“Val wouldn’t leave him if he needed anything, you know that. Call him first, though.”
It was true. Val was probably at the house right now, fixing some supper for Charlie, or else she’d brought Charlie back to eat with her. Val wouldn’t leave Charlie to fend for himself.
“You’re right,” she said. “Val will take care of him.”
Eliza called, just to be sure. The stitches had come out easily, Val said. No pain. Had Charlie, by any chance, made any other appointments while he was there? Consulted with oncology or neurosurgery?
“No, honey,” said Val. She sighed. “I tried, course. You know, Eliza, you can lead—”
“Oh, Val,” interrupted Eliza. “If you tell me that you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink I swear on my father’s traps I’m going to lose it.”
“Okay, then, Eliza. Listen, your dad’s resting, you want me to bring the phone over or let him sleep?”
“Let him sleep,” said Eliza. “Thanks, Val.”
She ended the call and looked at Russell and shrugged and said, “Let’s do it. Let’s go get a beer.”
There were exactly three places to get a beer in Little Harbor. One was the seafood restaurant, The Lobster Trap, open only in the summer, where the tourists and the summer residents went. Hoity-toity, her father called it. Then there was The Cup, where no self-respecting lobsterman was going to end his day. Finally, there was The Wheelhouse, domain of the fishermen. They went to The Wheelhouse.
Russell headed straight for the bar and returned with two bottles, Bud, cold.
“They were out of champagne,” said Russell. “So I got you this.”
“Oh, give me a break,” said Eliza. “Nobody drinks champagne after hauling.” Though, in fact, she would have killed for a very cold glass. “Let me give you money for mine,” she added, reaching for her wallet, which it turned out she didn’t have. She’d left it at her father’s house that morning, along with her phone. She rummaged around her side of the booth where her sweatshirt was anyway, for show, and muttered a little bit, also for show.
“Don’t worry about it,” Russell said. “I think I can buy you a beer.”
Russell sat across from her in the booth. Those same booths had been there long before Eliza had illegally drunk her first beer at The Wheelhouse at age fifteen. They’d been there when she was ten years old, sent by her mother to fetch her father home on a Saturday night, the way all of the men had to be fetched home at one time or another. Probably the booths had been there since time began.
Russell was so tall that his knees bumped up against hers. Even if she’d wanted to get her knees out of the way she wouldn’t have been able to, so she left them where they were, gently pressing into his. That was okay, right? It was just knees. She tried not to think about the winter painting lobster buoys in the barn. To help her not think, she drank a lot of the first beer fast, and felt it go right to her head. Must have been all of that sun on the boat—she’d put her tourist hat on too late.
“I owe you for today anyway,” Russell was saying. “One-ninety-five. Not the best day, not the worst.”
Eliza stared at him. He’d gotten some sun too, despite his own hat. In Massachusetts you were practically put on trial for child abuse if you let your kid get a sunburn; you were even looked at askance if you let yourself get anything other than a reputable, resort-ready tan exactly three shades darker than your normal skin tone. Here a sunburn was normal, just a fact of life, a part of the workday, a battle scar. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I be kidding?”
“You’re not going to pay me one hundred and ninety-five dollars.”
Russell stretched his legs; he had to tilt his body toward the outside of the booth to do that. She missed his knees, once they were gone, but she didn’t know how to get them back. “Sure I am. You work, you get paid. Gavin Tracey doesn’t volunteer on the boat, I didn’t ask you to volunteer on the boat. I asked you to work.”
That’s when Eliza made her mistake: she laughed. It wasn’t meant to be a bitchy laugh, more like a hey-buddy-stop-your-kidding-around kind of laugh, good-natured and sociable. But it came out all wrong.
Looking back later she saw that’s when it all went downhill. She didn’t know it immediately. But she should have seen it from the way Russell’s features slid together.
“You keep it,” she said, trying to recover, trying to sound affable. “Half of what we hauled is going to my dad anyway. And you used your fuel to get to his traps, and your fish to bait them. And I don’t—” She stopped herself. Too late, though.
“You don’t need it.”
Well, bingo! Of course she didn’t need it. One hundred and ninety-five dollars! She felt awkward being in this position, but…she spent that on a hair appointment, on one shoe out of a pair, on her weekly housecleaning, and didn’t blink. Judith Barnes, who made significant monthly deposits into her and Rob’s checking account, owned two Birkin bags and was looking at a third. And let’s not even get started on the Hinckley. It was true, Eliza Barnes didn’t need Russell’s one hundred and ninety-five dollars. Russell needed it much more. The price of bait had nearly doubled this year, creeping closer and closer to one hundred dollars a tray. Fifteen grand to replace the reverse gear!
She tried coming at it from another angle. “But I’m not even a good sternman. I’m useless. I don’t deserve to make whatever Gavin would have made.”
Someone had accidentally put a few extra Ss in one of those words before it came out of her mouth: uselesssss. Eliza could feel some of her hard edges softening.
Russell narrowed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the table.
“Put my share in the fund to fix your reverse gear,” she added.
He unfolded himself and rose from the booth. “Drink up, Eliza, I’m going for two more.”
“Mine’s empty,” she said, and it felt like a dare, the way she hit the bottom of the bottle against the table.
The second beer went down easier than the first, if that was possible, and then Russell returned to the bar. Again Eliza reached for her nonexistent wallet and again Russell refused. Two beers turned to three, then to four. At beer three and a half Eliza said, “So, Russell, you seeing anyone?”
“I see people.”
“Anyone—special?”