“Due for a long vacation.” She gave me a long look. “Right here in Bunkport.” She stared at me critically but not disapprovingly.
“Would the relationship work?”
She looked at the faces of my buddies.
“Is he okay?” she asked, pointing at my head.
“A pervert,” the Sisters said. “He only likes women.”
“But kind of neat as men go,” a beautiful squeeze called Evelyn said.
“A drunk, but not as bad as me,” Tom Tipper said. “Nobody is as bad as me.” He got up, spilling beer, trying to stare us all down. “But nobody, okay?”
“Good health,” Dr. Shanigan said. “Life signs of a man ten years younger. Blood tests, last month, were fine.” He glanced at Dolly. “No sexual encounters since then, I would think.”
“A believer,” Father Mikey said, “with a new terminology. If he met God, God might like him.”
“God might like everybody,” Priscilla said. “So do I, with a large number of exceptions.” She gave Elizabeth her wide smile. “I like your advertiser, though. Pays his tab. Can be helpful. Good boater if he doesn’t go full blast in the fog. Walks home after four beers.”
“After I caught him that time,” Deputy Sycophant said. “Boy oh boy, good thing I lost the paperwork.”
Okay, so I had five beers that evening. Sycophant is a fuss body.
“Good slow lay,” Dolly said.
I don’t know what Sheriff would have said. His cell phone, a minute ago, had called him out on a case of domestic violence in the trailer park that Deputy Dog was having trouble with. We could see Sheriff outside, putting on body armor and checking his shotgun.
Elizabeth put Tillie down carefully, took a few steps back, pirouetted, and asked if I found her attractive.
Sure I did. What man doesn’t like long legs, a full bosom (hidden by a tightly buttoned-up blouse), long thick auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, slender well-cared-for hands, a sultry voice, like Marlene Dietrich. That voice could have warned me. Marlene was a chick one couldn’t push around, not even in her movies. Ever see The Blue Angel? Jeezum!
Priscilla had been watching Elizabeth’s performance carefully. “Nothing is ever one thousand percent right. Tell us what’s wrong with you, will you, dear?”
She patted her left breast. “This boob is fake.”
She told us about her cancer, all through one breast when it was finally detected, and spreading into lymph ducts up to the armpit. The surgeon did his job and prescribed chemo that made her bald and sick to her stomach for quite some months but she had been in remission for quite a while now. The surgeon said, “This type always comes back.” Next time around it was likely to kill her. The oncologist said she might live into old age, dementia, and a final rest in a nursing home.
She turned to me. “I can have another breast manufactured from surplus flesh of my belly if the lopsiding bothers you. Won’t take too long but I’ll have to fly back home and stay awhile.” She patted the other breast. “This one is perfect.” She smiled. I admired her well-cared-for teeth. Even so, the smile was twisted. Nervous maybe.
My smile must have been nervous, too. One breast, one leg, a fine kettle of fish. A matching kettle of fish?
Priscilla winked. “What do you say, James?”
Right. James. She got that from the ad. I was a new man. Hi, I am James.
I could have hemmed and hawed, suggested that Elizabeth should stay in Priscilla’s motel for a bit, that we do some introductory getting together, share a few meals in Bunkport’s falling-apart lobster- and crab-pier’s restaurant shack, but I liked those sparkling eyes and I’m used to lopsided anyway. Even my latest leg, mostly made in China, is a tad shorter than the other.
I would say we liked each other at first sight.
Love at first sight, according to Priscilla. She likes movies with “feel good” endings and reads pure romance. Tarzan and Jane stuff. Sentimentality, hard to find these days. Larry the Lawyer was on my side. So was Tom Tipper and Deputy Dog. “Love is for the lovebirds,” the deputy said. “And they are birds, dammit,” Tom Tipper said.
Like at first sight. That was okay. We agreed. Except Priscilla, she had been married once. She knew about true love. Her husband died in Montreal during their honeymoon. Some say she squashed him.
Elizabeth moved into the cabin and the weather was fine for a week and we were mostly boating. I bought her a diving suit and cylinders and goggles and showed her where the last cod swims, and we saw two types of Maine seals, smiling at us from rocks overgrown with bright orange rockweed. We met with a bevy of harbor porpoises, and, briefly, with a thresher and a blue shark, both of them large, but not hungry, maybe it was too cold for them. She went ooh and aah spotting herons, ospreys, eagles, wild turkeys, turkey vultures, and listened to the lonely call of a loon. She also noticed the bleeding chair. There were cormorants (big black seabirds) on it, but they flew away as she pointed.
Elizabeth liked crime. She was also interested in the incident featuring the corpses on the Take It Easy. She kept asking around about what happened, even made notes, read newspaper clippings in the library, consulted charts.
And now this.
After she had climbed all over the giant buoy, she wondered whether we should contact the authorities.
I didn’t think so. Why meddle?
She found a camera in her bag and clicked away.
“What do you care?” I asked and she said she was a journalist, remember? Taking pictures of amazing events had become a habit. I told her our Bunkport friends wouldn’t like a write-up on easily misunderstood events, especially this close to home.
Why not?
I told her. The authorities like making a fuss. Anybody, any local body, who spotted the chair would know exactly what happened here. I mentioned fishing territory. Some fool lobsterman had broken the code. This was a Bitch Island Sisters reserve. The Sisters, I assumed, would have caught an intruding thief in the act and warned the trespasser, then, on another occasion, warned the fool again. And then, well, they killed him, created an example.
“Have anyone specific in mind, James?”
Me?
“So the Sisters shot this poor guy up?”
Well now...
“Tom Tipper was the victim?” Elizabeth wanted to know, which was a good guess, for Tom, who reads Nietzsche in German, and has become convinced that we’ve made up our own values and that, because we are wrong, the values are wrong too, may have been drawing the wrong conclusions. Amorality ain’t immorality. But Tom, he doesn’t really give a rat’s ass about nothing no more. The way he is going I have been thinking of persuading Tom to sign himself into a mental institution. Save Sheriff the trouble of dragging him, kicking and screaming. A dry-out place behind bars someplace. Get some peace and quiet.
“Tom who?” I asked.
It was true I hadn’t seen Tom Tipper for a while. I was sure Elizabeth — having gathered enough Down East lore during her investigations — might be guessing right. So the Sisters kidnapped the poor blighter, his recliner and all. They heaved the lot onto the back of the pickup truck and ferried the load to Bitch Island. They got their squeezes to help them maneuver chair and Tom on top of the giant marker. They tied everything up good, got back in their boat, and round and round the avengers go, firing away. Poff poff POFF.