“Maybe that’s what happened to the girl from the motel.”
“Drugs?” Gryffin shook his head. “I doubt it. Not Kenzie.”
“No. This Denny guy. Maybe he kidnapped her or something.”
“Uh-uh. Denny never leaves the island. I mean, he might come over once or twice a year to get some groceries, but that’s it. Toby brings him whatever he needs when he’s out there provisioning Lucien. Denny’s a total hermit. I mean, he’s just sane enough to be on this side of AMHI.”
“AMHI?”
“Augusta Mental Health Institution. State loony bin. If he were down in Portland or someplace like that, he’d probably be on the street. But here—well, he’s pretty normal.”
“Normal?” I stared at him in disbelief. “Ever hear of Stephen King? I mean, you were the one who brought up Charles Manson.”
Gryffin looked exasperated. “You’re from away, so you don’t get it. Half the guys in Maine look like Charles Manson. Especially here down east. There’s a lot of survivalist types living off in the woods; you can’t go arresting them every time someone wanders off the Appalachian Trail. If you could even find them.”
“But you know right where Denny is.”
“Yeah, and it’s a good place for him.” He stared out at the bulk of Tolba Island. “Guys like Denny, maybe they know what’s best for them. Stay away from the rest of us. Some people just don’t play well with others. If they want to hide and waste their lives, that’s their business.”
I didn’t say anything, just stood beside him, gazing at the water. After a minute I peered at his face.
“What?” he demanded.
“The green ray.” I extended my finger. He flinched, and I stopped, my finger hovering an inch from his cheekbone. “There—in your eye. That weird speck of green. I’ve never seen that before.”
“Pigment. Too much melanin. Like a freckle, only in my iris.”
“It’s weird. It’s kind of beautiful.”
“That’s your beer talking. Come on, I’m starving.”
We walked to Aphrodite’s house. The day suddenly felt old. The sun was already sliding down toward the western horizon, and as we approached the house it all seemed plunged in shadow. I was hungry now too, and tired.
“I’m going to crash after I eat,” I said as we went into the kitchen. The house was silent, with no trace of Aphrodite or the dogs. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“I’ll get you set for a nap after lunch. Sit.”
He cleared aside the papers on the table by the window. We ate without talking. When we were done he cleared the plates, then said, “Okay. I’ll show you the guest room. Then I’ve got to make some phone calls and do some work.”
“What about your mother?”
“What about her? She’s either schnockered or out in the woods with the dogs. She’ll be back at some point. Maybe after you have your little nap the two of you can trade hangover remedies,” he said angrily. “She drives me nuts. She always has. We’ve never really gotten along.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You want to know the truth? If I were you, I’d just leave and go back to the city. Even if she’d known you were coming, even if you had brought a tape recorder—she would have found some way out of it. And that—?”
He pointed at my camera. “Not in a million years.”
I stared at the table. I still hadn’t paid Toby for bringing me out; it couldn’t cost much more to have him bring me back to Burnt Harbor. If I left early the next morning, I could be home by tomorrow night. I wouldn’t be out much more money, or time, and I’d have the rest of the week to—
To what? Scream at Phil? Drink myself to sleep or shuffle around the clubs looking for music and someone to go home with?
That wasn’t going to happen. The clubs were gone. I had a better chance of getting laid here in Bumfuck than on the Lower East Side. I had the Rent-A-Wreck for the rest of the week, but not enough money to do something interesting with it.
And there was still the minor matter of Phil Cohen. No matter that he’d screwed this up, he would give me grief and almost certainly do his part to make sure everyone within the Tri-state radius thought it was my fault.
“Shit, I dunno.” I looked up at Gryffin. “Listen, would there be a problem with me staying overnight? I mean, this editor arranged this for me, and I don’t really want to bail and go back without anything to show him. I’ll keep a low profile,” I added. “Just for a day or two.”
Gryffin sighed. “I guess we can see what she says. Get your stuff, and I’ll show you the guest room; you can sleep or read or whatever. Check how your Nokia stock’s performing.”
He led me back upstairs. We went past the room with Aphrodite’s islandscapes, into a narrow ell that led to one of those jerry-built additions, its floor uneven and the windows mismatched.
“Remember what I was telling you about the folks at Oakwind having no idea what they were doing when it came to architecture and building? This is Exhibit A.” Gryffin waved in disgust at the walls. “Denny built this—my wing of the house, including the guest room. And if you think it’s bad now, you should have seen it back then. Snow blew right through the cracks in the walls; there’d be two-inch drifts in here. Nothing was plumb—you could set down a bowling ball at one end of the hall and it would roll to the other. Toby had to come in and basically rebuild it. So it’s still kind of funky, but—”
He stopped and opened a door. “You will find no snow in your sleeping quarters.”
No heat, either, that I could detect, but I was afraid to push my luck by mentioning that. The room was under the eaves. There was a bed with a white coverlet, a nightstand and lamp, a ladderback chair and small chest of drawers. Braided rug on the floor, a window overlooking evergreens and gray rocks.
“It’s fine.” I dumped my bag on the bed. “Thanks.”
Gryffin bent to feel the baseboard heater. “This isn’t on. And I forgot the space heater. Well, you’ll be okay for a while. If you stay, I’ll bring you the heater before you go to bed tonight, how’s that? But now I have to get some work done. Bathroom’s down the hall, there should be hot water. See you later.”
He left. I grabbed a change of clothes and found the bathroom. More mismatched windows, a cracked skylight that had become a morgue for moths and flies, clawfoot tub, rust-stained sink.
But there was a nice Baruch rug on the pine floor, and expensive Egyptian cotton towels, and a block of Marseille soap in a brass holder by the tub. All of which led me to peg Gryffin as a closet sensualist.
I took a long bath. There was plenty of hot water. When I was done I dressed, keeping my expensive jeans but upgrading to a clean black T-shirt. Then I went back to my room, crawled under the blankets, and passed out.
It was late afternoon when I woke. The light seeping through the windows had that trembling clarity you get in early winter, when there are no leaves to filter it and the clouds are the same color as the sky. I exhaled and watched the air fog above my mouth. Then I got out of bed, went to the bathroom and washed my face. I raked my fingers through my hair and confronted the mirror.
I looked like shit. For the last few decades I’d coasted on good bone structure and good teeth. Right now those were the only things I still had going for me. With my ash-streaked hair and sunken eyes, I looked like a bad angel scorched by the fall to earth. I bared my teeth at my reflection and stepped back into the hall.
The door to Gryffin’s room was shut. I knocked on it softly. No reply. I went inside, closing the door behind me.
The room wasn’t bigger than mine, though less monastic. There was a more elaborate rug on the floor, a nice Mission-style bed, carelessly made with plaid blankets and a heap of pillows. Dark curtains, half drawn. A small desk with the now-empty computer case I’d seen in his motel room. An open suitcase holding flannel shirts and jeans. A few framed photos on the walls—a fishing trip, friends from Putney, graduation from Bowdoin College. On the desk a heavy old brass candlestick with a thick pillar candle and a Gauloises matchbox; on the windowsill some smooth gray rocks and the carapace of a box turtle.