Slater knew he was right, because look where he had just washed up. “Well, okay then,” he said, as if he and his ex had just concluded the most casual confab. Turning the key in the ignition, he said, “It’s been great catching up.”
“Yeah,” she said, playfully batting at his window as he raised it, “don’t be a stranger.” She had a bittersweet smile on her face, and for a second or two he wondered if she, too, had been running through that same little might-have-been scenario.
He lifted a hand in farewell as he pulled the car away from the curb, and then he slowed down to watch in his rearview mirror as she set off down the street, an ever-diminishing figure in a blue jogging suit. She turned the corner without looking back and, like so much in his life, was gone.
Chapter 10
Port Orlov wasn’t always called that. Originally, it was a little Inuit village, built to take advantage of a natural harbor. For hundreds of years, the natives had lived in rough but sturdy dwellings made of caribou hides and sealskins, each family’s totem pole raised beside the door. Their slender kayaks, in which they had chased down bowhead whales migrating through the Bering Strait, had lined the shore.
But in the late 1700s, one of the many Russian trading vessels that ventured into these waters in search of furs, skins, and walrus tusks had discovered the village, and there the Russians had enacted the same play—the same grim tragedy—as they had all over the Aleutian islands and along the coast of what the natives themselves called Al-ak-shak, or “Great Land.” First, the visitors came in peace, offering to buy all the sea-otter pelts and ivory and bearskins that the Inuits had on hand. Then they traded rum and guns for as much as the native hunters could go out and capture. Then, when the Inuits began to offer some resistance—arguing that to kill so many of the creatures, and in such a wanton manner, was not only wrong, but ultimately threatening to the natives’ way of life—the Russians savagely beat them into submission, enslaving and slaughtering them by the thousands. By the time Captain Orlov and his like were done, less than a hundred years later, the Inuits, who had numbered over eighteen thousand on their arrival, had been winnowed down to a precious few, and the otters, cormorants, and sea lions that they had once relied upon for their own survival had been hunted to the brink of extinction.
The old totem pole in town had the faces of some of these creatures carved into it—the otters and wolves playing an especially prominent role—but nowadays the pole was leaning at a crazy angle, and nobody had gotten around to righting it. A fresh coat of paint wouldn’t have been amiss, either.
Harley Vane, the hood of his coat pulled up over his head and his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his parka, kicked some gravel at it as he passed—he wasn’t into any of that native shit. He was headed for the town bar, the Yardarm, to do a little business. It was only four thirty in the afternoon, but the daily ration of sunlight was already long gone. From now on, the days would only get shorter and shorter—comprising at best an hour or two of light at midday—before the hazy sun sank below the horizon again and the stars filled the sky. The street, inordinately wide to allow for the occasional, sixteen-wheel big rig, was rutted and cracked. And, apart from the snowplow rumbling past, deserted.
In front of the Yardarm, Harley saw the usual array of rusty pickups and dented vans, including—just as he expected—Eddie Pavlik’s plumbing truck. Eddie did more business selling grass out of the back of that truck than he ever did rooting out clogged pipes.
Harley stepped into the noisy bar and threw his hood back. The sudden rush of the warm air made his hair frizz out, and he quickly smoothed it down before Angie Dobbs could catch sight of him. He spotted her now, in her waitress apron, delivering a pizza to some clowns sitting near the pool tables. Eddie was racking up the balls for Russell Wright.
Harley must have walked through this room, crammed with wooden tables and chairs, sawdust on the floor, maybe a thousand times, but ever since the night of the accident at sea he felt like things were different, like people were looking at him. At first, he was convinced they were all impressed—his picture had been in the papers, and the story he’d told was pretty amazing. Nobody else had made it out alive. But now, he got a different vibe.
Sometimes he felt like they were snickering at him behind his back.