The Whiskey Sea (16 page)

Toby said, “I haven’t seen him, either.” A moment of uncomfortable silence. “He essentially disappeared this summer.”

She was struck with a needling of hope that maybe she’d run into Charles in the city. How crazy that she’d stumbled upon Toby, the only person she’d met before in New York. But then again she was on his stomping grounds.

“Do you think he’s in the city?” Frieda asked.

“I have no idea. As I said before, he’s been out of the picture lately.” He took a tiny step back, and Frieda felt the divide between them widen. “Frieda, it was nice to see you again,” he said to her, and his look conveyed charm but revealed nothing; then he turned to Bea. “Welcome to New York. I hope you enjoy it.”

Frieda managed a smile, and Bea said, “Thank you.”

“Well, have a nice evening, ladies.” He tipped his hat and wheeled away.

When Frieda turned back to Bea, her sister’s face registered a pale new awareness. “You don’t know where Charles is?” she gasped. “I had no idea. Obviously he hasn’t been around town lately—I haven’t seen him—but I thought you knew where he was.”

Frieda shook her head.

“My God, Frieda. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Wrapping her hands around her tumbler, Frieda stared into it. Then she looked up, letting the pain—finally—show to someone. “I-I didn’t want to ruin this for you. This is your time, Bea.”

“You’re my sister and best friend. I can’t believe you kept this inside.”

Frieda looked down. How had she come to this?

“So he took you away for a night, ruined your virtue, and then disappeared?” Bea asked with rising anger in her voice.

“He’s not like that,” Frieda said just loud enough to be heard. “There has to be an explanation. He’s not mean. He’s not.”

“But he simply vanished . . . without a word?”

“Sort of. But he’s not a bad man, Bea.”

Bea blinked a few times. “O-K,” she said. “But I feel terrible leaving you now. I didn’t know . . .”

“He’s coming back,” Frieda said, and gulped.

Bea looked at her with an empathy only a sister could feel, and Frieda had to ward off tears. It had always been the two of them, but now each was heading out alone into uncharted seas. Bea would happily float away, but how would Frieda keep her head above water? Her sister was the one who had always kept her centered and focused, anchored to an old familiar shore.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Keeping occupied was the only relief Frieda could find. She scrubbed the boat while it lifted and lowered on the tides like a big shiny beast, breathing. She worked on the engine even though nothing needed doing. Then she went to Bahrs and poked around for extra work. These things provided a temporary reprieve.

One of Silver’s old friends told her that another of his old friends, a man called Dingbat—Frieda never understood why; he seemed perfectly sensible to her—needed some work done on his boat. She found him down the most rickety pier, where many of the old fishing boats gathered together like half-dead insects floating on the sea. These were the boats of the men who’d played it straight through these five years of running.

On the way there she passed gleaming new running boats docked next to old battered fishing craft that needed painting. The haves and have-nots had always existed in Highlands, but now they sat side by side, rubbing shoulders in a harbor crammed to capacity. Today there were more strangers about, and they reminded Frieda of gangsters.

Dingbat, a phlegmatic gaffer, hat pulled down over a bald head compensated by a bushy steel beard, told her he needed a new water pump, a repair that in the past he would have done for himself, but arthritis had made it too difficult. “I’m wondering if you could put this work on credit. Just till I make my next good haul. Then I’ll be paying you back.”

Dingbat had been one of Silver’s favorites, meaning that Silver would spend some time with the man. He had always spoken highly of Dingbat and his wife. But even if Silver hadn’t liked the man, Frieda did, and he was just scraping by, while she was storing cash as if she’d live to eternity. Frieda looked around, and a cloak of comfort fell around her. She was home. The docks, this part of the docks, her refuge. She wasn’t a wealthy boat owner or a struggling clammer or fisherman, but she breathed to the rhythm of this place.

“No need to pay me,” Frieda said.

Dingbat pushed back his stooped shoulders. “I ain’t no charity case.”

Proud, always proud. “Do as you like, but you’re doing me a favor. I’m bored on the days I’m not working. Bored out of my mind in fact. Need to keep busy.”

“Bored, huh?” He eyed her warily.

A thought hit her. “You know, if you ever need help out on the water, I’d love to go out with you sometime . . . that is, when I’m not out with Dutch or working on his boat.” She paused. “I’m sure you know what I’m doing.”

