Big Summer(67)
In desperation, I said, “Is there anyone in town who might know this guy? Anyone who could help?”
She shrugged. “I s’pose you could go to the dock. Ask if anyone’s seen this fella around the Lady Lu. But all of the charters are going to be out t’sea on a day like today. Won’t be back ’til sundown.” She gave us a long, assessing look and finally said, “Fella at the intersection of Bradford and Commercial Street? Dressed up as a Pilgrim, ringin’ a bell? He might be particularly helpful.”
Fantastic, I thought. A traffic cop dressed as a Pilgrim. How lucky that we’d arrived on mess-with-the-out-of-towners day. “Thank you,” I said, getting to my feet. The dog opened its eye again and released a long and mournful fart before rolling onto its opposite side.
“Tell him Dora sent you,” she said.
* * *
I whispered to Darshi that we should walk slowly, taking our time making our way back to the car, hoping that Dora would reconsider, that she’d come running after us to tell us the guy’s name, along with his address and phone number, but all I heard as Darshi unlocked the doors was the sound of children’s voices, high and cheerful, carrying across the water.
“She knows him,” Darshi said as we climbed into that car.
“I also got that impression.”
“She knows him and she’s covering for him. But why?” She frowned, squinting in the sunshine. Darshi was a night owl, not a big swimmer or a fan of beaches. Between that and the overwhelming whiteness of the population, or at least the parts of it we’d seen, my roommate seemed immune to Cape Cod’s charms. “Look for a man directing traffic dressed up as a Pilgrim. Puh-leaze.”
“You don’t think we should check?” I asked.
Darshi pulled back onto Commercial Street, narrowly missing a collision with a man clad in a tiny silver Speedo and nothing else, pedaling an old-fashioned cruiser-style bike that was painted hot pink. “Something about this… about Nick, or whatever his name is.” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s like it’s on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t remember.”
“So you don’t think we should go look for a Pilgrim directing traffic?”
Darshi started to drive, then stomped the brakes again. This time, the hold-up was a drag queen in a neon-yellow minidress and towering pink wig who was riding an adult-size tricycle down the center of the street. Signs on both sides of the rear wheels advertised her show that night at a place called the Crown & Anchor. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe that isn’t any weirder than the rest of this.”
* * *
The Pilgrim-costumed traffic cop turned out to be real. In between dongs of the brass bell he held and almost balletic spins he performed in his buckled shoes, he said that he did know that Dan Brannigan had a new mate this summer—“Tim O’Reilly’s got the shingles, don’t you know,” but, alas, he didn’t know the name of “the young feller.” He estimated the boat would be back by five o’clock; five-thirty at the latest. It was barely noon, not even seven hours since I’d found Drue. It felt like a week had already elapsed, if not an entire month.
“We can come back,” said Darshi. The traffic Pilgrim had sent us to the Portuguese Bakery for a snack. “Get the malasadas, if they’re fresh,” he’d said. They were, and we had, and, in spite of everything, the deep-fried, sugar-coated pastries were delicious, the happy marriage of a fritter and a piece of fried dough. Unfortunately, the guys behind the counter hadn’t known the name of Dan Brannigan’s mate. Neither did the guys at the bicycle shop next door, although that visit jarred loose the memory of Nick telling me he’d worked at a bicycle shop somewhere else on the Cape, only I couldn’t remember the name of the town, if he’d told me. Darshi and I had spent the next twenty minutes sitting on a bench outside Town Hall, watching the drag queens hand out flyers for their shows and calling every nearby bike shop that had a listed phone number. No one remembered a Nick, or a guy who’d matched his description, from the previous summer.
“Maybe we could bring Dora some malasadas,” Darshi suggested. “We could try to bribe her. Loosen her up with carbs and fat.”
I shook my head. By then, I was getting antsy. When I closed my eyes, I could see Detective McMichaels knocking on my bedroom door, pushing it open, finding me gone, and deciding that I’d been responsible for Drue’s demise, because only a guilty person would have fled. I would have given anything to be back in New York, needle-felting the Nativity scene I’d promised a client. I’d already done the sheep, donkeys, and Wise Men, and I’d special-ordered blue wool roving for Mary’s gown. I’d make myself a cup of tea and have one of the crumbly sweet cornmeal cookies that I liked, and sit on the couch with Bingo curled up beside me, and know that I was as happy as anyone had a right to be.
“I think we should go,” I said.
Darshi and I got back into the car and began the slow and perilous trip back to Route 6. The streets were narrow, and there were pedestrians everywhere, guys in pairs or groups, exhausted-looking couples lugging armloads of towels or beach chairs, pushing strollers or carrying toddlers in slings or on their shoulders.
While Darshi paused to let another crew of barely clad men go by, muttering “Doesn’t anyone in this town wear shirts?,” I shut my eyes and pictured Nick: his tousled hair, his crooked smile. I remembered his smell, the smoothness of his skin, the way he’d looked in the hot tub when he’d pulled me into his lap. I shook my head, not wanting to play that tape forward, and rewound it instead. The way he’d looked at the party, his tanned, corded forearm on the table. The way he’d looked, sitting on the deck, tilting his head back to take in the big house.