cupful of cheap instant coffee powder into every percolated pot. The proctologist handed me three envelopes, one addressed to each of us, then told me that if I ever had piles I could rely on him to cut them out for cost.
Ellen held her happy smile till the courtesy taxi had disappeared, then she tore up the proctologist’s business card. “The creep suggested I might be his receptionist.” She ripped open her envelope to find two hundred dollars. Mine had the same amount, while Thessy’s only contained a hundred, though the proctologist had also given him the ‘Go Dawgs’ hat. Not that the inequity of the tip mattered, for we always pooled and shared the money evenly.
It took just over an hour to empty Wavebreaker of her garbage and dirty linen, and then to hook up the shoreside electricity and pump diesel and fresh water into her tanks. Those chores done, and the synthetic fabric of the precious sails covered from the ravages of sunlight, I hefted my old marine kit bag on to the dock where Ellen was waiting to ambush me.
Ellen planned to return to her tiny apartment in the town where she kept her precious books and where, on an old manual typewriter, she wrote what she called her ‘five-finger exercises’, which she would never let anyone read. McIllvanney had offered to let her stay on board Wavebreaker, so long as the boat’s air conditioners were disconnected, but his offer was not as generous as it seemed for Ellen would have been little more than an unpaid security guard and also subject to Bellybutton’s endlessly tedious suggestions, and she far preferred her small hot room in the busy crowded apartment block that smelt of cooking all day and marijuana all night.
“I’ll see you in a week’s time, Nick?” Ellen now challenged me.
I shook my head. “You know you won’t. I’ve got a boat to mend.” I tried to edge past her, but she blocked my progress with her bicycle. “Sammy Meredith can skipper the boat,” I suggested.
“Sam Meredith is a creep. Be here in one week, Nick, or you won’t see me again!”
Thessy was already waiting at the yard gate where our taxi thumped and quivered. Ellen was still arguing with me as Thessy and I climbed in and backfired away, but I was no longer listening. I had Masquerade to mend and a life to live and, even if it meant living it without Ellen, my charter days were done. I was free.
I had been in New York when Masquerade was stolen. I had gone there from Florida because my father had pleaded with me to go. He was opening his celebrated King Lear on Broadway. He was old, he told me, and he was feeling his age, and he had played the Lear for five months at the National in London and he was tired, and he wanted to patch things up with me because it would make him feel better, and I was the only one of all his children whom he could trust, and he needed my youth to support him at this difficult time and so, like a fool, I had believed him and flown to New York where I had found the rogue ensconced in a suite of the Plaza with a frizzy-haired girl young enough to be his great-granddaughter. “The dear soul wishes to be in the theatre,” he told me, “and her legs are good enough to allow me to encourage that ambition, though doubtless at the risk of slipping a disc or two in my back. Would you like to sleep with her?”
I went to his opening night. He was brilliant. I still don’t know how he does it. He despises the method actors. “Grubby little players,” he calls them, “vermin in greasepaint. They’re not paid to be amateur psychiatrists, but to be players, to be actors. The stage is a job, dear Nick, not a mindfuck.” On that first Broadway night I had stood in the wings where he was absent-mindedly fondling the breasts of his frizzy-haired admirer, and to me he had looked just like any other dirty old man; but then, as the royal fanfare sounded, he had twitched his grey gown, given me a wink, and walked into the stage’s glare. “Attend
Ellen held her happy smile till the courtesy taxi had disappeared, then she tore up the proctologist’s business card. “The creep suggested I might be his receptionist.” She ripped open her envelope to find two hundred dollars. Mine had the same amount, while Thessy’s only contained a hundred, though the proctologist had also given him the ‘Go Dawgs’ hat. Not that the inequity of the tip mattered, for we always pooled and shared the money evenly.
It took just over an hour to empty Wavebreaker of her garbage and dirty linen, and then to hook up the shoreside electricity and pump diesel and fresh water into her tanks. Those chores done, and the synthetic fabric of the precious sails covered from the ravages of sunlight, I hefted my old marine kit bag on to the dock where Ellen was waiting to ambush me.
Ellen planned to return to her tiny apartment in the town where she kept her precious books and where, on an old manual typewriter, she wrote what she called her ‘five-finger exercises’, which she would never let anyone read. McIllvanney had offered to let her stay on board Wavebreaker, so long as the boat’s air conditioners were disconnected, but his offer was not as generous as it seemed for Ellen would have been little more than an unpaid security guard and also subject to Bellybutton’s endlessly tedious suggestions, and she far preferred her small hot room in the busy crowded apartment block that smelt of cooking all day and marijuana all night.
“I’ll see you in a week’s time, Nick?” Ellen now challenged me.
I shook my head. “You know you won’t. I’ve got a boat to mend.” I tried to edge past her, but she blocked my progress with her bicycle. “Sammy Meredith can skipper the boat,” I suggested.
“Sam Meredith is a creep. Be here in one week, Nick, or you won’t see me again!”
Thessy was already waiting at the yard gate where our taxi thumped and quivered. Ellen was still arguing with me as Thessy and I climbed in and backfired away, but I was no longer listening. I had Masquerade to mend and a life to live and, even if it meant living it without Ellen, my charter days were done. I was free.
I had been in New York when Masquerade was stolen. I had gone there from Florida because my father had pleaded with me to go. He was opening his celebrated King Lear on Broadway. He was old, he told me, and he was feeling his age, and he had played the Lear for five months at the National in London and he was tired, and he wanted to patch things up with me because it would make him feel better, and I was the only one of all his children whom he could trust, and he needed my youth to support him at this difficult time and so, like a fool, I had believed him and flown to New York where I had found the rogue ensconced in a suite of the Plaza with a frizzy-haired girl young enough to be his great-granddaughter. “The dear soul wishes to be in the theatre,” he told me, “and her legs are good enough to allow me to encourage that ambition, though doubtless at the risk of slipping a disc or two in my back. Would you like to sleep with her?”
I went to his opening night. He was brilliant. I still don’t know how he does it. He despises the method actors. “Grubby little players,” he calls them, “vermin in greasepaint. They’re not paid to be amateur psychiatrists, but to be players, to be actors. The stage is a job, dear Nick, not a mindfuck.” On that first Broadway night I had stood in the wings where he was absent-mindedly fondling the breasts of his frizzy-haired admirer, and to me he had looked just like any other dirty old man; but then, as the royal fanfare sounded, he had twitched his grey gown, given me a wink, and walked into the stage’s glare. “Attend
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