The Scent Keeper(79)

Fisher opened the cabin door and ducked inside. I followed him, cautious, then stopped in stunned silence. Looking at the interior of the boat was like gazing at clockwork, each thing in its own, well-loved place. The wood and metal gleamed; every surface was clean. There were books, lined up along a shelf, five bottles of spices, a pot and a pan, each hanging on its own hook. Behind the kitchen I could see a cubbyhole of a room with a bed, neatly made with a plaid blanket.

“Wow,” I said, forgetting my doubts, my anger, falling back into the way he and I used to be, two children creating worlds of their own.

Fisher grinned. “I did it myself.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. “But how does this all work?” I motioned to the boats around us, and the opulent houses beyond. I didn’t see how the two could coexist.

“We’re outside the city limits,” he said. “A couple years ago, rich people started abandoning their old boats here, and some folks thought it was a shame to let them go to waste. We’re kind of like hermit crabs.” He smiled. “Everybody wants to kick us out, but so far they can’t figure out whose jurisdiction we’re in. Thank God for bureaucracy.”

He leaned toward a cabinet. “Can I get you something to drink? I’ve got water, and water.”



* * *



We went back outside and sat on the dilapidated deck, leaning against the wall of the cabin, looking out at the canal. For a long time, we were quiet. The sky still held the light of late summer, and I could hear rustling from the boats around us, men’s voices, the sounds of cooking and settling in. In the houses that lined the channel, illuminated windows held small moments, like the open doors of an Advent calendar. A woman walking back and forth, a baby in her arms. A couple sitting at a table. A boy playing with a dog. All those stories, all those lives, each one an entire world to the person living it, and yet I knew none of them. Maybe that’s how it always is, I thought—we all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything.

“Okay,” I said, turning to Fisher. “Tell me.”

He took a slow sip of water, put the bottle down. “I don’t know,” he said. I waited, and he shrugged. “Everything started out well enough, I guess. I got the job in the nursery, found a room in a shared house. It wasn’t great, but I could afford it.”

I considered the boats around us, their slow but certain future at the bottom of the water. What could wasn’t great mean?

“Why did you stop writing me?” I asked, and steeled myself for the answer.

Fisher just sighed. “I thought everything would be different. You know, away from my father. It turned out I didn’t know as much as I thought. I know about growing vegetables—but that nursery was all about fancy names and colors and landscaping.” His voice shifted to disdain. “It sucks to go to a place where you don’t know what you’re doing, day after day. Nothing I did was right. And the manager hated me from the start—said he didn’t have time to babysit.”

“What about the girl?” I asked, breaking in.

“What girl?” He looked at me, puzzled.

“The one who got you fired.”

He almost laughed. “So you do care,” he said. “Jesus, Emmeline. She was just somebody who worked there. The manager was hitting on her. I told him to leave her alone. That was all the excuse he needed to get rid of me.”

I had been wrong for so many months. So much time spent imagining, hating, longing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“I got fired, Emmeline. I screwed up at the only thing I thought I knew how to do. How was I supposed to tell you that?”

“I would have understood.”

“Says the girl wearing a two-hundred-dollar pair of jeans.”

I felt a sudden rush of shame, sitting on that boat, knowing where I lived. What I did.

“I’d say you’ve got a story or two to tell me yourself,” he added.

“My jeans don’t get you off the hook,” I said, though I realized that, as always, Fisher had seen more than I wanted him to.

He shook his head. “I didn’t want you to know, okay? And then later, it was just easier to be here—to be who I am here—if I could pretend you didn’t exist.”

I had a sudden vision of the blinking red light on Victoria’s answering machine. The messages piling up. The push and pull of my old and new selves.

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“I couldn’t pay my rent, so I got kicked out of there, too. I just kept walking around the city, thinking about all the things my dad used to say about me. Thinking he was probably right. I couldn’t go home like that.” He laughed, but it was more of a chuff. “I mean, I couldn’t go home, in any case. But then I saw that bar, and I went in.” He shrugged. “Turns out, I’m pretty good with alcohol. I started out bussing, and then Izzy trained me to be a bartender.”

He looked around. “A guy told me about this place, said there was an available boat. I know how it looks, but you’d be amazed. Jim used to be an aerospace engineer. Lost his wife to cancer and just fell apart. Jamie,” he nodded toward the old fishing trawler, “ran away from home, just like me. Wants to be a musician. He’s always talking about living intentionally and trying to get us to eat vegan.”