me buy you a beer.”

That's how it began, and it had been moving along that easily ever since. Women were usually a lot more difficult—from my ex-wife Miranda to my old flame Franny Tate, who had told me flat out that she wouldn't waste the airfare flying to the “outskirts of nowhere” to visit someone who had given up and chosen the life of a small-town loser. I don't mind the label. Everyone on Nantucket except the few remaining natives had failed somewhere else before they wound up here. The place is like a bird sanctuary for dreamers and eccentrics.

I walked Fiona into Faregrounds, now—the site of our first drink and our primary hangout ever since. Patriots football was super-charging the atmosphere of rowdy boosterism.

She caught the bartender's eye. “A Guinness and a Bud Light,” she said, just before Tom Brady threw a forty-nine-yard bomb to Rob Gronkowski, who caught it in double coverage and ran it in for a touchdown. The bar went wild. The Pats were playing Detroit and the game was a rout. That didn't bother the half-drunk Nantucketers around us, but I knew Fiona preferred to watch a real contest.

Half an hour later we were walking out into the snapping cold air. The wind had picked up. There was more snow coming.

“I'm terrified of turning into an American,” she took my arm. “Some sort of fake attempted American, like the girls who live with me. Wearing Old Navy jeans. Reading idiotic magazines about celebrities. Using outdated surfer slang and pining for a Big Mac.”

“I don't think you have to worry about it,” I said.

“I don't even watch actual football anymore. Except the World Cup. And I'm losing my accent.”

“No you're not.”

“I didn't even know I had an accent until I came here.”

“And all the men found it so devastatingly attractive?”

“They do, don't they?”

“Well, I can't speak for all of them.”

We walked through the parking lot in silence. We passed her car and headed for mine. The wind was thrashing the trees, straight out of the northeast. We could hear the faint dark rumble of the ocean between the gusts.

“So, did you like the poem?”

“It was lovely. But I wouldn't say it was particularly encouraging.”

“No?”

“I tell you life is too short. You try to cheer me up by saying it's shorter than I think and I'm a bit of foam falling behind a ferry. For some reason that fails to brighten my mood.”

“But it's true.”

“That's not enough, Henry.”

“It is for me.”

She took my hand and gave me a rueful smile. “Lucky man.”

We walked along in silence for a while.

“Come home with me?” I asked finally.

“It's your Sunday night with Tim and Caroline.”

“They like you.”

“They like having you to themselves. As you very well know.”

“We could drive around for a while and make out.”

“In a police car?”

“Why not? We can park at Surfside, scare all the kids away.”

“Not tonight. I have things to do and you need to get home. Doesn't Miranda drop the kids off at five?”

I shrugged. “Checkmate.”

“Next week, I promise. Take me to dinner and ply me with liquor.”

I laughed. “That should work.”

“All right. I'll ply
you
with liquor.”

“Now you're talking. Two glasses of wine and you can pretty much have your way with me.”

I had tried getting her drunk on one of our first dates. I bought Irish whiskey and matched her shot for shot. She was very maternal and business-like, giving me a glass of water and wiping my face with a warm towel when I puked, and then putting me to bed. Her note the next morning had said simply, “Nice try.”

“Wednesday night?” I asked her.

“I'll pick you up at seven. Dinner at the Boarding House. I'll buy you a split of pinot grigio, and pounce.”

We were at my truck. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss me. “Don't be late.”

I took off. As usual I felt she was keeping things from me—her true feelings, her plans and ambitions, the way she spent her time when were apart. But that was all right. In this gossip-ridden little town, the capital city of Too Much Information, Fiona's secrets were a relief. What you don't know, you can't judge. I was happy to leave it that way.

Chapter Nine

Stray Humans

“They're coming,” said Pat Folger.

It was the most dreaded phrase on Nantucket, worse than “You are called for jury duty,” “You're number sixty-five on the stand-by list” or even “The airport will be closed indefinitely due to fog.”

