'Boat loads. Every goddamned week more Chinks come in.'
'On a boat?'
She nodded.
'I live out Brant Island Road. Unload them there middle of the damn night. You married?'
'Sort of,' I said.
'You got somebody?'
'Yeah.'
She drank.
'Had so many somebodies can't remember their fucking names.'
'Tell me about these Chinese unloading in the night?' I said.
She was singing to herself, and maybe to me, in a small, surprisingly girlish voice.
'Everybody, got somebody sometime…'
'I think you got the lyric wrong,' I said.
'You fool around?' she said.
'No.'
She nodded.
'Well, fuck you then,' she said.
'Or not,' I said.
'Everybody falls in love somehow…'
She picked up her glass and drank most of it and put it down and leaned back in the booth and closed her eyes. She began to cry with her eyes closed. I didn't say anything. Pretty soon she stopped crying and started snoring.
'Ah, Mr. Excitement,' I said out loud.
'You've done it again.'
CHAPTER 29
Susan and I had set up a room in Concord. The kitchen and part of the dining room were reduced to bare ruined choirs. But I had moved the refrigerator into the dining room, and the furnace worked, and there was running water. We put a bed and a table and two chairs in the front bedroom upstairs, the one with the fireplace, hung a curtain in the shower, and stocked the back bathroom with towels and other necessities. Susan and I made the bed, which wasn't as easy as it might have been, because Pearl kept getting onto it and snuggling down every time we spread something out.
'Who could ask for anything more,' I said when we finally finished with the bed.
'Except maybe a kitchen.'
Pearl was pleased with the way we'd made the bed. She turned three circles on it, and curled herself against the plumped-up pillows which she rearranged but slightly.
'Why do we need a kitchen when we have a phone?' Susan said.
'I forgot that,' I said.
It was a late Saturday afternoon, getting dark. Susan had brought a vacuum and was vacuuming fiercely. I went to the cellar, got some firewood, courtesy of the previous owner, hauled it upstairs, and built a fire. Then I went to examine the larder.
Susan had brought a picnic supper, and stashed it in a large carry-out bag in the refrigerator. I opened it fearfully. Susan was capable of an apple and two rice cakes. I looked in the bag. There were four green apples. My heart sank. But there was also cold chicken, seedless grapes, French bread, cranberry chutney, and a significant wedge of cheese. There were even paper plates and plastic utensils, and clear plastic cups. I had contributed two bottles of Krug, which lay coldly on their side in the refrigerator, and a small red and white Igloo cooler full of ice.
I carried everything upstairs and set it on the table. I opened the cooler and stuck the champagne into the ice. Susan had finished vacuuming and was aggressively dusting all surfaces.
'Isn't it better to dust before you vacuum?' I said.
'No.'
I nodded and put the food on the table. Pearl immediately moved down the bed, and lay so that her nose was as close as possible to the table, without actually getting off the bed.
'Where's that blue thingie,' she said as she paused in her dusting to rub a small mark off one of the window panes.
'It's not nice to call it a blue thingie,' I said.
'I mean the blue tablecloth. Only a barbarian would eat off a bare tabletop.'
I made sure the picnic basket was closed so Pearl would not forage in it, and went for the tablecloth. Susan went to shower. I brought the tablecloth back, put the tablecloth on the table, went to the shower and poked my head in.
