Dreams in the Key of Blue Read Online Free PDF

she said.
    “What’s the salad dressing?”
    “Olive oil, tarragon. Oh, that’s right. You’re a food freak.”
    I laughed. “I think I might phrase it differently. How do you know so much about me?”
    “When I heard you were coming to Harbor, I did some research, mostly on the Internet.”
    “You mean that my love of food is floating around in the electronic ether?”
    “That and a lot more.”
    “My life is an open byte,” I said. “You wanted to ask me about corporate crime.”
    She wiped her mouth with her napkin and shot glances around the crowded restaurant. “When I was a sophomore, before I got my internship with Martin International…”
    At that moment, Stu Gilman walked into the restaurant. He spotted us immediately and made his jerky way to our table.
    “God, I don’t believe his timing,” Jaycie said.
    “Lucas, Jaycie,” Gilman said, with head bobs that might have been greetings or minor seizures. “Beautiful day. Enjoying lunch?”
    “Excellent food,” I said.
    Jaycie said nothing.
    “Showing Dr. Frank our eateries?” he asked.
    Her face reddened. She smiled, nodded, and rearranged the few remaining home fries on her plate.
    “Well,” Gilman rumbled in a lower register, “gotta get my lobster roll. Enjoy the day.”
    Jaycie watched Gilman waddle to the counter. “Let’s go,” she said.
    She was silent as we drove to the village.
    “Gilman rubs you the wrong way,” I said.
    She hesitated. “Yeah.”
    “Anything you want to talk about?” I asked, leaving the option entirely to Jaycie.
    After a moment she said, “I guess not.”
    “What about sophomore year?”
    “Not that either, I guess.”
    I nodded. I liked Jaycie Waylon. That may sound like an odd statement, but I don’t like many people.
    Gilman’s arrival at the restaurant had startled and silenced Jaycie. Whatever distressed her would eventually surface, I thought. She had assumed the role of my personal guide to the school and the village. We would have other opportunities to discuss white-collar crime.
    Jaycie dropped me at the house, then headed to her Saturday class.
    I completed my reclamation project on the house, and curled onto the sofa with pen and pad. The class had already suggested directions for itself: aggression, the male propensity for aggression, male sexual pathology, the politics of gender, theories of serial violence, and exceptions to the theories.
    All I had to do, I thought, was put a little meat on the bare bones, and I had the next five months knocked.

I HATE SUNDAYS.
    When I was young, church was mandatory. The minister was a gentle, wise Frenchman who seemed to know something about everything. The building was an architectural dream, a stone mini-cathedral perched on the bank of a river. That my attendance there on Sundays was required was an abomination.
    My mother issued the order; my sister enforced it.
    “Why do I have to?” I whined.
    “Ma says,” my sister said.
    “That’s not a reason.”
    “Change your pants.”
    “If Ma said, ‘Chop off your brother’s head,’ would you do it?”
    “Where’s that blue sweater I like?”
    Even the light was different on Sunday. It flooded the living room—yellow, dull, dusty.
    “It’s holy light,” my sister said.
    “The air is putrid,” I muttered.
    My sister took my hand. “We’ll be late for the bus.”
    Now, years later but with the same Sunday angst, I yanked on my jeans, grabbed a flannel shirt, and shuffledin my moccasins to the kitchen to make coffee. I gazed through the window at the overcast day and watched as an unmarked police cruiser pulled into the driveway.
    Herb Jaworski was a short, two-hundred-pound man whose curly hair remained black, despite his sixty-five years. He arrived at my door attired in coveralls and a red wool jacket. During my few days in Maine, it had become clear to me that this was “the Maine uniform.” It was also the uniform of the Ragged Harbor Police Department. Jaworski had been chief of