Ten Years of Public Breakups, Then He Ran After My Bus novel · Chapter 4 of 40

Chapter 4: Six A.M.

The Point house sat at the end of Ash Point Road with its back to a spruce wood and its face to the whole of Penobscot Bay.

It was a shingled cape from 1925, gray as driftwood, with a blue tarp across half the roof and a bay window in front that looked southeast over the water.

I had cried in that window on the day we signed the papers.

I pulled in at five fifty-two, with a thermos and no sleep, and his truck was already in the dooryard.

Of course it was.

Eben was on the porch steps with a clipboard, in his work jacket and his cap.

The sun was just coming up red behind him over the islands.

"It's my day," I said, getting out of the car.

"The roofer's on my day. The rest of the week is yours."

"That's a creative reading of the napkin," I said.

"I read it with Paulie standing over me."

"So did I."

He looked tired, and so did I, and we didn't say anything for a moment.

A pickup came up the road with a ladder rack and parked behind my car.

The roofer got out, an old man with a gray mustache, and two sons who looked like him at thirty and at twenty.

"Morning," the roofer said, and looked at us, and at the house, and at the two vehicles.

Everybody in a thirty-mile radius had seen the video of Harbor Park by then.

"Morning," Eben said.

"I'll start with the north side."

"Start wherever you want," I said. "We're not having a fight."

"Wasn't going to ask," said the roofer, and went around the side with his ladder.

I went inside to look at the kitchen, because I could not stand on the porch next to Eben.

The kitchen was open to the studs on two walls.

We had taken down the old plaster two years ago in July, in a good week, laughing, with a bottle of wine going warm on the windowsill.

Then we broke up again, and the studs had stayed bare.

A bucket sat in the middle of the floor with an inch of water in it.

The ceiling above it had a brown stain the size of a tablecloth.

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