John Casey: Compass Rose

She watched him suck the last bit of flesh off the bones. He put them on the fire, took another drink from the bottle. He filled a pipe, lit it with a stick from the fire, recorked the bottle, washed his knife, packed everything into his knapsack. He stood for a long while, looking all around. She began to like him again, liked him for liking what he was looking at.

Maybe in a month. Apples and carrots and riding her bicycle. Or was this the way she would be, cocooned in splashy flesh so that she couldn’t even fantasize about a man being startled by her, by her badge and the lighthearted look of her?

• • •

The man shouldered his knapsack, tapped his pipe ash into the stream, and ground out the last bit of fire with the sole of his boot. He squatted to splash water on the rock, reminding her that he was serviceably strong in the hip and leg. Were all voyeurs washed back and forth between thrill and loneliness?

She watched him go, heard him for a bit longer crackling through the undergrowth. Then only the stream and her own breathing. She rolled onto her side and tucked her hand between her legs. No — she wouldn’t be able to, she wouldn’t fit into any of her old fantasies.

She had a moment of self-pity, an emotion she despised. Enough of that. If she wasn’t going to arrest anybody or fuck anybody, she could at least do something useful. Go back and test the water samples. And then tell Mary not to bring home any more of her damn desserts.

May was surprised when Phoebe Fitzgerald asked her to have lunch. She couldn’t think how to say no. “Oh, good,” Phoebe said. “I’ll swing by and we’ll go to Sawtooth. The food’s wonderful, and you’ll be doing me a favor. Part of being a member of the tennis club is I have to have so many lunches there each month, and Eddie won’t go. Wait — that’s not what I mean at all.”

May hadn’t had a good look at Sawtooth Point since they put up the yew hedge. “Irish yew,” Phoebe said, as if she’d planted them herself. “And stands of Scotch pine between the cottages so you don’t have to see your neighbors, even in winter. The big one over there is Jack Aldrich’s. Do you know him? His wife and her sister grew up here. But you must know all about them.”

No end to Elsie Buttrick.

May was just as glad Phoebe went rattling on. “I only met Jack Aldrich at the interview. He interviews everyone before they can buy a cottage. He even interviews you just to join the tennis club. The great big white mansion with the porches is called the Wedding Cake.”

“It always was,” May said, “even before it got added on to and gussied up.”

May stuck close to Phoebe when they got out of the car and went up on the porch. A waiter or maybe the person in charge said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fitzgerald. You’ll be two? Lawn side or ocean side?”

“Lawn, please.” She said to May, “I want to see who’s playing tennis.”

More than half the people around them were dressed in white tennis clothes. What with the high-gloss paint on the posts and railings and the tablecloths and napkins, it made for an awful lot of white. May felt better once she sat down, not that anyone had looked at her oddly, but she’d felt odd in her navy blue dress and nylon stockings.

Phoebe leaned forward and said, “You’ve known Eddie a long time, haven’t you?”

Was that what this was about? “Yes.”

“What was his wife like?”

“We didn’t see much of her. Then she was gone.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Eddie is Dick’s best friend. Eddie took us in after the hurricane, carried us for a good while. I’m not one for talking about—”

“Well, yes. Eddie’s a very good person. I was just wondering. I mean, I wonder how his son got to be so different.”

“Walt’s been away for some time now. He just got back.”

“Of course, I know how hard it is being a single parent with a problem child. I have a teenage daughter, and she was impossible. She blamed me when our dog died. But then she gives her stepmother a terrible time, too. My ex-husband remarried very quickly — and now she’s at boarding school. My daughter, I mean. And maybe that helps. After she called up the vet, she decided it wasn’t my fault that Sabu died, and she called me up and we had a good cry together. I’m going to have soup and salad; I’ve got a game this afternoon. But I recommend the quiche.”

May nodded. She was relieved when Phoebe concentrated on penciling in the order and stopped tumbling at her.

May looked at the creek coming out of the woods and into the salt pond. All these people in white with bare, tanned legs sitting on the porch or hopping around on the tennis courts — not a half mile from her house. She’d known there was building going on; she’d seen that over the past year or two. She’d noticed the gatehouse and then the sudden yew hedge transplanted all at once, six feet tall. But it was these people, all one tribe, who made the air different, as if what they breathed on Sawtooth Point was their own air, as new as the tennis courts and houses and brightened-up Wedding Cake. It didn’t seem altogether real, as if all these people were dreaming it and she’d somehow walked into their dream.

Now that Phoebe had handed over the order slip, she was eyeing the tennis courts. “I have to play that woman this weekend, the one with the pink headband. We’re supposed to wear all white, but I guess … So there she is taking a lesson. She’s ahead of me on the ladder, but she’s not all that good. The pro told me I should be able to move up to the top ten. Jack Aldrich’s wife is in the top ten, she and her sister, Elsie Buttrick, but Elsie hasn’t been playing this last year. Do you play?”

“No.”

“You must be doing something to have such a good figure. I don’t know what I’d do without tennis. Thank God they have an indoor court for the winter. And I can go skiing; I still have a share in a ski lodge in Vermont. But I’m afraid Eddie’s worried about that.”

“I don’t see why. His business’ll slow down when the weather turns.”

“Oh, it’s not that. He doesn’t make a fuss, but he gets this look when I go back to my old haunts. It’s not that I have a particular beau. You’ve probably guessed that Eddie’s in love with me.”

Different air or not, it sounded wrong to say it flat out. May was afraid Phoebe was going to say more, but Phoebe veered off.

“How long does a person have to live here to really live here? It’s been three years and people still say, ‘So you’re staying on past Labor Day again?’ Not these people.” Phoebe waved her hand. “Everyday people who live here. It’s as if being part of life here is harder than joining Sawtooth. It’s as if there are things you have to know but that nobody tells you. I thought I might get to be friends with Miss Perry. I rent my little stone house from her, I go to the same church. I ran into her when she was taking a walk and I said I’d heard she’d sold land to Elsie Buttrick and I said how much I love my little stone house and would she ever consider selling it. She said, ‘That really is out of the question. I thought it was well known that I am bequeathing everything to the Perryville School.’ I felt put in my place. Very much put in my place.”

May said, “Miss Perry’s old. You likely took her by surprise.”

“I thought it might be because I’m Eddie’s office manager. Maybe anyone who has anything to do with Eddie.”

“No. She knows Eddie and Dick are friends and she’d do just about anything for Dick. Of course, she’s known Dick since he was a boy.”

“Well, there it is again. I’ll be a newcomer until I’m old and gray.” Phoebe sat back and crossed her legs. She looked at her pretty knee as if she was making sure old and gray were a long ways off. “I’m usually good at fitting in. I like getting to know people and having people get to know me. But around here it’s as if everyone already knows what they need to know, and what’s the point of talking about it.”