cottages were for,” Hangtown explained, waving at the little bungalows. “Painters lived in ’em. Nowadays, I’ve got Jim Bolan in residence. You’ll like Big Jim. A part of him died in ’Nam, but he does honest work with his hands. Been helping me with my contraptions since he got out of prison. These old hands aren’t what they used to be.”
The antenna was not heavy, just clumsy. They eased it out of the truck and started toward the barn with it, Mitch wondering just exactly what Jim Bolan had been in prison for.
“Got my two beautiful daughters living here, too,” Hang-town added. “They can do any of the farm chores need doing. I taught ’em to hunt, fish, change a tire, you name it. Moose-not a soul calls her Mary Susan-Moose took to it more than Takai. Does most of the farm chores. Now Moose is the one for you, if you want to plant your seed in some fine, fertile soil. She’ll make you jump through hoops for it. She’s a full-time practicing virgin, but she’s-”
“Hangtown, I’m really not looking to-”
“A big healthy brown-skinned girl, just like her mother was. Loves children. Makes all of her own clothes, pickles, bread. Can slaughter a pig. Hell, she could probably take out your appendix on the kitchen table if she had to.”
“It’s already out,” said Mitch, reflecting on just how different it was in Dorset than in the city. Here, he regularly came in contact with people who could do things. In New York no one knew how to do anything except express their opinions, loudly.
“Mind you, Takai will catch your eye first,” Hangtown pointed out. “Get your blood to boiling.”
“She’s the realtor, right?” Mitch had seen her sign on Dorset Street.
“She’s a serial destroyer of men, is what she is. Nothing but teeth and claws. Stay clear of her, Big Mitch. Her mother was half-Japanese, half Hawaiian, and all she-devil. I married Kiki after Moose’s mother, Gentle Kate, got sick and passed away…” Hangtown’s lined face broke into a sudden scowl behind the beard, his piercing blue eyes very far away. “Then I lost Kiki, too.”
“She died?”
“She left us. Died out in California. Kiki’s death… it was very sudden. I raised the girls myself. It’s just been we three for a long, long time.”
They made their way inside the big barn now and dropped the antenna on the dirt floor next to an old potbellied wooden stove. Mitch gazed around in pure, wide-eyed wonderment. He was actually inside Wendell Frye’s studio, the very place where the master created his works of art. It was like being inside the cluttered workshop of a gifted and mad Santa Claus. There were tin snips, cutting tools, shaping tools and welding torches of every conceivable type on his workbench. There were bins filled with hubcaps and fenders. There were deep-sea- diver’s helmets, boat propellers, copper pipes and elbow joints, bales of wire, rolls of copper flashing. There were mobiles in the shapes of birds and animals and planets hanging from the beams overhead. A ladder led up to a loft where there was even more stuff.
Mitch was enthralled. “How will you use this?” he asked Hangtown, meaning the antenna. “What will it be?”
“I collect things,” the old master replied, shrugging his heavy shoulders. “And I collect ideas. Sometimes the two connect up, sometimes they don’t. I have very little say in the matter. Most people don’t believe me when I tell ’em that. I’m sure you do.”
Mitch nodded dumbly, wondering why Wendell Frye had so much confidence in him. They’d known each other less an hour. Now he heard footsteps approaching.
“Father, where have you been?” a young woman demanded from the doorway.
“Foraging. And now I’m going to show my friend around.”
“Well, you’ll just have to show him around later,” she lectured him, as if he were an unruly child. “You’ll be late for your appointment.”
Hangtown waved her off. “Moose, my dear, say hello to Mitch Berger, an honest writer and one hell of an Abbott and Costello fan. You might consider taking him into your bed. You could do a lot worse.”
Moose was a tall, strongly built woman in her early thirties. She had her father’s piercing blue eyes. A face and hands that were weathered by outdoor work. Ash-blond hair that was gathered up in a bun. Her homemade denim jumper and wool cardigan lent her a dowdy, Swiss-peasant sort of look. She was not homely but she was not exactly pretty either. She had too much chin and way too many worry lines. She seemed like someone who was accustomed to carrying a considerable burden. Possibly Mitch had just met him.
