Chapter Forty - Six
Daphne.
As the afternoon wanes, Daphne’s mercurial moodiness increases, her rage and despair rising and falling until she centers the blame on Cortland, sending him packing… another glass, barely missing his head accompanied by shouts and screams.
An hour later, as her anger wanes, and with no one left to shout at, she wishes she had not sent Cort away. But he and his automobile are gone, perhaps to the condo, perhaps downstate, and possibly for good. Daphne finds this first troublesome, then less significant, as her introspection returns and the new post-crash reality brings with it more tears, distress, and repeated cycles of instability. Up then down, until after three more drinks, she calls Margie, who is shocked to find Daphne a mess, and so full of loss that Margie becomes concerned. Cajoling… “Hold on, girl. I am coming up. Take some of that Zoloft I prescribed after Tim…if you’ve any left… but not too much, and no more booze! Think happy thoughts.”
“Impossible,” says Daphne, hanging up the phone which rings again, and then again, as she ignores it and finds the Zoloft, washing down three pills with a glass of soporific gin, she’s labeled a dry martini, the booze and pills leading her down paths better left untraveled.
She is lost and fears it may be permanent, Unable to find the words to describe her thoughts, she knows the feeling, as she retreats into her past, experiencing an instability and a normlessness similar to what she felt when she learned of Tim’s death.
She had delighted in discovering her new self, as she grew with confidence from decision making on GG World and on her new residence. But now she becomes her audience. Two Daphnes, the observer and the memory maker… remembering her years with Tim, and before these her school girl years of grade school, junior high, and high school. She sees her cheerleader self, and her life before Tim, the years spent with her father and grandfather, where she now realizes she had been unhappy.
There were many years before Tim’s death. Many years before, she had discovered who she was, or who she thought she was becoming, transforming into her pre-crash incarnation. Beauville Daphne. GG World Daphne. Her self of only days before. The ‘new and improved’ version, a self that she now suspects had always been there, but hidden… Emerging after Tim’s death… the self-actualizing adventure that had begun with the pain and betrayal of his passing, and then flourished with her new independence… Thank you GG World and the market’s rise. But now, this version of self is departing. And with this realization, a fear and an awareness haunt, that she and the markets had existed in a tandem fraud pretension. With an overwhelming sense of loss, her tears stream more.
She remains alone as afternoon becomes evening, lonely like the sun, still high but falling down the sky and headed north of west, a great ball of deep yellow brilliance that will soon transform, first orange and then into a solid red. This beauty would normally make her spirits climb, instead the sun will set unnoticed.
If you were observing, you would see a transformation in Daphne, an inversion of her primal scream, her shoulders slumped, her eyes dimmed, the flesh of her face gone soft collapsing in upon itself as streaks of untended tears move slowly down her face from cheeks to chin… Tears that will with time join others, and provide an evaporated record of her despair.
She has become a picture of disaster. Someone you might see on the front page after a fire, an earthquake, or a hurricane, her hair a mess and tangled with small tufts and snarls sticking out where she has been tugging on it. Unconscious of the act, she worries her index finger. The nail ripped off and bleeding from where she has bitten it to the quick and then with repeated nibbling separated it from the surrounding flesh. This should be bothersome. But she is unaware, already moved on to the next finger, leaving behind streaks of blood across her cheeks and chin… her senses turned inward, her eyes blank, vacant, as if separate from her features. She remains awake, supported by an inner hormonal speed left over from the market’s turmoil, sufficient to prevent a crash from the Zoloft and the booze.
She slumps, supported by the cushions, a silent lost confusion aboard her wonder of a yacht, extravagant with shine and wealth, but a luxury that provides no comfort, as such surroundings are the norm for her. The bright varnish, the soft leather, the careful curves of space. For some it might provide support and hope with thoughts of, look what you still have, but this is not the case for Daphne. It is a luxury she has always had, and thus no luxury at all, instead it is as common as the weather. Wealth had not been the basis for her resurrection. The loss of wealth would be something else, a great disaster, but one avoided after Tim, thus still unknown.
