The Whiskey Tide (42 page)

     
She shook her head. "I think it's more than that. Let's face it, you've been places... seen things... read all the time. You think about things the rest of us don't. I think maybe you miss — I don't know — having someone else like that around. Someone you can talk to."

     
"I've got all of you to talk to."

     
"About whether this winter's worse than three years ago? Whether the boat Gratton bought is as well built as Dad's?" She gave him a withering look. "You take pains not to show your learning, or the polish from your aunties. I've watched. But it's part of you, Joe, your mind especially. Maybe you need to do something with it."

     
"What would you think of an engine repair place?"

     
"You mean a business? That you'd start?" The Singer started again. "Is that what you want to do?"

     
Joe let a long breath out and rested his elbows back on the edge of the sink. "I don't know. I guess that's the problem. I'm just thinking it's time I found direction. Got serious."

     
"With Rita?"

     
"Yeah, maybe that too."

     
"Do you love her?"

     
Joe tried to find an answer in the silence. "She's fun. She'd make a good wife. Love's just a lot of romantic nonsense, isn't it? Do you suppose your mother and dad were in love when they married?"

     
He felt the ground growing slippery, but Arliss plunged ahead, the Singer chugging faster with her intensity.

     
"Yes. I do. And I know what you're thinking. So was I, and look where it got me. Well, I
did
love Tommy. I still do. I'd give anything just to see him again!" Her voice broke and the sewing machine jerked to a stop. She wiped her sleeve at her eyes as a sob escaped her. "Why did he leave me, Joe? I was a good wife. Why didn't he say anything? Why did he just disappear like that and leave me to wonder?"

     
Joe didn't know what to say. She'd never let on the hurt she felt over Tom, not in his hearing, probably not to anyone, he thought now. Feeling mean for having opened the wound, he went to her and put a hand awkwardly on her shoulder.

     
"I don't know, Arliss. Maybe he fooled us all."

     
"I suppose you're going to tell me I'm lucky he left before I'd had a couple more babies."

     
"Not if you cared for him."

     
She gave a watery smile and almost visibly pulled herself together. Joe wondered how many times she'd done it before.

     
"Well, I'll tell you one thing," she said. "I'm not going to depend on Ma and Dad all my life just because my husband ran out. I'm going to make this sewing machine into a future for me and my kids." She stood and flipped the gray silk over the ironing board she'd set up. "I'm going to have a house of my own some day. And Ma's going to have curtains and dresses."

     
"And what about Drake and your dad and Sebastian and me?" Joe teased.

     
Arliss spit on her finger and tested the iron. "Despite what you all think," she said with pretended grandeur, "you're too ugly for dresses."

***

     
"I've made a list. The dates when I saw lights on the beach," Zenaide said hesitantly. "I keep a journal, you see. It helps pass the time."

     
She slid the paper toward her neighbor, who stared at it with such deepening dismay that Zenaide wondered if she'd done the wrong thing. But she liked this girl who had popped up in her life and made it interesting and been kinder to her than almost anyone she could remember. She wanted to help.

     
"Two and three times a month," Kate said in a dull voice. "My God."

     
Zenaide frowned. It wasn't proper to meddle in someone else's affairs, but the girl who studied birds was very young, and perhaps didn't have anyone to advise her. Worry had put its print on her face ever since Zenaide told her other smugglers were using the beach. She looked thinner, too, though she'd always been slender.

     
"The next time I see lights, I could waken you, and you could call the police to report them," Zenaide suggested. "I could — I could come and throw stones at your window."

     
Tatia tsked in alarm.

     
Kate shook her fair head. "Thank you all the same, but no."

     
"The more times someone lands there, the greater the chance they'll be noticed," Zenaide explained patiently.

     
"Yes, I know. They could attract attention and we could be the ones picked up, Mr. Santayna and I. I expect the police have been bribed, though, for someone to act as brazen as this. Either way, if I say anything, I'm probably just increasing my own risk. I've been through it all so many times my head aches." She gave a wry smile. "And the smugglers could lie — say we — my family — were in on it." She hesitated. "Or they could tell the truth."

     
Zenaide raised her eyebrows, waiting to lift her teacup until she heard elaboration.

     
"I'm almost certain it's my mother's brother who's letting them land there," her neighbor said in a tone that held traces of bitterness. "My mother would be devastated, and we'd probably still be viewed as accomplices."

     
"Oh my." Zenaide felt flattered the girl would trust her with news of a relative's caddishness. Her store of wisdom seemed used up, however. "Have a madeleine," she offered. "Cook makes very nice madelines."