It contained all the frustration, anxiety, and despair of working in the trades in what Elaine Bailey like to call a “Premiere destination resort community.” You were at the mercy of spoiled petty demanding people, pampered into a new infancy—adult toddlers, pointing and screaming at the baubles and treats they craved, stamping their Manolo Blahniks and jamming their perfectly manicured thumbs into their collagen puffed mouths at the slightest delay. Dealing with these new millionaires was like working in the king's nursery, where the young prince could have you beheaded if you denied him an extra cookie.

Most of the time it didn't matter. These owners were working in New York, or traveling in Europe. The only evidence of them was the occasional whining phone call or fax. But they always showed up eventually, generally when the final payments were due, and the richer they were the more reluctant they were to part with their money. A few years before, Pat Folger had built an eighty-thousand-dollar custom kitchen for a fast food franchise tycoon. He arrived on the island owing Pat sixty-thousand dollars. He was happy to write the check if the kitchen “passed the test.” Pat had no idea what he was talking about, but it became horribly clear when he dumped a bag of marbles onto the counter. If they didn't roll, he would consider the counter sufficiently level. But of course they did. Not even NASA built things to that tolerance, but Pat had to spend three weeks tweaking and shimming the kitchen, which everyone knew was never going to be used anyway.

That goblin was a Woody Guthrie-like friend of the working man compared to Preston Lomax, whose perfectionism and malignant eye for detail had resulted in numerous lawsuits, and occasional fistfights, as he accumulated houses all over the East Coast, from Hilton Head Island to Woodstock, Vermont. Everyone knew he would be stalking through the house, looking for reasons not to pay. And everyone was pretty sure he'd find some. Perfection was hard to come by in the building trades.

Especially in the painting trade; and most especially, on Mike Henderson's paint crew.

They were an odd bunch, castaways and drifters, losers who really couldn't make a living anywhere else. “Stray humans,” Cindy called them. She said Mike collected them like stray dogs, but Mike knew he was one of them himself. So were all his friends. The island was a forgiving place. The people who actually lived there, the year-round residents who had come from somewhere else, had generally come to hide out and regroup and start over.

Bob Haffner, for instance. He was Mike's foreman. Bob was a skilled painter. He was highly organized and he knew where all the putty knives and nail sets and pot hooks were on any job site; he knew how to get things done and how to get people to do them. He could get a Sunday's work out of Derek Briley during World Cup finals weekend or an extra hour's work on a Friday afternoon out of a jaded slacker like Kevin Sloane. He was good with people, because they knew he had made every mistake they would ever consider and possessed every flaw and weakness they could ever imagine. All he really cared about was finding new and ever more elaborate ways to avoid working and get stuff free. Painting was a temporary expedient that had somehow become the major part of his life for the last fifteen years. Most painters as good as Haffner would have started their own company long ago. But Bob didn't want to commit to the business. He was sure one of his schemes would pay off any day now. This was a man who saved everyone else's receipts so he could go head to head with the tax auditors after he had written himself off as a loss for the third year in a row. This was a man who got his clothes at the dump and stocked his larder out of the church food pantry. This was a man who would convince cancer homecare workers that he was dying just so he could get hot meals delivered to his house for free.

At least he wasn't drinking anymore. But he couldn't stay away from the twelve-step programs. It wasn't just AA or Overeaters Anonymous or the Gulf War syndrome groups. He was in several combined groups, too: co-dependent phobic liars with obsessive compulsive Gulf War syndrome and adult children of overeating masturbation addicts with recovered memories of same-sex child abuse. There were times when he couldn't remember what meeting he was at and what kind of insane shaggy dog story he was going to have to invent to maintain his good standing with the other victims.

That was when he realized he was addicted to twelve-step groups.

“Is there a group for that?” he asked Mike. “It would be so perfect.”

He was cutting in the big living room ceiling and Mike was rolling it when Pat Folger walked in. They ignored him. He turned off their radio and said it again.

“You hear me? They're coming. Next Tuesday. With three moving vans full of furniture.”

“Just three?”

“Are you gonna be ready?”

Mike set the roller in the pan and turned to face the squat red-headed contractor. “How about you, Pat? I can't paint stuff that isn't built yet.”