No, it had not been the money, instead it was a new sense of self and resolve that had righted her after Tim’s demise… Her decisions and the rising markets allowing the person she might have always been to emerge from the psychic jailed confinement, normal, left over, and thus surprising when she had realized it… formed from childhood, society, her father, and men, in general.
But now with this new-self departing and her awareness growing, she lists, self-worth askew, stumbling about the Master Mind, reduced, reducing. Drinking more. Feeling as if she is shrinking, bit by bit, not quite as tall, inside and out, her vertebrae, the discs that make her spine… both real and psychic, compressing. Meanwhile, the sky, the gleaming varnish, the perfect luxury of her surroundings, are all as common and unnoticed as the setting sun.
Minutes pass… An hour. There is no one else anywhere about. The distant chaos from Camp Hope has abated with the early evening. The workmen headed home just as they have left from Chateau Daphne.
Full of booze, but not yet tipsy, Daphne walks the marina, from slip to slip, aimless and unaware of the imported Kauri, the breeze, the sky, the early evening. The real world is distant. Then her feet lead her back, past the Master Mind and upward, steps and more steps, until the path that leads to the gray stone stacked patio. Where she looks upwards toward the tall great room windows. Gazing at her new residence, but not seeing it as she continues to examine inward, at what was and what might have been… at her new and recent freedoms, her expected future memories where she had imagined a permanence that now may be impossible… a future filled with nieces and nephews, and someday summers… Things that now may never be.
Her tears stream as she is captured by an overwhelming sense of loss. A loss of freedom, hope, fulfillment… Could it all vanish in an afternoon? Her tears slow, then continue as she climbs the stairs upwards until she reaches the long hall, moving on towards Wilson’s works space.
She has no accepted Demon like Wilson, but something speaks to her through her thoughts. There is no way the bankers will let her manage this place now. With her stock money vanished, they will admonish and then chuckle kindly. And then they will put the brakes on. There will still be money, but they will be taking charge. They may want Cortland to take over again. But she has enjoyed her new relationship with men. She does not wish to return to the old one. She does not want to listen to Cortland telling her, so suddenly now, again…What she must do.
The room is full… mixing containers, the lingering smells of chemical epoxies, power tools and hand tools, sharp chisels, hammers, sandpaper, a mess of work and work preparation, across two sheets of sawhorse supported plywood.
This too has become part of her and comforting. These private early evening walks and musings have become part of her life… and she fears they will now be gone forever. She sighs and slouches, grabbing a sharp chisel, then slumps toward the floor, tears percolating, filling the corners, the edges of her eyes, slowly rolling down her face, until an occasional drip falls from the bottom of her chin.
Daphne gazes at the chisel, then its shadow across her wrist as she maneuvers the sharp edge, carelessly caressing her skin. She could… she could… And then she casts the thought aside. What a mess she would leave. She sees herself askew like something mislaid, expired, blood everywhere, a mess, a disturbance. Would she appear at peace, would her limbs be splayed immodest, would her face hold an awkward latent smile, a monkey’s rictus grin? She imagines a worker finding her, and then more of them, a crowd shocked and talkative, or sad and staring.
It is too much. She cannot. Impossible. She lacks the courage. There is no way she could allow such an indignity. There will be a tomorrow, another day for certain! A better day, perhaps? She descends the stairs and wanders back out and down to the Master Mind, another drink, another pill, another drink, and then another and another, until peace grabs her and she reclines against the coaming beneath a transforming midnight blue and deep red orange horizon darkening sky. The stars climb, but she does not see them.
There is still no one about. She is alone asleep, passed out from way too many pills, a curl of vomit at the edge of her lips, spreading. Then someone is shaking her, grabbing her, “Daphne, Daphne.” Through a fog… “Oh no, oh no, Daphne.” and then forceful fingers tug her. From an amorphous haze, and a deep fog, she rises, her senses filling in, her eyes opening. It is Margie.
