North of Boston (23 page)

“I have a favor to ask. It's about Noah and Thomasina,” I say. Back in high school, Thomasina spent a number of Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations at our house, rather than riding them out by herself in the deserted halls of Gaston when her parents couldn't be bothered with her. Jeffrey always asks about her and Noah, whom he's babysat several times.

“Of course. How are they doing?”

“Noah's OK for having just lost his father. Thomasina's not so good.”

I explain her struggle with addiction, and Jeffrey nods without surprise. I describe her failed attempts to get sober, how she's become even more unreliable lately. I mention her night in jail and a bit about the Foxwoods fiasco.

“Noah's always been able to call me if he needed anything. He called me the night his mother didn't come home. But I'll be out of town for a while—I'm leaving Friday for a few weeks—and I'm worried. Thomasina promised she'd go to back to meetings, but she doesn't have a very good track record where that's concerned.”

Jeffrey snaps a celery stick between his teeth. “I think I know where this is headed.”

“Noah really likes you, Jeffrey. He still talks about the day you took him to the science museum and sat through the Imax movie about dinosaurs twice.”

Jeffrey chuckles. “I didn't mind. He explained the parts I didn't get.”

“He knows that you raised me, and that I think the world of you, and of course Thomasina's always loved you and trusts you implicitly, so—”

“So you want to bring me into the picture, just in case.”

“Do you mind?”

“Of course not. Tell them they can call me anytime. Give them the home phone and my cell.”

“Great. I'll give you theirs as well.” I jot down the numbers on a notepad. “Maybe you could give them a call before I leave, just to say hi. I want Noah especially to feel OK about calling you if he needs anything.”

“I can do more than that. I'll take him to the museum again so we can renew our bond.”

“You will? You're the best, Jeffrey.”

He grins, accepts my bear hug, then holds me at arm's length. “Now tell me where the hell you're going.”

“On a cruise.”

“I didn't know you like cruises. Where to?”

“The Bahamas.”

“Well, I hope you have good weather.” He looks at me thoughtfully, as if he senses something off. “Be careful, will you, Pirio? Some of us love you, you know.”

—

There's nothing to bring me to his doorway. Nothing more I need from him, nothing I want to know. But I'm here anyway.

I park on the street and walk down a dirt driveway to a cottage on the outskirts of Rockport, a quaint seaside village thirty miles north of Boston. He left the rooming house in Charlestown and moved here a few days ago. It's got WiFi and a view of the harbor, he said. A train goes into Boston.

It feels late, though it isn't. Only nine o'clock. The sky is pure blackness, no moon or stars. A thin mist, too delicate to be called fog, swirls in the halo of the light above his door.

I'm leaving on the
Sea Wolf
tomorrow morning. My duffel bag's packed, zipped tight as a sausage, secured with a small combination lock. The cameras are inside, wrapped in fleece sweatshirts; an extra cell phone is stuffed into a wool sock. A backpack holds my laptop and some books, including Aksyonov's
Generations of Winter
, a modern Russian saga that I've been meaning to read for some time. In case there are a lot of empty daytime hours or, more likely, sleepless nights. It's all sitting on the floor next to the door of my apartment, waiting to go.

If I were home right now, I'd be pacing like a lunatic. Fear is easier to bear when you're physically in motion. But there are different kinds of fear, and as I mount the two wooden steps to his front door and gently knock, a more subtle kind takes hold of me.

The door opens soundlessly. He's standing there. We are silent, and the air feels thick around us. I ask if he'll teach me to cook.

His face darkens; he turns away. Now he knows I'm really going.

I follow him into the kitchen, where he starts opening and closing nearly empty cupboards in a flurry. Says he doesn't think there's a cookbook, but he knows what he saw his mother do. Says you don't need any special instructions to cook on board a vessel like the
Sea Wolf
anyway. The men are likely to be starved and grateful, meals, sleep, and pissing being their only breaks from work. “Whatever you do, make a lot,” he counsels. Recommends carbs: pasta, rice, pancakes for breakfast. Things like that. Says frozen meatballs are probably a good thing to have on board. And sausage, home fries, tomato sauce, syrup. Says fish is best seared for a few minutes in a hot pan or baked in the oven with breadcrumbs. Beware of overcooking. He gives an ironic arch to one eyebrow. They won't be lacking in fresh fish, right?

