Sea Fever (9 page)

She reached for her apron, her cheeks flushed. “What was he doing

here?”

Regina raised her brows, surprised by the faint hostility in her tone.

“I’m thinking of hiring him.”

“What for?”

“Scrub floors, unload deliveries, stuff like that.”

Antonia sniffed without turning around from the cook top. “We

don’t need some man around to do our work for us.”

They hadn’t needed a man eight years ago, when Regina showed up

on Antonia’s doorstep with Nick in her arms. Whatever her faults,

whatever her feelings about providing for her estranged daughter and a

three-month-old grandson, Antonia had done everything that needed to be

done. But her mother wasn’t getting any younger. Regina watched her

mother’s hands on the spatula as she turned hash on the griddle— strong,

veined hands, the knuckles growing knobby with age, the nails yellow

with smoke— and felt a surge of love and panic tighten her throat.

Antonia would never admit it, but she couldn’t do as much as she used to.

Margred was great with customers, but she went home to her husband at

night. And Regina . . .

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“Things change,” Regina said shortly.

“Sex changes things,” she’d said to Dylan.

Oh, boy, did it ever.

Her period was late. Only a day late. One day.

Maybe she wasn’t knocked up. But she felt the weight of worry like

a live thing pressing on her abdomen, burning beneath her breastbone.

“It’s those damn catering jobs,” Antonia told Margred. “She took on

another one, family reunion, week after Frank Ivey’s birthday party. Now

she wants to hire help.”

Regina grabbed a knife and started chopping scallions for the pasta

salad, ignoring the ball in her stomach. “Six bucks an hour, a couple

hours a day, a few days a week. Big deal.”

“We can’t afford him. Not once the season’s over,” Antonia

grumbled.

Chop chop chop. “He won’t last that long. He won’t want to stay

here in the winter.”

“He could. He looks crazy enough.”

Maybe he did at that. Her knife faltered.

“I don’t like him,” Margred said.

Regina glared at her, feeling betrayed. “You were okay with him

before. He’s a vet. Like Caleb.”

“He smells bad.”

Regina remembered Jericho’s freshly scraped jaw, the line of dirt

around his neck, and felt an uncomfortable prickle of guilt. “So would

you if you didn’t have a place to take regular showers.”

Margred shook her head. “Not that kind of bad. He smells . . .

wrong.”

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Antonia slapped a plate on the pass. “As long as he doesn’t touch the

food or scare off the customers, I don’t care how he smells.”

Regina gaped at this unexpected support from her mother.

Antonia set her hands on her hips. “You going to stand there jawing?

Or are you going to serve this hash before it gets cold?”

The next few hours passed in a haze of work and steam. At eleven

o’clock the menu changed from eggs, hash, and home fries to

sandwiches, subs, and pizza. The tables filled with summer people who

didn’t want to cook, campers in search of a hot meal, yachters ashore for

shopping or some local color.

No Dylan. Regina caught her gaze wandering to the pass, watching

the door for his tall, lean figure, and pressed her lips together.

“Shit, oh, shit.” She jerked her hand from the cutting board.

Her mother looked over. “You all right?”

“Fine,” she said, examining her white fingers. She’d only caught a

nail this time, under the knife’s edge. No blood, no foul.

No blood.

She’d run to the bathroom three times to check, as if the act of

pulling down her underpants could somehow transform the sweat of the

kitchen into good news: Not pregnant.

She needed to go to Rockland and buy a damn test.

She needed to keep her mind on her work. She loved cooking, took a

deep satisfaction in feeding people. But there was no challenge in it

anymore. No distraction. She could prepare this menu blindfolded.

“If I never fried another clam or made another lobster roll, I could be

happy,” she muttered.

“You’d be happy, and we’d be out of business,” Antonia said.

“Order up.”

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Eventually, the line of tickets shortened. The dining room cleared as

customers returned to their boats, vacations, lives.

“God, I need a cigarette,” Antonia said and went out by the

Dumpster to smoke.

Regina garnished the last two orders: lettuce, tomato, a slice of red

onion. As she set the plates on the pass, she glanced again at the door.

Tall man. Dark hair. Just for a moment the pressure eased. Dylan?

But it was only Caleb, standing with his weight on his good leg,

talking to Margred.

“Get you anything?” Regina asked. “Cup of coffee?”

His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Coffee would be good.”

She carried the mug out to him while Margred served the last table.

“Thanks.” Caleb took the cup; watched her over the rim. “Maggie

tells me you hired that homeless guy you’ve been feeding.”

Regina jerked her mind from one set of worries to another. “I’m

thinking about it. You said he checked out.”

“He doesn’t have a record. He still has issues.”

She cocked her chin, on the defensive. “You mean, besides needing

a job and a place to live?”

Caleb sipped his coffee. “There’s an encampment,” he said abruptly.

“Homeless guys, vets mostly, out at the old quarry.”

Her mouth opened. Shut without a sound. A camp? Of homeless

vets. On World’s End?

Margred finished her table.

“I’ve been by there once or twice,” Caleb continued. “Keeping an

eye out. Took one of them to the clinic this afternoon to see Doc Tomah.”

“So?”

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“He had headaches. Delusions.” Caleb’s gaze locked with his wife’s.

“Claimed he was possessed by the devil.”

Margred sucked in her breath.

“Uh-huh,” Regina said. Why was he telling her this?

“What did you do?” Margred asked.

“The doctor prescribed Haldol. And I drove him back to camp.”

“You have to tell Dylan,” Margred said.

“I plan to.” Caleb’s voice was grim.