“What have you done? What have you done?” They are walking now, back and forth, back and forth, coffee, and more walking. And then nothing. She fades once more until a siren, men now grabbing her, she is lying down and then a mad dash drive to Beauville. She senses sound and light. The bridge is down. The ambulance flies and flashes, and then a racing gurney. She is pricked and poked and questioned through a fog, then a bright light, a squeaking clattered tires on the tile commotion, filled with shouts. Something cold fills her veins. She sees stainless steel, hanging clear distended plastic monster tentacles attach to her arms and wrists, then nothing. It will be alright, we think, we hope, she sleeps.
Wilson is not surprised when he returns to the job the next day to see no sign of Daphne, nor is he surprised to find the Master Mind companionway opened wide, the door unlocked, ajar. Walking the length of the marina, he half expects to see her floating face down before him, gone like her husband, imagining her fish belly white against the water. Then he observes her car still parked by the Marina.
Then he calls Feely, who informs that he’s heard nothing, switching subjects, adding, as bankers will with their thoughts on money, that one of Wilson’s checks has not cleared. Had he not noticed that the larger one was postdated? “Wasn’t this a felony to write a check like that, one rubber?” “Yes and no,” replies Feely. “Not often, and when your rich not ever, and there were reasons the bank might not be paying the check, a hold, a cancellation, no money, the date an excuse, or letter of the law waiting until five days in the future.” Feely pausing, continuing… “I imagine it will straighten out. Daphne will no doubt reappear. It is odd, perhaps. But I would not worry too much. Things will balance. But there will probably be further ups and downs and shudders. Instability. I watch the rich and those with their savings in IRAs. I’d watch for the next week or two. No doubt there will be a period of adjustment. I will keep you posted.”
“But she wrote the checks before the crash before the markets tumble. Why now?”
“It might have been nothing, a loss of place and time, an unattendance to the date. A casual mistake… The rich are like that, sometimes… Odd, you say she wrote them the same day?”
When Wilson inquires further. “Should he keep working?” “Of course,” says Feely. “You were never a backward fellow, were you? You want it done as much as she does. I know you. I’ve sensed that even with its style, its potato head fact.” Feely chuckles. “That’s irony for you. You’re attached… You don’t want your name on something unfinished, flapping in the wind.” And all of this was true. Feely adding “And if you’re fucked… Your fucked.”
So, when the men arrive for work, Wilson ignores them, saying nothing. They see his jeep and hear him chatting, see him through the 2nd floor windows, his movement’s shadows behind the east sun’s window glare. Upstairs they will find him measuring and sanding working on the helix stair. Accepting that he is once more trapped by circumstance and project- life inertia, the dye cast, what will be for the moment… anyway. Will be. But sensing, using Harding’s made up word as his demon stutters… Normalcy, normalcy… Unlikely.
Yesterday’s crash has cast the dye of fate or the dice of gambling chance. And he is once more a passenger on that highway, still in charge of his bus, but uncertain where that bus is going… Uncertain of the terrain ahead.
Across the lake, beyond the harbor, five miles distant, on the other side of Beauville, the hospital sits on the shores of Lake Michigan. As the men arrive to work on her house, Daphne awakens. The nurse is babbling something as she is jolted back to life by the grate of a metal post and bracket, a change in fluids, new bags hanging, drip, drip… Drips before her eyes that follow the plastic tube to its needled insertion at her inner wrist. She attempts to move, but she is swaddled tight, trapped, as she tries to shift and rise… “Where am I?” barely a whisper … But tugging hurts as her movement stretches skin and tape pulling the needle at her arm and vein. And then she remembers the reality and then the fog… and walking with Margie, back and forth, the blurred noise of sirens, the opaque flash of lights. Vaguely, it comes back to her, the reasons, what she’s done and why she’s here.
Margie is staring at her from across the room. “Your awake.” Daphne’s eyes blink, then shut, then open wide. “What were you thinking? How do you feel? Poorly probably.” Daphne provides no immediate response. “The pills,” and again… “What were you thinking?” Rising from behind her forehead, her head and throbbing skull, Daphne remembers her decision to roll the dice of end it all, and then tossing the bottle away and across the room, falling asleep and then, her aching head, needing relief. She remembers crawling across the cabin sole, grabbing pill after pill, taking too many, apparently. It had not exactly been a conscious act. What had she done? The moments now returning through a fog.