***

     
Aggie liked making Theo laugh. She liked the sound and it made her feel she'd done a good deed. He was laughing plentifully as he helped her out of the car and, despite her objections, insisted on being old-fashioned and walking her to the door.

     
"Thanks for tea, Theo. It was lovely."

     
He had picked her up after her new job; been waiting, she suspected, though he'd tried to make it look like he and Pierce had just happened to be driving by. Of course it was just innocent fun, being with Theo. It didn't mean anything. He was still down in the dumps and getting out was good for him. Besides, she liked the attention. She never had to prove herself with Theo.

     
"That's the second time this week Theo's brought you home," Kate observed coming into the hall as Aggie shrugged out of her coat. She sounded out of sorts.

     
"He's lonely." Aggie smoothed her hair.

     
"Exactly!" Kate's voice sharpened. "Theo wants something to cling to. Don't let him think it's going to be you if you don't mean it."

     
"Don't be absurd."

     
"He's not some fish in a bowl you can feed when you want to and expect other people to take care of when you don't. Stop leading him on!"

     
The reference to the goldfish Aggie had let starve a few years previous made her furious. "Theo and I will do whatever we please. You may be goddess of the seas, Kate, but you're not the queen of the universe. Stop trying to run everyone's life!"

***

     
"The man at the pet store says they're not likely to nest." Aunt Norah tapped a greeting on a bar of the parakeet cage.

     
"But they might," Aunt Maggie amended hopefully.

     
Joe watched the bright little parakeets dart here and there, reminiscent of their owners. They had christened the birds Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the singing sweethearts, and had placed a potted palm next to the cage so the birds would think they were outside.

     
"You make yourself at home now, Joseph," Aunt Maggie insisted. "We've got a couple of things to do in the kitchen."

     
Sunday dinner was part of the ritual when he went to Mass with them. Sometimes they had pot roast warming in the back of the oven and sometimes chicken with stuffing. Today the aroma said pot roast. Stretching, he surveyed the gateleg table set with linen and china. It took watching your elbows for the three of them to fit around it, but the aunties were firm in their conviction Sunday dinner shouldn't be served in the kitchen.

     
The aunties were good company, even though he probably hadn't appreciated that as a kid. They brought up things they'd read in the paper. He sometimes thought it was lurid crimes which they followed most avidly, but they also were fascinated by things like the telescope built on Mt. Wilson in California and tender-hearted over tragedies like the earthquake that had killed eighty thousand people in China. He was glad, on the rare occasions he thought about it, that he'd been exposed to both the practicality of the Santaynas and the interests teetering on whimsy of his mother's aunts.

     
The truth was, he enjoyed the aunties' place a lot. Not that doilies and frills were his taste, but he liked the order. He liked the carefully maintained furniture that hinted at substantiality; the pictures and potted plants that acknowledged there was something inside you had to feed just as you fed the body.

     
All his discontent of recent months seemed to coalesce in an awareness he wanted more to his life than he currently had. Challenges of some sort, and a place like this. Good curtains at the window and furniture that wasn't threadbare and touches that he couldn't put his finger on but knew were lacking where he lived. He wanted time and space to stand alone like this and think. Bookcases and a comfortable chair where he could read at night. He wanted a wife who could create those surroundings; who had interests other than clothes and babies and would stop his heart looking at her.

     
He wanted Kate Hinshaw.

     
The thought hit him with such force his knees gave way. He sank onto the couch. Ridiculous. He and Kate were friends. He'd seen her with her hands scraped raw and her nose dripping. He'd never kissed her; never even touched her except for the night she was shot when he was terrified she was going to die.

     
But the coldness settling in his stomach confirmed a truth that had been hiding at the back of his mind. He sat devastated by it, wondering how he could be such a fool. He and Kate were so far apart he might as well be in love with the moon.

Thirty-one

     
Aggie's knuckles rapped furiously on the door of Felix's apartment. He wasn't expecting her. She hadn't heard from him since the morning he refused to replace her dress. He'd told her more than once not to come here uninvited, but she didn't care.

     
The valet who was there in the daytime opened the door.

     
"Where's Felix?" she demanded brushing past him. "Tell him Aggie Hinshaw's here."

     
Before the valet got halfway to the bedroom, Felix himself emerged, alerted by voices. His expression when he saw her was carefully neutral. He jerked his head toward the bedroom and the valet left them.

     
"What're you doing here?" Felix asked brusquely.

     
"You got me sacked! That's what I'm doing here."

     
"You got yourself sacked, slapping a customer."

     
"He pinched me, the fat little pig!"

     
The back of his hand hit her face before she could blink.