Then he asks me when, by the way, I'm leaving. There's a gravelly edge in his voice.

I say tomorrow morning at five.

“Right,” he says emphatically, and bangs around a few more cabinet doors. “In that case, the boat's already been provisioned. You'll just have to get creative with whatever's there.” He leans back against the counter, folds his left arm over his right, stares at me without pity. Cooking lesson concluded.

If tomorrow wasn't tomorrow, I might wish I hadn't come. I sigh deeply. I do it again. The sighs are loud and completely involuntary.

He pulls a bottle of wine and two glasses off the counter, goes into the living room. I follow. It's got matching plaid furniture, knotty pine tables, a braided wool rug. A wall hanging featuring a deer in a forest and small woodland creatures. Lamps with faded shades.

He opens the bottle by sitting down, squeezing it between his thighs, working the corkscrew with his good hand. I don't dare offer help. He pops it somehow, pours one glass. Before he pours the second, I tell him I don't want any.

“Oh, great,” he says sarcastically, as though that just takes the cake. “What are you, an alcoholic?”

I tell him that if I had one glass of wine, I'd probably have several, and probably get drunk, and probably still be drunk at three-thirty when my alarm went off, and so might end up, as they say, missing the boat. That if I was an alcoholic, I probably wouldn't be sitting right where I am, stone-cold sober; I'd be back at my apartment tossing back shots of vodka or gin.

I do have a bit of an exercise habit, however, I explain. Over the last few days I've swam for hours and hours, trying hard to catapult myself into that blissful, high-endorphin zone. But my breath and kicking never synchronized. I just got dog-tired and dragged myself out of the pool. Oh, and I also have a small shopping issue, I admit. Recently I spent an entire evening online, had a lot of stuff shipped overnight express, and when it all arrived, I didn't even feel like opening the boxes. I did open them, though, and for a while I played around with all my new stuff like it was an only child's pathetic Christmas morning. I inflated the pricey rubber survival suit to see if it really worked and ended up puncturing it with the Swiss Army knife.

I smile lopsidedly. “So that's my addictions lineup. None of them work very well.”

Not entirely true. I omitted last night's cigar and the pleasure it gave me. But I wouldn't be a real addict if I didn't keep something back. Besides, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

I perform the stogie ritual just as Milosa taught me: I snip the end and lick the bitter brown paper, spiral fully half of it in my wet mouth. I light a wooden match, watch it flare, hold the fire steady, and puff. Short coaxing puffs until the leaves crackle and I see a steady glow of red. Until smoke streams internally down the length of the cigar, fills my mouth fully, and eventually leaves it to swirl around my head. Smoking stogies is hardly a trip to Nirvana, but it's a few stops down the line. As always, it's the smell that matters: a thick, brown, dirty odor that clobbers your pretensions, coaxes your brain to release its store of natural opiate, cradles you in a hot, dry, unbearable presence, like a desert wind you would willingly lie down and be baked in, becoming smokable yourself. Cigars work wonders for me.

But right now Russell Parnell and I both know that the substance I really want, and what I'm really here for, is love. That cliché, that pop-tune staple, that stingy old hermit in the hidden cave who has stubbornly refused to show his face to me, though I've clambered up his mountain path countless times to prostrate myself before his pile of stones.

Maybe I'm unworthy. It's crossed my mind. I don't know how to wait, bide my time. Maybe it's because I'll settle for sex. And have, too many times. But who can help it? Need is sharp and raw. It bores a hole in your chest from the inside and pulls you into rooms like this one, where you are forced to awkwardly refuse or accept glasses of unnecessary seduction wine.

I've been around too long to believe that what might happen here tonight is likely to be anything more than transient. But tomorrow I'm leaving on a possible death trip, so what is that to me?

Parnell and I sit facing each other in the small room, tension between us. Electric, dense, warm. He wants me. It's in the set of his jaw, the level gaze of his eyes. In the way he moves the fingers of his good hand, as if the sinews are about to pop.