“There's plenty for you to paint.”

“How about the mantel? Or the cove molding upstairs? Or the loft baseboards? Half your guys are at the Chicken Box, Billy Delavane is out surfing, your son quit last week. Costigan is the only guy you have working. My whole crew is here and we're painting ourselves out of a job.”

“No. You're
talking
yourself out of a job.”

“Then fire me. And good luck finishing this place by Tuesday.”

“Don't tempt me.”

Folger stumped out of the room.

“He's always complaining that he gets no loyalty,” Haffner said, going back to work. “I feel like telling him, Pat—that's because you're a toad and everyone hates you.”

“That would go over well.”

“Shall I do it? I could do it right now.”

“Actually, I'd prefer it if you waited until we all got paid.”

A few minutes later, Billy Delavane poked his head in the door. “Stop painting and do something you're good at,” he said, “like drinking coffee.”

He extended the paper tray from Fast Forward. “Black for Mike. Cream and sugar for Bob.”

“It's more than that,” Haffner corrected him. “Fuck the coffee. It's just a
vehicle
for my cream and sugar.” He took his cup.

“Don't worry about Pat,” Billy said, taking a first sip. “The last few weeks on a job, Pat goes insane. Just like your dad used to. He fired his own son yesterday.”

“Hey, Dad never fired me.”

“He came close. Like at Butler's, when he said ‘take down the ceiling'—he meant scrape it, but you ripped the whole thing out, right down to the strapping. Or when your dog walked all over the stenciled floor? That was a good one. I thought he was gonna have a seizure that time.”

“Okay, okay. He should have fired me but he didn't.”

“Pat's even worse, though. He'll scream at anyone. He threw the Lomax kid off the site yesterday, just because he asked you a question.”

“He wanted to know if we were using eggshell paint on the walls. So what?”

Billy hiked his shoulders. “Hey, I have no idea. Avoid Pat this week. That's my advice. And if you can't avoid him, just say ‘yes.' He likes it when people say ‘yes.'” Billy glanced at his watch. It was a gold Patek-Phillipe, out of place on a job site, but he wore it everywhere. “My break's over,” he said. “See you guys later.”

On the second floor of the house, Tanya Kriel was painting trim with Lu-Anne Dowling. Lu-Anne was a lesbian, so feminine and charming that Haffner had flirted with her for weeks when she was first hired, until he caught her with the tile girl in the upstairs bathroom. Lu-Anne had no political or philosophical mission; she just liked women. She had a little crush on Tanya but she knew it was hopeless. She was talking about a party she'd been to the week before. She didn't know who was straight and who was gay, which had resulted in a few drunken embarrassments. Tanya was nodding, but she was thinking about other things.

Primarily, she was thinking about murder.

She had come up with some good ideas for dealing with Preston Lomax recently. The best one involved using his own vices to cover her tracks. He was a smoker, Eric had told her that. During her sister's time he had quit—no patch, no gum, just cold turkey—he had been insufferable on the subject of his peerless self-discipline. But apparently he was back to three packs a day now. So much for the captain of industry and his iron will. Tanya smiled: this was an opportunity. Nicotine in pure form was one of the most poisonous substances on Earth. All she had to do was drop a crumb of the stuff into his drink and he'd be dead in less than a minute from cardiac arrest brought on by the overdose. She could just hear the doctor saying, “Extraordinary, Mrs. Lomax. Your husband smoked himself to death in the most blatant way I've ever come across in thirty years of practicing medicine.”

Which begged several questions: how to get the stuff into his drink, for one thing. Also she had no idea what it tasted like. Would he notice it? If it acted fast enough, that wouldn't matter. She was starting to catalogue other poisons—she had been reading on the Internet about some stuff called brucine—when the clamor of an argument broke her concentration.

Haffner had come upstairs and he was yelling at Kevin Sloane. Tanya hadn't said a word to Kevin all day; she could hardly bear to look at him after what he'd done. The idea of him just standing there, watching her with Mike, seeing everything and just sort of soaking it up into his gonads like some hideous carnal leech made her literally sick to her stomach.

