Storm Tide Read Online Free PDF Page A

If this is a bad time—”
    “You’re damned right it is, when supposed college graduates can’teven remember the author of a book assigned in almost every college in this country for well over a decade. Why did you call me, then? Why waste my time?”
    That evening, just before closing, Judith called. “Hello, David.”
    In my most professional voice: “I called to tell you your order arrived.”
    “Thank you. I have to apologize for Gordon. I hope you weren’t insulted. From what I understand, he was less than gracious on the phone.”
    “Well, maybe we should forget it. Maybe it’s too late for this season.”
    “No, David. It’s a very good time. The ground here isn’t frozen yet.”
    It wasn’t that I didn’t think about Judith. The steam escaping her lips in the yard. The way her eyes held mine, like a cat’s: eyelids slowly lowering to withhold what seemed offered only a moment before. But she was married to what sounded like a nasty and possessive man. What was the point?
    On New Year’s Eve, I made an obligatory stop at the party of a good customer. Perched on top of a sand dune overlooking the Atlantic, the house was barely livable in winter. Blowing sand pitted the mammoth windows and shrouded the work I had done on the gardens—which would guarantee another fine contract when the owners returned in spring. I did not intend to stay. This wasn’t my crowd.
    For as long as Saltash has attracted summer visitors, it has had a tax-paying population of painters and writers, ex-commies and anarchists, and dating back at least to the early 1950s a colony of old Time-Life people. They had retired to vacation homes bought decades ago or spent long summers here, sometimes eight months long, May through December, before going south for the winter or returning to an apartment in New York. I did landscape work for a Professor Emeritus from Yale; an ex-commissar in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade; a researcher who claimed to have written much of John Hersey’s war reportage. Some of them had been around for my glory days in Little League. They were friendly, but they weren’t my friends. They were articulate and glib, fond of whiskey and wisecracks I didn’t always understand. The truth is, they liked having a local guy to talk to, but I wasn’t quick enough to interest them in conversation. Moreover, this being the holidays, many of their children were at the party, ex-prep-schoolers who’d summered together since they were kids and whose conversations bragged about their accomplishments since. Backed into a pissing contest between a foreign correspondent covering China and a playwright whose agent atWilliam Morris said Swoozie and Olympia were dying to star in her new play, I excused my way to the buffet table for one more sandwich before going home. As I reached for the roast beef I overheard someone say, “So you and Gordon are a childless couple?”
    “Is that like a burpless cucumber?” Judith smiled, but her stare was as sharp as cut glass.
    “But you don’t have any children?”
    “We thought about it,” Judith said. “But decided on a sex life instead. Actually we have five children and six grandchildren. Hello, David.” Judith turned her back on the other woman. “I’m glad you’re here. I want to ask you something.”
    She was wearing a black velvet dress, a slender string of natural pearls like baby teeth across her bare upper breast. I followed her to a dimly lit corner near the huge bay windows, and in the glass reflection, instinctively tried to catch sight of her husband.
    “I couldn’t really ask you on the phone,” she said, so softly I had to lean close to hear. “I was afraid you’d say no. Promise you won’t say no until you think about it.”
    I was about to touch her. I was about to make a fool of myself, when she said: “There are a number of people in town who say you’d make a good selectman.”
    Talk about a cold shower. “Me?” Ridiculous. I wasn’t sure how