“You’ll have to forgive my father, Mitch,” she said, gripping his hand firmly. Her manner, like her gaze, was direct and no-nonsense. “He’s of that age where he says whatever comes into his head, just like one of my second graders. He’s always wandering off, too. Father, you can’t just take off without telling us. Jim’s been waiting to take you to the doctor.”
“Now where are those apple-butter tubs…?” Hangtown muttered, ignoring her completely as he clumped his way over toward the loft ladder. “I always pay my honest debts.”
“Father, you were supposed to be in New Haven at eight o’clock. Father, be careful up there! Father…?”
“Damned doctors,” Hangtown groused as he made his way slowly up the ladder. “What’s he going to tell me I don’t already know? I need a new hip, two new knees. Got to stop smoking and drinking-if I don’t I’m going to die. Well, guess what? I’m going to be taking myself a nice long dirt nap any day now, and there’s not a goddamned thing anyone can do about it except grab a shovel.”
“Please don’t talk that way,” she said fretfully. “You know I don’t like it. Father…?” Moose followed him up into the loft, sighing with exasperation.
As the two of them began thudding around up there Mitch heard another set of footsteps approach. And now Wendell Frye’s other daughter came striding across the dirt floor toward Mitch, who immediately drew in his breath.
Takai Frye wasn’t just pretty. She was exotically, stunningly beautiful-without a doubt the sexiest woman he had ever been face to face with in his life. And he was someone who had interviewed Uma Thurman. Takai was uncommonly tall, slim and long-limbed. And decidedly Asian, with gleaming slanted eyes, silken skin, a perfect rosebud mouth and a face that was all angles and planes and cheekbones. She wore her jet-black hair cropped at her chin, her nails long and painted black. Her thumbs were unusually long and narrow, more like index fingers than thumbs. She wore a shearling jacket that must have cost three thousand dollars over a black turtleneck sweater, stirrup pants and ankle boots. She carried a black leather appointment book in one hand, a cell phone in the other.
“Well, well, I have to admit you’re a cut above the usual skeegie characters the old man drags home.” Takai spoke in a clipped, somewhat mocking manner, as if there were invisible quote marks around everything. She possessed major attitude. Clearly, she was used to being smarter, richer and prettier than anyone else she came in contact with. “At least in outward appearance you are,” she continued, circling Mitch as if he were a farm animal at auction. “You’ve shaved, run a comb through your hair. You have a decent, relatively clean sweater on. You’re amply fed…” She poked him indelicately in the tummy with a talon. “More than amply, in fact.” Now she gave him a final once-over, a probing examination that seemed to scan the size of his IQ, bank balance and sexual equipment. “Yes, I would say you’re a cut or two above his usual dump crowd.”
“In Dorset we don’t say ‘dump,’ ” Mitch pointed out. “We say recyclable waste transfer station.”
Takai drew back, raising an eyebrow at him haughtily. “I suppose he promised you that you could stay in one of the cottages for as long as you like, free of charge. And that one of his two-count ’em two-lusty daughters would make passionate love to you in the night. Cook you a hot breakfast. Mend your filthy socks. Well, forget it, Buster Brown. None of that is ever going to happen.”
“The subject of bearing my round, healthy children also came up. At least I think it did-he mentioned the word seed.”
Takai peered at him suspiciously. “You don’t sound like his usual swamp Yankee either. I’m beginning to think that we have a case of mistaken identity.”
“In movies, they call this a meet-cute,” Mitch said. “Honestly, I just brought an antenna home for him, is all. And I already have a home of my own on Big Sister, an apartment in New York, a job, a book contract, an investment portfolio and…” Mitch trailed off, wondering why he was trying to justify himself to Takai Frye. She’d instantly gotten under his skin, that was why. “And I know how to mend my own socks.”
Overhead, Hangtown and Moose were still thudding around in the loft, sending trickles of dust down upon them.
