shell game

Would they come for him tonight or tomorrow? Or, given the island factor, the next day? Bobby turned off all the lights and climbed up the ladder into the loft. The stars out the skylight were really something. He lay fully clothed with his hands behind his head. Well, he had blown the two o’clock boat picking up Merry, and the five o’clock waiting with the freaking cops.  Funny how island life was controlled by the rhythm of the ferry schedule. The newspaper in on the 9:00. The mail on the 11:30.  The Daddy Boat at 6:00 on Fridays. His life particularly. He was going to miss out on Memorial Day weekend taxi business if he read the oracles right. Didn’t need to throw the I Ching to figure that one out.

    “Well, shit,” he said aloud. He’d have to tell Dana to find another driver. But thanks to that last shingling job, he was owed a bunch of money. And the Bakers would pay just as soon as they came out for the season. The cabin was okay forever, assuming the Cooper kids didn’t sell. Which they never would, because they couldn’t agree about anything. They never came out anyway. They had an even bigger spread on the Vineyard, Block Island’s rich cousin.

      He loved his cabin as much as Merry loved her old family house. He had built it himself one summer, while he lived on the boat. And over the years, quite a few now, he had tricked it out with stones and driftwood, sea glass and shells. All delicate, of course; the cabin itself was tiny, just 10 x 20. It was his art house, his finest sculpture, a little decorated box to live in.  Everything was stowed neatly in spaces like a puzzle. You had to be tidy in a small space.

        Bobby was used to living in small spaces. Like boats. And prison.

        Nobody knew about that except Merry. And soon so would her son Joseph and the whole rest of the island.

         Well, at least there was nothing incriminating around the place. He liked to smoke a bone sometimes before having sex, but he wasn’t having a lot since Kate left the island after last summer’s fling. Kate. Katie. Sometimes it seemed like every damn woman in the world was named Catherine. Or Katherine. Anyway.

        The stars were beautiful without. He gazed at them until his pulse steadied and he slept.