He chewed on something inside his cheek. “Yeah, I know what you’re doing.” He spat into the water, but his face revealed nothing about his feelings on the matter, and Frieda didn’t ask. On the docks people stayed out of other people’s business.

“I’d love to go out sometime just to . . . fish and clam.” Frieda had often wanted to go out on the water for something other than rumrunning, and Hicks would’ve been the obvious one to take her. But time around her wasn’t good for him, she reasoned, so she had never asked.

Dingbat said with a gleam in his eye, “My wife might get jealous.” And he laughed.

Frieda smiled. “I’ll promise her to mind myself.”

After she fetched her tools and was walking back to Dingbat’s slip, she nearly collided with Hawkeye. She smelled his rancid breath before he spoke. “Whatcha doing down here on the wrong side of the tracks?” he asked with a penetrating stare.

She sidestepped him. “Get out of my way.”

“I thought you only took to them fancy boats now.”

She shoved past him and kept walking. It was a tough day to have to listen to that old bastard. As she strode on, she shook herself, trying to rid herself of him.

Catching a glimpse of the road, she thought she saw Charles’s Renault. In the lane across from her, on the other side of the road. She started to wave, but the car sped by without giving her time to see who was driving. Was it Charles? He drove an unusual car, but with all the tourists streaming in and out of town, it wasn’t impossible that someone else had driven a car like his down here. But if it was Charles, why hadn’t he come down to the docks?

Troubled with questions, Frieda continued walking back to Dingbat’s boat. She started working on the engine but was compelled to come up for air and look around for Charles every few minutes.

Dingbat’s wife came to sit next to her. Frieda couldn’t remember the woman’s name. Clara, she thought it was. Silver would never have forgotten.

Her hair was as white as Santa Claus’s, and her eyes were red rimmed. She wore a patchy straw hat and an old dress that nearly dragged the ground over her scuffed rubber boots. They exchanged pleasantries while Frieda worked and Clara watched.

Dingbat shouted from the dock, “Don’t bother the girl while she’s working.”

“Can’t you see I’m supervising?” Clara retorted, and Frieda laughed.

A few moments passed in comfortable silence. Then Clara said, “What’s the matter, honey? You look mighty serious. Like maybe you’re lovesick.”

Frieda’s defenses flew up. She hated that she was so transparent. Pursing her lips, she turned the wrench with more force than was needed. Clara was breaking the unspoken rule about not messing in another person’s business. But she knew Clara meant well, and who else did she have to talk to now? Bea was gone.

Frieda kept working, and her movements calmed the spark that so easily rose to flames inside her. “You must be some kind of mind reader.”

“Honey, when you get this old, you see things the eyes don’t see. You see them with your heart and your mind.”

Frieda stopped for a moment. “Sounds witchy.”

“No hocus-pocus here. Just lots of living; it lends you some wisdom. Which I’m guessing is a trade-off for lost youth.”

Frieda looked out over the harbor toward the bay. A ferry heading to the city belched black smoke from its funnel as it made its way. The day was coming to full brightness; tourists were arriving in droves, while others were going back to their everyday lives. Then she scoured the dock area again; she couldn’t help it. If Charles had returned, where was he?

Dingbat’s wife tossed a hand-rolled-cigarette butt into the water. Close to shore the water was muddier and floated cigar butts, newspaper pieces, and oil slicks rising and falling on swells slapping against the wooden timbers.

Clara said, “Go on and tell me. Get it off your chest.”

Frieda squinted and felt relief even before she spoke. “The truth is I’ve fallen for a man I don’t understand.”

Clara sighed. “And he’s hurting you.”

“No. Not like that. He’s not beating me.”

“No . . . I mean, hurting your heart.”

Frieda kept working, her words flying out of her now as fast as her hands moved. “I never know what he’s thinking. Sometimes it’s wonderful, like the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Other times I’m so unsure. I’m lost. I have no idea where I stand. I think he loves me, but I’m not convinced. I worry all the time.”

The woman’s face registered something Frieda could not name. Empathy maybe, and she was glad for it. “But that’s love, honey child. You always worry about the folks you love.”

Frieda couldn’t respond. She’d never much pondered the nature of love before, but when she had, she’d never imagined the anguish that accompanied the joy. Of course love involved worry. Worry over Charles had consumed her. She had analyzed his every gesture and expression. When he wasn’t close she was miserable, and when he was near she was fearful she was going to lose him.

Why were people drawn to the mysterious, to the far horizon, to something unreachable? What had driven her to the edge, with no promises of what lay beyond it?

