Envious Moon Read Free Page B

last thing she wanted was for me to worry about her. Which meant that her moaning was involuntary and that she could not do a damn thing about it. I didn’t know how I would tell her I got all this money. But I figured I’d worry about that later. The important thing was what it could do for us. If it could change our lives. If it could take us away from the narrow pathways we had always walked on to something different. We were young and when you are young you think there are shortcuts out there that you only need to find. Shortcuts that older people have kept from us. Both Victor and I believed that this might be one of those. And that it could alter our lives. As it turned out, it could. Just not in the way we had imagined.
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    V ictor and I left the following night under clear skies. The moon had appeared as only a sliver above the harbor and the breeze was light. We were in my fourteen-foot skiff, the one that had been my father’s, and the most important thing was the breeze. We were going through open water and anything more than a light chop could be trouble.
    I steered the skiff through the rows of fishing boats docked in the inner harbor. Under the lamplights on the wharf we saw men on the decks of boats readying themselves to go out the next morning. Some of them looked up at us as we went by and when they did they waved or nodded at us in the dark.
    We left the moorings behind us and the water opened up and I pulled down on the throttle and picked up speed. I followed the buoys toward the mouth. There were other skiffs and men pulling pots in the moonlight. A large trawler returning from Georges Bank came within thirty feet of us and we saw the shadows of men leaning against the railing. I didn’t recognize the boat or the men on it but I had been to sea enough times to know what they were thinking. In their minds they were already on land. The catch had been unloaded and the holds scrubbed.They were sitting in the bar, the open ocean growing more distant with each draft.
    We passed the lighthouse at Point Judith and then the breakwater. Behind us the lights of the village shrank to pinpricks. We were in the sound now. This was water I had known my whole life. I knew where all the shoals and shallows were and I kept us away from them. To our right the dark humpback of land stretched toward Connecticut. To our left was Narragansett Bay and we could see the lights of freighters at the edge of the sky. There was the gentle breeze that blew my hair back and if it was not for what we were about to do, I would have relaxed into the ride. I would have enjoyed myself.
    Even though the chop was light the hull of the small skiff still smacked against the water and we did not try to talk. We stood side by side, and in front of us the island began to take shape in the dark.
    Soon we were close enough that we could make out the high dark bluffs. I turned the skiff to starboard, and we began to trace the western side of the island. The harbor and the main village were on the eastern side and there were no lights here. When we got closer, the ocean was shallow and I throttled down as we rode in the lee of the bluffs and we could hear each other clearly now.
    â€œThis is fucking crazy,” Victor said.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œWe don’t have to do this, Tony,” he said. Victor was the only one who called me Tony. I preferred Anthony but it was okay with me if Victor called me Tony.
    â€œLet’s just find the cove,” I said. “Then we can bail if we want.”
    I agreed though I had already made up my mind that I wasgoing to go through with it. I kept thinking about all the money for college, and about my father. I pictured myself walking with those college girls in Providence. What my father would think if he saw me.
    I studied the island to my left. I had only been on it a few times, and not since I was little. We always thought of it as a place for tourists. A lot of the girls we