What would it be to be folded in those arms, my face in the roughness of his sweater, my face looking up to his? What would it be to touch his face and run my fingers across his lips to let the blood rise into them before they're kissed? I want him, too. I want to feel what our love might feel like if it was real.

But my body doesn't move. I see it traveling between us, crossing that short distance, but it doesn't go. It's leaden, heavy. This is not my choice—it's simply what my body is insisting on. Not to go. Wisdom or betrayal? I ask myself. But the body doesn't answer abstract questions. It simply doesn't walk the four steps between Russell Parnell and me. I sit there without a wineglass in my hand, feeling dumb as a fat tree, as if my feet have sent long, ugly tendrils underground to root me to the spot.

He sees what has happened, and his own desire slips gracefully away. No hard feelings.

I leave the apartment soon after that, stomp petulantly down the dark driveway to my car. I'd like to know what my body thinks it's doing. Which, in its wisdom, it won't say.

I
'm standing on the dock in inky blackness, my luggage at my feet. The taxi that dropped me off rolls quietly away. I check my watch. It's 4:43 a.m. I'm early. Usually I'd be wary of hanging out alone and carless in the dark in this section of town, but I figure the muggers and murderers are still in bed. Floodlights shine on a few gently bobbing fishing vessels. The
Sea Wolf
isn't one of them. Also, and not incidentally, there are no people around.

Wrong day? Time? Place? But I swear I heard Johnny right.

It's cold, an hors d'oeuvre of what's to come on the mid-October Atlantic, if I ever make it there. I shrug my shoulders under a jacket that already feels too light. It's high tide—I can tell from the sound of seawater lapping against the pilings just a few feet below the dock. A police car cruises down Seaport Boulevard; the pudding-white face inside stares at me as it passes. Maybe he thinks I'm an outdoorsy prostitute; maybe he doesn't give a damn. I stomp my feet, feel the icy air in my lungs. Was I duped? Am I being tested? A water rat scurries across the pier.

An old red Corolla pulls into the lot and stops in front of the dock, leaving its headlights on. The trunk pops up. A man gets out and walks toward me. He's in his midthirties, hair neatly parted and combed flat. He grabs my gear. “This way,” he says, heading back to the car. He tosses my duffel bag into the trunk, slams it, and slides behind the wheel. I hesitate, then get in the car.

“Where's the
Sea Wolf
?” I ask.

“Change of venue. More your style.” He looks me over smilingly. “Name's Brad.”

“Pirio.”

“I know. You're the Swimmer. Nice to have a celebrity on board.”

“I'm hardly that.”

“You don't get to choose.”

“Ned Rizzo saved my life.”

“So I heard. I knew him well, worked with him for years. But you, you're something else—” The way Brad looks at me, I almost glance over my shoulder, thinking Mary, Mother of God, must be favoring him with a visitation.

“Where are we going?”

“You'll see.”

We're headed south on 93, passing gas tanks and billboards and empty lots and scattered tall buildings and three-deckers set next to one another with no room to spare. My heart is pounding so hard I'm surprised I can't hear it. Brad seems like a nice enough guy—they mostly are, these local fishermen—but that doesn't change the fact that Johnny's already played me for a fool. There I was, standing on the dock like well-behaved bait, and now I'm being taken to an undisclosed location. I can hear Milosa in the background laughing. (I always hear Milosa in the background laughing.) Yet there's no choice now but to stick with the plan and act normal, even though every movie I've ever seen featuring abduction, imprisonment, and torture is playing in my head at once.

Somewhere in Dorchester we get off the highway and head east along a wide, flat road that looks like it's on its way to nowhere. It dead-ends at a marina. Boats all around, many of them sailboats. There's a pink seam of light at the eastern horizon, and trickles of sunlight are creeping across the water, making it glow green like tarnished copper. I open the window to the screech of gulls and the clang of halyards.

We drive behind a warehouse, and there in the near ocean, in a space all to itself, floats a luxury yacht, brightly illuminated inside and out. Two hundred feet probably, sleek, white as sea foam, with a needle-sharp bow. I count four levels, stacked like the tiers of a wedding cake, with a lookout and a lot of sonar stuff spewing out the top. It's a nautical Taj Mahal in a neighborhood of huts.

