The Lighthouse Road

with a marble-topped table in the middle of it, a crystal vase with a hundred flowers sat atop it. The tub was claw- footed and cast iron and large enough to bathe a bear.

Rebekah moved from room to room with her finger pressed to her lip. She appeared to be levitating. He stood at the window in the turret, watching her, marveling at the contrast between this place and all the other places he’d ever been. He rolled a cigarette and stood there long enough to smoke it while Rebekah inspected every inch of the suite. As he stubbed the cigarette in an ashtray there was a knock at the door.

He crossed the room and opened the door. A waiter in a white coat pulled a linen-covered cart into the room. Two covered plates and a basket of bread sat on the cart. Odd’s mouth started watering at the smell of it.

“Would you like me to set this in the sitting room?”

“Sure,” Odd said.

“Over here,” Rebekah corrected. She was sitting on a sofa with pink paisley pillows on it. “Put it on the table here.” She patted the coffee table before her.

The waiter wheeled the cart across the suite and covered the coffee table with another linen. He set the plates of food on the linen, set silverware on either side of the plates, put the bread basket and a ramekin of whipped butter and bowls of salt and pepper on the table. From the second shelf of the cart, covered by the linen, he removed a silver bucket filled with ice and a bottle of champagne. There were two coupes in the bucket as well, and he set one before each plate on the coffee table. He uncorked the champagne and poured each coupe full and said, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No, thank you,” Rebekah said.

He bowed and was gone.

When the door closed behind him Rebekah stood up and said, “Look at this!”

“They think we’re the king and queen of someplace,” Odd said.

“You mean we’re not?” Her smile was luminous.

“Let’s eat some of that food.” Odd sat beside her.

They removed the cloches in unison. On each plate was a slab of roast beef and a crock of au gratin potatoes, a pile of broccoli florets, and a sprig of parsley. Before Odd picked up his knife and fork he lifted his champagne and raised it before him as he’d seen folks in the Traveler’s Hotel saloon do. He looked at Rebekah with all the earnestness he could muster and said, “This is it, Rebekah. This is the first night of our happiness. The first of a million.” He chinked the rim of his glass against hers and drained it. “Now,” he said, “I aim to fill my belly up with this here plate of food.”

Rebekah didn’t say anything, only sat there beaming, sipping her champagne. Odd cut into the roast beef, sprinkled the forkful of meat with salt and pepper, and started eating.

“We’ve never had anything like this. Not once,” Rebekah said, looking around. “All those nights in your fish house, sitting on fish boxes.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe it.”

Odd said, “I told you so.”

Rebekah finished her champagne and poured them each more. Odd quaffed his between a bite of potatoes and meat.

“You’re supposed to sip it,” Rebekah said.

“These glasses are nothing more than thimbles,” Odd said. “I can’t help it.”

She smiled. She could not stop smiling.

“Ain’t you gonna eat?”

“I can’t eat right now.”

So Odd ate alone, first his plate of food, then half of hers. Rebekah nibbled on a crust of bread, birdlike. They talked and laughed and behaved exactly as if they were on their honeymoon. When they finished the bottle of champagne, Odd fell back on the couch, unbuckled his belt, and let out a deep and satisfied breath.

“I never ate so much food in my life.”

Rebekah put her hand on his taut stomach. “If anyone ever deserved a feast, it was you,” she said.

“Why’d I deserve a feast?” he said, taking her hand in his.

She spread her free hand before her. “For this. For all of this. For having courage.” She took her hand from his and ran it through his messy hair. “How in the world did all this happen?” she said.

Instead of answering he stood up, went into the bathroom, and plugged the drain in the tub. He turned the hot water on and from a bottle on the edge of the tub poured bubbles into the rising water. He went back to Rebekah, took her hand, and led her to the tub. There he left her, walking backward from the room as she undressed slowly, for his benefit, and stepped into the steaming bath.

He returned a couple of minutes later, naked himself, two cigarettes smoking in his mouth, a flask of whiskey and the ice bucket in his hands. There were two crystal glasses beside the bathroom sink, and he filled them with ice from the bucket. He poured the whiskey over the ice and set the glasses on the edge of the tub and took one of the cigarettes from his mouth and handed it to Rebekah.

“I’m about as foul as a man can get, sweetheart.”

Rebekah took a long drag from her cigarette and as she exhaled said, “Well, then, I suggest you join me in here.”

He had one foot in the tub before she finished talking.

For a long time they sat in the tub without speaking. They finished their cigarettes and Odd drank his whiskey and they rested their heads on the porcelain, the steam from the bath soaking the mirror above the sink. Odd was a kind of happy he’d never been before, loose after the champagne and whiskey, his gal there in the city with him, in the tub, with no more need to speak. He felt the fatigue from the last four days’ labor seeping out of his back and shoulders and into the bath water. He hadn’t known, hadn’t ever even suspected, that this feeling was in the world to be had.

Rebekah, though, was growing distant. As they sat in the tub she was reminded of the baths she used to take with Thea — with Odd’s mother — and the weight of those memories, of all their implications, was drowning out the pleasure of being where she was with him. She realized, also, that their lives in Duluth would not be roast beef and honeymoon suites all winter long. Odd was a fisherman, after all, and even if he was flush now, as he claimed to be, he couldn’t afford this forever. They’d end up in some tenement with noisy neighbors and the rank smell of sauerkraut in the halls. She remembered that from Chicago even if she remembered nothing else.

And beneath all of these bothers, she felt some strange and distant guilt about Hosea alone in his big shop, moping around the flat plotting his revenge. She didn’t know what he was capable of. She didn’t want to know.

It was Rebekah who finally spoke. “I suppose he’s burned the woods down by now, trying to smoke us out.”

Odd cocked his head and looked at her. He thought of saying nothing at all but couldn’t help himself. “I guess he ain’t found us.”

“You know he’s been to see Danny. He would have stopped there first.”

“And you know Danny would sooner kiss Hosea on the lips than spill.”

“I know.”

She reached into the bathwater and rubbed Odd’s foot, which was resting at her waist. She tried to forsake her doubt. She couldn’t. “There’s no part of you that sees the folly in all this?”

“Are we going to circle around this for the rest of our lives?” Odd said. “For God’s sake, Rebekah, we ain’t fifteen-year-old kids.”

Rebekah looked at him and the thought of the years that separated them hit her hard. “What are we, then? Tell me, because I can’t see. This isn’t who we are —” she gestured at the lush accommodations, held up one of the crystal low balls “—not by a long shot.”

“Of course this isn’t who we are,” Odd said sharply. “But it’s who we deserve to be, for a few days at least. We’ll figure the rest out after that.” He looked at her softly now, feeling bad for snapping. He saw tears in her eyes. “Listen, Rebekah.” He sat up, leaned toward her. He took her head in his hands and kissed her and then put his hands on her shoulders so they were only a few inches from each other. “I told you, I’m going to take care of you now. You and the baby. You don’t have to pay for nice dresses anymore, for a nice bed to sleep in. I’m going to see to that.”

She looked doubtful. Sad. “What if I’m no good with the baby? If I’m only suited to take care of myself?”

“I ain’t worried about that.”