Good Harbor

Three days running, Joyce left his room high as a kite, but more and more perplexed. As she drove back to Gloucester, she fretted over the way he never took off his clothes, never let her touch him below the waist. He even stopped her from running her hands under the shirt he never removed, holding her wrists, gently but emphatically, until she stopped trying.

Joyce longed to give him what he gave her, but he refused. He shifted his weight when she tried to lean against him. When she reached down for him, he shook his head no.

“Why?” she asked, panting, wanting him inside her.

“Your pleasure is my pleasure,” he said, removing his face from between her hands, kissing a path down between her breasts, down to her toes and up to her clitoris, where he stayed until she stopped him.

And he stopped only when she stopped him, when she was drenched, weak, sore with pleasure. When she said, “Enough.” Or when it got to be two-thirty.

The lobster shift, he called it, three in the afternoon until eleven at night, though often there was overtime until early in the morning. His regular route took him all over the North Shore, though he’d been as far as Maine and New York City.

He told her that sometimes, too wound up to sleep after a long night, he would find a spot and watch the sun rise over the ocean. Like the morning they had met at Halibut Point. “I won’t go back there without you now,” Patrick said as they lay on top of the threadbare sheets. “It’ll be our own piece of sky. On the edge of the morning, the off-chance meeting of lonely hearts.”

Joyce shivered.

“You enjoy hearing me go on a bit, don’t ya?” he whispered, lips to her ear.

As she drove home, she plotted ways to pry off his shirt. She practiced asking him why he wouldn’t get naked with her. Was he impotent? Did he have AIDS? Was he a priest? Was there a camera in the room? Was he a psychopath setting her up for a brutal murder?

She’d think of something before their next time together. He was going on a three-day run, all the way down through Connecticut, he said. He’d call at ten, the morning he returned. Joyce didn’t know how she’d wait that long. She’d probably finish the bedroom and start on the kitchen.

As the supermarket came into view, Joyce decided she couldn’t wait another minute for a cold drink and pulled up to the soda machine out in front.

Rummaging through her wallet for change she heard her name.

“Joyce!”

It was Buddy Levine. “I am so glad to see you,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to call and thank you. Kathleen’s been so blue at home lately, if you two weren’t spending so much time together, I’d be a lot more worried about her.”

THE NEXT DAY, Joyce showed up at Kathleen’s front door at noon. “I am taking you to lunch. No excuses.”

Kathleen offered none. “You look good,” she said. “Is the writing going better?”

“No. But I did find a great little store in Rockport.” Joyce twirled around to show off a new sundress. “Put on some shoes, and we’re out of here.”

They went to Traveler’s, a newly renovated restaurant on Main Street where the fish sandwiches were served on sourdough rolls. Sitting under a ficus tree by the front window, Joyce studied Kathleen’s face as she read the menu. The hollows in her cheeks were too pronounced, and she seemed tense and vague. Joyce had seen Kathleen gripping the door handle in the car all the way into town.

“How about a glass of wine?” Joyce asked.

“I’m fine, you know,” said Kathleen quickly. “I’m just ready for this treatment to be over. It’s knocked me out.”

“Is it just fatigue, really?”

“I think so. Buddy is nagging me to go talk to someone. But I’ve got you, don’t I?”

“Yes, you do.” Joyce studied the menu. What could she say? “I’m sorry I’ve been too busy not-quite-screwing my boyfriend to pick up on the hints you probably dropped on the phone every day”? Or maybe, “Good thing I ran into Buddy, who spilled the beans about your lying to him.”

There was a rap at the window. Kathleen waved at a young state trooper in full regalia: black shiny boots, peaked cap, holstered gun. “Jimmy Parley,” she said to Joyce. “An old student.” She motioned for him to come inside.

“Look at you,” she said, shaking his big hand.

“Hey, Mrs. Levine. You know my little girl is going to kindergarten next year?”

“Impossible. Alyssa, isn’t it?”

“Yes!”

“Hard to believe. Forgive me, Jimmy, this is my friend Joyce Tabachnik. She bought the Loquasto house over on Forest. Near where your cousin Bob lives.”