Laura Alban Hunt

Chapter 29 -- Signs of the Times

I opened the door and ushered the odd trio into the living room. For a moment, no one spoke. I studied the young woman and in return, she was intently studying me. It seemed to me that we were locked in battle, all of us, not wanting to be the first to speak. I turned to Sanchez.

"You can let her go," I said, keeping my voice deliberately mild. Sanchez dropped her hand away, but the policewoman didn't.

"Please," I said, staying mild.

The policewoman shrugged. "She can be wild."

I laughed.

I couldn't make out anything about what the girl was thinking; her expression was sullen. She was wearing a short sleeve plain white t-shirt and old jeans, replete with holes.

"Ms. Sanchez, there are two reasons why the young woman needs to be restrained. She's a danger to someone, either me or herself, or she's a flight risk. I'm not a jailer, and I'm not going to be watching her twenty-four/seven. And if she's dangerous, why you can keep that good grip on her as the three of you turn around and march out the door."

The policewomen visibly hesitated and I smiled. "You are here to release her, right? I've got room for one more if you're going to be a permanent guest."

The hand came away and the girl continued to stare at me, a sullen and angry expression her face.

"You have some papers for me to sign?" I asked and Sanchez nodded.

"I'm going to need some more of those applications. They are for the permanent staff at the new house."

"Staff?" Sanchez asked.

"Housekeeper, groundskeeper, handyman," I told her.

Sure enough, Sanchez walked into the trap. "Servants," she said, both dismissive and condescending at the same time.

"Staff," I corrected her. "Employees. There of their own free will."

"I'll get them to you later this afternoon. I'll need to know the address of your new domicile."

The girl had, in the meantime, walked over to the sliding glass doors and looked out at the pool. She didn't say anything, but stood silently, her back to the room.

I gave Sanchez the old phone number, but told her that after today it wouldn't work. One of the many things I had to do, utilities-wise today.

I signed the papers Sanchez had for me, and then pointedly showed them the door. When they were gone, I turned and walked up and stood next to the girl. "My name is Laura Alban Hunt," I spoke to the glass, not the girl.

"Rachael Avilla," she said, also talking to the glass.

"This is my old house," I said, and then laughed. "Not that old, but I bought a new one. It's larger and nicer. A bigger pool. We're going over there in a few minutes."

"I'm not supposed to get my leg wet for a couple of days."

"I've got some plastic wrap you can use when you take a shower."

She looked at me directly, her voice raised. "You saying I stink?"

"No, but go a few days without a shower and you will."

She waved at the front door. "You stood up to them."

"They weren't being very smart. That and I don't like them very much."

I saw an expression cross her face just then; I wasn't sure what it was. It didn't take long to find out, though. "You got a bathroom?"

"Sure," I pointed it out to her and she all but ran for it. A few seconds later, I could hear someone being sick. I didn't know if I was going to be needed or not, so I just stood where I was, waiting.

She reappeared after several minutes. "This new house of yours, you got an empty bedroom?"

I took that to mean unoccupied, so I said, "Yes, of course. My partner and I will be in one, you can pretty much have your pick of the others."

She shook her head, "No, I meant no furniture."

"No, all the rooms are furnished, why?"

"Because right now, I got a handle on puking. By noon..." She shook her head. "Well, I'll be climbing the walls and throwing up anytime I eat or drink something. Probably shit myself, too."

I remembered Sanchez mentioning the girl was a heroin addict. I also recalled vague stories of how hard a habit it was to break and that going "cold turkey" was unpleasant.

She looked at me. "What kind of bull-shit did they tell you about me?"

"Not much. They said that you have a couple of kinds of VD, drug and attitude problems. That you were stabbed."

"Shanked. The fucking bitch wanted my jeans." She shook her head, smiling for the first time. "She might have shanked me, but I cold-cocked her good, right after that. I busted her teeth."

I nodded, not really understanding. Oh, the words made sense. But she'd been in a fight because someone else wanted her jeans? That didn't make any sense.

"Look, let me tell you something," the girl went on. "I'm not high, and I don't ever want to get high again. Like I said, I don't know what they told you.

"Last week, I woke up on the street. I'd been fucked in every hole in my body. I was bleeding in half a dozen places.

