Free North of Boston by Elisabeth Elo

since the collision I’ve been expecting the Coast Guard to call with news that they’d found the freighter and that official sanctions were being enforced. Instead, I discover that mysterious problems have cropped up
,
and no one even bothered to let me know. I’m glad that I dressed for work carefully this morning: a black wool below-the-knee dress over black tights and ankle boots in soft hunter-green suede. An indigo Jil Sander single-breasted coat with a demure round collar, Mikimoto pearl earrings, hair in a smooth bun at the nape of my neck. Clothes (except the boots) that might remind me to behave myself.
    I skip out of work in the afternoon, and on my way downtown I try to remember what I said the day of the accident, when I was interviewed for an hour by a shy officer with strawberry-blond curls and endearingly chubby hands. He asked question after question, sometimes circling back to ask the same question again in a slightly different form, which made me wonder later if he’d been trained in interview techniques. It seemed that he was jotting down volumes of information, more information than I was actually providing, studying me occasionally with pink-rimmed, brotherly eyes.
    I have no idea what I told him. I felt loopy, as if I’d drunk a few glasses of champagne. I knew they hadn’t found Ned, but what that meant hadn’t sunk in. Instead, the foggily pleasant thought that he was bound to turn up soon intermittently crossed my mind. When I saw him, we’d laugh in relief. What a day we had! The miraculousness of my own rescue wasn’t apparent to me either at that point. I liked that the guys were making a big fuss over me, but why they kept telling me I was amazing was anyone’s guess. I’d been given a spare Coast Guard uniform that felt like love. A warm blanket was draped across my shoulders. Everything was sweet and nifty in my book, even the watery hot chocolate my interviewer served me in a paper cup.
    By the time he flexed his dimpled knuckles and assured me that a thorough investigation would commence immediately, I was ready to be handed a stuffed animal and tucked into bed. I had no brain cells left to pay attention to the procedure he explained—something involving ships’ logs, physical evidence, and an official-sounding agency. All I heard was that I was to go home and not worry. That sounded pretty good.
    My old Saab courses down Stuart Street, through Chinatown, to the waterfront, up Atlantic Avenue to the North End. It’s a chilly gray day in Boston. They usually are. I park in a garage, cross tides of tourists strolling along the wharves. The Coast Guard building is a plain brick square with some glass-and-steel triangular structures popping out of the top. Minus those modernist architectural oddities, it’s as clean and upright as a buzz cut on a skull of tar.
    I looked up Cavalieri on the Internet this morning, so when he introduces himself it’s like meeting someone I already know. The posted picture was kind, and about ten years out of date. In person, his eyes are closer set, his cleft chin less cleft, and his neck not so beefy. His office is as depressingly functional as everything else in the building.
    â€œI’m sorry about Mr. Rizzo,” Cavalieri says as he ushers me to a seat. He walks behind his desk. He is trying not to check me out but can’t help it, and he’s not sophisticated enough to be furtive. He must like what he sees because when he sits down he’s smiling way too much for someone who just delivered condolences.
    â€œFour hours in forty-two-degree water. I’ve never heard anything like it. Not exactly a lot of fat on your bones either,” he says, taking another opportunity to survey my body.
    â€œI bruised a rib,” I say, which is true. It still hurts.
    His smile widens, as if my bruised rib only makes me more spectacular.
    My rib, hearing its name, starts to