Mike had avoided Kevin, also, she'd noticed. They'd barely spoken all day.

“You call this sanded?” Haffner was shouting. “This isn't sanded!”

“Hey, bite me, man. I sanded it.”

“No! You moved a piece of sandpaper over it. But that doesn't matter because
it's not smooth
and it can't be painted until it's smooth. Get it? That's why we sand things. Not so we can say we sanded them. Not for fun. Not for the exercise. We sand things to
make them smooth.
So we can paint them. Is that really too much for you to grasp? Is that too tough for you? Do you need a little chart with stick figures?”

Mike had climbed the stairs and Kevin turned to him.

“Did you hear the way he's talking to me, Mike?”

“I heard him.”

“He's being a dick, man.”

“This kid isn't a painter, Mike,” Haffner said. “I can't talk to him. You give it a try.”

Kevin looked calmly at Mike.

“I don't think he should be allowed to talk to me that way.”

“I tried being polite. That didn't work,” Haffner said.

Kevin's eyes were steady. He wouldn't look away.

“I think he should apologize.”

“The hell I will!”

“I think you should exert your authority, Mike. Things can get way out of control when the boss is afraid to exert his authority.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Shall I tell him?” Kevin asked. “I'll be glad to tell him.”

Mike turned to Haffner. “Apologize, Bob. You were out of line.”

“Out of line? You're paying this little turd eighteen bucks an hour to get in everyone's way, he's acting like he owns the place and I'm out of line. This is bullshit.”

“So let's patch it up and put it behind us.”

“You patch it up, boss man. I'm outta here.”

He stalked down the stairs. They heard the door slam. Kevin smiled at Mike.

“You
could apologize. That would be okay.”

Mike fought down the urge to punch that smug grin into bloody pieces. Kevin had the power and he knew it. Pretending things were different wouldn't change them. He looked at Tanya. She looked away.

“Sorry,” he said.

“That's it?”

“I'm very sorry Bob was rude to you. All right?”

“I don't know. I detected a little sarcasm there. Am I right? Was there a little irony in your tone?”

There was a gagging silence. Mike couldn't bring the word up his throat.

“Mike?” Kevin prompted him.

“No.”

“Well, good then. I guess we can all get back to work.”

He walked to the next door casing and started sanding it in the most cursory way possible. Tanya looked at Mike. Her look said
Is this how it's going to be?

Mike looked down. He had no answer for her.

Which meant
yes
. Mike's future was firmly in Kevin's hands. He was holding Mike's marriage hostage and that gave him power and power felt good; better than good. It was like snorting amyl nitrate. It obviously gave the little creep a major head rush.

Mike started back down the stairs. He had created a monster, and the monster was having the time of his life.

***

Across the raw mud of the Lomax compound, on the second floor of the main house, the remaining member of Mike's crew, Derek Briley, was finish-painting window casings, eavesdropping on another local monster. Lomax and his friend Nathan Parrish were chatting away, not ten feet from him, exchanging confidences of various kinds, primarily business related, and Derek was soaking up every word. All he had to do was keep on working. He was nothing to them. He might as well be a dog lying in the sun with his head on his paws, tame and witless.

Derek was anything but. He had a mean streak and he was clever, with a cockney shrewdness that was far more useful than the educated intellectual clog dance his boss went through before every decision. Derek had most things decided in advance. One good example: he'd never diddle the help, no matter how cute they were. He'd warned Mike about it jokingly one day when he'd seen the boss making goo-goo eyes at Tanya Kriel. “This for thinking, that for dancing,” he'd said, pointing to his head and his crotch. But Mike didn't listen. Scratch that. He listened all right; and he thought about it long and hard. Oh, yeah, he did the full clog dance, then he went ahead and did whatever stupid thing he was going to do in the first place. Mike's thinking was like the Circle Line tube. A lot of noise and jumble to get back to where you started from. It was different with Derek. When he was thinking he was working things out, figuring the angles. His kind would always get the better of a Mike Henderson. End of the day, bullshit baffles brains. That was Derek's philosophy.