Page 9 of Harbor Me

“Her deal, Dana. Woman shows up in a truck loaded with everything she owns, out-of-state plates, dressed for a boardroom, and takes a job answering phones in a boatyard at the end of a peninsula. That’s not a career move. That’s a getaway. So, what am I not being told? She got fired? She running from a husband? Is somebody going to show up here with a subpoena?”

Dana laughs right in my ear.

“Mr. Cole, can I be honest with you?”

“That’d be a first for a Portland office.”

“When her application came in, my manager thought it was a joke. We placed her file in front of three companies down here. They were all very keen to hire her and offering real money. One of them offered her a directorship over the phone, before the interview. She turned all three down and asked us, specifically, by name, about the listing at Cole Marine Services.”

Papers shuffle.

"Between us? She's spent the last year and a half freelancing. Doing books and claims consulting for half the small businesses in the city. She has references that read like love letters. And now she's taking about a sixty percent pay cut to sit in your office."

The gulls are going off out over the water. I don’t say anything. The only word in my head is why, and Dana obviously doesn’t know either, and now the damn thing’s stuck in my teeth.

“So no,” Dana’s saying, “There’s no deal, no subpoena, no angry husband that we know of. We vet our placements very carefully, our reputation is on the line after all. There’s just a wildly overqualified woman who wanted to work for you for some reason, and frankly, Mr. Cole, after the last four placements you burned through, my advice is to say thank you and stay out of her way.”

“I don’t burn through-”

“April’s placement is still in therapy and not ready to rejoin the workforce yet. You very much burn through, Mr. Cole. Have a great summer.”

She hangs up on me. Once I get rid of Vanessa, I’m never using them again.

Sixty percent pay cut. That’s the one I want. Asked for this job by name.

There’s a version of a man who hears that and feels flattered. I feel the opposite. Nobody walks away from real money to come organize a stranger’s invoices unless the invoices aren’t the point. She wanted something at this yard bad enough to move her whole life for it.

For one stupid second, some idiot part of me, the same part that’s been thinking about the soft skin at the back of her neck all morning, hopes the thing she wanted is standing in this gravel lot. I stamp that out fast and hard. Hope like that is exactly how a man ends up gutted.

I’ve owned this yard eleven years, and I can’t think of one thing in it worth wanting if you’re not me. This is the family business, the only thing I know how to do. That’s what makes it valuable to me. On paper this place is barely worth keeping open. We scrape by at best. There’s nothing that can be embezzled here.

Which means I’m missing something. I was right, this is Bill with his fake agreeableness all over again, except she’s even better at it.

That’s the story I build walking back across the gravel, and it’s a good sturdy story, and it survives right up until I pass the office window.

She’s on the phone. Pacing the length of the desk, cord stretched, free hand chopping the air. Through the glass I get pieces of the conversation.

“…no, I understand your policy, I’m telling you the policy doesn’t apply. The unit failed inside the warranty window, your own records prove it, and Mr. Cole shouldn’t have paid the first invoice, let alone-” She pauses when the person on the other end clearly interrupts. Her jaw sets stubbornly. “Then get me someone who can. I’ll hold.”

She holds. Sees me through the window. Covers the mouthpiece.

“Your radar guy from last fall,” she calls through the screen. “They double billed you and voided the warranty claim to cover it. I’m getting it back.”

“That was four hundred bucks. It’s not worth-”

“It’s four hundred and sixty, and it’s yours.” She’s back on the line before I can answer. “Yes, hi. Yes, I’ll wait for the supervisor. I’ve got all afternoon and a very comfortable chair.”

She does not have a comfortable chair. The chair in that office has been broken since the Obama administration.

What she’s got is my full attention.

Color up in her cheeks, free hand carving the air, that mouth going a mile a minute on my behalf. And I stand in the lot wanting to walk in there, take the phone out of her hand, and find out what all that fight tastes like. The thought arrives whole and ready, like it’s been waiting since yesterday afternoon for its shot. I stay where I am. It doesn’t leave.

There’s a hairline crack in my distrust of Vanessa and I feel it spread while I stand there. Pleasant Bill in the fleece vest never once went to bat for me. Quite the contrary.

By four the sky’s gone that flat pewter that means a storm by nightfall, and I’m in the workshop buttoning up the Chris-Craft when the screen door bangs and her footsteps come across the gravel.

Heels traded for boots. New boots, stiff, the kind you buy because the gravel was chewing up your heels and you had to work very hard not to show it. Realizing that makes me feel better. Despite appearances, she has weaknesses, I just need to find the rest of them.