Coe, a teenager who worked for Fern, was tending to the wood fire in the parlor, running the carpet sweeper over Terry’s cookie crumbs, and collecting empty bowls, dishes, and plates. “Done with that, Miss Loden?” He wore a woolen court-jester hat of the snowboard generation, even indoors, and was very much the postmodern dude. No one asked him what his favorite meal was. From the look of him, Rebecca would have guessed frozen pizza.
Later that evening, sitting in a quilt-backed rocking chair with a china cup of blackberry tea on the chessboard table at her elbow, blissfully content, Rebecca noticed Coe returning from an outdoor task with a markedly jauntier pace. Smiling to himself and meeting no one’s eye, he carried a few scraps of kindling to the fireplace, breezing past her, the flaps of his untucked flannel shirt emanating the unmistakable fragrance of marijuana. The boy kneeled at the wide stone hearth, his tattered jeans frayed at the hems, the dirty white strings dripping with snow, and attended to the crackling pine wood with rapt concentration. Rebecca watched him wistfully, envying his carefree youth.
She was not the only one. On the other side of the fireplace, in a wide club chair near the player piano and the French doors leading out to the porch, a guest named Mr. Kells sat with the New York Times dipped just a few inches below his eyes. In them, fleeting yet unmistakable, was the same wistful expression that had clouded her own eyes, the same glimmer of the fuddled memories and exquisite indolence the tender aroma of pot aroused. At precisely the moment she became aware of him, Mr. Kells looked up and became aware of her — prompting her to glance away, embarrassed and protesting her innocence with a return to her copy of Vermont Life and a feature story about chain-saw art.
Mr. Kells was a football coach at a small northeastern college, in Gilchrist overnight to scout a quarterback recruit. At least, that was the occupation her writer’s mind assigned him. Big hands held the newspaper, football hands — brown-skinned, ringless, and hairless. He was in his mid-forties, thick-chested, his weight well-distributed over his tall frame but just beginning to round out in the middle, the stone build of his youth starting to soften. The plate of oatmeal-maple cookies that found its way to the piano bench near him was empty now, but for the crumbs. A few tiny woolen pills remained stuck to his white polo shirt, from a sweater he had pulled off after dinner. But his belt matched his shoes, and in general, Mr. Kells bore an agreeable, everyman look, a rugged, one-of-the-guys familiarity that belied his actual behavior.
He was the only guest aside from Mr. Hodgkins not to succumb to the geniality of that pleasant, fire-lit evening. He had kept to himself at dinner, seated next to Mr. Hodgkins, eating methodically. They were the only two not to ask any questions about Rebecca’s interview with Luther Trait. Since dinner, he had spent the evening ensconced behind the New York Times — not hiding, necessarily, but separated from the rest, an outsider. Perhaps it had something to do with his traveling through all-white Vermont. But would a college football coach lavish the better part of an evening on the Times’? Rebecca could not get a good read on him. When pushed for his favorite meal, he pointed to his plate as he chewed. “This is it,” he said, “right here.”
Rebecca found herself missing the Times for the first time since leaving New York. She kept up with it online, but news was so ephemeral in cyberspace. Printed on paper, it seemed intractable, authoritative, final.
She roused herself out of the rocking chair. In the sitting room near the kitchen there was an overstuffed sofa with navy blue throw pillows sunk like napping children in the curves of its plush, welcoming arms. The sofa was Fern, the pillows her guests.
“In here, dear.”
Fern was inside the saloon doors, past a sign that read Employees Only.
“Oh, never mind the sign,” she said. “That’s just to keep out the riffraff.”
Rebecca pushed through into the warm kitchen. “You get a lot of riffraff here?”
The room was square, arranged around a large, central butcher-block island. The sink and countertops had been wiped down, the trash paper bagged, recyclables separated and ready to go. Fern fed muffin pans to a large stove built into an exposed brick wall, then pulled the string on her apron, lifting the neck loop over her neat, peppery hair, and padded in moccasin shoes over to the faucet to refill the kettle. Fern struck Rebecca as an old-guard lesbian, a distinguished veteran of the gender-identity wars, her commission honorably resigned. If she was alone, it was certainly by choice, and yet she wasn’t alone. She had her guests and, as Rebecca set her cup on the counter, Ruby the cat came rubbing against her leg.
“Hi, there,” said Rebecca, kneeling to pat Ruby’s slinky black coat. “I remember you.”
“Ruby, come here,” Fern tsk-tsked, pouring a dish of milk and setting it on the floor. Ruby’s belly pouch swayed as she sauntered over to the dish on silent, white-mittened paws. Fern stroked her tail as the cat lapped.
Rebecca asked, “Is she an indoor or outdoor cat?”
“She’s no mouser. She’s too lazy. You’re lazy.” Fern worked the cat’s soft head, scruffing the blaze of white between her forehead and her nose. “She’s too skittish, the old girl. I don’t know what she’d do with herself if she ever got outside. She’s too sheltered. You’re too sheltered.” Ruby had stopped drinking altogether, back arched, eyes narrowed to a squint as she luxuriated under Fern’s small hand.
“Thanks again for arranging things.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Fern. She was up and washing her hands in the sink. “I’m thanking you. When’s the next one coming?”
“Soon, I hope,” said Rebecca, as Fern pulled a bag of oranges from the pantry and spilled them onto the butcher’s island. She halved them with a long knife pulled from a magnetic strip on the wall. “I don’t suppose there’s anywhere I could get a New York newspaper at this hour?”
“No. I know that Mr. Hodgkins has been driving up to Newport for his. He usually leaves it around here somewhere.”
“Mr. Kells has it,” she said. The dishwasher began to breathe steam and Rebecca slid down the counter away from it. “Has Mr. Hodgkins been here awhile?”
“Four days. A nice, quiet guest. Private bath, uses a lot of towels. He must have some friends near town. He’s always driving off.”
The kettle whistled and Rebecca filled her cup. “What about Mr. Kells?”
Fern paused to think, her knife blade poised over a Sunkist as though determining its fate. “His second night. He skipped dinner yesterday. I don’t know him that well. Funny thing, though.”
“What?”
“No skis. Neither of them. No winter sports gear whatsoever. This time of year, that’s usually what I see. Not people traveling alone and without skis.”
“I’m traveling alone,” Rebecca said. “And I don’t have skis.”
“Ah,” said Fern, winking and pulling a juicer out of the island cabinet. “Everyone is a suspect.”
Rebecca returned to the parlor with her tea. Dr. Rosen and Darla had slipped away, and Robert and Mia were chatting in French over a game of Mastermind. Bert-and-Rita had moved on to back issues of Consumer Reports they had brought along with them. Terry was watching SportsCenter with the volume turned down. Coe was still tending to the fire.
The Times was folded on the piano stool next to the plate of crumbs and Kells was gone. Rebecca picked up the wrinkled newspaper and glanced at the headlines, then dropped it back onto the stool. She was less interested in its content than she had thought.