"I sat there for a long time, thinking about it. I got pretty fucking scared. So, just like that," she snapped her fingers, "I decided to give it up. The streets. Then my fucking asshole pimp started on my case about getting back to work. I took the fucker's baseball bat and beat him fucking silly with it. That's when the fucking cops came.

"Lady, I don't ever want to go back out there. Ever. I don't care what you want me to do, so long as it doesn't mean going back out there, I'll do it. But for the next couple of days... it's not going to be fucking pretty."

"There are times," I told her, "when I hear a young woman in there, hiding in the corners of your mind. Then I hear the street girl."

"Yeah, well, we need to get going. They gave me some stuff last night, but it's just about worn off. You have to put me in a room without furniture. You know why they call it 'kicking the habit?'"

I shook my head. "Because you go a little crazy. You get an overwhelming urge to kick things. Better if there's nothing to kick, you understand?"

"If you throw up every time you eat or drink..."

She laughed. "That lasts two, three days. This is like the third time I've gone cold turkey. I couldn't do it on the streets. No fucking way. Those people," she waved at the door Sanchez had left through, "are almost as bad. I told them to stop giving me the shit and they'd just hold me down and shoot me up. I was less of a problem, you see.

"I figure they want to make an example of you," she told me.

"Do you have any things? Clothes, toiletries?" I asked.

She shook her head. "The clothes on my back. They gave me this raggedy-ass pair of jeans yesterday when they cut my other pair off. Fucking bastards. It was a new pair, the fucking pimp stole them from a Target a couple days before."

Besides the holes, I was pretty sure the jeans she was wearing were boy's jeans. The t-shirt, too.

"Doesn't fucking matter," Rachael went on. "Like I said, in a few hours, I'm going to be a mess."

I sighed. She was roughly the same height as Susan, but if anything, ten or twenty pounds lighter. The thought of letting her go two or three days without something to eat or drink worried me.

Rachael had a knack for reading people. She spoke seriously. "It's going to look bad, I'm not shitting you. But you don't die; you just wish you could. Please, tell me you won't take me to a doctor."

"I can't promise that," I told her. "You have medical problems that need to be treated."

A flash of anger passed over her face. "They won't get the AIDs test back for a another day. I swear to God," she crossed herself, "that I ain't going to sleep with anyone for a couple of days.

"You call a doctor and about the only thing he can do is give me more stuff. They like to do that. They think it's better to ease you off. Full of shit is what they are. Please, I don't want any more. Not ever. You make an excuse; you tell yourself just one more time... And the next time, and the next time and the next time...

"Now, we need to go. I can hold it in for about another ten, twenty minutes."

I led her out to the car and she promptly tipped the seat back and closed her eyes. I drove to the house.

When I stopped and turned off the engine, she sat up and looked at the house. "You're shitting me!"

"No."

I led her inside. I'd made a quick judgment on the way over, and led her to one of the main house bedrooms that had its own bathroom. As soon as Rachael saw the bathroom, she ran for it, closing the door behind her.

I figured she'd be a minute or two, so I went out. Calvin was in the living room. "Can you and Tom empty out the bedroom I was just in? Everything? Put the stuff in storage or something. Then I need some tarps or plastic sheeting to go over the floor, then some old bed sheets to go over the plastic. A couple of old pillows and old blankets. Something no one is going to miss.

"No mattress?" Calvin asked.

"No, unless you have one that can be tossed afterwards. She's going to be messy."

"I think Tom has some of the plastic ground cover sheets. Heavy plastic. We don't really have any old sheets, pillows or blankets. Mrs. Baxter was a source of a lot of charity donations."

"Well, if we don't have any, would you run out to a thrift store and buy some? Give me the receipts and I'll pay you back."

He nodded. "Mr. Baxter gave me a credit card for household expenses."

"I'll set that up," I told him. "Could you also see to getting the old utilities turned off and the new ones put in my name?"

"I'll try. Sometimes, they get petty when it's not you personally doing it."

He went to get Tom and I went into the room knocked on the bathroom door. "I've got some men coming to move the furniture, Rachael. Don't be startled, okay?"

"Yeah!"

Then I heard the sound of retching, coming from the other side of the door.

I had Maria run off to the store to get some 7-Up, ginger ale and root beer, my own favorite upset stomach remedies. I didn't know what Rachael liked, but I was going to be ready.

I was standing in the middle of the now empty room when Rachael called from inside the bathroom. "Those fuckers gone?"

