Last night she’d been quiet again, though, distant and preoccupied. This was how we were now. All or nothing.
The rain came down all afternoon, swirling in gusts and then petering off to a drizzle. Once, the sun thought about coming out, but then the wind picked up and the rain came in sheets. Not that it mattered. Once you were wet, it was all the same. I didn’t feel it after a while. The fever that seemed to come and go was back again. I went through the motions, keeping warm, hot almost, even though my shirt was soaked through.
The sun was low in the sky when I pulled up to the float. Manny was getting the crates ready to be hoisted up to the warehouse. He was bent over, and when he glanced up at me, he straightened and put his hands on his hips.
“You’re as red as these bugs get when you cook ’em,” he said, pointing to the lobsters in the crate.
“Fighting a cold,” I said, climbing off the boat. A cough went through me, and it was a minute before I got it under control.
He was saying something about how I should get that checked out when I waved him off, walked up the stairs, a heaviness in my legs.
Inside the warehouse, I went in the bathroom and rummaged through the drawer until I found the pill bottle I was looking for. The pain in my back was getting worse, and I was burning up, even though I was soaked through. I shook one of the pills out of the bottle into my palm and swallowed it, the chalky taste coating my mouth. I didn’t know if it would help—the date on the bottle said they’d expired last year—but I was desperate. There was a towel hanging on the back of the door, and I rubbed my head and face with it before I went back outside.
Manny was gone when I got back to the float. Up above, I heard a door shut and saw him on the side stairs to the old room that he now used as an office. He walked to where I was standing and held out a glass jar filled with a reddish-brown liquid.
“Drink it,” he said. “It’s tea with a somethin’ special in it. A family recipe.”
I took a sniff. It smelled like cherries and something I couldn’t place.
I held it back out to him. “What’s next? You going to tuck me in?”
He took the jar, leaned over, and put it on the deck of the boat. “Trust me. Make you sleep like a baby.”
I climbed on the boat, slipped the jar into the cup holder next to the wheel, thinking I’d toss it out later.
“Maybe,” Manny said, untying the line and throwing it over the rail, “you won’t be such a battyhole if you get some sleep.”
I flipped him off, and he blew me a kiss as I throttled forward. I left him standing on the float, the water churning up behind me.
Calm Cove was just around the bend. I was at the wharf when the sky opened up, the rain pelting the boat as I tied her off. I took the jar out of the cup holder and went below to wait it out. I stepped out of my Grundens and pulled my shirt off, the flannel so wet that when I draped it over the faucet, a puddle formed below it and trickled down the drain.
There was a dry sweatshirt in the crate, and I pulled it on, sat on the edge of the cushion. The rain drummed against the boat, and the wind had picked up, rocking her from side to side. I thought about getting up and going back to the house, but I wanted to fix the drip from the faucet that I’d been ignoring. Might as well take advantage of the rain and get it done.
But my body refused to move. The jar was on the table in front of me. I reached out, unscrewed the cap, and brought it to my lips. I took a sip and winced, the alcohol masked by the cherry smell sliding down my throat, settling like a small fire in my stomach. It wasn’t exactly good, but it wasn’t bad either. My head felt lighter in two sips. By the third, the ache in my back was just a tingle. I hadn’t eaten all day, and the warm liquid made my limbs feel weightless. My legs stretched out in front of me, my head tipping back.
I closed my eyes, rested the jar on my chest, and sipped from it until it was gone. There was a thud, and I opened my eyes to see the glass jar rolling on the floor. I thought I’d only dozed off for a moment, but when I looked at my watch, two hours had passed.
I dug my phone out of my pocket and called Hope to say I’d be late, and she was quiet on the other end.
“Just come home,” she said, but whatever Manny had put in the tea had my tongue thick, my vision blurry. Not drunk exactly, but numb. I can’t, is all I could manage to mumble before I hung up the phone. I thought of shutting my eyes again, just for a second, and before I could muster the energy to stand, my body slid down on the bench and my eyes closed.
I woke to the sound of an engine revving, slow at first, up to full throttle, then down again. I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping, but it was dark, and the fever was back by the way my eyes were burning.
I looked at my watch and swore. It was almost one in the morning. My mouth was dry. I thought of the painkiller I’d taken at the shop. Apparently it hadn’t expired. Add in the alcohol in the tea, and the combo had knocked me out for hours.
I pulled on my boots and went up to the boat deck, still half-asleep. Calm Cove was a working dock during the day, noisy and full of boats. But at night, after the Wharf Rat closed, it was typically quiet, even on a Friday night.
The Wharf Rat was dark except for a faint light in the back window, most likely Eddy closing up for the night. The noise was coming from the other end of the dock. I followed the sound to a boat that sat in the last slip, its dual engines rumbling.
The boat was dark, not a light on that I could see. I yelled out, but my voice disappeared, lost in the noise. I walked toward the engines. It wasn’t until I was standing with the full moon behind me, giving light to the wheelhouse, that I saw a man in the captain’s chair, sitting with his head down.
I yelled again and stood so close to the boat that it bumped my thigh.
I considered walking away, but whoever was in the chair seemed to be asleep, with twin engines churning up the black water.
I slapped the side of the boat, two hard whacks with my open hand. The boat rocked, and the man turned, but in slow motion. I saw his hand fumble with the key, and the engine went silent. He turned in his seat, and I caught the shadow of a woman in front of him, standing between his legs, her arms around his neck.
Her long hair shielded her face, but her shirt was open. I backed up from the side of the boat. The light in the wheelhouse went on, and when the captain’s chair swiveled to face me, I was looking at Ryland Finn. A drunk Ryland Finn. His eyes tiny slits in the dim light.