Envious Moon(19)

She laughed. “Are you for real?”

“It’s payment. For sleeping on your beach.”

She pushed a barrette back on her hair with her right hand. She had to lean back to do this and when she stretched I got a sense of the small breasts beneath her T-shirt. “It’s not my beach,” she said.

I shrugged. “It’s a striped bass. A real nice fish.”

Her hands came back to her sides and she crossed her arms on her chest, as if aware of where my gaze had been. Her eyes narrowed. She said, “How’d you know where I lived?”

It was a completely reasonable question and I had anticipated it. I said, “I followed your tracks. From the beach.”

She seemed to be thinking this over. “I don’t even like fish,” she said.

“This is nice fish,” I said. “People who don’t like fish like it. It’s a white fish. Very sweet.”

“I don’t know how to cook.”

“I’ll cook it for you,” I said.

“I don’t even know you,” she said.

I smiled. “I’m Anthony Lopes. From Galilee, Rhode Island. I live with my mother and I missed my boat. I’m a nice guy. You can ask anyone.”

“Who could I ask?”

“Okay, look,” I said. “If you want, I will just cook the fish and then leave. You can eat when I’m gone. I’m telling you, you will like it. Lock me in the kitchen if you want. I don’t care. If you ever want me to go, just say so. I’ll leave in a second.”

Hannah sighed. “This is so weird. Who does this?”

“I’m a full-service fisherman,” I said, and this made her smile. It was a natural smile, the kind she couldn’t help, and as soon as she did, I saw her look away from me as if this was something she didn’t want to give me yet. Though it was okay for I had already seen it and it was not something she could take back.

“You’re really going to cook it,” she said.

I nodded. “I’m telling you it’s nice fish.”

She stepped off her bike and said, once again and to no one in particular, “This is so weird.” I knew then that I had her. She wheeled the bike past me and onto the porch and rested it against the wall. She opened the wooden door and turned and looked at me.

“Well, come on then,” she said, and for the second time in my life I walked into that huge house.





Standing for a moment in the foyer in front of the staircase, different feelings washed over me. The stairs were to my right and I saw the railing, the one that had come into play that night. And in front of me was a long narrow hallway and its polished hardwood floor gleamed as if it had been recently waxed. This was where her father had hit. Where he had died. I must have been staring at it because she pointed at it.

She said, “The kitchen is that way. Down and to the right. I’m going to change.”

She left me then, heading up the staircase, and I walked gingerly across that stretch of floor. To my right I passed the large empty ballroom, one of the biggest rooms I have ever seen. It had floor-to-ceiling windows and its floors were parquet. The ceiling was high and in its center was a massive chandelier. Halfway down the hallway there was a wooden side table against the right wall. Above it were black-and-white photos. I stopped. In the pictures there was a man who must have been her father. He was tall and wide-shouldered, and a full head of hair swept back from his forehead. A big handsome face. A large man, the same man who tackled me on the stairs. In one picture he was standing on a sailboat, maybe a forty-eight footer. The collar on his shirt was up and he wore white pants. In another he held a girl that must have been a young Hannah. Her curly hair the color of the sun. Her legs dangling from out of a small skirt, little buckle shoes on. Her father staring down at her with a look I can only describe as complete adoration. It broke my heart to see that look, that kind of love. Everyone should know that kind of love for as long as they can. I had known it with my own father. And now I had taken it from Hannah.

I found the kitchen where she said I would. It looked more like the kitchens Berta cooked in than one that belonged in somebody’s home. It was long and narrow and ran down the eastern side of the house. Everything was stainless steel: the eight-burner stove, the countertops, the refrigerator. The floor was concrete. Glass cabinets held stemware and plates. There were no windows.

I put the newspaper-wrapped fish on the counter and peeled the paper away. It really was a beautiful fish. If I had brought it home to Berta, she would have stretched it into three or four meals. Fried hunks of fillet the first night. Fish stew the next night. And then she’d use the skeleton and the head for a stock for one of her spicy soups we’d eat with bread.

I took the knife from the back of my belt and I removed the head and was about to do the same to the fillets, when I heard her behind me. I turned and she stood there, having changed into a new pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Her legs were deeply tan and shapely where they came out of her shorts, complected differently from her face, which was pale except for the numerous freckles.

“Hello,” I said.

“So you really know how to cook?” she asked.

I flipped the fish over. “Yes.”

“Where’d you learn?”

“My mother taught me.”

“A lot of boys wouldn’t admit that.”