"Yes," I told her.

She came out and I pointed to the door. "Those fuckers are my employees. A married couple with grown children, and a widower with a grown daughter. They aren't fuckers. I've already told them they don't have to put up with anything from you. You will be polite to them, do you understand?"

"And you?"

"You and I will work it out between us."

She looked around at the thick clear plastic on the floor. "Lot's of plastic for my leg!"

"They're getting some sheets and pillows," I told her. "It will be a few minutes. You sure you don't want a mattress?"

"I would just mess it up, too."

I contemplated the old bed we'd left behind when we moved from Long Island. The bed itself was one that we'd bought right after Roger and I had been married. We had skimped on it, and it was just a metal frame, a set of box springs and a double bed-sized mattress. The problem about moving twice in six months was a lot of excess baggage had been shed for the first move.

"I don't think you can do much harm to an old mattress. It will be more comfortable than the floor."

"For the next couple of days..." she paused, turned, and rushed for the bathroom.

A minute later she was back. "Too bad my stomach doesn't know there's nothing left to puke."

"Yeah, I've had the flu a few times," I told her. "I know what you mean."

"That's what a doctor told me the first time I tried this. It's like the worst case of flu, ever. Could I get some more toilet paper?"

I found Tom who knew where it was kept; I got an armload of rolls. Oh yes, I've had the flu a few times!

When I got back to the bedroom, Rachael was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, her head pillowed on her knees. I laughed to myself. Either she was an incredible actress or she was going to have a terrible time later on in life when she wanted to sleep with someone -- she snored loudly.

I put the toilet paper in the bathroom, in one of the cabinets, leaving a couple of rolls on the back of the toilet. It took a second, but I realized that there was no mess. When I was sick, I made a mess, splattering everything around. Either Rachael was more dainty than I was, or she'd cleaned up after herself. What did that say about her? I'd said it before, aloud, now I repeated it to myself. She was two people -- one the foul-mouthed, tough street kid and the other was a normal young woman, probably on the tidy side. Susan was like that, whereas Jamie's room, I'd been told, required wading to cross.

Maria was back with the groceries a little later. She showed me where the pantry was, if you want to call a walk-in closet bigger than any bedroom closet I'd ever had a pantry. We kept back a six-pack of each and put them in a large refrigerator to chill. She smiled at me when I offered to help with carrying things. "That's my job," she told me.

"I've been here less than an hour and I find that it's really nice to have someone to fetch and carry things for me. It would be very easy, I think, to start taking it for granted."

She smiled at me. "I was thinking you had adapted very well."

I laughed. "Necessity is like that. But I will do some of the work, because, like I said, I don't ever want to take you or anyone else for granted."

"Mr. B. used to say that the ideal situation was that the work got done and he didn't notice it."

"It was something my husband taught me," I told her. "You thank people for their help, even if it's just a quick thanks. So thank you."

She shook her head and left grinning.

I went and asked Rachael what her drink preferences were and she shook her head. "Water, water, water! Even that I'm gonna barf. What the fuck is ginger ale?" She was sitting on the floor, as she'd been earlier.

"A sweet drink that tastes of ginger. I could tell you how I like it best, but you'd probably barf again."

"Why are you doing this?"

"It's a long story. I wanted to help someone in particular; she's special to me. The foster parents she is with aren't accredited for adoption, nor for 'long term care.' They were going to take her away from them at the end of school. Her foster mother isn't going to live that long; it would just cause the girl ten thousand times more pain than anyone has any right to ask someone to endure. So, I applied, thinking I'd ask for her, then let her visit a lot."

"You got a husband?"

"No, he's dead. He was killed on 9/11."

"I never knew my mother-fucking asshole father. My mother ripped off some fucking drug dealer; they shot her in front of me. I was nine fucking years old."

I smiled at her. "I realize it's early yet, but someday I'm hoping you will forget that word."

"Fucking never going to happen," she said emphatically.

"It's nothing more than a four letter exclamation mark," I told her. "You don't need it."

She looked at me. "That's not the usual reason people get on my case for my language. Those that give a shit."

"Well, you'll find that I'm not the usual sort of person you've met."

"You're not married, but you got an old man, anyway?"

I shook my head. "I'm gay. She's about midway between how old you are and how old I am."

