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  “Well, if I see it out on the dock or something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Oh, I’m sure if anyone sees it, they’ll just keep it. You know what a world this is, hon.”

  I nodded. The insinuation irked me. “Well, I’d like to think that the residents here are a tad more honest than that. You had it insured, I hope?”

  “Well, I hadn’t updated my policy to our new town here, so no. It was voided when we moved.”

  I nodded again. That is to say I kept myself from rolling my eyes, because it took every fiber of my being to not call bullshit on the woman.

  Peter Muncie piped up, “Hey, Lisa, you must know that cop that comes around from time to time, Hagen.”

  “A police officer? Now, why on earth would I know a police officer?” She seemed downright insulted. The Lisa Show was getting good.

  “He lives in Brentwood Court, doesn’t he?” Peter looked directly at me to ask.

  “Yes, I believe so.” It wasn’t up to me to tell the gang that Ben Hagen most certainly lived there and that he made the best steak this side of Carter’s Steak and Chop House.

  “So, you know him?” Peter indelicately persisted.

  “No, I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure.”

  “Oh, you’d uh, you’d remember him,” Jack Junior guffawed. “Shiny black hair, very preppy, and always smiles with too many teeth,” Jack said, pointing to his mouth.

  “Jack!” I griped.

  “What? I don’t trust people who smile with that many teeth.”

  “You’re just jealous because he still has that many teeth,” I quipped.

  “Oh, now that you describe him a little, I do remember seeing him, I think. He’s what my mother would have called ‘popular’ with the fairer sex, isn’t he?” and when she sent that zinger sailing, she was looking directly at me, waiting for a reaction.

  I changed the subject. “Jack, are you going to deal?” The heat was rising in my cheeks.

  “Oh, I’m sorry Alexandra, dear, is he a special friend of yours?” Lisa sent a gloating smile at me, or were those fangs she was bearing?

  Whatever they were, she didn’t like me. And despite seeing right through her tactics, a part of me wondered if it might be true. The part about Ben being popular. And while I stared blankly at my cards, my mind wandered. Ben Hagen is a good-looking guy, wealthy. Something befitting the country club set if it interested him. What could he see in a boat nerd who can’t for the life of her keep herself clean and tidy? I’d walked onto the Fortune Cookie feeling good, and the woman in the tight pants on the barstool in the salon, thumbing through a fashion magazine, had reduced me to a self-conscious schoolgirl.

  Richards nudged me back into the game.

  “Two,” I said and laid down a couple cards. “Hey, anybody going to Hamilton soon?”

  “Why, what’s there, kiddo?” Jack asked.

  “I’ve got to take some pictures and get information on listings. The client’s away on a job and he told me he’d double my commission rate if I took the pictures and did more of the leg work for him.”

  “Why don’t you take the truck?” Sefton asked and plunked down a hand that won the pot.

  I smirked. I had a measly pair of kings. “Well, to be honest, I don’t know how to drive stick, but if one of you taught me…”

  “Don’t look at me,” Peter said.

  It was a shared sentiment around the table as though this was something they’d rehearsed. I turned to my right. “How about you, Doc? Could you teach me?”

  “Could I? Yes. Will I? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, thus far I consider us to be friends.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that teaching someone to drive stick can be… tricky.”

  I felt my lower lip extrude into a pout.

  “Yeah, you need to find someone to teach you who can take your abuse,” Muncie chimed in.

  “Fair enough.” I nodded and decided to ask that person the next day.

  “What do ya say we take five?” Richards suggested after a few more hands.

  “You always say that when you’re losing,” Peter Muncie griped.

  “Hmm, for a guy who is looking for a new GP, you’ve got some real attitude, Muncie,” Richards scoffed playfully.

  “Ok, ok, let’s take five,” Muncie agreed.

  Doctor Richards got up from the table and stretched his back, arching and twisting. I watched as Lisa eyed him, and by eyed him I mean looked at him from top to bottom, lingering somewhere in the middle.

  “Rough day?” I asked.

