The New Moon's Arms Read Free Page B

in a little plastic cup, some fluorescent pink punch I hadn’t. I sipped it. My left eye spasmed against the sour-sweet chemical taste. “Jesus,” I said. “Who bring this?”
    “Me,” answered Gene. “You don’t like it?”
    He looked like somebody had kicked his puppy. I resigned myself and took a big gulp of the drink. I swallowed hard. “It’s wonderful,” I told him. “Just what I needed.”
    He beamed and patted my hand. I found myself gripping his hand back like a lifeline. I squeezed my eyes shut to blink back the sudden tears. Opened them again. With a sad smile, Gene nodded, gave my hand a firm squeeze. We stayed like that for a second or two. “You want me bring you some more?” he asked.
    I released my hold. “Of the drink? Oh, no. That was quite enough.”
    Mrs. Soledad stepped between us, neatly eclipsing Gene. For a little old woman, she knew how to take up space. She hugged me. “He on the next leg of the journey now,” she said. “One day you and he will catch up.”
    I murmured a thank you. I didn’t know how else to respond. She cotched herself on the padded arm of my chair. “Don’t worry,” she said, seeing me get up to offer her my chair. “This suit me better.”
    Mrs. Soledad had been Dadda’s neighbour. Her family had been salt farmers on Dolorosse since way back. She wouldn’t tell anyone her age. Her standard answer was “Somewhere between sixty and ‘oh God.’” She used to sit with Dadda when I was at work.
    “I guess I won’t be coming by the house so much any more.”
    “I guess so.”
    “You know what you going to do yet?”
    I shook my head.
    Mrs. Soledad went to the big island only when she absolutely had to. She had a quarter-acre salt pond on her property where she still farmed solar salt, the way she and her husband and their families used to do. No way they could compete with the Gilmor Saline factory, but Mrs. Soledad sent her specialty salts to big island on the workers’ co-op boat every few weeks, to be sold in the Cayaba tourist market. She and Mr. Soledad had sent their son to university on salt—first one in both their families to get a degree—and she wasn’t going stop now. For food, she phoned her order in to Boulton’s grocery on the big island and paid on her credit card. The grocery delivered the food in boxes to the waterbus. She would put on some of her dead husband’s working clothes, meet the waterbus at the Dolorosse docks, pile everything into a wheelbarrow, and haul it up to her house. If you offered to help her with it, she would blister your ears for you with some choice swear words. Dadda once joked that if her bark was this bad, he never wanted to feel her bite. And she was hale. Hiked from one end of Blessée to the other every day, for exercise.
    But right now, she simply sat beside me, in silence. The most settling silence I’d had all day. This was a side of her I hadn’t seen before. Hell, I’d never seen her in a dress before. In a little bit, my shoulders eased down from around my ears. I took a deep breath. “Nice hat,” I said. “Impressive.”
    Mrs. Soledad preened. Today’s confection was a smart little black pillbox with a huge peacock feather thrust through it and curling around the nape of her neck. The feather started off black at its base, and prismed to iridescent greens and purples at its tip. A scrunched half-veil in black netting completed the look. “You like it?” she asked.
    “It suits you.” I hoped she wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t exactly answering her question. Where was Gene? I tried not to make it too obvious I was looking around for him.
    Mrs. Soledad never went without a hat. “Protecting my head from the cancers,” she would say, pointing at the sun. I’d never seen her wear the same hat twice, and she liked them old-fashioned, gaudy, and extravagant. As far as Mrs. Soledad was concerned, every day was an Easter parade. She was Hindu, but that was just a minor