Stupid too. Tillie comforted me. Dolly was busy at that time.
“Breed koi,” Dr. Frederic J. Shanigan, MD, said. Koi are big carp that come in exotic colors. They freeze in their ponds in winter but thaw back to life in the spring. Dr. Shanigan breeds them for money on his island that none of us got invited to. Our medical recluse — who brags about his beautiful island home designed by an architect from far away, an Oriental who even created a Zen garden: artfully arranged rocks surrounded by white, carefully raked gravel — lives about ten miles out of Bunkport Harbor. He has a clinic in town that’s mostly run by Nurse, as Doc likes to travel. He uses his expensive powerboat as a ferry to the mainland, and a small but fast seaplane for getting further away. He is a sporty type who kayaks as well. Fastbuck Freddie heals for money only. No insurance, no treatment, unless there is top dollar in advance. Doc refers old people to out-of-the-way clinics because Medicare cuts into his bill. A pregnant homeless woman turned up with her baby stuck sideways. Doc sold her pain pills he got as samples. Priscilla, when she saw the woman collapse on her doormat, called the county helicopter service. By the time the chopper got to Bangor Hospital it carried a dead mother and a still-born baby.
But, you know, even Freddie Shanigan has different aspects. I had a splinter festering up my hand and Doc took it out for free. Priscilla broke out in shingles and Doc was right there with the injection and the ointment. Again: no charge. He treated Dolly, Sheriff’s wayward wife, for a fungus infection. Tom Tipper, treated free for side effects of alcoholism, claims Freddie sees us as members of his sacred inner circle.
I still won’t breed no koi or shoot, like Doc, the herons that sneak up into the pond to eat them.
“Learn to fly,” Sheriff, who used to be Air Force, said. That would be nice, but I get sleepy a lot. The boat can be anchored and the truck parked, but planes need somewhere where they can put themselves down. There are strips in Maine, but mostly they are private and the owners use trespassers for target practice.
I let that go, too.
Dolly smiled at me in her special way. In between lovers, was she? Beautiful woman, Dolly is.
Maybe Dolly wasn’t what I needed either.
Priscilla said we were getting close here. Female companionship would be the answer.
“Right,” Tom Tipper agreed. “I can come over for dinner.”
I said Tillie, sitting next to me on her own barstool, needed to go out, and please excuse us.
The subject came up again when the Big and Little Bitch Islanders, led by the Sisters, their lead lobstermen, showed up for refreshments.
The Sisters also suggested I should look for intimate company. “Be like us, get yourself a woman.” The Sisters are powerful personages, housed in powerful bodies, who use the young ladies they refer to as their “squeezes” as stern men. They own powerful fishing boats (Bad Cat is the leading vessel), and a refurbished WWII landing craft. The landing craft ferries their motorcycles and pickup trucks to the mainland and back. They stomp about armed.
“Get yourself a squeeze or two,” Big Sis told me.
“Sure thing,” I said.
I wasn’t too sure.
Shouldn’t I know better? There was the high-school teacher who got me to get her into trouble and we might have married if I hadn’t found a helpful medic. The Vietnam masseuse didn’t mean well, either. There was the one-night-stand in a Boston singles bar where lonely secretaries, nurses, some widows, maybe, a divorced woman or quietly dressed twenty- and thirty-pluses, in sensible shoes, toting handbags, looking through intellectual-looking paperbacks, glance at men shyly. The glancer I ended up with told me she was a biologist’s assistant, single, no complications, the last boyfriend was long gone. She preferred a motel until she got to know me well enough to invite me to her apartment. She had booze in her bag. I was alone when I woke up late the next morning. No wallet, no car keys, even my twenty-dollar watch was missing. No goodbye note, either.
The police reminded me we live in a bad, bad world. A fellow veteran lent me a Franklin to get me home.
Still. A woman. You never know. Someone from away, perhaps. A fleeting relationship. Or a long-time prostitute with manners. Some lady looking for a break.
I started thinking about the Sisters again.
I suppose, being a minority, the third gender has to prove superiority. Maybe the Sisters overdo their act a tad. The Sisters give me lobsters from time to time. They let me blunder about in their territory at will. They have me visit on their boat, and baby-talk to Tillie, who lets them hold her upside down and nuzzle her bare belly.
I advertised in the Washington Post, Tom Tipper’s hometown. He said government women get frustrated. He helped with the ad’s text; so did Dolly, who writes a supportive column in the Greater Bunkport American, a weekly. She also wrote a Harlequin novel. Larry the lawyer was the copyeditor. Doc Shanigan took digital pictures and created a Web site. I showed up as the kind, grizzly outdoorsman with his cute little doggie. The cabin and its neat interior, the boat and the pickup truck, both shiny in late sunlight, the snowmobile and the all-terrain vehicle, everything was there against a backdrop of islands and mountains in the distance. Odd man out, maybe, but a man of substance.
Tom Tipper told me to mention jazz. I visit his trailer to listen to the CDs he makes me order and we play duets. His keyboard blends with my sense of percussion. “Jazz attracts the sensitive, the intelligent, the spiritual, yet cool,” he whispered, “and the beautifully erotic.”
LOBSTER YACHT’S, named YOU TOO, OWNER/SKIPPER, MAINE COAST. VIRILE ONE-LEGGED VET MARINE. NO DEBT OR TV. SHORE CABIN WITH PLUMBING. IN NEED OF SINGLE WOMAN. AGE 30–40. LOG FIRES. THE CHICKADEES SING ALL WINTER.visit www.james.holbert.com for pictures and ‘contact me’
My publisher called. He said we had to talk. He knew he had specified crime but on second thought there had to be romance, too. “Put that in, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Priscilla calls him Walrus. Bald head, big moustache, obese, waddles, very persistent. Walruses must be persistent to get all the food they need to gather that weight.
You’re familiar with Alice in Wonderland, are you? She’s in the public domain so I can quote without permission:
(and a romantic entanglement, okay?)
The ad drew a bit of e-mail. I countered with polite refusals. I mean they were certainly nice women, and I appreciated them taking the trouble to contact me, but there were problem kids in reform schools who came out once in a while, and/or weight problems, or Tillie-eating dogs in tow, even prowling former lovers on parole. One was stalked by a rich rapist.
“Never mind,” Tom said. “Luck is with the lucky.”
Elizabeth didn’t bother to e-mail or send a photograph, she showed up, saying it isn’t difficult to locate a one-legged lobster-yacht owner/skipper in Downeast Maine.
And there she was. Striding into a full Thirsty Dolphin at Happy Hour on Friday. Coming straight at me, kissing me lightly on a grizzly cheek.
The audience applauded.
Elizabeth dropped her duffel bag so she could shake Priscilla’s hand across the bar. She introduced herself to the good old boys, the Sisters and their squeezes, Dr. Shanigan, Sheriff and Dolly, Tom Tipper, Larry the Lawyer, Father Mikey, and Deputy Dog (Sycophant being on duty that evening) as Elizabeth Scofield, single, thirty-four years old, lover of jazz and small dogs (Tillie sat on the barstool next to me, she got picked up and cutie-pied), an adept at coastal sailing, presently boatless due to a settlement with a recently divorced husband. For work, our applicant told us, she did freelance journalism.