The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [27]
“Hey? Been down to the Ocean Wave?” said Lawrence softly, raising his head as if to call through the ceiling. “Old bugger wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said. “Wouldn’t’ve known fifty years ago any better than now. I don’t let any of my crews go near that place. Do I, Eugene?”
Eugene blushed. He put on a solemn expression, as if he was being badgered by a teacher at school.
“Eugene, now, he don’t have to,” Vincent said.
“Isn’t it true what I’m saying?” said Lawrence urgently, as if some body had been disputing with him. “It’s true, isn’t it?”
He looked at Vincent, and Vincent said, “Yeah. Yeah.” He did not seem to relish the subject as much as Lawrence did.
“You’d think it was all so innocent here,” said Lawrence to Lydia. “Innocent! Oh, boy!”
Lydia went upstairs to get a quarter that she owed Lawrence from the last game. When she came out of her room into the dark hall, Eugene was standing there, looking out the window.
“I hope it don’t storm too bad,” he said.
Lydia stood beside him, looking out. The moon was visible, but misty.
“You didn’t grow up near the water?” she said.
“No, I didn’t.”
“But if you get the two-thirty boat it’ll be all right, won’t it?”
“I sure hope so.” He was quite childlike and unembarrassed about his fear. “One thing I don’t like the idea of is getting drownded.”
Lydia remembered that as a child she had said “drownded.” Most of the adults and all the children she knew then said that.
“You won’t,” she said, in a firm, maternal way. She went downstairs and paid her quarter.
“Where’s Eugene?” Lawrence said. “He upstairs?”
“He’s looking out the window. He’s worried about the storm.” Lawrence laughed. “You tell him to go to bed and forget about it.
He’s right in the room next to you. I just thought you ought to know in case he hollers in his sleep.”
LYDIA HAD FIRST SEEN Duncan in a bookstore, where her friend Warren worked. She was waiting for Warren to go out to lunch with her. He had gone to get his coat. A man asked Shirley, the other clerk in the store, if she could find him a copy of The Persian Letters. That was Duncan. Shirley walked ahead of him to where the book was kept, and in the quiet store Lydia heard him saying that it must be difficult to know where to shelve The Persian Letters. Should it be classed as fiction or as a political essay? Lydia felt that he revealed something, saying this. He revealed a need that she supposed was common to customers in the bookstore, a need to distinguish himself, appear knowledgeable. Later on she would look back on this moment and try to imagine him again so powerless, slightly ingratiating, showing a bit of neediness. Warren came back with his coat on, greeted Duncan, and as he and Lydia went outside Warren said under his breath, “The Tin Wood-man.” Warren and Shirley livened up their days with nicknames for customers; Lydia had already heard of Marble-Mouth, and Chickpea and the Colonial Duchess. Duncan was the Tin Wood-man. Lydia thought they must call him that because of the smooth gray overcoat he wore, and his hair, a bright gray which had obviously once been blond. He was not thin or angular and he did not look as if he would be creaky in the joints. He was supple and well-fleshed and dignified and pleasant; fair-skinned, freshly groomed, glistening.
She never told him about that name. She never told him that she had seen him in the bookstore. A week or so later she met him at a publisher’s party. He did not remember ever seeing her before, and she supposed he had not seen her, being occupied with chatting to Shirley.
Lydia trusts what she can make of things, usually. She trusts what she thinks about her friend Warren, or his friend Shirley, and about chance acquaintances, like the couple who run the guest-house, and Mr. Stanley, and the men she has been playing cards with. She thinks she knows why people behave as they do, and she puts more stock than she will admit in her own unproved theories and unjustified suspicions. But she is stupid and helpless when contemplating the collision