end of his nose as he scribbled in a ledger, a stubby pencil gripped in his right hand and a lit cigarette in his other. At least Anders thought it was a cigarette. But the man dispensed with it in such a smooth, quick motion, his hand disappearing beneath the desk, that Anders would have thought he’d imagined it altogether if not for the telltale wisp of smoke rising up in the air. When the captain turned his attention to Anders, his face morphed from alarmed to relieved to annoyed. “Thought you were my wife,” he muttered. He opened a squeaky desk drawer and reached for a new cigarette out of the pack stashed there.
Anders nearly apologized for startling the man, but then remembered why he was there. “Has the ferry departure time been postponed?” Anders asked. The captain brought the cigarette to his lips and lit it with the flick of his thumb on a red lighter. He glanced at Anders, then back at his work.
“No,” he said, the cigarette impressively staying put between his lips
“Oh. Good.” When the man didn’t say more, or appear to be finishing up what he was doing, Anders pointed his thumb in the marina’s direction. “Should I just go wait on the boat?”
“Suppose you could, if you want,” the man said, without looking up.
Confused, Anders hesitated. When he realized the man wasn’t going to say anything else, he turned to walk back out the door.
“You’ll be waiting awhile, if you’re trying to get back to the mainland.”
“What? I thought you said it wasn’t postponed.”
“It’s not.”
“What do you mean?” Anders asked.
“Boat left at three today. On account of the weather.”
“What? How was I supposed to know?”
He shrugged, scribbling in the book with his pencil. “I announced it four times on the ride over. And again when we docked.”
Shocked, Anders wondered how he had missed it. Then he remembered his earbuds and inwardly groaned. “I had my headphones on . . . I didn’t hear.”
The man didn’t respond and panic started to grip Anders. “How do I get back to the mainland? I need to get back.”
The man finally plucked the cigarette from between his lips and tapped the ash into a coffee mug on the desk, while his eyes grazed Anders’s face once more. “Walk around the docks long enough, you might could find a waterman’ll take you. If the price is right, anyway. Otherwise, you’ll need to find a place to hunker down. There’s a motel should have room.”
“You mean spend the night?” Anders asked, appalled.
“I reckon. ’Less you up for some long-distance swimming.”
Back outside, huddled beneath the awning over the office door, Anders glanced around the dock. There wasn’t a soul in sight. And he was overcome with a surreal feeling—a familiar one that he had encountered a few times since moving to Maryland, a sense that this wasn’t his real life. He was stranded on an island in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, in the middle of a downpour, with no cell service, and worse, he realized, a story due for tomorrow’s paper, with no way to file it. He’d never missed a deadline, and the anxiety of it gnawed his belly. He stood for a minute cursing the rain. Then he reopened the door and stepped back into the marina office.
“Can I use your phone?”
* * *
—
When Anders stepped back out into the storm twenty minutes later, having explained the situation in private (BobDan had generously shut himself in what appeared to be a smaller office room within the office and turned up the radio) and dictated all his quotes and observations to Greta to fill the six inches (they’d have to go without a photo, and Greta would have to call Lady Judy for the final fundraising number), the anxiety had lifted from his belly, but another feeling had taken its place: ravenous hunger. He hadn’t eaten since the morning’s Pop-Tarts, and saliva pooled in his mouth as he recalled the thick frosting painted on those cakes. He needed to secure lodging, but his first priority would have to be food. Remembering the restaurant he’d passed, Anders retraced his steps out of the marina and entered the One-Eyed Crab wet as a dog.
While the docks and the road leading from it had been bereft of people—nearly a ghost town—the inside of the restaurant was surprisingly bustling with life, people crowded at wooden tables and at the length of a rustic bar lined with Christmas lights, their voices commingling