Rachael looked at me, intently. "That age thing bothers you, does it?"

I stopped and thought for a second. Why had I said that about how old Elena was? Because I was bothered by our age difference? Or, maybe, because I wasn't bothered by our age difference?

"Good question. I like her a lot, but we haven't known each other very long. I'm not sure exactly what I think about age differences. I don't think I care. I'm pretty sure I don't care."

___________________

I decided to draw a line instead of talk about the next three days. Rachael survived; I survived. I spent a lot of time sitting and talking to her, more time watching her tear herself apart or at least something was tearing her apart. She wept, she cursed, she was sick a lot. Twice she had to stand in the shower to wash the accumulated filth off. Once I had to hold her up, because she was trembling too hard to do it herself.

I was kicked twice, but not hard. Each time it happened, she'd go into a mixture of anguish and rage. Never directed at me, though.

I talked to Susan; I talked to Elena. Neither for very long. Once Vivian appeared, curious about the house, more curious about Rachael. I didn't think it was proper for spectators, so even though there was a good chance Vivian might have been able to help, I didn't let her in to talk to Rachael. There would be time later, I told Vivian.

It was late Thursday afternoon; the night before had been a very long one; I'd hardly slept at all. When I crawled back to consciousness, I was worried at first; I couldn't hear Rachael snoring. A couple of times I'd tried to get her to eat or drink something; she'd been right about what a disaster that was.

I looked at her, concerned, but instead she was looking at me. The fever and pain that had been there for the last few days was gone. "Why?" she asked simply. "Why did you stay with me?"

"Once, when I was little, I found a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. I was eight, I think. About that old. My mom told me I should just let it die, that was nature's way, she told me. I made a fuss, and she called a vet and got instructions for taking care of it. The vet told my mother that there was virtually no way the bird would survive, that it had to be kept warm and fed, the feeding was hourly, all day long. And all night long.

"For three days, that's what I did. I fed the bird. It was a robin fledgling. I would pet it on the head, just stroke the feathers there, then I would feed it a beef broth mixed with milk, mildly warmed. Every hour, on the hour. I used an eyedropper."

I sighed and Rachael nodded. "It died," she said, thinking she understood.

"No, it lived. It was older, almost ready to fly. Three days was all it needed. Funny about that; three days was all you needed, too."

"I could eat an entire Happy Meal!" Rachael said with feeling.

"No, I think something a little lighter, first. If you feel like you're up to it."

"I feel lots of things, hungry and thirsty are at the top of the list."

So I brought her a ginger ale and she slowly sipped it. We talked about music. It was weird beyond words. Not a single singer or musician she mentioned I'd ever heard of. The ones I talked about, she pretty much had never heard of, and the few that she had heard about, she'd never listened to anything by them.

After the ginger ale, she sat down to a bowl of beef noodle soup. She got about halfway through it, pushed it to one side and put her head down on the table and, a second later, was snoring again.

Maria laughed when she saw it. "I shouldn't, I suppose."

"No," I told her. "Let's give her a few minutes, and if she hasn't been sick, I'll clean up the bedroom."

She was scandalized. "You cleaned up enough, the last few days! I know, I watched some!"

In fact, in spite of the fact I'd slept about three hours, I felt I could have slept for another twelve. I pried myself out of the chair, and as I did, I remembered that there were a lot of things I should do, things Maria couldn't. "Go ahead," I said, resigned.

She headed for the bedroom and I headed for the phone. The first person I called was Marybeth.

"I need a doctor," I told her. "One that, for the right amount of money, would make a house call, at least this once. A woman doctor, preferably."

I got a number and dialed it; I was told that the doctor was with a patient, my call would be returned. I got the distinct impression that if I hadn't invoked Marybeth, I might not have gotten the callback. Once again, on my mental list of things to do, I put "network locally!"

The phone finally did ring and I talked to Dr. Kate O'Brien. She actually laughed at the notion of a house call. "Just bring the patient in, I'll see her."

"There are issues. She's spent the last three days going cold turkey from heroin. She is exhausted and weak; not to mention the State of Arizona saw fit to leave her with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. They are in serious need of going out with the trash."

"You don't have enough money to get me there today," Doctor O'Brien told me. "However, as a friend of Marybeth, I can send one of my associates. He's the junior doc right now. He does whatever I tell him."

