Cape Cod Noir - By David L Ulin Page 0,76

It glides down the hall, rustling as it swoons.

“I have a craving for sea air,” the Untoward Specter says, “and the Hands of the Orphans have offered to arrange an excursion.”

Lord Lumpish fiddles with his cuff links. “I fear that none of us are ready for a game of pies,” he says.

6.

In his usual booth at Jack’s Outback, Ted sits with his grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato on white bread, his fruit cup in a bowl. Because fruit cup in a cup just isn’t enough fruit cup.

He’s nervous about Neglected Guests. Something is lacking in the third act. The Three Widows of North Varnish have a secret he can’t quite get at. He, who made them with his own two hands.

No, what’s really bothering him is that he can’t place what’s bothering him. It makes him grumpy, having to worry about all these other people. And yet every summer, another script dashed off, more puppets, more rehearsals. Actors! They’re the very opposite of cats, always wanting you to know what they think.

There’s one last grape in his bowl. He tries to get it onto his fork, but the grape rolls and rolls, eluding him.

“Get you your check?” asks Ellie.

“No!” Ted says, much louder than he’d intended, and he and Ellie both are startled.

7.

Perry climbs onto the deck of the Murasaki and holds up a paper bag full of egg sandwiches. “Egg sandwiches!” he says. He made them himself.

The other guys working the restoration job set down their hammers and chisels and brushes. They shuffle over and take the wrapped packages from the bag, muttering thanks.

“I get to wear a beard in this play I’m in,” Perry says. “I’m like some kind of king, you know? I have my own greensward.”

The others pass around a bottle of ketchup.

“The guy who wrote it is crazy, just crazy. He’s directing too. You know who he is. That poster, with all the kids and how they died? It’s hilarious.”

One of them says between mouthfuls, “Yeah, dead kids, funny,” and the others chuckle.

“Everyone in the play is awesome and we all get along great,” Perry says. “I mean, I don’t like them better than I like you guys or anything.”

They’re all chewing, looking at their feet or at the water or at other boats.

“Though there is this one girl,” he says.

This gets their attention for a moment, but Perry knows how that will go: the whistles, the ugly winks and uglier questions.

“Anyway,” he says, “the show’s this weekend. You should all come! Wait till you see the part about the pies.”

For a moment the others think maybe he brought pies in addition to the sandwiches, but then they figure out that he’s still talking about the play, and they shake their heads and wipe their mouths on their shirtsleeves and get back to work.

8.

Aggie, at home, has to take off the Hands of the Orphans so she can answer the phone. It’s Jared. He sounds like he’s trying to swallow something.

“I have bad news,” Jared says. It’s about Otto, the dog. Their dog, though he lives with Jared now.

Aggie tries to keep to the facts. “What does the vet say?”

“I have to bring him back on Tuesday. But it doesn’t look good.”

“What does that mean, doesn’t look good?”

Jared’s voice goes hard. “Look, I thought you might want to know. So you can make time to see him, if it comes to that.”

“Comes to what, Jared?”

“I shouldn’t have called,” he says, and then there’s another voice in the background—Honey? it says, or is Aggie imagining things?—and then the line goes dead.

9.

At the bar, Carl takes his beer onto the deck and finds Alex alone, staring out over the pond. He touches her shoulder and says, “Listen, I feel like things are all wrong between us. Maybe we can talk this out.”

“Things are all wrong between us?”

“Come on.”

She brings her face to within a few inches of his and says, “Take your hand off my shoulder, Carl.”

He pulls away as though he’s been burned. “It’s Perry, isn’t it?”

She doesn’t answer, but he swears he can feel some kind of heat coming off her. And something else, like maybe she enjoys this.

“Poor, simple Perry,” he says. “That your kind of guy?”

He grabs her shoulder again and moves to kiss her, but Alex hits him in the gut and knocks his beer off the railing. In the moment that he flails for it, she heads for the door. Plop! goes the mug into the water, and Alex is gone