"So strange in these modern times to have your daughter tell you that you need to get laid. I'm saving it for marriage."
"I didn't mean to be coarse. I didn't want you to think that Mother was the only woman in the world. You might even find something better, for Christ's sake."
Nordstrom rolled his eyes and Sonia stomped out of the room. There was a kind of half friendly bitchery between Sonia and her mother that he had found incomprehensible, as if they were trying to play a game with razors. He poured a dollop of bourbon and went to the window, abruptly turning away when he saw that two of Sonia's friends from college had taken off the tops of their bikinis. One of them, a rather plain girl all in all, had beautiful pear-shaped breasts that tilted up a bit and glistened with suntan lotion. Nordstrom felt a slight pulling low in his stomach that he was unable to blame on the whiskey. The girl had helped him with the dishes the night before and he had scarcely noticed her. In the past week or so, since the incident while basting the lamb, he had maintained with no particular effort the sensation of having just awakened from a lovely dream, but the difficulty was that certain things had become too utterly poignant to be borne up under. He would sit in the room in the dark listening to the music until it quit, sometimes not until near dawn. In between the records he heard the sea rising and falling against the breakwater. He found himself unable to read and without any interest in thinking. Thoughts, sensations and pictures passed through his mind but he let them float away. He wondered what a person blind from birth saw in his mind. He wondered about that sophomoric notion of what a man is, deprived of the input of the five senses. He wondered who was listening to the music from his bedroom, who was the listener and was startled. In sleeping the dreams of Laura had disappeared and he occasionally dreamt of women that didn't exist. How could that be? He would wonder in the morning. He rigged a setline down on the beach using a doorknob for a sinker and a chicken liver for bait, as he had done as a boy, but at dawn when he pulled in the line there was only a small dead shark tangled in a large clump of seaweed. He mourned his errant curiosity and buried the shark with the same reverence he had buried the soul of the crow thirty years before.
That night as he prepared dinner for a dozen absolutely stoned young people Sonia came into the kitchen and stared at him with her eyes flashing.
"You really pissed me off today. I wasn't trying to interfere in your life. You could at least talk to people. I keep telling them you're my father but they think you're the cook."
"There's nothing wrong with being a cook. But I'm going to take your advice and get a girl friend. A blond one with a huge ass that listens to country music."
Actually two of Phillip's friends had asked for turkey sandwiches one morning thinking Nordstrom was the cook. They had been embarrassed later and one, a short plumpish Sephardic Jew from New York, had helped Nordstrom with dinner. He was an habitue of the same restaurant in the Village where Nordstrom had eaten with Sonia and Phillip. The young man was a fine cook and while they were preparing the food (filet of sole Bercy aux champignons) Nordstrom asked him about the waitress that had caught his eye. It proved to be a fatal question.
"Oh my god just stay away. She's an absolute kike cunt, a dancer with those big dark Monet eyes. She'd put you in the blender. I mean my god every well-heeled fool in town comes around with flowers and she treats them like dog-shit. She was married to this schvartze coke dealer, you know, a spade killer, and she had an affair with this writer who got his teeth beaten loose. But of course I'll introduce you if you love the masochism bit. You don't look like the type." The young man had given off a melancholy laugh. "I like these dipshit English girls myself."
The night of Sonia's anger Nordstrom capitulated and sat at the head of the table. He didn't mind that the people he cooked for smoked marijuana as it seemed to sharpen their appetites. He had roasted some quail he had stuffed with green grapes, halved and soaked overnight in Calvados. They were eaten greedily which pleased Nordstrom and he talked at length with two Harvard MBA's about the energy crisis and the consequences of Middle Eastern politics on oil imports. The two young men were surprised that the cook had been to Jidda, and had helped to negotiate an OPEC deal. They left rather hesitantly for a disco in Rockport with the rest of the crowd. Sonia kissed him and patted his back on the way out of the door.
Nordstrom watched their taillights recede into the warm darkness and then fed the tomcat that had emerged from under the backporch. If no one else were around the cat would now enter the kitchen which tonight was hot and muggy with a rank low tide smell hanging in the air, a seaboard reminder of what a swamp in summer smells like. The cat ate the last single quail that Nordstrom had been thinking about having for breakfast but had decided the cat would enjoy more than he did. The cat ripped at the brown-roasted skin and even crunched down the bones. Nordstrom petted the animal until it went rigid and dashed for the kitchen door. It was the plain girl with pear breasts in a pale-blue caftan. She shrugged at Nordstrom as he let the cat out the screen door. She poured a glass of club soda and drank as if her life depended on it. Nordstrom didn't remember her at dinner.
"I got this perfectly goddamned sunburn today and felt sick as shit." She talked out of the side of her mouth as was the strange habit of her class. Nordstrom could think of nothing to say so he put on his white cook's apron and began the dishes. He had taken off his shirt while the cat ate and felt a bit naked, now that the girl was there.
"Hope you're having a nice time," he said lamely.
"Sure. Faboo, if I hadn't fried the hell out of my skin like a perfect nitwit." She paused and boldly appraised Nordstrom. "You're a perfect dear to do all this cooking. I mean Sonia's so lucky." She sat down at the kitchen table and took a bag of papers from her purse and rolled a large joint, lit it and inhaled deeply. "I'm going to Santa Barbara tomorrow to visit my mother, if anyone gets up early enough to run to Logan." She approached Nordstrom at the sink and put the joint between his lips, ignoring his shaking head. "This is pretty good shit, supposedly Hawaiian."
"I'll take you to the airport," he choked expelling the smoke.
They looked at each other closely for a moment and there was a glimmer of comprehension Nordstrom decided not to admit to himself. He looked down at his hands buried in the soapy water. She left the room and put on a record, then returned and helped him with the dishes. Above the music they could hear a thunderstorm approaching from the west. The air grew even more still and warm. He felt the sweat flatten his hair and trickle down his back as he listened to her chatter about a career in fashion. She absentmindedly traced a finger down the sweat on his arm and he felt an involuntary shudder. Then she drew her caftan over her head and tossed it in the corner.
"I don't know about you but I'm perfectly suffocating and my burn itches."
She wore very slight, pale-beige panties and bra. She was burned, though not too badly, on the top of her breasts and just above and below her panty line. He reached out and touched a nipple beneath the fabric with a wet forefinger. She turned around and raised her arms. "My back isn't as bad." He wiped his hands on the apron and pressed them to the small of her back. Then she backed toward him, stumbling a bit in clogged sandals. He looked down at his hands and her buttocks craning outward. She reached behind her touching his hands, then slipped down her panties to just above her knees. "Go ahead. I've been thinking of this for an hour."
Nordstrom went ahead, as it were. On completion he collapsed backward to the floor with his pants around his ankles and the damp apron forming a small tent around his member. She laughed and he laughed. She lit him a cigarette and he smoked it without getting off the floor. She stepped out of her panties and took off her bra. She took a bottle of white wine out of the refrigerator and handed it to Nordstrom with a corkscrew. They abandoned the dishes and took a dip in the pool with the lights off, watching the approaching thunderstorm above the lights of Marblehead. They made love again with him sitting beneath her on a wicker lawn chair. The rain drove them indoors and they sat naked on the couch feeling the air cool gradually and watching the lightning and thunder explode above the ocean. They smoked another joint and danced. They fell asleep on the couch and did not hear the laughing voices that turned out the lights and record player.