"This girl has been sexually abused. She has a couple of STDs, the social worker told me Monday that the AIDs test results were negative. I'd really rather she saw a woman doctor."

"Well, good luck finding one," she said.

I realized she was about to hang up. "I don't suppose you could refer me to someone? Cost isn't an object."

"Mrs. Hunt," she started to say.

"Laura," I interrupted her.

"Laura, then. At five this morning I was performing minor surgery. Then hospital rounds at two different hospitals. Then at nine this morning I was here in the office. My last scheduled appointment is 4:30. I'm already running twenty minutes late. I'll probably get out of here around six. Then I need to zip home, pick up my son and take him to an orchestra rehearsal.

"If you want my advice, Laura, either bring her in or let Dr. Donovan look at her. Put her in a robe, wrap her in a sheet, we won't care. If she's truly sick, it won't matter."

I sighed. It was pretty clear that I wasn't going to get what I wanted. Maybe that wasn't a bad thing. And if Rachael said she didn't want a male doctor? She wasn't going to die between now and tomorrow. Tomorrow she'd have clothes, be a little stronger. "Okay, send your doctor," I told her.

She actually laughed. "I'm glad you said that, because I was beginning to think you are an idiot feminist. Mike Donovan is a very good young doctor, and it doesn't sound like you need a superstar doctor. Very good will be good enough."

I gave her the address, and she told me that he'd arrive within two hours. That was, I supposed, pretty good. When you thought about it, house calls meant the doctor spent a lot of time driving instead of treating a patient. Not exactly the best use of the doctor's time.

Elena got home from work and we hugged for a few minutes. Finally she pushed away. "You look like shit, Laura! You need to get some sleep!"

"Later," I told her. "There are a few more things to do. Can you go shopping, and get some jeans and things for Rachael?"

Elena nodded, and she left while I went and took a shower.

When I got out I went and shook Rachael awake.

She looked at me, and shook her head. "Let me sleep."

"I found a doctor who makes house calls. The bad news is that it's a male doctor."

She gave me a quizzical look.

"What?" I asked.

"Like I've ever had a choice?"

"Well, this time you do. If you don't want to see him, you don't have to. In a bit we'll have some clothes for you. We can go to the office tomorrow for a regular appointment with a woman doctor."

"And if I don't like her?" Rachael asked.

"We'll find one that you do like," I told her confidently. There were a lot of doctors out there after all.

Rachael just laughed. "I've never had a doctor I liked. The fuckers just poke and prod. It's like cops. Most of them don't give a fuck. You get out of line; they slug you. It's part of the job; they don't give it a second thought."

I thought about that. All my life I'd gone to doctors. Some had been pleasant; most had been brusque. That's what it was, I thought. It was a job. They did it; they didn't want to invest anything more into a patient than I wanted to invest in a sink of dirty dishes.

"Well, it'll be your choice," I told her. "If he's ugly and has warts, you can tell him to take a hike."

Rachael didn't say anything, but it was clear she thought I was nuts. Tell me, Laura Alban Hunt, just what do those dishes think of you? Get me clean, get me dry, get me back on the shelf or in the drawer. The thought of a tea glass flipping me a bird nearly made me laugh.

"You're strange," Rachael said.

Right then the doctor arrived. He was a personable man, although he was closer to thirty which was my personal line where you stopped being young and started being "mature."

He had light brown hair with reddish highlights, a small cleft in his chin and a soft voice. He was a little pudgy, which was nearly covered up by the loose-fitting green smock he wore.

I introduced him to Rachael and then handed him her medical records that Sanchez had brought over Monday afternoon with the AIDs test. Dr. Donovan smiled at me, smiled at Rachael, and then sat down on the bed next to Rachael and started reading.

When he finished reading, he started asking questions, with a pencil in hand to take notes on what looked like a blank medical chart. Questions, questions, questions. A million of them.

Finally he started to examine her. He took her wrist and held it for a few seconds. "Yep, a pulse! Looking good so far!" he exclaimed. Then he put a stethoscope around his neck and listened to her heart for a second. "Yep, a heart-beat!" A second later he was listening to her lungs, commenting that she was breathing.

He looked into her eyes, ears, nose and throat -- all of that stuff. Then it got personal, the vaginal and rectal exams. He was quick, and mercifully, his banter vanished for the duration. Then he took a look at the dressing on her leg.

