Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(44)
Centaur has now been dead for nearly a year. Back in June, Bart received an e-mail from Ruby Taylor, saying she was getting married after her graduation from Tennessee—to one of her teaching assistants, a South African fellow with an unpronounceable Dutch last name. Not even an American. And certainly not an American hero like Charles Buford Duke.
Bart never responded to Ruby’s e-mail because he didn’t want to hear the story. He already knew the story. When Bart and Centaur’s convoy went missing, when they stayed missing for nearly two full years, everyone gave up hope. (No, Bart thinks, not everyone. Not Mitzi.) But Ruby Taylor gave up hope. She fell crying into the arms of her teaching assistant, who smoothed Ruby’s hair and told her the future still held promise and light. This all may have happened before Centaur died.
What is Bart to think but that girlfriends, women, love, and marriage are pursuits best left to others.
On Friday, Bart wakes up and feels just the opposite. He thinks that if Centaur could see him, he would scream in his face like Sergeant Corbo, the meanest, ugliest, toughest drillmaster in the USMC, and tell Bart to “GO GET THE GIRL!”
Bart spends $150 on a bouquet from Flowers on Chestnut, and he walks right in the door of Bayberry Properties. Allegra is sitting at a desk in the very front of the office. She is wearing a soft white sweater, a patchwork suede miniskirt, and a pair of suede boots. She looks even more beautiful than she did when she was dressed as a geisha. Her dark hair is now long down her back.
“Special delivery,” Bart says, holding out the flowers. “For Miss Allegra Pancik.”
Allegra sees him and the flowers and puts two and two together, and whereas she has every right to tell him to buzz off for not calling or texting when he said he would, she gifts him a radiant smile.
“I thought you forgot about me,” she says.
“Forgot about you?” he says. “Impossible.”
Allegra floats around the office, holding the flowers up like a trophy.
“I need to find a vase,” she says. “And I want to introduce you to my aunt and uncle.” She beams at him. “I thought I’d imagined everything that happened Tuesday night. I thought I’d dreamed it.”
“Not a dream,” Bart says. He suddenly remembers that when he blew out his birthday candles, his wish was that he and Allegra would live happily ever after. “I just had stuff to do the past few days. My family was all visiting, and I pretty much ignored them at the party, so…”
“I know,” Allegra says. “I felt so bad about that.” She finds a vase under the office’s kitchen sink, and she fills it with water. “These are going right on my desk where everyone can see them.” She touches his arm. “Thank you, Bart.”
He wants to kiss her, but there are other people in the office. Most of them are at desks, on their phones or engrossed with their computer screens, but Bart can’t risk compromising Allegra’s professionalism. Even now her phone is ringing. He needs to let her go.
“Have dinner with me tonight,” he says. “Fifty-Six Union, seven thirty. I can pick you up, or…”
“I’ll have my dad drop me off at the restaurant,” Allegra says. “And you’ll get me home after?”
He nods. “See you then.”
When Bart gets back home, he finds Mitzi on the side porch smoking a cigarette. Bart checks the time on his phone. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon—four and a half hours until he will next see Allegra. But Mitzi smoking in the middle of the day is a new development, and not a good one.
“What’s up, Madre?” he says.
Mitzi waves the smoke away but does not extinguish the cigarette, despite the fact that it is nearly burned down to the filter. “That envelope Eddie Pancik dropped off earlier?” she says. “It was a listing sheet. I’m selling the inn after your father dies.”
“You are?” Bart says. He’s not sure how to react. Is this good news or bad news? On the one hand, it sounds like good news. Mitzi has made a decision to stop running the inn. On the other hand, selling the inn seems inconceivable. It’s the only home Bart has ever known, and it’s the only place Mitzi has ever lived on Nantucket, except for a long-ago summer rental. “What will you do then?”
“I haven’t decided yet,” Mitzi says. “Your father told me you want to reenlist for active duty?”
“He did?” Bart says. Bart wasn’t sure Kelley had absorbed this piece of news.
“As much as it terrifies me, I think it’s a good idea,” Mitzi says. “You aren’t happy here, that much is obvious. You need a sense of purpose. You need to create a life. They won’t send you back overseas, I wouldn’t think.”
“Probably not,” Bart says. There is appeal in going where the action is, but he has also considered officer training school. His dream is to become a drill sergeant at Camp Lejeune. He would love nothing more than to be on the other side of basic training. He knows firsthand the mental toughness it takes to be a Marine. He was held prisoner for two years; he watched his fellow troops die. And he survived. He is tougher, meaner, and uglier than even Sergeant Corbo. He regards his mother. “I thought you would be against it. I thought you would throw yourself on the ground in front of my feet and beg me not to go back.”
Mitzi drops the butt of her cigarette into an empty Diet Coke can on the railing. The Diet Coke throws Bart for a second loop. Has Mitzi been consuming the stuff? Cigarettes and Diet Coke and selling the inn? Do Mitzi’s further plans include moving to Vegas to participate in the World Series of Poker?