“Why don’t you try talking to me instead?”
He went back to work on the faucet. “Okay. If you want me to talk, I’ll talk. Here’s three little words for you: Go. To. Hell.”
CHAPTER 7
As Mitch eased his Studey across the rickety wooden causeway toward home, he was grateful for his island sanctuary. He needed some time alone to reflect. That nice, simple little get-together at Beth’s had gotten complicated in a hurry. It was so great to see Kenny again. He seemed like a terrific guy. Mitch was thrilled that his old friend and Kimberly were so madly in love. But then along came Hal, who it turned out had deep feelings for Kimberly and a world-class temper. Mitch was worried about a round two between Hal and Kenny. He was worried about Augie Donatelli’s obvious and highly unwelcome interest in Beth. The ex-cop was so hot for Mitch’s first love that he’d actually followed her to the Mohegan Sun, for crissakes. Mitch was also worried about the way Augie seemed to be getting under Des’s skin. She’d had words with him in Beth’s kitchen. And wouldn’t tell Mitch a thing about what they had talked about. She’d been unusually tight-lipped. It baffled him. Kimberly’s strange, remote father baffled him. So did her nervous, clingy mother. Hell, they all baffled him. His old life, the one he’d spent in darkened movie houses soaking up the world according to Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn and the brothers Warner had been so much easier to figure out. Everything was in black and white-even when it was filmed in Technicolor. Out here in Dorset, there were so many different shades of gray that it made his head spin like a gerbil wheel.
An old yellow MGA ragtop was parked at Bitsy’s house. She had company tonight. Mitch could hear the loud, thumping rock music. Although, oddly enough, the music grew louder as he pulled up in front of his own place. Loud enough for him to recognize it as “Trouble No More” off of the Allman Brothers’ landmark Eat a Peach.
The music was coming from his place.
As Mitch climbed out of his truck both Quirt and Clemmie came running up to him, yowling. Clemmie, who seldom went outside, seemed genuinely outraged. Wet clothes were draped over his lawn chairs, Mitch noticed. A pair of jeans, a T-shirt. Mitch didn’t remember leaving them there. He hadn’t. They weren’t his.
He pushed open the cottage’s front door, his heart racing, kick-ass music blasting-and discovered a naked stranger standing in the middle of his living room doing a low-down, hip-swinging boogie to the beat. In one hand he clutched a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, in the other a bottle of Corona.
Mitch flicked off the music first thing. Didn’t matter. His bare-assed intruder didn’t stop dancing. Just boogied on for another four, five, six seconds before it dawned upon him that the music had stopped. And swiveled around on one bare heel, gaping at Mitch in surprise.
“Can I help you?” Mitch demanded.
After a long, really long, moment of silence the intruder responded, “Other way around. Bitsy said you wanted my advice.”
“I do?”
Apparently, there was not a reliable high-speed hook up between this guy’s mouth and brain. After another incredibly long gap in time he said, “You’re Mitch, aren’t you? Or am I… Uh-oh, do I have the wrong house?”
“No, you came to the right place.” Mitch studied him more closely. He was slope shouldered and sun- browned, well put together but going to flab, with high, hard cheekbones, uncombed blond hair and zonked-out blue eyes. About forty maybe. If Matthew McConaughey had a brother who’d inhaled way too many paint fumes, he would look just about like Mitch’s naked stranger. “You’re J. Z. Cliffe, aren’t you?”
“That’s what they keep telling me. Bitsy buzzed me out. Figured I’d just wait for you. Got hot so I took a swim. Got wet so I dried off. Then I got hungry.” J. Z. remembered the sandwich in his hand and took a bite. “Then I got thirsty.” He gulped down some beer. “Now we’re all good. Glad to know you.”
Mitch grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts from his wardrobe cupboard and tossed them to J. Z. “Why don’t you put these on? Make yourself at home. What am I saying, you already have. Would you like to write my next column for me? How are you on the subject of icebox questions?”
J. Z.’s face got all scrunched up. “How am I on… hunh?”
“Never mind.”
“Hey, sorry if I stepped on your turf, man. You can come over and help yourself to my stuff any time. What’s mine is yours. I’m real casual about possessions.” He stepped into the boxer shorts and pulled the T-shirt on over his head, then sauntered his way slowly around Mitch’s exposed-chestnut post-and-beam living room, peering at the walls and ceiling. He moved with a rear-slung, rubber legged gait that reminded Mitch of R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural. “Not that I’m trying to talk myself out of a gig or anything but your place looks pretty decent to me. I eyeballed the outside before you got here. You’ve got some minor blistering of your trim on the west side of the house. But you can go another year, easy. Unless what you’re thinking is you want to redo the color in here because of aesthetic or spiritual reasons. Which I can totally get behind.”
“Thanks for the info.” Mitch fetched himself a beer from the refrigerator. “But Bitsy and I were talking about you in connection with another subject.”
J. Z. frowned at him. “I paint houses, man. What else could I
…?”
“Kimberly Farrell.”
“Kimmy?” He squinted at Mitch with one eye shut, which was either his way of trying to act inscrutable or he needed glasses. “What about her?”
“It’s a personal matter.”
“So this isn’t a professional get-with?”
“No, it’s not.”
“In that case…” J. Z. retrieved a plastic baggie from Mitch’s dining table and removed one of the dozen or so hand-rolled joints that were tucked inside. “Care to partake?”
“No, thanks, but you go right ahead,” said Mitch, who had to admire the strict line that J. Z. drew between work and play.
There were matches on the old glass-topped rowboat that was Mitch’s coffee table. J. Z. flopped down in the easy chair and fired up the joint, toking on it deeply. “Are you into her? Because I can totally dig that. Kimmy’s shmoking hot. But you’re too late, man. She’s engaged to some computer geek up in Boston. Besides, don’t you have a thing going with our resident state…?” He froze, staring down at the lit joint in his hand. “Uh-oh…”
“Don’t worry. I don’t care about that. Actually, I’m the computer geek’s best man. Kenny Lapidus is his name.”
J. Z. observed a moment of silence as he sat there processing this. “Okay…”
“And you and Kimberly were married very briefly a few years ago.”
“A million years ago,” he recalled with a fond, faraway look on his face.
Mitch sat down on the love seat across from him. Clemmie moseyed over and jumped in Mitch’s lap, eyeing this stranger guardedly. “I was wondering what happened between you two.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, man, because I’m not a hostile or confrontational person. But why’s it any of your damned business?”
“It’s not,” Mitch acknowledged easily. “And if you don’t want to talk about it I can totally respect that. But I’ve looked out for Kenny since we were little kids, okay? I just want to make sure he’s not getting into something he doesn’t understand.”
J. Z. treated Mitch to his one-eyed squint again. “No problem, man. Happy to help a brother.” He took another pull on the joint, holding in the smoke for several seconds before he let it out. “Were you ever young and stupid?”
“I like to think I still am.”
J. Z. flashed a lopsided grin at him. “Good answer. But were you ever young and stupid in a place like Dorset?”
“I grew up in New York City.”
“Totally different universe. I spent a lot of good years in the City myself, but I ended up back here. And, trust me, it can really suck. A young guy’s going to do his wild thing, you know? Trouble is, when you do it here in Dorset
