Margaret Millar - Wives and Lovers

Someone had told George once that he moved like an athlete, and ever since then he’d been extremely careful to move like an athlete at all times, eyes straight ahead, shoulders back, stomach in, chin up. This posture was no longer easy to maintain, partly because he was forty now and putting on weight, and partly because in such a position it was difficult to avoid stepping into the holes in the wharf or stumbling against the two-by-fours where it had been patched up.

The wharf was eighty years old. It had been built to last forever but even the proudest citizens of Channel City were forced to admit that it wasn’t going to make it. Some of the holes in the planks were as large as fists and when cars drove along it or when a seiner accidentally struck it while docking, the whole structure swayed and tottered and the pilings squawked like gulls.

George took a personal interest in the wharf. He liked boats and he liked money, and the wharf meant both to him since the Beachcomber was built on the end of it. Sometimes, when a particular hole got so big that there was danger of one of the Beachcomber’s customers breaking a leg, George himself would come out and repair it, equipped with a bag of nails and a hammer and any piece of wood he could lay his hands on. One of the holes George had rather impulsively mended with the favorite chopping block of the Beachcomber’s head chef, Romanelli. After an exchange of bitter words with George over the incident, Romanelli went home and sulked for two days, drinking red wine and planning hot revenge. Unable to think of anything drastic enough and rather pleasantly tired from trying, Romanelli returned to work on the third day, docile and resigned, and George bought him a new chopping block and personally burned Romanelli’s initials on the side of it with a soldering iron.

On each side of the wharf “No Fishing” signs were posted but these signs were traditionally ignored and by noon the railings were lined with fishermen of all races and ages and sizes. George nodded pleasantly to each of them because they gave the wharf local color and provided interesting characters for the patrons of the Beachcomber to watch as they dined.

He stopped behind an old woman wearing oil-stained jeans and a wide straw hat pushed back on her head. Her face was brown and lively and covered with wrinkles, like coffee being stirred.

“Hiya, Millie.”

Millie jumped, clutching at her hat. “Jees, you scared.

“I see you’ve changed places again. How’s the luck over on this side?”

“The same,” Millie said. “The same, no matter where I go. I got a jinx, George.”

“Go on. You just have to keep trying.”

“I tell you, I got a jinx. It don’t matter whether I use mussels or squid or sardines, or what I use. Listen, George, I got a proposition.”

“Nuts,” George said pleasantly.

Millie’s propositions were always the same. They were a natural result of her jinx. Other fishermen might occasionally catch a stingray, but Millie hardly ever caught anything else. She usually pulled up at least one a day, and her problem was to get rid of it. If she threw it back into the sea it might be washed up on the beach and some curious child might pick it up and cut himself on the ray’s barbed poisonous tail.

After considerable thought on the subject Millie had figured out a way to make a profit on her jinx.

“Listen, George, you cut off the tail, see, and the head, and clean out the guts and what you got left? Filet of stingray. Only you don’t have to call it stingray on the menu. Maybe just filet of ray. Don’t that sound good to eat?”

“No.”

“Hell, George, you’re getting old, your mind’s narrowing. You think maybe just because a stingray’s a mean-looking bastard he won’t taste so good. You serve swordfish steaks and swordfish are the meanest-looking bastards ever lived.”

Laughing, George put his hands in his pockets and jingled the loose change. He had every intention of some day buying one of Millie’s stingrays and taking it over for Hazel to cook.

“I never see you eating any of the things,” he said.

“I had one last night for supper,” Millie lied solemnly. “No kidding, George, it was a real taste thrill. Maybe like tuna, maybe like abalone. High class stuff.”

“I bet.”

“Or chowder. How about making it into chowder, George? Chopped up like that, who’d know the difference from clams, I ask you. Be a sport and take a chance, George.”

“Ixnay.”

Millie sighed. “Oh well, no hard feelings anyway, eh? How’s Hazel?”

“The last I heard, fine.”

“I saw her drive by a few minutes ago. She went into the Beachcomber. How about that?”

“What do you mean, how about it?”

“I figure you and Hazel—”

“You figure wrong.”

“Well, you don’t have to bite my head off.”

With haughty dignity Millie returned to her fishing. She crossed herself and gave her pole three quick jerks to discourage her jinx.

Hazel’s old blue Chevy was standing in the middle of the parking lot next to the Beachcomber. Hazel had never learned to park properly and whenever she came down to the wharf she just left her car with the key in the ignition so that anyone who wanted it moved could move it without bothering her.

George unlocked the front door of the Beachcomber and walked through the foyer into the bar. Hazel was standing at one of the open windows looking out at the sea and breathing very deeply like an underwater swimmer storing up oxygen for the next dive.

He stared at her across the room, wondering why she had come, whether she had heard anything about him and the girl.

“How did you get in?”

“Through the kitchen. Romanelli told me you’d be along in a few minutes so I thought I’d stay and say hello. So, hello.”

“Hello.” He took off his yachting cap and began rolling up his sleeves. “Nice to see you, Hazel.”

“You act overjoyed.”

“It’s too hot to turn cartwheels.”

“Think you still could?”

“Sure, I think so.” He put on his bartender’s apron, tying it very tight to minimize his paunch. “I’ve been swimming from here to the breakwater and back every day for a week now.”

“Why?”

“Keeping in shape, that’s all. How about a beer to cool off?”

“Sounds fine.” She crossed the room and perched on one of the red leather bar stools with her legs crossed. “I heard you were on another of your health binges.”

“Who told you?”

“Word gets around.”

“It seems to me a hell of a lot of words get around to you.” He drew two beers from the tap. “Here’s to crime. Someday it may pay.”

“Right.” She sipped her beer. “Gee, this is like old times, eh, George?”

He looked at her uneasily over the rim of his glass. “I guess it is.”

“Maybe we ought to drink to old times.”

“That’s for New Year’s Eve.”

“What did you do last New Year’s Eve, George?”

“I don’t remember.” He remembered too well: he’d tended bar until two o’clock in the morning and then, in one of the vilest moods he’d ever experienced, he went home and began drinking. He woke up the next morning in a house on East Wilson Street with a plump black-haired girl lying beside him making little snorting noises in her sleep. His wallet was gone but he never reported it to the police.

“I kind of like New Year’s Eve,” Hazel said. “Don’t you?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Well, what else is new besides the health binge?”

“I wish you’d stop calling it that. I’m just trying to keep fit.”

“Romanelli says you’ve been eating seaweed.”

“I don’t eat it. I sprinkle a little of it on my food.”