  “Just a kink in my back,” he said, and I watched as he took a triangle sandwich from crab mountain.

  I was watching and waiting for his reaction to the sandwich filling when Lisa walked to the sideboard, reached around Richards, and from my vantage point, I saw her brush her bow against his stern. I felt myself arch an eyebrow and I thought I was going to be sick.

  “Oh, excuse me,” she said breathily, practically panting. I then watched her pour herself a scotch and jauntily hop back onto the barstool. “What you need, sweetie, is a good massage.”

  I lowered my head and felt my mouth drop open, and the room went deathly quiet. From the corner of my eye, I could see Jack Junior shift awkwardly in his chair and down his vodka tonic.

  “Alright, let’s deal the shingles,” he said, his tone all business.

  I felt agitated for Jack, I felt sorry for Doctor Richards, and I felt a little queasy from that sketchy crab sandwich. I was wondering if any subject was safe, but I was resolute to lighten the mood. “So, Peter, how are the ladies on the Gee Spot? You’ve been over there quite a bit lately.”

  “They’re real nice ladies.” He smiled. “What you see is what you get,” he added, and I wondered if mentally he had prefaced that sentence with “unlike Lisa…”

  How right he would have been.

  CHAPTER 8

  I frantically reached my arms out, one after the other, and kicked my legs, but my efforts got me nowhere. I looked up to see the moon beaming down, the size of a dinner plate, on a vast expanse of water with no land in sight. I began to tire, and I felt the suffocating pressure of the water pushing me down. The water was dark. Black. If you’ve never seen black water, it’s scary and the nightmare you’re too old to believe in. It gives you the feeling that you’ll sink for an eternity. I sputtered and fought against the water that was strangling me. In my last breath on the surface, I spotted the red light of a buoy in the distance. I felt myself sinking and then… I bolted upright, breathless, turned to my right, and saw the glow from the alarm clock illuminating the glass of water on my bedside table. I ran my hand through my hair and exhaled a deep, relieved breath. “I guess I’m up,” I said.

  It was still dark out, and I flicked on a light and shuffled across the passageway to my office and woke up my sleeping computer. At least one of us had gotten a decent rest. There was that email from my new client in Hamilton. He had itemized two work boats, a truckable barge, a generator, and a landing craft that he wanted me to sell for him. He said that he’d taken his marine coordinator with him on their latest project out of town and it’d be up to me to take pictures of the items and, in fact, he was giving me the exclusive rights to the listings. If only I could get there to take current photos and collect specifications. While I waited for morning to break, I read the news online, looking for updates on the robberies in town (there were none), and checking my horoscope (Geminis were in for an eventful week). I updated a few records in Salesforce, my CRM software, and got caught up on my financial statements. Then I found a station that had started playing Christmas music and I swiveled my hips to “Blue Christmas” and other bouncy tunes while I vacuumed the main level of my boat. Getting dressed, I rehearsed how to ask for a driving lesson or two. I mean, I had to learn to drive the truck at some point and I had a good idea who could teach me.

  When I crossed the doorway into Aggie’s,
there he was. Seated at the counter on the middle red and chrome vinyl stool, wearing jeans and a blue and white checked shirt. On approach, I noticed the skin between the back of his ears and his sandy brown hair and the straight band of tanned skin above his collar, signs of a fresh haircut. He was spreading strawberry jam on his whole wheat toast and I took the stool next to him after waving my morning salute to the gang in the nook.

  I smiled at the man beside me. “Hiya, Bugsy.”

  “Morning,” he said and took a bite big enough to leave sugary red specks of jam in the corners of his mouth.

  “Can you teach me how to drive stick?” I asked.

  He instantly stopped chewing. Pausing, I presume, to wonder if he’d heard me correctly. He swallowed and looked at me with squinty-eyed surprise. “You don’t know how to drive stick?”

  “Not exactly. So, will you?”

  “No.” Bugsy shook his head vigorously without, it appears, having even for a moment considered the request before answering and then taking a sip of coffee.

  “Why not?”

  He swallowed the gulp. “Because I know you, and despite everything that has transpired, I still consider us friends.”

