“So where do you come in?”
“Well, what she did, she got all her hippie friends together and they all came over here to set up a commune. That was everyone’s dream at the time, right? Get away from it all, live off the land, all that shit. Well, that lasted as long as those things usually did, and then people began drifting away. In the end Lisa, that was her name, was hanging on here pretty well alone.”
I looked out over the reach of open water glinting and shifting in the raw sunlight. Gulls swooped and plunged for fish, efficient feeding machines, aerial rodents.
“By then she wanted out too,” Sam went on, “only it turned out this place wasn’t so easy to sell. There are a couple of hundred islands round here, but only some of them have a good supply of water, and even then there are shortages all the time. This place had enough for the Theosophists and the hippies and guys like us, but not enough to support people who want showers and washing machines and dishwashers and Jacuzzis. So Lisa found that having invested all her dough in this place, she was kind of stuck with it.”
“I still don’t see where you come in,” I said.
Sam grinned broadly.
“I got in, that’s how.”
He made a circle with the thumb and first finger of his left hand and inserted the forefinger of his right rapidly several times.
“We fell in love,” he added in a tone of contempt.
I thought of Andrea, of my inexplicable attraction to her. Was I too “falling in love”? How lame the phrase sounds, how hackneyed and banal! We need more and better words to describe the experience, a vocabulary as rich as the one that some cultures have for different varieties of snow. Presumably the reason we don’t is the same in both cases: an inability to distinguish, a feeling that neither snow nor love is important enough to our lives to warrant that degree of discrimination.
“Lisa and I had a friend in common,” Sam explained. “That woman who was teaching the class? I got to know her while I was hanging out in Seattle. Andrea used to spend a few months out here in the summer, but she had a job teaching back on the mainland. She introduced me to Lisa, who used to come over every now and then. It started off as a straight mercy fuck, but Lisa thought I was the hottest thing to come down the pike in a long time, and I was kind of at loose ends myself then. Next thing I knew we were married.”
“Oh, so it’s really your wife who owns the place,” I said. “Which one is she?”
I was irrationally furious at the discovery that Sam had known Andrea, and presumably slept with her.
“She’s dead.”
He pointed to the island on the other side of the strait.
“She tried to swim across to Orcas. Lisa was a good swimmer, but the currents around here are very treacherous.”
The sun had disappeared behind the firs massed on the heights behind us, and the air felt cold.
“I know things haven’t been easy for you recently,” Sam said in an almost inaudible voice. “But soon you will regain everything you have lost, and more besides.”
I stared at him, wondering again if he knew about David.
“Speaking of loss,” I said, “why did those kids call you that?”
Sam’s irritating little smile reappeared.
“Ah, you noticed that? Well, I guess you should know the answer to that one, Phil.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I knew,” I replied shortly.
“You
I laughed derisively.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Sam turned to me, looking me in the eyes.
“You’re like all of us, Phil. You know more than you think, but you also know less.”
I sighed impatiently.
“That’s gobbledygook, Sam.”
“No, Phil, it’s a great truth. A sublime truth.”
He smiled suddenly and slapped me on the arm.
“But just stick around, kid, and pretty soon you’ll know it all.”
I’d had enough.
“Sam, listen!”
I paused, trying to find the right words.
“Can we just get something straight? I get the feeling that you guys are into some kind of religious or philosophical thing here. Is that right?”
Sam’s eyes left me, gazing out over the stretch of water where his wife had drowned.
“I guess you could put it that way,” he said at last.
“OK. Well, let me just say something. I appreciate you inviting me here, and it would be a great pleasure to spend three or four days in such a beautiful spot.
Sam looked at me with a frown.
“Chill, man!” he said with a slightly forced laugh. “No one’s asking you to do a damn thing except veg out and enjoy yourself.”
“Great. And I’ll have to leave on Wednesday or Thursday in any case. My car’s at that house on the mainland. Lenny took the keys. Does he live there or what?”
There was a slight pause before Sam answered.
“He’s staying there this week, while Russ and the other guy are away, case they need to call in.”
“But there must be a phone here,” I replied. “You called me in Everett, remember?”
Sam looked uncomfortable for the first time. Then he shrugged.
“I’ve got a cellular, but we try not to use it too much. You never know who might be listening in.”
I laughed.
“Have you got secrets to hide, then?”
Sam jumped up.
“I better get going,” he said, turning away. “I’ve got to choose a reading for this afternoon. You stay if you want.”
I got to my feet.
“No, I’ll come.”
The truth was, I was already looking forward to seeing Andrea again.
I had been faithful to Rachael for the ten years we had been together, and since her death I had not thought of finding someone else. This was not a question of high-minded morality. I was simply out of practice. Without realizing it, I had sealed myself off from contact with the other sex. I had invested all I had in one relationship, and lost everything. The idea of starting all over again seemed more trouble than it was worth.
But Andrea had somehow penetrated the cocoon of indifference and sloth with which I’d surrounded myself, and had done so-this is what really disturbed me-without even trying. There was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that she was remotely interested in me. On the contrary, she was almost certainly fixed up with one of these guys who, for reasons beyond my comprehension, were kissing up to Sam. Nevertheless, for reasons equally beyond my comprehension, she had gotten to me, and before I left I wanted to know why.
I was also mildly curious to know exactly what kind of scam Sam was working. I had no doubt that it was one. If he’d bothered to get married to this Lisa, who must have been quite a lot older than him if she’d bought the place back in the sixties, it could only be because he knew that she was sitting on a nice chunk of real estate. This indicated a degree of financial planning I wouldn’t have suspected in Sam, even if he couldn’t have known that Lisa would be out of the picture so soon. But the way he’d parlayed this attractive but unsalable asset into a permanent meal ticket was even more impressive. I didn’t know who was grabbing the check for the cost of keeping the operation going, but it clearly wasn’t Sam. Probably the followers he’d recruited had to go and work on the mainland every so often, and hand over their earnings to him. Maybe that was what this Russ was doing. That would explain