She looked at Clara. “Funny, I thought love would be happier.”

When she had installed the new water pump, she said good-bye to Dingbat and Clara and then started walking. Out in the sun in the hottest part of the day, through stagnant afternoon air, she had to walk uphill to reach Charles’s street. But she needed to know whether he was back or not. Now she had taken a step beyond pitiable. This was ridiculous, and yet the desire to know pulled her as if by an urgent tide.

She had never been to Charles’s house, but he had told her what street it was on. If the Renault was parked in front of one of the houses on that street, she would knock on the door. She picked up her pace, almost running, air scorching inside her lungs, flaming in and out, her heart hammering. What if Charles was there and not alone? What if he’d brought another woman? No, he would never be so cruel.

She reached his street, but the car was not there. She didn’t know how to feel. Had she wanted to find him doing something she didn’t know about? Did she have any reason to be snooping? She didn’t even know whether the car she’d seen earlier was his or not. But if he’d been heading home, he would have arrived by now.

Now drenched with sweat, Frieda leaned over her knees to catch her breath. When she stood up, it hit her that even if Charles had been here it didn’t necessarily mean he was avoiding her. Maybe he had errands to run. Shopping to do? She remembered how sweet and utterly devoted Charles had been to her in the city, and she admonished herself for having had such crazy thoughts. Something had called him away, but he would be back.

She nearly stumbled. Suddenly she was so tired.

She walked downhill and straightaway to the sand beach, past picnickers and swimmers in their fancy bathing costumes, and into the low surf that barely chuffed against the bar today. In her leather boots she sunk into the wet sand, soaking her shoes, and then she reached down, scooped up seawater, and splashed it on her face. Instantly cooled.

Nothing bad had happened really. Nothing.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The next morning, when she saw Charles walking toward her down the pier on the hottest day of the summer so far, his figure seemed to flutter inside the heat waves, and she thought she might be seeing an apparition or a ghost. Sometimes she felt as if she’d dreamed him into being, that maybe none of it had been real. She had to mentally shake those thoughts away and focus on the man striding toward her.

Charles, her Charles.

Here he was, real and warm and smiling, pushing back his Panama hat, taking her in his arms as soon as she jumped from the boat onto the pier. Ah, the scent of his aftershave, the sleek loveliness of his limbs, and his warm breath in her hair. The sun shone brighter, and the wind came with a new freshness.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispered.

She held him tightly for a moment, afraid that if she let go he would disappear again. Maybe if she held on forever she could keep him here.

He pulled back, his hands gently resting on her arms.

Trying to keep her voice light, she said, “Where have you been?” She was surprised at how weak and relieved she sounded.

But he seemed unfazed. “Family duty,” he said as though no further explanation was needed. He didn’t seem to grasp how much his absence had affected her. He offered no more excuses. “Can you stop what you’re doing, and I’ll tell you all about it?”

The joy had come back. He had returned to her.

She had been preparing the
Pauline
for a run. The crew of the
Pauline
was planning to resume its forays into the night. “I can stop for a little while.”

“Are we going out on a run tonight?”

“Yes.”

He kissed her and took her hand.

“Wait. I’ll be just a second.” She leapt back onto the boat, scampered down to the engine room, put away her tools, and wiped her hands on a rag. She was dressed in her usual work attire—pants, shirt, hat, and fisherman’s boots, her hair tucked up. After taking off her hat, she shook out her hair and wished she had a tube of Bea’s lipstick. But she figured that Charles had fallen for her just the way she was, so she joined him on the dock, and he led her down to Bahrs.

“I’m famished,” he said as he pulled a chair out for her. “I left early this morning. Traffic was terrible, and the ferries are running late. No time for a bite to eat.”

He slid beside her and moved in close, his hands on the tabletop. She stared down at the shape of his hands, the long fingers with downy hair on the knuckles. Glances angled toward them from all directions from fishermen, rumrunners, dockworkers, and the Bahrs family, working to feed a boathouse full of hungry men. The locals were used to Frieda, but although Charles told her it wasn’t his first time in the place, he clearly wasn’t a regular. Were they wondering how she’d managed to snag a date with a young man like Charles? Although no one mentioned it any longer, they all knew she was the whore’s daughter. Did some of them still see her that way?
God, please don’t let anyone say something to Charles.
Thankfully, Hawkeye wasn’t there. He might tell Charles simply out of meanness.