  “Come on. Please, pretty please. Pretty please with strawberry jam on top? You have a little right here, by the way,” I said, touching the corner of my mouth to illustrate.

  “No,” he said and dabbed at the jam on his face then licked his finger.

  “Come on, Bugsy.”

  He looked at me flatly. The moniker still hadn’t caught on.

  “I mean, please Mr. Beedle, I’d be forever in your debt if you’d just show me how to drive Nat’s truck.”

  “What’s the urgency? It’s been sitting for months,” he said, taking another slurp of coffee.

  “I have a big client in Hamilton and I need to get there.” I batted my eyelashes at him.

  “You have something in your eye?”

  I smirked. “No,” I huffed. Bugsy can’t be won over by feminine wiles, but he’s known to indulge in dessert from time to time. “Look, I might even bake you a pie,” I said, keeping the language vague, no promises explicitly made.

  Bugsy took another crunchy bite of toast. “What do you think?” he asked, looking up to survey Aggie who had just topped up our mugs.

  Ags looked as though she were contemplating the response, for a little too long if you asked me. “I’d go for it, Bugsy,” she said even though I know she’s doubted my coordination skills since the intro to Zumba class she took me to, which I think we agree was a colossal mistake.

  Bugsy took a sip of coffee and nodded as he swallowed. “I’m going to hate myself for this.” He looked down at his watch. “Ok, I can show you at… fourteen hundred hours.”

  “Why can’t you just say two o’clock like a regular person? Nobody talks in hundreds of hours and thousands of seconds and—“ I stopped myself when I saw the expression on his face had changed to one of annoyance.

  “Young lady, you don’t sound like someone who wants a favor.” He smiled and batted his eyelashes at me this time.

  “Ok, ok. Fourteen hundred hours. At the motor pool.” I smiled back at him. He left with his to-go mug topped up and I tore a corner off the fritter Aggie had plated for me.

  “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Bugsy, and I know you hate it when I say this, but you look tired,” Ags said lowly, looking a little concerned.

  “I am,” I said, intimating that there was something to it.

  “What’s going on?” She picked out a fritter and took a bite, fortifying herself and preparing for the details of my latest crisis.

  “Do you ever, um, have recurring dreams?” I whispered. I didn’t need the two cents from the guys in the nook.

  “Not often, but my therapist says I’m not half bad at interpreting them. Lay it on me,” she said just before taking another bite.

  I downed a big sip of coffee. “Ok. Well, I’ve had this dream twice recently. I’m out in the water. Swimming, I mean, not on the boat, and it’s nighttime. There’s a moon and it’s shining on the water but there’s no land in sight and I can’t touch the bottom. But there is a buoy off in the distance.”

  “Mmhmm? Go on.” Ags narrowed her eyes and fixed them on me; I could see her wheels were turning.

  “And my clothes are heavy with water and I’m panicking and…” I took a deep breath while I relived the feeling. “And I feel suffocated by the water and…“

  She nodded. “Mmhmm,” her tone different this time. Decisive.

  “What ‘Mmhmm’?”

  “You want the short version or the long one?”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Just tell me.”

  “You’re not gonna like it.”

  “Ags…“

  “It’s Bugsy.”

  I turned to look behind me to see if he was back in the store. He wasn’t there and I swivelled back to face Ags. “Bugsy? What about him?”

  “You don’t want to rent Nat’s boat to him because you feel it would suffocate you. You’re so used to being single and dressing like a slob—“

  “Ags!”

  “I’m just kidding,” she said. “About the dressing part. The rest is accurate, though.” She took another bite of the fritter and sent me a satisfied smile. “Also, the deep water. You’re afraid of falling into that bottomless, limitless pit of love,” she said theatrically and got a silly dreamy look in her eyes.

  I shook my head. “No way. That’s not it.”

  Aggie shrugged. “That’s my two cents.”

  “For your two cents, I owe you change,” I said and looked up at the clock wondering how I could sneak in a nap before two and ensure a dreamless one at that.

