“Damn it,” Ford said, throwing the covers back, “that’s not supposed to happen.”
“Something wrong in the lab?” I asked. I figured it was an alarm of some sort; a warning that one of the dozens of fish tanks there was leaking water or an aerator had gone bad.
“Phone call,” Ford explained. “This won’t take long,” then hurried out of the bedroom, his weight causing the stilthouse to vibrate.
A telephone? Ford’s cell phone buzzed as an alert and his landline had an old-fashioned ringer. It was not a story a man would invent, especially a man as honest and plainspoken as Marion Ford. So maybe he had changed his ringtone or he owned a third phone-none of my business, but I was aware that only an emergency or a drunken friend would cause a phone to ring at two in the morning.
I listened to a screen door slap shut, and soon the gonging stopped. I stretched, yawned, and lay there, luxuriating in the contentment I had just shared with a man I might be falling in love with. Maybe was already too far gone in love for my own good-it was way too early to have discussed commitment-but I didn’t care. It felt natural to lie there in my own skin, unashamed, letting moonlight show my body to the window and anyone who might be outside peeking-which was not a possibility, of course-Ford’s house, actually two small houses built on stilts in shallow water fifty yards from shore. That fact made my boldness a silly fiction, but I maintained it by walking naked to the bathroom. I felt a great closeness to my new lover, true, but I was nonetheless shy about using the toilet-the result of spending most of my life sleeping alone. So I made use of the opportunity but didn’t use the light switch. Vanity was the reason. I’ll never be considered beautiful by fashion model standards, but I do have a long, full body that moonlight treats kindly, and reality was something I’d seen enough of for one day.
After a few minutes, I surmised the phone call wasn’t an emergency or I would have heard Ford’s voice spike through the wall. It allowed me to relax while I stood at the window. Dinkin’s Bay Marina, down the shoreline, was speckled with dock lights where houseboats and cruisers shimmered beneath the moon. Still a few wandering souls awake: two women huddled together on the aft deck of a Chris-Craft; the boney silhouette of Tomlinson sharing a joint with a friend. I had met the two women when Ford was in the hospital, so I recognized them from the name of their boat, Tiger Lilly. The women had been chilly toward me at first but that had changed. Tomlinson, of course, still flirted openly, he still probed my availability with words and his eyes while urging me to Float on! But that was changing, too.
I like it here, I thought. Good people in a place that feels safe.
I slid beneath the covers; arranged my hair, then folded the sheet across my breasts for maximum effect. After several more minutes, I decided to read while I waited. Books were something Ford and I had in common and they can bring two strangers together faster than anything I know. We both liked nonfiction, especially natural history, which is always a safe topic of conversation. Gradually, though, books had allowed us to reveal our more personal tastes. Reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings had somehow led me into British classics. Now I’m fascinated by the complicated lives of George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë, among others, and we had been trading favorites, him reading Jane Eyre-or pretending to at least. I had been switching between Carl Hiaasen and Peter Matthiessen. Killing Mister Watson was on the bedstand, but I soon put it away because the subject matter-violence set among mangroves-was unsettling after my visit to the Helms place.
I lay back, rearranged the sheet, then my hair. Next thing I knew, I had been transported by a nightmare from Dinkin’s Bay to a doorless mansion where pit bulls eyed me from a hallway, then gave chase. The worst part was the terrible guilt I felt-the guilt of sneaking into the concrete privacy of a neighbor’s house without a permit or an excuse to shield me from a faceless woman’s axe.
Marion!
Maybe I screamed his name. More likely, I dreamt that part, too, because I was sitting up alone in bed when I awoke. There was no clock in the room, but I felt that a long space of time had passed.
I put my feet on the floor and found the baggy shirt I had been using as a robe. Dew dripped off the tin roof; the boom of a distant owl interrupted the rustle of mangroves and the chiming of chuck-will’s-widow birds. Yes, it was very late.
Where was Ford?
FORD’S LAB was walled with bubbling aquariums, its pinewood interior old, like most fish houses, but furnished with stainless tables, a marble countertop with chemical racks, and a metal desk, where I found the biologist sitting. He was so deep in thought, he was startled when I came into the room.
“Marion?” I said gently. “Is everything okay?”
Lighting from a goosenecked lamp was harsh, but only over the desk. It showed an open book-a world atlas-and what looked like a complicated cell phone near a legal pad where Ford had made notes, his block printing tiny but as concise as the orderliness of the room.
“Oh… Hannah!” he said, as if he’d forgotten I was visiting. “Sorry, I got preoccupied.” Then swiveled his back to me, closed the atlas, and slid the legal pad beneath it. The cell phone wasn’t as easily hidden, but the thought was in his mind, I sensed it, even though he pushed his chair away, straightening his glasses, and invited me closer with a wave.
“I’m interrupting,” I said. “I should have knocked.”
“No. You never have to do that. Not with me, you don’t.”
I wasn’t convinced. We all have secrets, as I am aware. We all deserve the privacy of our own minds, but Ford’s attempt to hide what I’d already seen was disturbing. “This is your work space,” I responded. “You’re busy-no need to apologize.”
I hadn’t intended to sound chilly but did. That changed when Ford stood, moved into the harsh light, and I got my first real look at him, shirtless and unprotected by bedroom shadows. The man was too muscled to appear frail, but he had lost weight after a week in the hospital, then three weeks convalescing. Fishing shorts hung on the bones of his hips, he looked gaunt and vulnerable because of the fresh scar beneath his heart-a scar new enough to be startling.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing. Only two days ago, after pretending reticence, I had been celebrating Ford’s good news in bed. Now I was being cold to the man I’d nearly lost-a man I might be falling in love with and didn’t want to lose again.
“I should have put on a shirt,” Ford said when he saw my expression. “Hang on, I’ll grab a lab coat.”
I caught the man’s arm as he passed, then framed his face between my hands and kissed him. “I’ve got vanity enough for both of us,” I said, “so don’t bother. I thought you left the lights off to make me look prettier.”
When he grinned, I kissed him again, then leaned for a closer look at his chest. “Stand still, for heaven sakes! Get your hand out of the way.”
The scar was a pink weld of flesh that angled four inches across his ribs. I had touched the scar with my fingers, my lips, too, but always in bedroom darkness. So I kissed it again as if saying, Hello, then stood, taking care not to look at the desk. “I’m going back to bed. Get your work done, then come along. A man who shirks his work isn’t going to get far with me.”
“Hey,” he said when I turned to go, then pulled my body close, his eyes staring into mine. “When you came in, I did something else stupid. I tried to hide something from you. It has to do with the phone call. Want to talk about it now? Or wait ’till morning?”