She grumbled but rolled from the bed without cogent argument. True to his word, he arranged a boat to take her to where Sean Brolly had lured two doomed ships aground over a hundred years ago, stealing the cargo and killing everyone on board.
Steven had already found the library on their first day in town, and resolved to spend all day within the dusty stale air of the periodical room. They ate a quick breakfast across the street, not speaking as usual. Maple syrup on his waffle brought to mind the night before; blood, seawater, and unknown viscous fluids. Linda had a lot on her mind, a lot of irons in the fire and didn’t mind his silence. It wasn’t as if Steven was doing anything worth hearing about. He wanted to talk about the fishwives, but realized it would provoke angry questions, recriminations. Silence was better.
Steven wasn’t sure when his relationship with Linda had turned sour. It might have been when he lost his job right as her career skyrocketed. Sure, she could support him, but “could” was very different than “should.” It fostered a certain kind of dependence, along with a resentment that poisoned the simplest of interactions. He was no longer Steven Haight, ad agency executive; he was the husband of thriller novelist Linda Haight.
After a while, he stopped being able to understand why she kept him around, and started suspecting every man she spent time with professionally. He imagined he could smell them on her when he got close enough. He was certain that if she hadn’t fucked at least two different authors at her last convention, it was only because she was too busy to maintain even the most superficial of relationships. On his worst days, Steven feared that she only stuck with him because of convenience, familiarity, and even worse, out of spite.
Linda was deep in thought when she stepped off the small boat that afternoon. Steven watched her jot notes in her notepad as she walked slowly up the warped wood in the salty breeze. The research had germinated, and the story was starting to take root inside of her. She would be easier to deal with for the next few months as she pounded out the first draft, distant, but less prone to micromanaging the affairs of the house, less prone to running Steven’s life. Of course, she’d still comment that God knows you can’t be trusted to run it yourself.
“You look like you’re ready to start writing,” he said, hands thrust in his pockets despite the heat.
She looked up as if startled to see him. “Yes.” She nodded, looked back at her notes, nodded again. “Yes, I think I’m going to spend tomorrow in the room working on an outline. We’ll be on our way back to Chicago in two days…three at most.”
Despite his wife’s mood, Steven felt the ground below him open and swallow his heart. “Three days?” he stammered.
“Maybe less, baby,” she replied thoughtlessly, letting her mood blind her to her husband’s. “This novel is going to be a best seller for sure. I just want to make sure I get the outline before we leave. Did you find anything in the library?”
Interesting? Beyond a doubt. But she wouldn’t use it. She had her story in place. “Maybe,” he replied instead. Through the sea air, the smell of her shampoo was cloying. “Did you decide what to do with Brolly’s fishwives?”
“Bonfire. It brings the ‘they used to lure ships to their doom’ full circle. I can’t prove it happened that way, but no one can prove otherwise, either. Plus, it makes a better story.”
Steven thought of the briny hair, the swollen, blackened tongues, the cold, slimy hands, the pungent scent of fermentation. He felt a stirring in his jockeys and thought instead about what he had found in the library. That snuffed his passion. “Oh. Good. Then I didn’t really find anything contradictory. Brolly was a madman, arguably a fisherman. He lived in a cluster of stilt homes on the tide flats with his wives.”
Linda nodded. “That, we found.”
“The papers had documented that quite well, as well as the nature of his arrest,” Steven continued. “His ranting as he was led from the tidal flats into the center of town had shaken the most resolute of men. Women who heard his shouting had fainted. The parish priest knotted a rag into Brolly’s mouth to mute his blasphemy, but the damage was done. Too many people had heard his cries to the ancient fish god, Dagon. Too many people had heard him attest to a lost city beneath the waves, of a race of Deep Ones who served, ageless. They were moved to a man to execute him before the madness spread. He was hung from a tree as soon as the mob reached the center of town. There was no trial. Nor was there further mention of his wives.”
“Maybe what happened to the fishwives had been too terrible for the reporters of the time to record,” Linda said, relishing the words as she said them. “Perhaps it had been a dark, guilty secret that those responsible took to their graves. I can work with that.”
The memory of a pungent, salty kiss told Steven all he needed to know. It was a fiery end the fishwives had gone to.
He started back towards the motel with Linda in the passenger seat, jotting down notes, the window rolled down to let in the seaside aroma. “Should we celebrate the beginning of the next book?” he asked.
“I’d like that.” Her hand left her notebook long enough to squeeze his thigh through his jeans. “Let’s stop at the grocery store on the way back to the room.”
Steven tasted the sour bile of panic. He forced a smile and complied like he always did. Wine helped Linda let down her guard, dropped some of her inhibitions. Maybe it would be enough.
She had finished most of the bottle of Merlot by herself with her dinner of BBQ pork and sweet potato biscuits. By the time the bottle rolled emptily along the bedside table, she had slid one hand inside his shirt, fingers curling in the fine hairs of his chest. Her teeth nipped at his ear, breath sour with wine, one leg thrown across his thigh as she ground lightly against it.
Steven closed his eyes, his body responding to her touch though his brain found it hard to remain in the moment. Eyes shut against the harsh realities of faded bedspread, shabby drapes, and shipwreck of his marriage, he could almost lose himself in the sensation. He gave in to the feel of her warm hands on his chest, teasing his nipples, sliding across a belly given more to flab than he would like to admit. Linda massaged his cock through his jeans, felt it eager to please, and so released it from its denim prison. Her touch was real. It was warm. It was drunkenly eager.
And it felt wrong. Her hands were too small, too inexperienced. Even fumbling as it was, her touch was far too gentle.
Steven looked into Linda’s blue eyes, probed for clues, for reactions. He reached up and caressed the soft skin around her eye. Her pupils were dilated with lust, but the eyes themselves seemed too squinty. His fingertip lightly grazed across her eyelid. So suddenly he almost didn’t realize he was doing it, Steven flipped her eyelid back over on itself.
Linda screeched and fell sideways off the bed as she scrambled at her folded eyelid. She collided with the side table, sending the wine bottle to the floor, shattering it on the hard wood of the floor. “Steven! What the FUCK!”
“I don’t know…”
“You’re fucking right you don’t know!” She found her feet, shrieking at him. The passion had converted from lust directly into rage with no stops in between. “You bitch and whine about how we never have sex, then I throw you a bone and you turn into a freak on me.”
Steven stood, his voice shaking as adrenalin surged through his bloodstream. She didn’t understand. How could he explain it to her, that maybe she had never taken the time to care about his desires, his needs? There was nothing wrong about it. No, certainly not. He was just unique. “I’m not a freak, Linda. I’m just a man with needs…”
“The fuck you are!” She shouted, spittle landing on his face, finger jabbing so hard in the chest he damn near lost his breath.