  ***

  “Ok, now the first thing we do when we get in a vehicle is…?“

  I gave Bugsy a squinty-eyed skeptical look and wondered when he’d adopted the tone of a kindergarten teacher.

  “Adjust the radio,” I said confidently and reached for the dial.

  “No, as the passenger, that’s my job,” he said, brushing my hand away from the dash and smiling, flashing those dimples he carried like a concealed weapon. The kind of heat-seeking missile that always makes my cheeks flush. “But, for now, we’ll skip the tunes so you can concentrate.”

  “I can’t concentrate without music,” was my whiney kindergartner response.

  “The way I hear it, you can’t concentrate with music. I heard about that Zumba class.”

  I scowled toward the passenger seat and made a mental note to speak to Aggie once again about over-sharing. “Look, that class was for Zumba ninjas. I need the radio to…“ I began to plead my case when I looked to see Bugsy lift the door handle as if to leave the vehicle. “Wait, wait. I’m sorry. Don’t leave me.”

  “Are you going to take this seriously?”

  “Well, not as seriously as you, but…”

  Bugsy rolled his eyes. The way he did it gave me a twinge of regret for the countless times I’d done it to him. But what’s done is done.

  “Ok, are you comfortable?” he asked.

  I bounced my tush up and down a few times on the baby blue upholstered bench seat. “Yes. For someone with no music, that is.”

  “That’s two. One more and I’m going to let you sit here.”

  “Ok, I’m sorry.”

  “Now, dump out the coffee.”

  “Why? I’m tired. I need coffee.”

  “You’ll understand in a minute.”

  “But—“

  “No buts, just dump it or…” Bugsy motioned toward the door handle again.

  “Geez, you are a little harsh, aren’t you? I thought–“

  “You thought what?”

  “Nothing,” I said and dumped the contents of my travel mug on the pavement. I guess I couldn’t blame the man for being in a bad mood. I’ve never faced eviction, but I’m sure it’s no treat to have that on your mind. Still, I thought he’d be a tad nicer to me considering I was mulling over the solu
tion to his housing dilemma.

  “Now you’ve got the three pedals. See them? Gas, brake, and clutch.” He looked at me to gauge my level of understanding as if I had lost the ability to count.

  “Hmmm.”

  “What now?” he asked.

  “There are three pedals, but I’ve only got two feet, Bugsy.” I looked over to see him in profile, closing his eyes, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly. Try as he might, he couldn’t stifle that smile. A few idle threats later from Bugsy, the odd smart-ass remark from yours truly, and something like instructions from mission control at NASA, I got Nat’s truck moving. First, slowly and jarringly, but the ride smoothed out along with the conversation.

  “So, what’s new?” I asked.

  “Oh, not much, new dock going in at pier seven and I’m working on the laundry building.”

  I nodded as I concentrated on what little traffic there was and cringed at the grinding sounds I was sure the truck wasn’t supposed to make. We talked about Jack’s new girlfriend—Bugsy thought she seemed ok. We conjectured about Russ Shears’ background or lack thereof —Bugsy wasn’t bothered by it. We even discussed the Gee Spot gals—Gladys had put the moves on him and he politely turned her down.

  “So, I uh, was at Aggie’s the other night,” I said.

  “Oh yeah. Red light ahead,” he warned me two blocks early. I could see him press his leg into the imaginary brake pedal on his side.

  “I can see it,” I sighed. “And she mentioned—”

  “Lemme guess. She mentioned my—“

  “Yeah, your dad. You want to talk about it?”

  “Not much to say. He’s evicting me. Trying to prove a point, I guess.”

  “And Ags said you want to move into Nat’s boat.” I looked across at him.

  “Eyes on the road.” He nodded at me. “That’s just something she came up with. I couldn’t ask you to…“

  I pulled into the public parking lot on State Street. “Do you mind? I have to pop into the Hobby Mart to get a magnifying glass for my night school course.”

  “Sure,” he said and stepped out of the truck, walked around the front, and met me on the sidewalk. “What is it you’re taking again?”