Elizabeth Hand - Generation Loss

“Everett?” The woman frowned. “He was here earlier, but I think he went out. Hey, Toby—”

She called to a man sitting alone at a table by the window. “Where’d Everett go?”

Toby Barrett looked up from a plate of eggs and bacon.

“Everett? He left a while ago.” When he saw me, he blinked. “Oh. It’s you. You know, I think he was waiting for you—”

“Well, he didn’t wait long enough,” I snapped.

“Have a seat.” Toby nudged a chair toward me with his foot. “You want coffee?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I slumped into the chair. Toby paid me the courtesy of turning his attention back to his food. He was wearing the same clothes as the night before, with the exception of a faded T-shirt commemorating the 1975 solar eclipse in Boze, Montana. After a minute the waitress brought me coffee and a menu.

“I can’t eat,” I said. I held my head in my hands. “God, I can’t believe this.” I picked up my coffee, grimacing. “So where the hell is Everett’s office, anyway? If I had been able to find him?”

“His office? That would be it, there—”

Toby gestured out the window to a red GMC pickup.

“His truck?”

“Yup. He give you his home number? That’s the best way to get hold of him, unless you radio him on his boat. Not much cell reception up here.”

I drank my coffee miserably, hoping I wouldn’t get sick. “I overslept. But I thought he’d at least wait.”

“He did. For a while, anyway. He was in here for breakfast—he’s here every day.” Toby speared an entire fried egg and ate it in one bite. “But then he got another paying customer, so he left.”

“Will he come back?”

“Not for a while. He’ll make his delivery. Then he’ll probably be out hauling traps.”

“Shit.”

I finished my coffee. The waitress set a fresh pot on the table, along with a plate of toast. I picked up a piece and ate it slowly, fighting nausea.

Now what?

Toby leaned back in his chair. He reached into the pocket of his flannel shirt, took out some rolling papers and a bag of American Spirit tobacco.

“How come you need to get out there so bad?” he asked as he began to roll a cigarette.

“I have a job out there.”

“A job?” He seemed taken aback. “On the island? Who you working for? Aphrodite?”

I hesitated. Phil had geared me up with all this cloak-and-dagger stuff about Kamestos and her paranoia, but it all seemed stupid now that I was actually in Burnt Harbor. There was no one here, and certainly no one who seemed to care that I’d arrived.

“I’m supposed to interview her,” I said at last.

“Really? She expecting you?”

“Yeah.” I wondered if maybe this guy was the friend Phil had mentioned, and asked him.

“Phil Cohen. Nope. Never heard of him.” Toby tipped his head, regarding me with calm hazel eyes. “But you do know Aphrodite.”

I finished my coffee.

“No,” I admitted. “I’ve never even spoken to her. Phil was the guy set it up for me. Through an editor in London.”

I poured myself more coffee. “But you know what? I don’t even know what the fuck I’m doing here. I think I better just get back into my goddam car and drive back to New York.”

“That would be a long way to come to have a cup of coffee and sleep—where did you sleep last night, anyway?”

“The Lighthouse.”

“That would definitely be a long way to come to sleep at the Lighthouse.”

Toby tapped his cigarette and tucked it behind his ear, folded up his tobacco packet and rolling papers and put them away.

“Well, if you still want to get over there to Paswegas, I’ll take you,” he said.

I stared at him in disbelief. “You can take me?”

“Sure.” He pointed toward the harbor. “See that boat out there?”

“A sailboat?” I squinted at the sunlit water. “You can sail in the winter?”

“Sure. Water’s same temperature as it is in the summer. You’d just die faster if you fell in now. We’ll motor over, unless the wind’s with us. It’ll take a little longer than Everett’s boat, but I’ll get you there. I was going over later today anyway.”

“Jeez. Well, thanks.” I ran a hand through my dirty hair. “I didn’t even take a shower.”

“That won’t bother me. If you’re staying with Aphrodite, I’m sure she’ll let you take a shower. But we should get going.”

He stuck a ten dollar bill under his plate. “How should I pay you?” I asked.

“We’ll figure something out.” As we headed to the door, he glanced at me. “Those all the clothes you got?”

“Pretty much. You mean, am I dressed up enough to meet her?”

“I mean you’re going to freeze your butt off if you don’t put on something warmer.” He looked at my boots and shook his head. “You better be careful with those—cowboy boots are terrible on deck. I think maybe I got some stuff on the boat you could wear. Come on.”

I followed him outside. I retrieved my things, locked the car, then headed after Toby.

Two steps and my gut clenched. Maybe getting onto a boat wasn’t such a great idea, after all. But Toby was already halfway down the beach, so I hurried after him.

As he’d warned, my boots were terrible in the damp. The pointed toes caught between rocks and slid on lumps of greasy black seaweed. I walked gingerly to where he bent over a wooden dinghy. A few yards off, waves swept the shingle and left a trail of shining foam.

Toby glanced up. “That all you got?”

I nodded. “Will my car be okay if I leave it for a few days?”

“Should be fine till Memorial Day. Okay, come on down this way—”

He dragged the dinghy into the shallows, waved for me to clamber in. I did. A film of brackish water covered my boots and immediately soaked through to my feet, ice cold.

“Better get down,” said Toby.

I sat as he got behind the dinghy and shoved it farther out. A moment later he hopped in, settled in the bow, and took the oars.

“This won’t take long,” he said. A few strong strokes and we were free of the shingle. A few more and I leaned over the side and vomited.

“Seasick already?”

“Hangover.”

I cupped icy seawater with one hand, rinsed my mouth then splashed more water on my face.

I felt a little better. My headache receded. The frigid air and water seemed to purge exhaustion from my blood. My eyes stung, but the pain felt clean and sharp, almost welcome. I sank back onto my seat, making sure my satchel stayed dry.

“See there?” Toby gestured at a small, blunt-nosed sailboat bobbing a short distance from the end of the pier. “That’s her. Northern Sky . Know anything about boats?”

I blinked into the splintered blue-and-gold light. “No.”

“She’s what they call a gaff cutter. Twenty-six feet on the waterline. I bought her twenty years ago for a dollar, from the ex-wife of a guy in jail down in the Keys. You know the two happiest days of a man’s life? The day he buys his boat and the day he sells her.”

Out here the dank reek of the harbor was gone. The air smelled of salt and wet rock, with a faint undertone of diesel fumes. I shaded my eyes and looked for other boats.

“Are you the only boat out here?”

“The only sailboat, this time of year. There’s a few lobster boats. Bugs migrate to deeper water in the winter, so it slows down about now. In the summer there’s a bunch of people here—yachts, windjammers. But you want to get off the islands in a hurry, you need a power boat. That way you can catch your flight back to Florida.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Toby laughed. “Oh, it’s not that bad. Not nowadays. Fifty or a hundred years ago, then that would be bad, I guess.”