HARBOR STREET was always susceptible to floods. Whenever there was a big storm, a nor’easter, a hurricane, the gray seas of the harbor would thrash about and rise ominously. One winter, it lifted huge blocks of white ice up onto the lawns of waterfront homeowners, though one might have asked them why they acquired properties in such a place to begin with. During the winter storm it looked like Antarctica, only with ducks instead of penguins.
When I went back, it was just foggy and the water was at its mostly natural level. The whole area, with its sailboats, boathouses, captain’s cottages and the like, was engulfed in a dense blue mist. Even the green grass of the lawns and the hedges dripped with white moisture. I made the turn up the street in an old-fashioned car, the make of which I didn’t pay much attention to. An old neighbor was sitting in the driver’s seat; I was in the back. Yet, as I found, I was steering the car. I was controlling it with my mind. I could make it brake and accelerate.
Her name was Bettina. She was half asleep. What a funny car, one that could be piloted via telekinesis. Bettina was wrapped up in a blanket. I could only see the back of her head, all blonde and fluffy, like a newborn chick. I said, “Oh look, the guesthouse, does Andy still live there?” Bettina yawned and resettled herself into the driver’s seat. “No, he left many years ago,” she said. “But I have seen him around town.” I had known the workman Andy my whole life, both before and after his stint in juvenile hall. Fleischman and Andy had robbed a liquor store.
“What about Mangione and Schmidt?” I asked. “The carpenters?” “Dead,” she answered. “Mike Mangione died of a heart attack. Schmidt fell off a roof.” “Oh,” I said. The further we went down Harbor Street, the more I noticed that the houses were no longer where they used to be. The Deuteronomy Smith House was still there, the life’s work of the famous shipbuilder, but the others were gone. When we reached the end of the road, I realized that the turnoff that would bring us back around Ditch Road had disappeared too. Instead, a palatial new home had been constructed. The old road was now its driveway. It was lined with lanterns and small pools.
It then dawned on me that I was all alone with Bettina in a car. We were all alone at the end of a road that had no apparent exit. A man and a woman, alone in a car. Something in the atmosphere trembled at that moment. It pulsated away in different colors. “You know,” I told her. “We are all alone together here.” Bettina yawned again. “So what,” she said. “So what.”