“It was an accident… An accident… I fell… I hit my head… I lost track.”
She shakes her head, trying to rise. The nurse says “Wait,” but Daphne rises and yanks her arm in the process, this time pulling the I-V from its needle insert, fluids dripping on the floor.
“Hold it, hold it. Stop!” The nurse pushes her down and begins to reinsert the I-V. As Daphne says first soft, then louder… “stop… Stop That… I’m leaving!”
“But you may not!... You tried to kill yourself. We have rules here. You must check out. And the Sheriff’s coming.”
“I’m leaving,” she says again. Remembering for the moment. That this moment, she is, was, and remains still… Assertive Daphne…
“You cannot,” repeats the nurse, pushing her back into the bed.
Margie glares at the nurse. “One moment.” Then she grabs her friend’s arm … Psychiatrist, MD Margie, now! Feeling her pulse, looking into her eyes.
“You should spend the day… One day.”
“No! I need to check on the markets. I must see what happened, what’s happening, the Futures this morning… Tomorrow.” She looks at the watch on her wrist, but it is missing. “Do you know?”
“You cannot leave. She cannot leave,” says the nurse. Pushing Daphne down again. “Stay put!” And then Daphne pushes back… “I don’t care what you … I’m leaving.”
The two women look on, not expecting this. “Ok, Ok,” says Margie, “But you’re coming with me!” Then to the nurse. “She is probably correct. I’ll sign, take responsibility. She’s right! Better to stop the rumors. We do not wish to make this official.”
So, before the busy sheriff arrives to check on a possible suicide… Margie and Daphne have departed the hospital. And this is probably a good thing, because had she stayed, the rumor would have soon spread across the town. This way she is just gone, her story and tale, another event from the fog of a summer night, after a day of market disaster.
The crash has messed with many fates this morning. Throughout Beauville, normalcy is unlikely. Strange will be the watch word for many as Daphne checked and pumped, processed and hydrated, and under Margie’s care leaves the hospital and the reluctant nurses. Daphne no longer leaning on Margie. Margie repeating “She’s my patient.” They are out the door, escaping.
And, at the moment when Wilson once again walks the docks, to see if he can locate Daphne. If she has returned from wherever she might have been? Margie and Daphne are headed south into cloud and haze, leaving a clear blue sky behind them… South to heat, humidity, and rest. Daphne nodded out from Margie’s newly administered drugs, head tilted back, and sleeping.
Her car remains, but still no Daphne. Who knows? Wilson pauses, gazing east, then south, still half expecting to see her floating, finished, done for, like her husband nine months previous. It would be a fitting end to the story, but inappropriate now, as Wilson’s, Daphne’s, Philippe’s, Tim’s (may he rest in peace) As Chateau Daphne is too, too, far along to stop. Yet, it would be just strange enough to fit this crazy project with its starts and stops and stutters. It would fit but it is not fact, and it cannot, it may not be!
A half hour later, Wilson and Dick are at the job where Wilson informs Dick that “Nothing’s changed… Another day, keep working,” adding “No rumors.” As both men watch Janet Wainwright out for her morning ‘constitutional’.
Her ungainly strides lead her from the woods, then down Longbottom Lane, where she turns at the path to the marina and the Master Mind in search of Daphne. Her energetic steps are entertainment, seven league boot strides reminiscent of old film footage. Not finding Daphne, she turns towards the building residence and begins to climb toward the house as Wilson retreats upstairs, seeking to escape her bother.Amazing… After all this time, after her early protest… This is the first Janet Wainwright has entered the building when Wilson has been there. He hears her shouting as Dean grunts “Morning” and points. “He’s up there.” Wilson hears her call. “Daphne, Wilson.” Wilson heading back along the bridge and looking down toward Janet Wainwright standing in the middle of the unfinished great room taking in the space, gazing at the high tall stone fireplace, the rows of windows north and south, first two-tiered, then three-tiered climbing, harmonious toward their central eyebrow arch.
