The Clinic Swore the Baby Was His, So He Stayed When It Wasn't novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Six-Ten

At ten past six the tug captain climbs to the bridge control house, lays down his terms, and she sets hers; below on the Lakewalk he says in public what he has wondered about for three years of her voice.

At ten past six the harbor radio said, "Bridge, Aurora."

I had not slept, and I had a mug of coffee going cold on the console.

The voice was the same as always, low and even and a little amused.

"Go ahead, Aurora," I said.

"Request a lift when you're ready, Bridge."

"And after, if you'd let me, a word."

I looked out the control house window at the gray lake, the white caps and his tug waiting in the canal.

"You're clear, Captain," I said. "Come up when you've tied off."

I lifted the span, and the Aurora went under with one long whistle.

A few minutes later I heard his boots on the stairs.

He ducked under the door frame and stood there with a manila envelope and a paper bag.

"Peppermints," he said, "and the clinic's log."

He set the bag on my console and unfolded one sheet.

It was a photocopy of a hand-written line.

Waara, 9:40, H-0918, in a tech's slanted pen.

"I took it so no one could say it wasn't there," Mats said.

"Do you always take what you need before you ask?"

"No," he said.

"I've asked you for two things."

He held up one finger and then another.

"I'd like a seat at every appointment, and I'd like a test the minute it's possible."

"A seat, yes," I said.

"A test, not now."

Something in my chest closed a notch, and I did not let him see it.

He wants paper, I thought, and he has not yet said my first name.

"Not now is a fair answer," Mats said.

I looked at the second hand on the wall clock.

"My next lift is at seven-thirty," I said.

"Do you want to see how this works?"

I stood, and he came and stood beside me at the controls.

He was bigger than the room.

He smelled of diesel and cold air and peppermint, and I had to look at the console to think.

"You've asked me for a lift a thousand times," I said.

"Have you ever felt one?"

"I've watched it from the water."

I put my hand on the lever.

"Put yours on mine."

He laid his hand over mine, broad and warm, with a pale burn scar running up the wrist.

I eased the lever and the whole span answered through the floor.

"Feel that?" I said.

"It wants to go. You just let it."

He went quiet, and his hand stayed where it was.

His thumb moved once across my knuckles.

I turned my face toward him without meaning to, and his eyes dropped to my mouth.

I could have closed the last inch.

"Take a number, Captain," I said.

He laughed, low, and took his hand away.

"I'm holding one," he said.

I walked him down at seven-fifteen, along the Lakewalk, where a dozen ship-watchers stood in the wind with thermoses.

A thousand-footer waited past the pier, and the tourists had their phones up.

"Bridge," Mats said, quietly, at my shoulder.

"For three years I've wondered what that voice sounds like when it isn't giving orders."

"I've wondered in my bunk, where no one asks."

He said it to the lake, level and calm, with forty strangers standing behind us.

"I'm saying it here because I can't do a thing about it here," he said.

My face went hot in the wind.

"That's a dirty trick, Captain."

"It's an honest one."

I watched the ship for a while, so I would not watch him.

"Saturday," I said.

"Your sauna. Wherever you keep one. I'll bring a pen."

"Why a sauna?" he asked.

"My family settles terms hot."

I had just asked a man I had known for a day to take his clothes off with me.

I did not take it back.

"There's one more thing," I said.

"Mats Brevik, you ought to know who you're running against."

"My ex-husband is Wayne Koskela."

He turned and looked at me.

"The commissioner," he said.

"Eight years," I said. "Until the third round, when he stepped out of the waiting room to take a call."

Mats was quiet.

Then he said, in a voice I had never heard on the radio, "He's going to find out."

"Yes," I said. "And I'd like to be the one standing there."

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