Chapter 5: The Gallery

I gave the two o'clock tour to eleven people and a wet dog.

Nobody asked about two Korean men. Nobody asked about anything except the shipwreck.

I told them about the schooner that hit the shoal in 1911.

I told them about the keeper who rowed out in a gale and pulled three sailors from the water.

I always leave out that the keeper's wife was never mentioned in the plaque.

By five the last tourist had gone home and the sun had dropped behind the bluff.

I locked the door at the base of the tower.

Then I unlocked it again.

Chan came up the path first, in my old black rain jacket with the hood up.

He stopped on every bend to look at the road.

Hyunjin came after him in a ball cap, with his chin down.

"Hat's not enough," I said, when they reached me.

"I know," Hyunjin said. "I've been trying to fix it."

He pulled off the cap.

His hair fell past his shoulder blades, black and straight and shining.

I had been trying not to look at it for a day and a half.

"That's the problem," I said. "That hair. Nobody's going to look at a ball cap, they're going to look at that."

"The company asked me to grow it," Hyunjin said. "Three years ago. It's part of the look."

"Then we make you boring."

"I've never managed that."

"Come up. I'll show you the quick way."

The tower has a hundred and twelve steps, and the last twenty are iron.

Chan stayed at the bottom with his back against the door, on watch.

"Shout if you see the parka," I told him.

"I will."

"Shout politely. We have neighbors."

Hyunjin followed me up the spiral stairs without a word.

When we pushed out onto the gallery the wind hit us at once, cold and clean, tasting of salt and kelp.

The whole cove lay below us in the last of the light.

I saw the harbor and the roofs of Harbour Street.

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