Brad wags his head like a kid arrived at Disney World. “Will you look at that? It's something, isn't it?”

“Whose boat is this?” It obviously doesn't belong to Ocean Catch.

“Bob Jaeger's. Named the
Galaxy
. This is its maiden voyage. Jaeger's girlfriend got sick of the
Sea Wolf
—not exactly luxury accommodations—and when it got that crack in its hull, she said she wouldn't set foot on it again. Convinced Jaeger to get a superyacht, and he did. The boys say the damn boat's got every damn thing you can think of. Even the toilet paper's extra soft. Have to say, I'm disappointed I'm not going on this trip. But it's just as well. It's not something a guy like me can get too used to. Still gotta go back and haul flounder, you know?”

He looks at me a bit apologetically. “I know Johnny hired you as cook to take Flabby Abby's place. But we just found out last night that Jaeger brought along some of his own people for the hospitality end of things: supposedly, he's got a crackpot chef, a waiter, and a lady who takes care of everything. So I don't know what they're gonna do with you.”

He parks, and we take my gear out of the trunk. He carries my duffel up the gangway. A man in a navy sweatshirt meets us before we board. He's in his forties, thinner and more stooped than you would expect a fisherman to be. He offers me no greeting, acts like he has better things to do than be a host. He and Brad exchange some muffled words, and Brad goes back to his car.

The man maneuvers my duffel down a stairwell, carries it along a narrow corridor, and drops it in front of a door. This I take to be my cabin in the yachting equivalent of the low-rent district. There are three other doors on the hallway, all closed. The din of engine noise, not too loud, rumbles through the steel floor into the soles of my sneakers.

“You're the last on board. We'll be leaving soon. You're supposed to report to Zorina in the galley right away,” he says and walks off.

Zorina.
My new boss. We already have weird names in common. Maybe we'll get along.

I enter my cabin. It's amazing what can be done with a seven-by-nine-foot space. There's a cozy bunk, a tidy formica desk with an easily accessible outlet, a slim built-in closet and stack of drawers. Even a chair for a visitor and an oval mirror attached to the back of the door so I can stay looking my best. Starched sheets and a nice woolen blanket are tucked around the mattress. A steerage-size porthole offers can't-get-much-closer-than-this ocean views. A good place to die or write or pray, though I'm not going to do any of those things. Right now I'm more inclined to take an unguided tour of the environs.

I retrace my steps and find the stairwell when, lo, I notice an elevator next to it. Imagine that. I take it to the fourth floor, enjoying its Fifth Avenue ambience (red carpet, gilt-edged mirrors veined with gold), and step out into a big lounge decorated in contemporary blues and grays. Coffee tables, lamps, and cozy club chairs are arranged around a huge, wall-hung TV screen. Sleek windows offer a panoramic view of Neptune's watery world. I do a double take, surprised to see the skyline of Boston shrinking with alacrity into the horizon. The yacht's so huge and stable, you can't even feel it move.

I make my way through sliding doors onto an open deck with a bar, a dining table with seats for twelve, and a covered Jacuzzi under a blue retractable awning. Three or four steps lead up to an area near the bow populated by lounge chairs.

I'm having too much fun to wonder what Zorina meant by
right away
, an admittedly relative term despite its flavor of urgency, so I take the elevator down to the third floor. What greets me when the doors slide open is an eye-popping grand salon straight out of Versailles. Tasseled brocade drapes, velvet settees, a huge chandelier with about a dozen crystal tiers. A grand piano, a black Yamaha, sits on a plush red-toned oriental rug the size of a small skating rink.

So far I haven't met anyone. I'm starting to think I'm on a ghost ship, but when the elevator doors open on the second floor, I hear distant voices: male, angry; female, commanding. Running water and the clanging of pots. I pass through a small library into an empty dining room. The next room is obviously the galley. A skinny waiter emerges carrying a tray of upside-down wineglasses. His hair is shorn in the back and spiky at the crown, with a long swoop over one side of his face. He glances my way, doesn't seem surprised to see me, and begins setting the table.

