Free Stay by Deb Caletti

fast
    around the dock cleats. The boat snugged right up against a
    stairwell, which Finn then climbed, giving a hand from boat
    to stair to several passengers on board. I watched the people
    walk down the steps—several couples, a family with two girls,
    another family with a toddler in a life jacket—and they all
    looked relaxed and happy and windblown. One guy stopped
    back at the ticket booth, which today had a young woman
    inside of it, and took out his wallet and handed over some bills,
    maybe arranging another ride for another day. The passengers
    wandered off the dock at various times—the couple with the
    toddler headed for The Cove, the family with the girls stopped
    to take pictures.
    Finn hopped back on the boat. He obviously had an ease
    there. You could tell it was his place. I watched him joke with
    the other guy, and then Finn went down below for a while before
    coming up again. He worked, making the boat right again after
    the sail. He coiled the wild ropes into neat circles. He arranged
    the collapsed sail into folds.
    * 65 *
    Deb Caletti
    I had finished my cheeseburger, rolled up the foil into a ball.
    I was almost done with my drink. I’d been staring, sure. It was
    then that Finn must have finally felt my eyes on him. I was far
    away but not so far that he couldn’t see me. He looked my way.
    He shaded his eyes with his arm as if to make sure it was me. He
    smiled. He waved, and I waved back.
    I didn’t walk over and talk to him, though, not then. If I
    needed the time for a tree branch to become just a tree branch
    again and the wind to become just the wind, then a boy, most of
    all, needed some time to be only a boy.
    My dad laughed so hard. “You are shitting me,” he said. “You
    found Annabelle Aurora? On your first day?”
    “You know her?”
    “Very well. She was a professor of mine in New York. I saw
    her at a party there years later, and we kept in touch. She’s an old
    friend, Pea. She stayed with us once when she came to a writers’
    conference in town. You were just a baby. Of course I knew she
    was out here. We keep in touch by e-mail. It recommended the
    place, in my opinion.”
    “She’s a friend of yours.”
    “And a poet. A very well-known one, I might add.10* I didn’t
    tell her I arrived yet.”
    “I’m not sure she exactly has a phone. ”
    10 Three accents, two famous people, if you’re keeping a tally. Dad knows tons of writ-
    ers, so there may be more coming. Oh, and Christian’s father was married for a short
    while to a woman who was married to one of the Rolling Stones, if that counts.
    * 66 *
    Stay
    “What do you mean?”
    “It’s a shack. She’s got an outhouse . You always said poets
    only got paid in magazine copies.”
    He laughed again. He was loving this. He sure got a kick out
    of that crazy old lady. “Annabelle is loaded.”
    “No!”
    “ Loaded . Her husband was some newspaper guy. Like in,
    ‘owner,’ not reporter. She might have even had some family
    money. They had this great apartment. Two daughters. Very close
    to the girls.”
    “That’s surprising. She’s alone in that weird place.”
    “Happy as a clam, I have no doubt. She always liked the outer
    edges. The farther, the better.”
    “Clams—right. She said to tell you she had mussels.”
    He slapped his hand on the table. “That fucking Annabelle,”
    he said. “Good memory for an old broad.” He was grinning
    wide. His eyes were sparkly. “When she came out to stay with
    us, we steamed some for dinner. You were too young to remem-
    ber this, I’m guessing. Your mother—she was in some mood.
    She went inside. Upset . . . I can’t remember. Annabelle and
    I ate mussels on the back deck and drank beers until we were
    toasted. Laughed our asses off remembering these people in our
    classes and those stupid parties where literary people try so hard
    to be literary people. Cool superiority as a mask for overflow-
    ing insecurity. ‘Every time I see people in social