For the first time, he was serious when he asked Rachael, "Who did the sutures?"

"Stitches?" Rachael asked and he nodded. "There's this girl in the clinic, she wants to be a nurse. They let her sew them."

"We'll hope she gets better with practice," Dr. Donovan said dryly. "There's nothing I can do now. It's going to be one very odd-looking scar." He lightly pressed his thumb near the bluish circle on her leg, with crazy quilt stitches across it. "And this doesn't hurt?"

"Just a little. Mostly, it itches."

"Well, they did something right, it's not infected."

He looked at me and I got the distinct impression we were supposed to get up and go in another room to talk about Rachael. "Here's fine," I replied to the unspoken request.

"Well, the last thing I will do before I leave will be to take some blood for our tests. Monday you will be well enough to come into the office, yes?"

Rachael shrugged. "I haven't barfed for almost a day. Yeah."

"I will give you a prescription for some additional antibiotics to get a start on knocking down the STDs. We'll start a course of injections on Monday."

He looked at me. "The young woman is mildly dehydrated, probably her electrolytes are messed up as well. Bananas and broccoli -- or Gatorade. Things high in potassium and iron. Another meal, later today with a salty beef broth. Don't eat much at a time, you can space it out over an hour or two; that would be best. A boiled or scrambled egg first thing in the morning. Some pancakes and a lot of syrup! A lot! Go a little light on the butter or margarine, at least at first."

He stopped and I waited for him to go on. He didn't; instead he got up and fetched a syringe and needle from his bag, and came and sat back down next to Rachael.

"I was told you weren't going to like having a man examine you," he said evenly.

Rachael shrugged again. "You're a doctor, right? That's what doctors do." She held up her arms, her wrists up. I'd seen the rash earlier; I'd been mildly surprised when Dr. Donovan hadn't said anything about it.

"You didn't say anything about this. Not a word."

"You wanted to quit enough to go cold turkey. You'll either succeed or fail," his voice was rough, for the first time. "You get points for wanting to get off the wagon -- and a lot more if you stay there."

I spoke up. "What are you talking about?"

"Needle marks, chicken tracks," Rachael said.

I looked again at her arms and I wanted to die, simply die. Each of the hundreds of those little red dots was a needle mark? I seriously doubted if I could give anyone a shot, much less myself. How many times had she used a needle? It had to have been hundreds of times.

"Odds are, there will be permanent scars," Dr. Donovan said, talking to me, not Rachael. "The ones you can see and the ones you can't. The signs of the times."

How many more girls were there, like Rachael, out on the streets? I've never been more ashamed of myself than I was at that moment. Who was I? What was I doing? I wanted to help girls be cheerleaders, girls who were marginal in ability. So that someone like myself wouldn't slip through the cracks!

What was that, compared to this? I'd failed in my desire to be a cheerleader, but had succeeded at just about everything else in my life. I'd failed to get in a very small crack -- so what? Rachael had nearly fallen into an abyss that made the one I'd been worried about not so long ago, look like cat scratch.

I agreed to be in the office on Monday at ten in the morning; I agreed to everything else. I took the prescriptions he gave me. I looked at them, and then at him. "They're for me."

He laughed. "Trust me, if I made them out for Rachael, you'd never be able to get them filled, without mountains of paper. These are general antibiotics, like we'd give for mild pneumonia or a minor infection. You'll want to go to a local pharmacy and get things set up in case of emergencies."

I nodded, numb still.

I showed him to the door and he simply told me he'd see us Monday. I nodded and closed the door. For a moment I leaned against it, exhausted.

It was funny. I'd been there to help Rachael for the last three days. I'd been tired, but I'd felt good about it. And she hadn't minded the company, I was sure of that. And yet, for all of that, I had no idea of what her life had been like. I had no idea if I even wanted to know what it had been like.

I went back to find Rachael had pulled a sheet up over her head, and was snoring again. I walked over and reached down and lightly touched her shoulder, buried beneath the sheet. "Sleep tight, Rachael."

I walked back out, found some ice tea that was maybe two days old, poured a glass and went outside to the pool.

That was a problem, I realized. In the past, it was just a few feet away from the water. Now it was twenty or thirty yards. I laughed at myself, because June was going to have a lot further to come. I put my feet up on one of the other chairs, took a sip of tea and looked out over the water. Thinking.