I'm not ready to make anyone's acquaintance, so I hop back on the elevator and descend to the first floor, emerging into a hallway softly lit by frosted wall sconces. There are six closed doors, three on each side—the staterooms, I figure. I've only taken a few steps on thick Berber carpeting when the door I'm passing opens and a young woman walks into me.

“Gosh, I'm sorry,” she says. “I should look where I'm going. So clumsy.” Attar of rose, carnation, a hint of woody moss. A gorgeous scent—classic, French, extravagantly feminine. Like an elegant Parisian grandmother with a wealth of romantic secrets to impart.

“That's more self-flagellation than is really called for.” I am, in fact, trying to be kind.

She smiles. “I wish you were a parrot I could put on my shoulder.”

“Thank you.”

With this, I feel we've established a certain bond.

She says, “I didn't see you last night, but I don't like parties and went to bed early. Now everyone's sleeping, and I'm awake. What are you doing up?”

“Looking for Zorina.”

“Oh,
her
. Bob won't leave home without her. She remembers all his appointments, dates. God knows I can't do that. She hates me, let me tell you. She'll probably poison me before it's over. Not that I'm anyone to be jealous of. Middle class all the way. But we were
urged
, shall I say. I played harp and went to Bryn Mawr. Where'd you go?”

“UMass Boston.”

“Oh. Too bad.”

The young woman is dressed in a loose nightgown and flowing robe, the fabric delicate, nearly transparent. Only the diaphanous folds afford some modesty. Her face is a pale oval of classical beauty. Red hair falls across her shoulders and down to her waist. A siren-red gloss has been freshly and heavily applied to her lips. Interesting that, though it is but six in the morning and she is barefoot and barely clad, she did not leave her stateroom before using lipstick and daubing scent behind her ears.

“By the way, do you know where we're going?” I ask. I feel as though I can ask her this question, and she'll forget my notable ignorance instantly. Like one of the nymphs of Maxfield Parrish, she seems to be not entirely real.

“To the north pole, I think. Someplace like that.
Arctic
is what I was told. Only with Bob you can never be sure. He changes things so fast. The only thing you can count on is that at some point we'll be forced to stand on the upper deck looking through binoculars at animals. We might see polar bears, he said. Walruses, maybe. Sea lions. Silver fox. Doomed things. The ice cap is melting, and we've got to get photos before it goes. That way, when Bob and I are released from our cryogenic preservation tanks, we can tell our new space-age friends, ‘Look, there we are standing on a glacier back in the good old days when planet Earth was cold.'” A pause. “You think I'm kidding, don't you?”

“Not sure.”

“You'll see. This is your first trip, huh?”

I nod.

“I'm Margot. Who are you with?”

“I'm not with anyone. My name's Pirio, and I'm crew.”

“Really? Why aren't you wearing one of those, um, T-shirts they all wear?”

“Haven't got it yet, I guess. Got to find Zorina first.”

“Well, pity you. She's probably in the galley, screaming ‘Off with her head.' I'm headed there for warm milk and honey. Out of pills, but they don't work anyway. Can't sleep. Never could. Don't know why I bother trying. If I read, I'd be unbearably brilliant by now. I knit sometimes. Baby booties. Of course it doesn't help that Bob snores. I wish you'd told me you were staff. I wouldn't have gone on so much. Self-disclosure is like a disease with me.”

“It's OK,” I say, following her down the hall.

“For you, sure. Why should you care?”

She seems to have decided that I don't, and it seems to hurt her. I'm guessing she's frequently hurt.

The sealed cabins we pass are quiet as tombs, sleeping revelers inside.

As we enter the galley, a woman I assume is Zorina, barely glancing up from some paperwork spread before her on the counter, announces to a round-bellied Asian cook that a guest is in need of warm milk. Her face is strikingly narrow, her features crammed onto it in a straight line down the middle: close-set eyebrows; close-set eyes; high, flared nostrils; and a small round mouth. She's wearing what looks like a flight attendant's uniform, cinched tight at the waist by a big brass button. Her figure is generous, but she holds herself stiffly, and comes off as uptight.

Rather suddenly, she addresses me. “You're late.” She throws a T-shirt at me. Navy and white nautical stripes in cheap polyester. A horror.

“You'll be serving, cleaning, doing laundry. Can you bartend?”