Turning, looking upward with stoic study, she says, “Good morning. Hello. Bon Jour.” Her eyes locating Wilson above her, crossing the bridge leading toward the main stairway. It, like everything else, defined by space, and obvious to what and why, remains unfinished. “Hello, Wilson. Have you seen Daphne? We were supposed to go riding, but she never showed up at Brown’s barn, the Camp Hope Stables.” “No,” he says, “She’s vanished.”
Janet turns once more, her eyes now gazing west upon the cedars, the unfinished patio, and the long spread blue view of water. “You do know spaces,” she says. “Spaces and views. It will be grand. I didn’t… I still don’t want it… But … She’s learning how, you know, I never thought I would say it, but I am beginning to enjoy Daphne’s company, and this house… almost?”
Her words hang in the air. “Is she alright?”
“The stocks, the market,” says Wilson.
“I know,” says Janet. “Conrad’s been drunk since yesterday… Not unusual, but unusual so early. We may need to cancel our fall and winter travels this year. I unplugged the television… It will come back, it always does.”
“I imagine you’ve survived a few,” says Wilson pondering on past economic history, the great crash and the many panics throughout the nineteenth century, and more recently the Savings and Loan mess of Silverado in 1987… A financial windfall for insider elites, unless your name was Keating or John McCain or one of the other affluent crooks.
“And you,” she questions.
“Never had enough to be directly troubled,” says Wilson. “But I have felt the lags. I felt Carter’s interest rates. I felt Reagan.” “It will be alright,” says Janet. “People always get so excited… Every one of these, the one in 87… the two before that. My grandfather survived the great crash. He told me, years…Years ago. Never sell, never sell! You can trust America! Each time we economize, the dividends decline for a bit, and everyone howls… and always we survive, though time and time, it waxes and wanes, as does the money… But we, me, Conrad, we have not worked in thirty years.”
She pauses for the moment, once more gazing about the great room space. “I like it… Well… She, you… You had better not stop now… well thought, well thought… When are you going to finish it? Will she have her Christmas party?” Wilson shrugs. “That’s a lot of questions. Time will tell.”
“Later, let her know I was by. When she shows up.” And Janet leaves. Off towards Camp Hope, intent on giving Brown a piece of her mind as part of her morning recreation. If she can find him? A few minutes later he hears faint… “Brown, Brown… Brown, you bum, you rascal. I see you, Brown.” Then, after a while, he observes Janet Wainwright returning, striding down the lane.
Six hours later, it has become beer thirty, another week gone by. None of the workers have paid any mind to the markets. As far as work was concerned, it had been a Friday like any other. But, when Wilson checks the TV, the markets have fallen another 3 percent.
Damn, thinks Margie, if the crash could have only waited, not occurred until next year. Her friend, her patient, would have been able to handle it far better had her home been completed. Had she been able to sit amongst her substance and its beauty, it might have been different. Emotions, whims, nightmares, fate… Daphne would bounce back but for now, even as Daphne sleeps slouched towards the car’s passenger side window, Margie is en route to Sunny Side center where she plans to check Daphne in, where she is making certain that her room is correct and proper, tilting her cell phone in her hand saying, “Yes, yes,” reestablishing her privileges to practice there. “Two weeks, perhaps a month of calm, a lack of alcohol and therapy… that’s what’s needed.”
It was a breakdown. She is certain. And one from the outside in. A collapse after so much change and confidence. Margie has listened briefly to the markets continued plunge; she needs to see that Daphne does not lose it all. Not her recent dollars. She knows Daphne has plenty left in trusts. Her concern is that she might fall back, revert and lose her place in time and space… that the result of the confidence her trades and financial success provided might depart with her money. The shock to her system would be immense if it takes years to come back. She worries, and when, how long will it take for them to recover? Perhaps the markets will come back on Monday, or in six months. The timing could make a difference.
Finishing the house will be more important for Daphne’s mental health than for her pocketbook. But more than likely, recovery will not arrive tomorrow. And still more than likely… That Cortland is probably already meddling, communicating with the bankers saying that he is necessary, the logical and only answer to their problem, Daphne’s problem. The bankers’ problem, Chateau Daphne. And the bankers likely face many of these this morning… many dilemmas such as Daphne’s. ‘All the more reason to transfer the burden to Cortland.’ Margie imagines him saying just this. It will not be good for Daphne if things do not rebound quickly.
