Chapter 19: The Hull

We didn't speak on the drive home.

Silvan parked the truck at the shop, and I got out and stood in the dark yard with the Sound lapping at the pilings.

I had no phone call to make and no door to knock on.

I had a text from a man who had never once won an argument with his mother, and eight hours.

"Come inside," Silvan said.

"I don't want the loft."

He looked at me.

I walked past him and put my hand on the shop door.

The big room smelled of cedar and varnish.

A work lamp burned over the cradle at the far end.

A twenty-two-foot launch sat there on its stocks, half planked, with the pale ribs still showing on one side.

He had been rebuilding her for a year.

I kicked off my shoes.

"Rochelle."

"I stood in front of three hundred people tonight," I said. "I'm tired of being the one things happen to."

"Tell me what you want."

"I want you to stand where I put you."

I took him by the lapels and walked him backward to the hull.

He went without a word.

At the open side I pushed the jacket off his shoulders, and he let it fall.

I took hold of his shirt and pulled it out of his belt.

His chest moved under my hands.

"You stood at the back of my wedding," I said.

"I did."

"Not tonight."

I climbed over the low gunwale in my stockings, into the hull, and held out my hand.

He took it, and came in after me.

On the bottom boards lay a canvas tarp and his folded work coat, and I pushed him down onto them.

The raw ribs rose around us on both sides, with the lamp coming through them in long stripes.

He lay on his back and looked up at me with that open, raw face, and I knelt astride his hips.

I undid his buttons one at a time.

I took my time on purpose, and watched what it did to him.

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