Charles, however, handled the looks as if they were nothing but bits of dust on his shoulders he could mentally brush away, or perhaps he didn’t notice the looks at all. He was dressed in shoes with fringed tongues, front-creased trousers, and a dress shirt, collar open to reveal a tanned chest, and cuffs rolled up to his elbows, showing that the hair on his arms had turned blond. He must have spent the last few days on the beach, and Frieda imagined the striped canvas beach chairs and umbrellas set up by servants, who also brought out drinks in crystal glasses. She tried to imagine his family, and she envisioned the resort types who came on vacations. But she was probably off by a mile. Even the rich who frequented the Highlands area were not cut from the same cloth as Charles was.

They ordered, and as they waited for the food to arrive she said, “Where did you go?”

“I was summoned to the Hamptons. My mother’s birthday. Father insisted.”

She struggled to form mental images of Charles’s family and his life away from here. “Was it a grand party?”

He smiled at her. “Of course it was, but all very stiff, you know. You wouldn’t have liked it. Too stuffy for you. The men talk of law, politics, and Wall Street. The women talk of fashion and the latest gossip columns. My father is frantic about the mayoral race coming up in November. All very haughty and long-winded, I’m afraid. But Mother’s a dear; her name’s Elizabeth, but we’ve always called her Bitty, among family only of course. She approves of my summer season away more than my father does. She thinks I need it.” He blew on his hot coffee.

Frieda’s life was so far removed. “Do they have any idea what you’re doing?”

He harrumphed. “They know I’ve taken a residence in this area, but no, they don’t know what I’m doing with my nights.”

Frieda also assumed they knew nothing of her. She looked at his hands and saw that he’d been biting his nails. She had never before imagined that the wealthy could have the same bad habits as she did.

“Did you see any of your old friends?”

“Hardly,” he answered. “Most are abroad.” He said this as if it meant nothing special. “Oh, you’ll find this interesting. One night we went to the Maidstone Club in East Hampton—very posh place, members only, naturally—where the food and service are excellent, but the main source of entertainment is to watch coast guard boats chasing the local rumrunning boats. It reaches the greatest heights of hypocrisy, you see, because one can order any type of liquor one wants, and the place will never be raided. The members of the club have too many connections. They enjoy watching from the windows as the poor slobs out there risk their lives to bring in the liquor, and then they enjoy the fruits of their labors without any risk to themselves.”

Frieda put her hands around her cup of coffee and stared into the dark liquid as if there she might find the solution to the riddle of Charles. “So, that’s one of the reasons you do it—as a protest . . .”

He patted her hand, then held it. “Now, Frieda dear, don’t assign such glorious and noble aspirations to me. My contribution has little to offer in the grander scheme of things.”

Their food arrived.

“I enjoy the sea. I enjoy this town. I like doing things I’ve never done before . . .” He looked into her eyes. “And I adore you.”

She could’ve sworn the light in the restaurant sparkled, as did the joy in her chest. She sank into the moment. It was as if she had waited her entire life to hear the words “I adore you.” Adore was almost like love, maybe one step away?

“I thought I saw your car yesterday. I mean, it was exactly like your car.”

He looked stumped for a moment. “I did return yesterday, but I was exhausted. I went straight to bed.” He smiled. “I was worn out by the journey.”

So Charles had lied when he said he’d come that morning. And his journey from the ferry to the summer house would not have taken him past the docks. And he hadn’t gone straight to bed, because his car was not at the summer house. And now he was dressed as if he’d just come from the Hamptons. Again, more questions she couldn’t answer. But after a fierce internal battle, she decided to let it go. She couldn’t push Charles away just as he’d come back to her. So maybe he had needed a night alone. No harm in that.

She told him about Bea’s leaving, about finding the apartment, and their night in New York City, and she loved the way he studied her face. It was enough.

“We saw Toby.”

Charles sat back. “Fancy that, meeting him again.”

“That’s what I thought. Quite a coincidence.”

“Did he flirt with you?”

Now it was her turn to be surprised. “Not at all. I don’t think he sees me, or Bea, in that way.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Besides, that man is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

So he was jealous. Good. That showed he cared. “He was polite, that’s all.”

“Hmm.”

“It wasn’t the same without you.”

He smiled when she told him about getting lost.

“I should have been with you,” he said.