And sure enough, by 10:00 Friday morning. Cortland is already sitting at the Trustworthy Savings and Loan waiting for a meeting that will not occur until the afternoon. The day after the crash, Trustworthy is experiencing a ‘bit’ of chaos. They suggest he return tomorrow, but Cortland waits anyway, in case. Squeaky wheel. Strike while the iron is hot, as he imagines again his presentation, his thoughts, his case, the reasons why he will declare he is the situation’s only savior.
He waits and waits, thinks and thinks more, spinning the future in his mind. Would they sell him the project, could they, while Daphne recovers? He has not spoken to Daphne since that final glass went spinning past his nose, or to Margie either, since his second call early Friday morning after Margie’s call informing and then blaming him for the mess he’d left behind and Daphne… as the sirens whined in the background. “How could he? How could he?” Surely, she has dragged her off to somewhere else by now. It was he, Cortland, after all, who had then called back to check on her survival and said, “Get her out of there.” … the hospital.
If…If he can arrange this, and buy it cheap enough, he might end up rich and richer, when he sells the place in a year or two, when it all turns around again. How stodgy were the bankers, how much might they wish to just get out? Cortland’s inner wheels are spinning. He and the bank were on the same footing only months ago.
Courtland waits into the afternoon and when he finally speaks to the first Vice President, Benjamin Dykster, he is told they appreciated his help after Tim’s death, and they may again, but for the moment, they will wait to see what happens, give it a week. That builder, Wilson, “He might just keep building.” His bank has called, and Daphne has for some reason postdated one of the checks, an accident but another wrinkle. They could just not honor it. Two checks, one for yesterday, the other by accident or by intent postdated to next week. Two checks. Why would she do that, anyway? But, if Daphne is in recovery, if she was not of sound mind, if she now is not of sound mind… Let it rest for the moment. Trustworthy, her trust… might get its money out, and then sell it to him or give him an option upon completion. Perhaps he might sign a contract to finish the project, take charge for the bank, for Daphne, then, if, if, but they will need to wait to speak to Daphne. “Give it a couple of weeks” repeats Dykster, as Courtland explains that he thinks he could hire Wilson’s foreman. They could use Daphne’s extravagance, the crash, to get out of the contract. Cortland thinks he could save them money. But the banker cautions. “Time, time. We will speak again.”
And he had really tried. Listening, hustling… Caring more, at least convincingly pretending. The poor woman was out of her depth, has had a breakdown. Someone, Cortland, who possibly better, needs now to take charge to finish the place. But Dykster says again, “Wait.” So, Courtland departs for the moment, planning to return tomorrow to repeat his interest, and perhaps if things are bad, they should sell it to him at a bargain to make the trust whole, Daphne’s loss, his gain. Wilson’s contract was really with Stevens wasn’t it, and he’s dead… almost a year… Perhaps there is no valid contract now. If he can find that this is the case… that they should not provide Daphne with any more money because nothing legal exists with Wilson? Then it and he… an arrangement may be possible… The trust, might wish, might need to sell it to him. He must make sure that Wilson continues working! Use his integrity, his principles… Against him! Until he makes this deal.
Wilson walks the hillside. Today has become tomorrow. He travels, down the slope until he reaches his beach, intent on order, where he observes the detritus that has washed up since the last storm and then returns up the hill for a wheelbarrow and then back down, then up again, to dispose of the assorted lake trash… Half plastic things and Styrofoam, the remains of misguided happy meals, man’s mess, fast food and grocery plastics, transferred from boat to shore, littering his bit of beach. When he finishes, his beach is raked and cleaned. To the south, his neighbor’s property, a few hundred feet distant, past the cattails and tubular lake weed, remains fouled and littered. The contrast is a statement of his industry. A quick film shot or video would show it.
Next door the same dam mess remains, and elsewhere all along the untended shoreline. All the crap that we now know breaks down into smaller and smaller eroding parts, eventually diminished to the size of molecules that will invade all creatures, the world, and man himself, his blood supply, the air, the lakes, the sea and sky, the food chain, the 20th centuries gift to the 21st.
