too.
10.
They take five, so Aggie brings her tools out to the truck. The sets are done, and she’ll need her own things if she’s going to finish those cabinets Ted wants for his place. She tosses the bag onto the floor of the cab, then climbs into the passenger seat and gets her cigarettes and lighter out of the glove box.
“Just one,” she says to the Hands of the Orphans, which are nestled on her lap.
The window is still spotted with Otto’s dried slobber, though it’s been months since he’s ridden in her truck. She keeps the window cracked while she smokes.
“The thing about Carl,” she says, “is that we’re both people who work with our hands.”
11.
En route to the shore, Lord Lumpish operates the handcar while the Untoward Specter acts as lookout. The Three Widows of North Varnish sit at the back, knitting scarves for their cats.
“I am not certain that fewer than three terrible things will happen to us today,” says the Untoward Specter.
“Are there any more cabbage sandwiches?” the widows want to know.
“If we must play a game of pies,” says Lord Lumpish, “I would like to be the baker. But who will be the pies?”
“The Hands of the Orphans will be the pies!” announces the Untoward Specter. “But where have they gone?”
“Here they are,” say the widows, who have accidentally knitted them into their scarves.
The Hands of the Orphans squirm in the yarn as the handcar rolls into a tunnel.
12.
Rehearsal runs late, and Carl misses the last ferry back to the Vineyard. Aggie offers to put him up at her place.
“Nothing special, but it’s cozy,” she says, and there’s something about the way she chooses these words. Like she herself is figuring out what she has to offer.
He follows her pickup out of town and onto a winding road off Route 2. The cottage looks like an Arts and Crafts throwback; she probably built the place herself. She leads him inside—front door isn’t locked—and he stands in the kitchen while she goes through the house, turning on lights in every room. “Open a bottle?” she calls.
There’s a little rack on the counter. None of the wines look good, but he settles on a Malbec that can’t be terrible. He’s rummaging through drawers, looking for a corkscrew, when he hears a man’s voice on the answering machine in the next room. Then hears, after a minute, the sound of Aggie weeping.
He sets the bottle down and walks into what probably used to be a dining room but is now a woodworking studio. Tools everywhere, and buckets of stain, and on a table a set of finished cabinets.
“Hey,” he says. “Hey, what happened?”
She’s sitting on the floor by the phone, rubbing her eyes with her fists. “Wednesday’s going to be my last day with Otto before he dies.”
Those cabinets are beautiful. Maybe he ought to hire her sometime.
“God, I’m so sorry,” he says, and kneels beside her. “Who’s Otto?”
Then Aggie has her arms around him, and her mouth is against his, and she’s moving her lips and nibbling.
He pushes her away. “I don’t think—”
She appears to wither a little, but she doesn’t start crying again. “You can take the bedroom,” she says, nodding toward the hall. “We’ll take the couch.”
“We?”
She looks startled, and her hand goes defensively to her pocket. Sticking out from it are five pale little hands.
13.
Perry drives out to Truro, to pick up Alex before rehearsal. She’s staying at her uncle’s place for the summer. The house is on a dirt road off another dirt road, at the top of a hill overlooking a salt marsh.
When she answers the door, she isn’t wearing pants.
“Wow, hi,” Perry greets her.
“I’ll be just a minute,” she says.
He follows her inside and closes the door behind him. He tries not to look at her thighs, but she snaps the elastic of her blue underpants as she goes into the bedroom. There are sounds of drawers opening and closing. “Hey,” she calls out to him, “if you were going to kill Carl, how would you do it?”
Alex is a year or two older than Perry, maybe twenty-eight, and he wants to be able to keep up with her. But he just laughs and can’t think of what to say.
“Something sharp, maybe?” she says. “Right through the eye? Or something weird. Some kind of poisonous sea creature on his chair.”
Perry says, “Hey, do you think Carl and Aggie—”
“Nope,” she cuts him off. “No way.”
There’s some kind of altar set up on