Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Frank said, lighting up another of the long brown cigarettes he had smoked all afternoon. “You think those cocksucking Kennedys were ever put under investigation? They never did anything I ain’t done.”

“Can’t say I know much about it, Frank. I’ve heard that, though.”

“Well, they sure as hell weren’t.” He shook his head and smoked. “Irish trash from Southie. They’re no better than me, and look at the fix I’m in.” He fell silent for a minute, then flicked his cigarette over the transom. “So, you innerested?”

So much time had passed I had almost forgotten the boat was for sale. I felt a little stab of shame that I didn’t have the money, or anything close to it. All I was doing was window-shopping.

“Two-twenty’s a pretty big nut, Frank. For a guy like me, anyway. She’s a beautiful boat, though.”

“Beautiful doesn’t begin it,” he corrected. “Beautiful is something you say to a broad. You’re beautiful, sweetie, yes you are.” With a bearlike hand he patted the gunwale. “This, my fucking friend, is a work of fucking art.”

“It’s a shame you have to sell,” I said. “I’m not sure I’d even feel right taking her from you.”

“Yeah, well.” He looked dismally out over the water, squinting into the fading light. Nearly four hours had passed since I’d appeared on the dock. “Listen. Do me a favor, will ya?”

I nodded. “Sure thing.”

“Be a good guy and get the fuck out of here.” He waved his can of beer toward the parking lot, now all but empty, except for my truck. “Go on. Back to where you came from.” He frowned and looked at his hands. “Just leave me the fuck alone.”

I did as he asked, leaving him there with his melancholy thoughts, and when I called the yard a month later to order a new propeller for the Mako and asked Carl if Felicity was still for sale, he told me that Frank had flown the coop. There were no liens against the boat, IRS or otherwise, as far as he knew; the maintenance bills were being sent to a PO box in Coral Gables and paid by wire from an offshore account-fishy as hell, but probably legal or at least hard to touch. Since then she had sat through summer and another winter, soaking up maintenance fees and pelican poop and bobbing forlornly in the swells. The odd thing was, the one time Carl had talked to Frank, and told him that I still came around the yard from time to time to look at her, Frank had said it was all right with him if I wanted to take her out. According to Carl, Frank had said he was sorry, and that it was a shame for a boat like that not to get any use at all, especially from someone who appreciated her.

That afternoon, with Tyrell still AWOL and nothing else on my plate-except of course for Hal’s airplane, and a certain amount of melancholy brooding of my own-I took Felicity out to Key Vaca, as Frank and I had done that afternoon a year ago. Despite her bulk she did a comfortable fifteen knots that sliced nicely through the swells, and it was easy to understand, sitting at the helm, the attraction of such a thing-why Frank had wanted it, and maybe done one or two things wrong in his life in order to get it. (Okay, not maybe, and not one or two; but I liked to think he hadn’t done anything truly terrible, such as kill someone, up there in dirty little Providence.) It was nearly a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of luxury pleasure craft, but in a way it was also a small thing; when you’re in a boat on the open sea, that smallness is what you feel, and the memory of this feeling is what calls you back. In his haste to depart, Frank had left an open chart on the table of the main salon: the Caymans, of course, world-class haven for tax cheats. Beside it I found a little pad of paper with course headings and distance calculations written in a small, almost girlish print. Too fucking far, Frank had written, underlining the words twice, hard enough to break the tip off his pencil. The thing was, it wasn’t too far for a boat like that, not if you knew what you were doing. It was just too far for Frank.

From a pay phone at the dock I called Kate. It was just evening, a little after seven, and I hoped she would be back in her room after dinner. If she didn’t answer I was prepared to hang up and head home, but she took it on the third ring, a little out of breath.

“Hey, kiddo.”

“Daddy? Hang on a second. I just got in.”

“Take your time, Kats.”

She held her hand over the receiver to talk to someone, then came back on the line. “Sorry. Here I am.”

“There you are.”

“Is it, like, eighty degrees down there? Because today it fucking, excuse me, snowed. Again. In April.” She laughed at someone in the room. “I’m glad you called, actually.”

“How’s that?”

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” She sighed theatrically into the phone. “ California. Airline tickets. Remember? We were supposed to sort it out by last week.”

We had talked about it over her spring vacation; at the end of May we were planning to fly, the two of us, out to LA to visit medical schools: USC, UCLA, UC San Diego. Maybe a jaunt in a rental car up the coast to San Francisco, to see Stanford and UCSF.

“Right you are. Must have slipped my mind. I’ll get on it, Kats, I promise.”

“I don’t mean to nag, but you know. It’s important. Like, my whole entire life, to be exact. I also wouldn’t mind seeing that Universal Studios Tour. I could use some serious kitsch about now.”

“Got it. Serious kitsch. Your whole entire life. Roger wilco.”

“Daddy? That’s not the reason you called, is it?”

“Sure it was. Planning for California. I’m on the job, Kats.”

“Daddy.”

“Okay, you’ve got it out of me. The truth is I just took out somebody’s boat for a little spin, and it put me in the mood to hear your voice.”

“Not the naked gangster’s Chris-Craft?”

“Labor official, Kats. Labor official. Nice fellow, too, once you get past the gruff exterior and the grand jury indictment.”

Kate paused for adjustment. “Dad? This isn’t one of those your-mother-and-I-have-decided-to-take-some-time-apart calls, is it? Because a lot of that has been going around up here. And if you’ll pardon my saying so, you sound a little strange.”

“No worries, Kats. Your mom and I are fine, unless you know something I don’t. Looks like I’m going to be taking a little trip, though.”

“I thought Big Pine was a little trip.”

“A trip from my trip, then. A kind of a business thing.”

“Hmmm. Very mysterious.”

“I’d tell you more, but it’s top secret, I’m afraid. At least for now.”

“Daddy, I know you. You don’t do top secret. Top secret is not your thing.”

“Don’t be so sure. I might surprise you, Kats.”

“Speaking of which. You know, there’s a girl in my dorm who thinks her dad works for the CIA.” Kate lowered her voice, having fun. “Supposedly he’s an accountant for the State Department. But then he up and disappears for weeks at a time. She also thought she saw him on CNN, in the background of a shot taken in, like, Turkey or someplace. He was wearing sunglasses and a turban.”

“Sounds pretty fishy.”

“That’s what I thought. Does the CIA have accountants?”

“Somebody has to do their books, I guess. Kats?”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Remember that summer when you were growing the beans? I think they were beans.” My mind was wandering, doing surprising things. “That science project for school.”

“Peas, Dad. Sure, I remember. What about it?”

“No reason, I guess. I was just thinking about it. You sure were all fired up about it. How old were you, thirteen?”

“Well, it was eighth-grade science, with Mr. Weld. So I guess that would be about right. We used to call him Fartface Weld.”