That afternoon Frieda asked Polly if she could stay all night with Silver, and the kindly middle-aged nurse shook her head. Broad and gray-haired, she was as strong as a mule, and she worked endlessly to clean, cook, and care for Silver. Like all the others in town, she had to know how Frieda was paying her, and obviously she didn’t want to bite the proverbial hand that fed her. She also knew that Frieda usually came back from running about two or three in the morning, and that if she was planning to be out the entirety of the night, there was another reason for it. By then everyone in town knew she was seeing Charles. They probably knew about the night they spent together in the city, too. Frieda could imagine what the woman was thinking: running rum was one thing, but carrying on all night unmarried was another. Frieda made a mental note to find another nurse as soon as possible to stay the nights; hopefully one who didn’t set up herself as judge and jury.

Crossing herself, Polly said, “I hope Mr. Silver here don’t figure out what you’re up to.” A devout Catholic, she often worked at her tasks to the rhythms of her prayers while holding a rosary. “If he don’t get no peace about you, when he dies his soul is destined to wander forever in purgatory.”

Frieda started coughing. Polly patted her on the back until Frieda could catch her breath. “For God’s sake, Polly, don’t even suggest such a thing. Besides, I have no secrets from him.”

Polly wrung her hands and looked as if she wanted to say something else, but she simply shook her head and kept quiet.

Frieda was hoping for a smooth run and then to be invited to Charles’s summer house for the rest of the night. But that afternoon, as she walked down the pier to where the
Pauline
was docked at the end, ominous gray clouds churned over the water. A summer storm would be coming. The cloud cover would obscure any moonlight, but it could make for a choppy sea.

Rudy and Dutch were already on board. “Glad to see you,” said Dutch. “We’re heading out early to beat this thing coming in.”

“It’s light,” she said, stating the obvious.

“You think, Frieda?” said Dutch, clearly annoyed. “Where’s that damn sap Princeton? I need the strength of his back tonight.”

“Damn sap?” Frieda, incensed on his behalf, asked.

“Don’t get yourself in a tizzy,” Dutch nearly shouted, and then seemed to calm himself. He ran a big, beefy hand through his prematurely silvering hair. “I can’t figure that snot-nosed kid. If you had everything in the world, a rich mama and papa, and law school to come, would you be out here doing this?”

“Come now, Dutch. You love it.”

“I love it, but someday it’ll be over, and then it’ll be back to toiling endless hours on the sea, scratching out a living. Don’t fool yourself. You’d take the easy life if it got handed to you.” He cocked his head to one side and squinted at her, seeming to consider his words carefully. “You don’t think it’s being handed to you, do you? You don’t think that boy is going to take you away from all this, do you?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, Frieda went down below to start the engines and smiled when she heard Charles’s voice above her on the boat. He was explaining to Dutch that he could see the harbor with binoculars from his summer house and saw that Dutch was preparing to head out early, so he’d come straightaway.

It was barely three o’clock, and yet Frieda counted thirteen other boats of all rigs and sizes also heading out. Dutch cut a course out toward Rum Row, slapping the boat over waves and sending up sheets of spray on either side. The clouds still hung out at sea, denying the rain and cover a storm might have provided. And yet many boat captains had become so confident that they regularly ran during the daylight hours anyway. The guard didn’t have near the numbers to match them all, and many runners had decided their chances of getting caught were the same during the day as during the night.

Out in open water they bounced through the chop and slid over swells while Rudy kept watch on the bow for guard boats, hijackers, and the weather. The cradle of the sea was rocking rough today, but they stayed the course. Frieda didn’t mind rocky runs, but rain was always disconcerting, because it cut down on visibility. She was having more nightmares than ever, and in the most common one the boat was heading broadside into a larger craft; she always awakened with a start a split second before they hit. Frieda shook her head, as if she could rid herself of the memory by scattering it over the water.

Dutch located the rum boat he lately preferred, the steamer
Dolphin
, and had to wait his turn while other small boats were loading. On the large vessel the men were too busy to exchange money. Instead every available crew member was occupied with handing down cases to all the smaller craft and also keeping a lookout for trouble. But that payment plan took a lot of faith in the shore boats’ captains, because any of them could later claim to have been hijacked or caught by the guard and then never come back to pay.

The boats in front of Dutch pushed off, and he was able to pull in alongside the
Dolphin
and begin shouting his order while Rudy threw over the fenders and lines. Dutch ordered both Rudy and Charles to help load quickly, as the bigger boat had men on watch and visibility remained excellent, the storm still hovering a few miles farther out at sea.