river. 'Jesus, I love it,' he said.
'You gotta be careful,' Lily said anxiously, watching him.
'Yeah, yeah, this takes two fingers…' To Lucas he said, 'Don't have a heart attack-it just unbelievably fucks you up. I can run the engine and steer, but I can't do anything with the sails, or the anchor. I can't go out alone.'
'I don't want to talk about it,' Lucas said.
'Yeah, fuck it,' Kennett agreed.
'What does it feel like?' Lucas asked.
'You weren't gonna talk about it,' Lily protested.
'It feels like a pro wrestler is trying to crush your chest. It hurts, but I don't remember that so much. I just remember feeling like I was stuck in a car-crusher and my chest was caving in. And I was sweating, I remember being down on the ground, on the floor, sweating like a sonofabitch…' He said it quietly, calmly enough, but with a measure of hate in his voice, like a man swearing revenge. After another second, he said, 'Let's get the sails up.'
'Yeah,' Lucas said, slightly shaken. 'I gotta pull on a rope, right?'
Kennett looked at the sky. 'God, if you heard the man, forgive him, the poor fucker's from Minnesota or Missouri or Montana, some dry-ass place like that.'
Lucas got the mainsail up. The jib was on a roller, with the lines led back to the cockpit. Lily worked it from there, sometimes on her own, sometimes with prodding from Kennett.
'How long have you been sailing?' Lucas asked her.
'I did it when I was a kid, at summer camp. And then Dick's been teaching me the big boat.'
'She learns quick,' Kennett said. 'She's got a natural sense for the wind.'
They slid lazily back and forth across the river, water rushing beneath the bow, wind in their faces. A hatch of flies was coming off the water, their lacy wings delicately floating around them. 'Now what?' Lucas asked.
Kennett laughed. 'Now we sail up and then we turn around, and sail back.'
'That's what I thought,' Lucas said. 'You're not even trolling anything.'
'You're obviously not into the great roundness of the universe,' Kennett said. 'You need a beer.'
Kennett and Lily gave him a sailing lesson, taught him the names of the lines and the wire rigging, pointed out the buoys marking the channel.
'You've got a cabin on a lake, right? Don't you have buoys?'
'On my lake? If I peed off the end of the dock, I'd hit the other side. If we put in a buoy, we wouldn't have room for a boat.'
'I thought the great North Woods…' Kennett prompted, seriously.
'There's some big water,' Lucas admitted. 'Superior: Superior'll show you things the Atlantic can't…'
'I seriously doubt that,' Lily said skeptically.
'Yeah? Well, once every few years it freezes over-and you look out there, a horizon like a knife and it's ice all the way out. You can walk out to the horizon and never get there…'
'All right,' she said.
They talked about ice-boating and para-skiing, and always came back to sailing. 'I was planning to take a year off and single-hand around the world, maybe… unless I got stuck in the Islands,' Kennett said. 'Maybe I would have got stuck, maybe not. I took Spanish lessons, took some French…'
'French?'
'Yeah… you run down the Atlantic, see, to the Islands, then across to the Canaries, maybe zip into the Med for a look at the Riviera-that's French-then come back out and down along the African coast to Cape Town, then Australia, then Polynesia. Tahiti: they speak French. Then back up to the Galapagos, Colombia and Panama, and the Islands again…'
'Islands-I like the idea,' Lucas said.
'You like it?' asked Kennett, seriously.
'Yeah, I do,' Lucas said, looking out across the water. His cheekbones and lips were tingling from the sun, and he could feel the muscles relax in his neck and back. 'I had a bad time a year ago, a depression. The medical kind. I'm out now, but I never want to do that again. I'd rather… run. Like to the Islands. I don't think you'd get depressed in the Islands.'
'Exactly what islands are we talking about?' Lily asked.
'I don't know,' Kennett said vaguely. 'The Windwards, or the Leewards, or some shit…'
'What difference would it make?' Lucas asked Lily.
She shrugged: 'Don't ask me, they're your islands.'
After a moment of silence, Kennett said, 'A unipolar depression. Did you hear your guns calling you?'
Lucas, startled, looked at him. 'You've had one?'
'Right after the second heart attack,' Kennett said. 'The second heart attack wasn't so bad. The depression goddamned near killed me.'
They turned and started back downriver. Kennett fished in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.
'Dick. Throw those fuckin' cigarettes…'
'Lily… I'm smoking one. Just one. That's all for today.'
'God damn it, Dick…' Lily looked as though she were going to cry.
'Lily… aw, fuck it,' Kennett said, and he flipped the pack of Marlboros over the side, where they floated away on the river.
'That's better,' Lily said, but tears ran down her cheeks.
'I tried to bum one from Fell the other day, but she wouldn't give it to me,' Kennett said.
'Good for her,' said Lily, still teary-eyed.
'Look at the city,' Lucas said, embarrassed. Kennett and Lily both turned to look at the sunlight breaking over the towers in Midtown. The stone buildings glowed like butter, the modern glass towers flickering like knives.
'What a place,' Kennett said. Lily wiped her cheeks with the heels of her hands and tried to smile.
'Can't see the patches from here,' Lucas said. 'That's what New York is, you know. About a billion patches. Patches on patches. I was walking to Midtown South from the hotel, crossing Broadway there at Thirty-fifth, and there was a pothole, and in the bottom of the pothole was another pothole, but somebody had patched the bottom pothole. Not the big one, just the little one in the bottom.'
'Fuckin' rube,' Kennett muttered.
They brought the boat back late in the afternoon, their faces flushed with the sun. And after Lucas dropped the mainsail, Lily ran it into the marina with a soft, skillful touch.
'This has been the best day of my month,' Kennett said. He looked at Lucas. 'I'd like to do it again before you go.'
'So would I,' Lucas said. 'We oughta go down to the Islands sometime…'
Lucas hauled the cooler back to the truck and Lily brought along an armload of bedding that Kennett wanted to wash at home.
'Shame that he can't drive the truck,' Lucas said as Lily popped up the back lid.
'He does,' she said in a confidential voice. 'He tells me he doesn't, but I know goddamn well that he sneaks out at night and drives. A couple of months ago I drove back to his place, and when we parked I noticed that the mileage was something like 1-2-3-4-4, and I was thinking that if I only drove one more mile, I'd have a straight line of numbers: 1-2-3-4-5. When I came over the next day, the mileage was like 1-2-4-1-0, or something like that. So he'd been out driving. I check it now, and lots of times the mileage is up. He doesn't know… I haven't mentioned it, because he gets so pissed. I'm afraid he'll get so pissed he'll have another attack. As long as it has power steering and brakes…'
'It'll drive a guy nuts, being penned up,' Lucas said. 'You oughta stay off his case.'
'I try,' she said. 'But sometimes I just can't help it. Men can be so fucking stupid, it gives me a headache.'
They went back to the boat and found Kennett below, digging around. 'Hey, Lucas, a little help? I need to pull this marine battery, but it's too heavy for Lily.'
'Dick, are you messing around with that wrench again…?' Lily started, but Lucas put an index finger over his lips and she stopped.
'I'll be down,' Lucas said.
