“He’s selling watches,” said Loo.
“I thought you were retired.”
“I’m retiring my retirement.” Jove put the last book on the shelf. Then he clapped his hands, and, like magic, turned himself from an intruder into a guest. “Well, what’s for dinner?”
In the kitchen, Loo cleaned and debearded some of the mussels they’d collected that morning, while Jove washed the salad and chopped carrots and celery in a blur, tissue paper still wadded in two tiny spirals up his busted nose. Hawley leaned against the counter, touching the staples in his arm and drinking a beer. Through it all Jove kept talking, his voice booming in the small room, listing name after name that Loo had never heard of. There was something about him that was like her father—and she’d never met anyone who was like Hawley before.
“Rodriguez, he’s still inside, but Thompson got out about a year ago, I saw him in Detroit. Eaton is flying helicopters in South America. Stein moved to Memphis. Blago quit and became a farmer. Vermont, I think. Something with goats. And Frederick Nunn—remember Nunn?”
“How could I forget.”
“Well, he’s dead.”
Hawley took a sip of beer.
“Parker told me. He’s working for Miller.”
Steam began to leak out of the pot on the stove. Loo’s father checked to make sure all of the mussels had cracked open. Then he turned off the heat. “I don’t know how you keep in touch with all those guys.”
Jove used the butcher knife to slide the carrots into the salad bowl. “Christmas cards,” he said, and chopped the head off a bunch of broccoli.
Everything Hawley did slowly, Jove did fast, even the drinking. For every empty of Hawley’s there were two for Jove. By the time Loo served the mussels, the men were through a six-pack. And by the time the meal was finished, another six-pack was gone. Jove reached into his bag and pulled out a bundle of papers. He slid them across the table to Hawley.
“You know how long I’ve been looking. Well, I found her. And she’s perfect.”
“What’s her name?” Hawley asked.
“Pandora,” said Jove.
“I thought it was going to be Cassandra.”
“That was before I dated a girl named Cassandra, and she slept with another guy when I was out of town. I don’t want her thinking I named my boat after her.”
“How’s she going to know?”
“Believe me,” said Jove. “That bitch will know.”
The boat Jove was buying was a forty-foot sloop with a decent-size galley, refrigeration and a head. The design was based on old cargo sailboats that originally brought supplies up and down the Hudson. It was built with those changing currents in mind, the need for quick tacks to navigate narrow channels.
“Can’t believe it’s finally happening,” said Hawley.
“Only took me thirty years,” said Jove. “All that’s left is to finish off some old business. Don’t want to leave any outstanding debts.”
Hawley took out his pouch of tobacco and started rolling a cigarette. He tucked in the filter and licked the ends, then flipped the Zippo against his palm.
“Those things will kill you,” Jove said.
“Yes,” said Hawley.
Loo stood and started gathering the plates, but her father stopped her. “We’ll do the dishes,” he said. “Why don’t you go get some sheets for the couch.”
There’d been no invitation extended, but Hawley and Jove already seemed to be talking in a shorthand that wove around Loo’s presence. She wondered what that intimacy was built on. How the man who’d just stabbed her father was now piling dishes in their sink.
She climbed the stairs, pulled a blanket and an extra pillow from the closet in her bedroom. Outside her window, the telescope Hawley had bought her was standing alone, pointed at the heavens. Loo slid open the sash and stepped onto the roof. She set her eye against the lens. Overhead the stars and planets were going about their business. The moon hovered in the shape of a crescent, only two hundred and thirty-eight thousand miles from the earth. Listening in the dark, she felt closer to that hunk of ice and rock than to the men talking below, their voices soft beneath the running water.
“I thought you said Pax would take care of the cars.”
“He did. I told you. Pax is great. Always clean. But then he called me back afterward with a job up here. A big exchange with some merchandise we’ve dealt with before. The buyer’s willing to pay half now and a bonus if we can go verify the goods.”
“I’m not interested.”
“It’s a lot, Hawley. These wristwatches will cover the cost of the boat. But Pax’s job will be enough to really retire. Get out of the business and never look back. The request had both our names on it, though. So I had to ask. Half of it’s yours if you want it.”
Loo held her breath and leaned over the edge of the roof. Down below in the kitchen the men had stopped doing the dishes but the water ran and ran and ran.
“Suit yourself. I’ve cleared my conscience. And I’ve got your cut for the cars.”
“I told you I didn’t want it.”
“You doing that good?”
“I’m okay.”
“That tragic fucking mess in the bathroom doesn’t say okay.”
Loo could hear steel wool scrubbing around and around inside an iron skillet.
“It’s how I remember.”
“That’s not remembering. That’s burying yourself alive.”
The dishes clattered. They sounded like they were breaking.
“I’ve been buried before.”
A flash of light streaked overhead, followed by an explosion that shook the roof of the house. Loo could feel the echo of it in her lungs. She crawled back through the window and hurried down the stairs.
Hawley was wiping down the counter, and Jove was standing over the sink, pulling off the rubber gloves he’d worn earlier to staple her father’s arm.
“That sounded like thunder.”
“Fireworks,” said Loo. “We can see them from the beach, if you want.”
The men blinked at her.
“Where’s the blanket?” Hawley asked.
Loo went back upstairs and the men grabbed a bottle of whiskey and some glasses. As they made their way through the woods, they could hear the crackling of the rockets. Then the path opened onto the shore and they stepped against a sky sparkling with gold and silver, long trails of smoke left hanging in the air.
Loo spread the blanket. They took off their shoes. Jove carefully wiped off his cowboy boots and set them side by side on a pile of seaweed. Then he poured out the whiskey. Loo watched her father lean his head back and drink.
“Jesus, Hawley, what happened to your foot?”
“I stepped on something.”
“What, a pitchfork?”
Her father wiggled his toes. The big one and the pinky moved, but the ones in between didn’t. On the sole of his foot the skin spiderwebbed in pink lines where it had been split and sewn back together.
“Still works. That’s all that matters.”
Jove poured himself another glass and raised it at Loo. “Here’s to keeping your dad out of trouble.”