“Where is Dylan?” Regina wanted to know.

Caleb’s gaze switched back to her face, but she got the impression

he didn’t actually see her. Story of her life, really. “Damned if I know.”

Typical. Unreliable, typical male.

“Reggie.” Caleb’s eyes sharpened. His voice was gentle. “Is there

something going on? Is there a reason you want to hire this guy, this

Jericho?”

Yes. No.

I could be pregnant. With your brother’s child.

Definitely, No.

She shrugged. “We’re really busy right now. I could use some help.”

“Lucy,” Margred said.

Caleb frowned thoughtfully.

Regina shook her head. “I don’t need a waitress. I need somebody to

do the dirty work.”

“Lucy’s not afraid of work,” Caleb said. “Or dirt.”

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Margred nodded. “And she’s strong.”

“On her college track team,” Caleb said with pride.

“She’d make more money sterning for your father,” Regina felt

obliged to point out.

“Lucy hates the water,” Margred said.

“Talk to her,” Caleb said. “I’ll tell her to stop by.”

“That would be . . . good,” Regina decided. She smiled. “Thanks.”

Caleb did not smile back. “Just take care of yourself.”

Regina fingered the cross at her neck. “I’m trying.”

With one eye on the clock and the other on the entrance,she tackled

the evening prep, chalked the day’s specials on the board, boiled and

boxed a dozen lobster orders for pickup.

And every time a tall, dark man crossed the threshold, her heart

jangled like the bell above the door.

But it was never Dylan.

Customers came and went, picking up orders of lobsters and pizza,

lingering to chew over gossip or pasta in the dining room. Antonia came

and went during the height of the dinner rush to help on the line. Nick

came downstairs to bolt a meatball sub between the first and second

features of a Chuck Norris movie marathon on TV.

Dylan did not come.

Maybe his conversation with his brother took longer than expected,

Regina thought as she shut down the grill.

Or maybe she had finally driven him away. She walked through the

silent restaurant, her own words echoing in the empty space. “You try

being responsible for somebody besides yourself sometime, and we’ll

talk.”

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Well, fine. She flipped the sign on the front door from OPEN to

CLOSED.

She didn’t expect anything else. From him, from anybody. If you

learned not to expect things, you couldn’t be disappointed. She and Nick

were fine on their own.

Or they would be with a little help. Tomorrow she would talk to

Lucy about working out the summer.

She closed the register, counted bills and receipts. Twenty, forty,

sixty, eighty . . . Counted: September, October, November, December . . .

Her baby would be born in April. If there was a baby. If the pressure

deep in her abdomen was more than nerves and water weight.

She lost track of the numbers, had to begin again. Twenty, forty,

sixty . . .

Wipe the tables, clean the case and counters, haul out the garbage,

mop the floor. The routine should have steadied her, but her mind kept

racing like a hamster in a wheel, circling round and round without getting

anywhere.

She was accustomed to planning and preparing, more comfortable

with “What next?” than “What if?” Even the gamble of going to Boston

at the age of eighteen had appeared to her practical mind as the next

logical step in her chosen career.

Yeah, and look how that had turned out. Every risk she’d ever taken,

no matter how calculated, had ended in dead ends and disaster.

Except for Nick. She was glad she had Nick.

But God, oh, God, she didn’t want to be pregnant again.

Fatigue pulled her muscles, settled in her bones. She returned from

the Dumpster and headed for the mop sink, a cramped closet in an out-of-the-way corner.

She flipped on the light. The mops jumped out of the shadows,

skinny monsters with clumped and stringy hair. Regina leaned against the

76

tiled wall, listening to the water hiss into the bucket and trickle down the

drain.

She couldn’t say what made her turn. A noise. A shadow. A tickle at

the base of her spine . . .

“Jericho!” The name whooshed from her, an explosion of breath, of

annoyance and alarm.

He blocked the work aisle behind her, skinny and stringy as the

mops, and close. Too close. She could smell him, his clothes, damp with

the outdoors, sour with sweat and the smoke from too many campfires.

“He smells . . . wrong,” Margred had said.

Yes.

Her heart beat in her throat. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

But he did not move out of her way. She could shove past him. But

touching him didn’t seem like a good idea. She didn’t want to commit

herself to physical contact, to push him into violence. Skinny or not, he

was bigger than her.

The taste of adrenaline was flat in her mouth. “What do you want?”

The job, she thought with sudden hope. Maybe he’d come about the

job. Although now, with him looming between her and the door, didn’t

seem like the best time to tell him she was thinking of hiring somebody

else.

He didn’t answer.

“Listen, it’s late,” she said in what she hoped was a calm, rational

voice. As if her tone could tug him back from whatever brink of crazy he

was on. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow—” She wet her lips. In

daylight, when there are people around.“— and we can talk about that

job?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he repeated.

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He sounded sincere. Which, for some reason, made her knees

tremble. Her knives were on the other side of the kitchen, like the phone,

like the door.

She couldn’t run away. Nick was upstairs.

Should she scream? But if she screamed, Nick might hear and come

down to investigate. Please, God, don’t let him come down, her boy, her

baby. “Take care of yourself,” Caleb had advised, but he didn’t have an

eight-year-old depending on him.

Regina gulped and eased her hand around a mop. The handle was

smooth and reassuring in her grip. “So, uh, can I get you something? A

sandwich?” If she could reach the counter, if she could get to the phone . .

.

Jericho lunged.

She jerked back. Swung. But she was too close, he was too close, the

mop crashed into the wall and slid uselessly off his shoulder. She did try