“Yes, we do,” Pam said, smiling. Janey had spotted her and was skipping toward us.
She awkwardly hugged Pam around the shoulders then said an extended “Hey” to me.
“It’s Henry,” I said. “We met two nights ago.”
“I remember,” she said. “Nice to see you. We’re just waiting for one of the big booths at the back. You guys will join us, right?”
I started to say I was planning on leaving soon, but Pam jumped in, and said, “We’ll never fit, will we?”
“We’ll all crowd in. Besides, Marsha won’t stay more than ten minutes, at most.”
“We’ll swing by in a bit,” Pam said, as Janey plucked up the second-to-last snapper dumpling from the plate and popped it in her mouth.
“Sorry,” Janey said, pointing at her cheek, then maneuvered away.
“I don’t expect you to come hang out with my friends from work,” Pam said.
“I don’t expect to, either.”
“Ha. I can sit here for a while. They won’t miss me.”
“I won’t stay long,” I said. “I have to drive back to Cambridge, remember? And it’s a school night.”
“Are you teaching tomorrow?” she said. I knew she was probably wondering about my work status. Writing poetry and teaching adult ed classes was no one’s idea of a lucrative living. I told her I was doing some private tutoring tomorrow for a high school student struggling with writing her college essay.
“I do a fair amount of that,” I said. “It’s probably how I make most of my money.”
“Well, you’re a writer, so you have to find something.”
“I’m shopping a manuscript of my poetry for publication. But even if I find a home for it, it won’t get me any money, and, as far as I can tell, it won’t change my life, at all. I’ll just be able to say I published a book.”
“What kind of poems are they?”
I told her, and it was pretty much the truth. How I’d published multiple poems in well-known journals while I was in my twenties, but at some point, I’d just lost the ability to write a poem. And these days I was writing either critical pieces, or else limericks.
“Limericks?” she said.
“You know—‘There once was a girl from Nantucket.’”
“Oh, right.”
“It’s my sole literary output these days, I’m sorry to say. Where are you from?”
“What do you mean?”
“Where are you from? Where did you grow up?”
“Oh. I grew up in Portland, Oregon.”
“Ugh,” I said.
“It wasn’t so bad.”
“No, I mean it’s terrible for rhyming in a limerick.”
“If it helps, I actually grew up in a town outside of Portland called Buckheaven.”
“That does help,” I said, and took a long sip of my drink. Then I said, “There once was a girl from Buckheaven . . . Thirty-two but she looks twenty-seven . . . She’s been drinking so long, at the Taste of Hong Kong . . . Trawling for unmarried men.”
“Oh my God,” Pam said. “I’m horrified and impressed at the same time.”
“It’s my only skill.”
“I feel like you’ve reduced me to a limerick, and I’m not sure I like it.”
“It’s a first draft,” I said. “I can change it, if you like. But it always has to be about sex in some way. It’s a limerick rule.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet,” she said, then spun the last remaining dumpling on its plate, and added, “I’m having fun talking with you, but pretty soon that table full of idiots are going to insist I join them, and then you’ll leave, and I’ll end up getting drunk again at the Hong Kong on a Thursday night.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I live right across the road. Do you want to come over, and we can drink some wine and keep talking?”
I started to answer, but she interrupted me. “I just heard how that sounded, and so I will honestly say that it’s no big deal if you turn me down, and also, I really do just want to keep talking. This is fun.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’d be up for that.”
“Okay,” she said, her eyes suddenly bright. “And look, let me pay for these drinks because I know there’s not a huge demand for limericks. And one more thing, which sounds terrible, but can you leave first, and then maybe meet me across the road in the parking lot of the Colonial Estates? You can’t miss it, it’s a bunch of ugly town houses. I just don’t want to be the topic of gossip tomorrow.”
“I totally get it,” I said.
Outside, the temperature had dropped, and I could see my breath in the harsh white light of the parking lot. I drove across the road into the lot of the Colonial Estates, finding a spot that had the word visitor stenciled on it.
A car I recognized as Pam’s Toyota pulled into the lot and made a wide swing to settle into one of the spots that abutted the nearest building. I got out of my car, telling myself I was only here to get information, and walked across the lot to where Pam stood in front of the building’s glass doors, keys in hand.
Chapter 12
Joan
“Have you walked to the end of the jetty yet?” Joan said.
“Yeah, a bunch of times.” Duane was lying beside her on the beach, on his back, his hands intertwined behind his head. From Joan’s position she could see little white balls of deodorant in the hair under his arms.
“Yeah, but have you done it at night?”
“No, have you?”
“Yeah, of course. It’s amazing.”
“Really?”
Joan had walked the jetty with Richard the night before, the two of them meeting in front of the Windward by the bench swing, then walking across the road to the beach. The night was clear, clusters of stars and a bright moon illuminating the massive blocks of granite that made up the jetty. Even without clouds, they’d had to concentrate; there were gaps between the granite slabs that got progressively wider as you made your way to the end. And the shadows created by the moonlight were tricky to maneuver. At the point of the jetty waves slapped into the rocks, making strange echoey booms and sending spray up into the cool night air.
At the extreme end the jetty began to slope into the sea, and there was a place to clamber down so you were standing on several relatively flat rocks, fringed with seaweed. In one spot, an overhang provided a little bit of protection. “I’ll hide here,” Richard said, “back in the shadows. You bring him down and tell him it’s the best place to be to experience the crashing waves. He’ll follow you, and then I can come out and shove him backwards.”
“What if he sees you coming?” Joan said.
“I don’t think it’ll make a difference. He’s strong, but I’ll be able to push him off the rock. Besides, we’ll both be here. If he fights back, then you can help.”
“What if he swims to shore?”
“He won’t. But if he does we can just say we were trying to teach him a lesson.”
Joan stood, trying to imagine what it would be like to be here with Duane, and with Richard hiding, waiting to ambush him. It actually was an amazing spot, both protected and wide open, waves booming in the rocks, the air filled with seawater, and blackness everywhere, like they were at the end of the world. “I don’t like it,” Joan said, after a moment. “What if you were crouched down closer to the edge. Right there.”