But Wilson knows nothing of this future. He simply dislikes the plastic clutter Except that some of the detritus is so small that he can see the small foam white beneath his toes, unrecoverable, unremovable on his now cleaned beach, impossible to lift from every grain of sand, bits of plastic still unrecognized as a future blood pollutant in this end of the 20th century. But just enough to form the kernel of a thought, that more than mess may be wrong here… All this damn plastic. However; it is the future present that occupies Wilson’s thoughts… Tomorrow, the next day and the days and months to follow. He has no time for the next century… For what his blood and organs may be screaming, in ten or twenty years, possibly with shouts of Cancer.
What will happen? Chateau Daphne. Is he safe? Is he at risk? Will he continue to finish that problematic house that he must now admit is part of him… Almost as much a part of him as the one he lives in? How odd, her house, Tim’s house, that it and stone and steel, wood and concrete and thought… His thoughts and ideas. That this old saddle effigy has captured him. But it has. It is a part of him now… ideas and labor… That porch, that long veranda with its stone and turrets, gables and arched glass, sitting on that Longbottom promontory. He accepts that he will and now must be cautiously tenacious not to toss it all aside. He is too entwined.
His eyes follow the shore, then move outwards to the bay where the Anomie’s reflected hull and mast form a perfect mirror image. Real and refracted, two boats inverse to one another, one real and one not, joined like Siamese twins where the Anomie’s hull meets the water… before the image vanishes with the rising breeze.
Sailing, sun, his boat. He should go to the job, but the Anomie beckons with the ripples on the water.
He does not bother to start the engine. The breeze is sufficient and constant enough to carry him without it. So, he tosses off the mooring and unfurls the headsail, which sends him slow and softly up and out the bay where he turns into the wind hauling the mainsail up the mast, first hand over hand, and then with the winch as the wing begins to fill, then tug against the mainsheet… gazing upwards and sheeting in until he is satisfied with the winged shape… the Anomie tilts with a shallow heel, moving now towards the greater lake, Longbottom Land, and Chateau Daphne.
From a distance the building rises, expanding in the center thrusting upward, massive, defined at one end by the great chimney as the ridges step down to the north and in the southeastern wing by the maid/guest quarters stair turret. In front of this is the straight long shaded covered porch, with windows where the porch transforms into the dining room radius. No question, it is grand. Another Abernathy statement on the water.
The water churns and swirls down the sides of the yacht. And the sun shines bright and warm on the decks of the Anomie, as his eyes follow the sun’s reflection toward the shore where it also reflects off the black surface of a pickup pulled up next to the tool trailer. Wilson recognizes the truck as Potts’, with its stacked ladders. Odd for his foreman to be there on a Saturday. More likely, he should be observing Indian Dick’s vehicle. Dick is the one who shows up on weekends to do the organizing, check on supplies, and make sure all tools are in repair and functioning, ready for the week ahead.
But it is not Dick. It is Potts, and strange, or perhaps not. Possibly Potts is there concerned after the crash, there for that extra effort, because Pott's like Wilson and probably the rest of the team are uncertain where the job is heading. Still, not normal, strange, and for a moment Wilson suffers a slight shudder of foreboding.
But this does not last long. The shadow passes and as the Anomie bubbles by he goes below to put on the waltz from La Traviata to accompany his rolling reach toward Boyd City. Later, he may think about it, but not now as he feels the wind, and hull, and keel, surge beneath his feet, a vibration and hum of water passing faster and faster cavitating at the juncture of keel and rudder as he grips the wheel and rocks slightly fore and aft, smiling at the sky… For the moment he is a part of the boat, he and his craft as one, feeling its tempo through his feet, riding the building waves, as he touches satisfaction amidst the beauty of day and lake and sky, and water sparkling off the waves. Sunlight scattered bright enough to hurt the eye, peace, a remembered adventure, a moment when his mind can go blank in a dance down the lake with Verdi in ¾ time. Forgetting the past week, the crash, and any potential future problems, as morning transitions into afternoon.
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