The Fisher Boy Read Free

confided that she was already having trouble with customers, this early. “There are so many street kids this year! It’s worse than the Summer of Love.” In her mid-fifties, Miriam was old enough to have experienced Haight-Ashbury in its prime, but back then she had been at boarding school in Lausanne, a Nixon Republican addicted to skiing, before the Peace Corps, social work, and motherhood altered her views. Miriam had burnt out doing social work, bringing the job home, taking the cases to heart. Making jewelry, dealing with gemstones and precious metals instead of broken lives, was infinitely less burdensome. She reported that Chloe, her three-year-old, was growing like the proverbial weed, spending the day at her shop, where the cashier was doubling as babysitter.
    “I see you’re enjoying the bouillabaisse,” I said to Miriam. She tended toward vegetarianism when not lapsing into chicken or fish, but found the bouillabaisse “heaven.” And she had been reluctant to try it. “I got sick eating mussels once, in Barcelona.”
    “Edward made it,” I said.
    “So the treasure can cook,” Miriam whispered. “Does anyone else know Edward? I mean, he just came in with the tide. Arthur found him sleeping on the beach in back of the house.” She reverted to social work jargon, to M.S.W.-speak: “Marginal people can have issues.”
    So many guests were congregating on the terrace that plants in the garden were being damaged, some impatiens flattened, some hibiscus crushed. On Arthur’s silver maple, the leaves, upturned in the wind, looked dusted with metal.
    “Oh, there’s Roger Morton,” Miriam said, as a man as thin as his malacca cane came weaving through the crowd. His bony fingers were crowded with rings, with onyx, black opals, and rectangles of turquoise, and his vest from India was sewn with dozens of tiny, round mirrors.
    “Do you know him well? Could you introduce us?” I asked Miriam.
    Just then the twins, suddenly sporting strands of pearls, swooped onto Roger and began a conversation which threatened to be long.
    “We have this improv troupe,” Roberto told Miriam. “We need a break so bad!”
    “I think Roger books his acts by March.” Sensing our desperation, Miriam had become a little distant, and was also gazing distrustfully at her bouillabaisse.
    Then Roger Morton, his cane stabbing the flagstones, nudged the twins, Roberto, and me aside to greet Miriam, saying, “How wonderful to see you! I’ve refurbished the White Gull from top to bottom. You’ve got to see it!”
    Besides Quahog, Roger Morton owned the White Gull, Provincetown’s most elegant guest house, with its deep pillared porches, cobalt-blue hydrangeas, and an iron fountain of Triton blowing a horn of water. Roger recounted the improvements he’d made to the White Gull, then asked Miriam, “Have I mentioned the Great Furnace Catastrophe?” Roberto and I hovered at Miriam’s side, our smiles fixed on our faces, waiting for the caboose of Roger’s long train of thought. Miriam glanced sympathetically in our direction, but the color was draining from her face.
    “I hope I’m not boring you,” Roger said.
    “No, I think it’s this bouillabaisse,” said Miriam, whose slouch Roberto was imitating until I glared to make him stop.
    Then something clattered, like a trashcan tipping over. It came from Arthur’s direction, by the back steps to the house. Arthur was laughing, and so was Edward, at his side and holding something circular that shone like brass.
    “Excuse me, excuse me!” Arthur was shouting in his stage voice. “I have an announcement! Whoever sold me this Chinese gong owes me a refund. No wonder the Empress Dowager wanted to get rid of it!” While Edward hung the gong back on its teakwood rack, Arthur continued to speak, smiling and twisting his signet ring, his polka-dot bowtie askew, but his enjoyment of an audience undiminished.
    “Of course, I gave this party to welcome you all to