“I bet there are clams there. I could make us clam chowder,” I said, as if clams were the only ingredient.
“Interesting,” said Boris.
“Funny how you just drove down here.” I took Boris’s hand in mine and leaned against his shoulder. “Seems like fate.”
“Fate?”
“Oh, I don’t know. This house, it being for rent and all.” I began leading Boris down the point. “Is that a dock? How wonderful.”
“I suppose no one will mind us looking, since this property is available to rent,” he said.
Boris was having fun walking around, but I was beyond that. I had already imagined the layout of the house, pictured myself on a blanket on the lawn reading a book. I wondered where the nearest store was, how much the rent could be, and what kind of heat—if any—the house used. Strategically, what I needed was alcohol, something to smooth Boris’s edges. Something to numb his intelligence. “Let’s go have lunch,” I said.
“All right.”
“But I want to come back here.”
I ate a good burger at a restaurant set on the muddy inlet. Boris had another lobster. I’d ordered Bloody Marys for us both. When Boris was on his fourth, I introduced the idea of renting the cottage. He had the money, after all. He’d lived in the same apartment since 1972 and each month paid a mere five hundred dollars of the three thousand it was worth.
“But who will live there?”
“It’s for the weekends,” I said. “For you.”
“That’s what you want?”
“No.” I rested my head on the table. “I thought maybe I could stay here, to keep it up.”
Even through the vodka, Boris was suspicious. “Out of the question,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you living here.”
“What you’re saying is that you can’t let me out of your sight.”
“Don’t be so outraged, Katherine. You can’t expect me to pay for this, for you, to stay here, away from me…”
“You could move here with me.” I only said this because I knew Boris couldn’t. His rent-controlled apartment had become an obsession with the building committee and any time he spent away—even a long weekend—would result in various letters shuttling between the lawyers.
“Katherine, why that cottage? Maine is nice on a weekend, but I’m sure there is nothing here for daily life. There’s no culture, only restaurants like this—burger, Bloody Mary, chicken finger,” he said, consulting the menu. “How will you live?”
“How indeed.” I regarded Boris with my head tilted to the right. “I don’t know. But I tell you this. I’m not going back to New York.”
“Katherine…”
The situation was getting desperate. I decided to gamble. “Maybe I don’t need time on my own,” I said, smiling as sweetly as possible. I reached across the table and arranged one of his curls behind his right ear. “Maybe we need to spend more time together. You work all day. You could spend more time at home. We could do things together. You said you wanted to improve your Italian. We could take a class. And maybe sign up at a gym, get some of your extra pounds off. I’ve always wanted to do a yoga class, but not on my own.” I nodded to myself, a person making peace with a new situation. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t need time to think. Maybe I just need more time with you.”
After some thought and another drink, Boris decided that it probably was better for both of us if we spent some time apart. He made me promise that I’d get a job, nothing too involved, maybe some bookstore work. He’d noticed that I read a good deal. I must have played the situation right because Boris thought that renting the house had been his idea. This sounds like an amazing piece of luck, but I was benefiting from good timing. Boris had not written in a couple of days, which made him jittery. Soon, my move made perfect sense. He could visit on weekends; he could finish his book in peace.
Also, the thought of having a vacation home appealed to Boris, although he preferred staying in hotels. A vacation home would bounce well off other people (“It’s just a cottage really, but it’s my castle”), would make a charming segue in cocktail conversations (“The Hamptons are nice, but if you really want to escape, I have a place in Maine”), would allow him to achieve the beleaguered, moneyed stance that he liked to cultivate (“I like to chop my own wood”). The house had recently installed heat. We could lease it as long as we vacated in June, when the place went from nine hundred dollars a month to nine hundred a week.
We met the owner late that afternoon. She had grown up vacationing in the cottage. Her home was in Boston. She was in a hurry to get back to Massachusetts. She liked me, although she kept giving Boris funny looks. He was drunk and kept grabbing me in casual, sexual ways.
“The deposit’s one month’s rent,” she said. Boris had slung his arm across my shoulders and his hand had come to rest on my breast. “You can move in whenever you want.” She looked away. “I haven’t had a chance to turn off the water and electric.”
I handed her a check. She handed me the keys. As simple as that.
The house had a little floating dock and a red canoe. I could barely picture myself on the dock and the idea of me in the canoe seemed a distant possibility, but Boris instantly assumed everything. He was still wearing city rayon and Italian loafers, but his mind’s eye had already set him on the dock, khakis rolled, bare feet pressed to cold wet wood.
Boris let me keep the car. He had accumulated just enough parking tickets to introduce the risk of towing and I think he was trying to distance himself from Ann, who gave him almost daily car reports. I drove him south to Portland so he could catch an evening flight back to New York.
“Be careful,” said Boris. “This William Selwyn… he is no joke.”
“Oh, Boris. How many people get killed every day in New York?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Lots,” I nodded confidently. “I’ll be very careful.”
A stiff wind was blowing outside the terminal. Flaming leaves scraped along the sidewalk. Clouds of cedar smoke billowed out of chimneys and pumpkins set their handsome bellies on every doorstep. There were cornstalks lashed to pillars and doorjambs, cheery reminders of fall’s riot and summer’s repose, the harvest and the winter chill to come. Flickering candlelight licked at the teeth of a few jack-o’-lanterns. In a tree, a linen-closet ghoul floated in the evening breeze.
I stopped at the drive-through at KFC for a bucket of chicken, got a six-pack of Harpoon, a newspaper, and some gas at the 7-Eleven, and headed back to the house. I needed some time to think. The moon was full over the bay. A dappled path of light extended to the water’s edge and night things cawed and whistled. I sat on the dock with my chicken bucket and Harpoon. This was the last of the warm weather. Soon everyone would be bundled up in wool, leather, and thermal drawers. Soon, only faces would peer up from the bundles, exposed and wizened, dried and windburned. Other animals were already done lining their dens. Other animals were already cozy in layers of blubber and thick fur, their sharp teeth retired for winter’s approaching deprivations, while in the dark alleys of Portland Bad Billy was searching for his next victim. People did not hibernate. The winter gave them no respite from their hunting.
The light from the kitchen window shed just enough light for me to make out the headlines. I hastily ate another piece of chicken then looked cautiously at the paper.