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It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.
Oh right, those millions. Man, I really loathed myself right now.
“Would you care for any music, sir?” Mr. Beefy in the front enquired.
“No, thank you. I’m going to try to sleep.”
That was a lie. My mind was fully engaged now that I’d had a power nap. I spent the next hour and forty minutes watching the coastal charm of Maine begin to blossom while trying to find the correct size for a hair coat on Amazon.
When we reached the rustic shores of Jonesport, we pulled up to the Kesside Bay swing bridge. The bridge was open right now, swung out to allow a lone sailboat to cruise through the deep channel that the high tide provided. Once the tide went out as it did twice a day, the channel was nothing more than brackish puddles, rocks, and clamming opportunities. When the tide rose, the channel was flooded with seawater once again. We waited for fifteen minutes until the sailboat was out to sea and yet the bridge didn’t swing back to let us pass.
“Is there a way to speak to that man in the tiny booth?” Mr. Beefy asked.
“Yeah,” I groaned, pulled my yellow ball cap back onto my head, and left the idling SUV much to my driver’s displeasure. I knocked on the driver’s side window. It rolled down to show me one greatly unhappy man. “I’ll just go chat with Portman.”
“I’m going with you.” I started to argue but the behemoth got out of the SUV.
“That’s not at all necessary,” I assured him. “Things here aren’t like they are in the big cities. We all know each other on Kesside Isle. Trust me.” I gave him that smile that had won so many feminine hearts. It should have. The cost to get that smile could have fed a small nation for a month. Seemed my smile had little effect on Mr. Beefy. “Okay, just wait by the car and if I need your help, I’ll shout.”
He nodded, folded his arms, and glowered at my back as I made my way to the stuffy little shack that held the mechanics for the swing bridge. What I knew about how to operate the bridge was nil, but I did know Portman.
I rapped on the window. A wiry old man of about ninety woke up with a snorty snore and gazed at me with tangled, frizzy silver eyebrows. He had a wild mop of hair—think Albert Einstein—and wore an old Navy uniform. From the Napoleonic war era. Blue velvet jacket with gold epaulets, white knee breeches, black shoes with brass buckles, and a glorious bicorn hat with a gold drapery tie-back tassel. Why? We had no clue as the war with Napolean had not been fought here in Maine to our knowledge. We’d had Portman Keyes here, daily, in his royal navy uniform for forty years. The people of Kesside Isle weren’t big on change.
“Bridge is up!” he shouted through the screen on the open window.
“I know that,” I replied. “The sailboat has cleared the bridge, though.”
He grumbled something under his breath and then leaned into the screen, pushing his bulbous nose into the screening until it bowed dangerously away from its frame.
“Are you trying to tell the harbor master how to do his job?!”
Jesus Christ. “No, Portman, I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, I’m just reminding you that—”
“You got an island resident pass?” he asked with no small amount of glee. Resident passes were a thing. Not sure how they ever got started, but it was before my time. Folks who lived here or were summer residents got little cardboard passes that they had to place on their dashboards—right-hand side so Portman could scope them out from his shack—to be admitted to Kesside Isle. It was insane, to be honest, but the passes had been around forever and, as I noted before, the people of this little chunk of rock weren’t big on change. The summer dwellers actually found it cute, and it gave them some false sense of security about their small but crazy expensive vacation homes. Gated community mentality and all that.
“Portman, I’m Elias Lake.” He stared at me as if I were a zombie trying to gain access to the last bastion of non-flesh-eating humanity. “Kesside. Elias Kesside.”
“Where’s your pass then?”
For fucking fuck’s sake. “Hold on.” I exhaled so loudly it was a wonder I didn’t pass out. Tugging my wallet free, I began rummaging around in the photo section. Stuck behind a shot of me and my father on my patio in L.A. were two old bits of Elias Kesside’s past. A dog-eared image of me and Billy Morton taken by his dad when we were ten or eleven. Way before we had sexuality questions about ourselves. We were just two boys sitting in a rowboat off the edge of the jetty, adventure awaiting us. Shoved behind that old picture was a resident’s pass from twenty-five years ago. Tattered and faded so badly that the original red coloration was now pink.
“Here it is,” I crowed and waved it in front of his mushed nose. His eyebrows tangled as he tried to read it. Where his glasses were, I had no clue. Maybe they were lost at Waterloo.
“Okay, that checks.” He studied the pass, then me a little more closely. “You look familiar.” He squinted at me with eyes as blue as the sea-kissed sky. “Didn’t I chase you around the town once when you and that Billy Morton stole my hat?”
Shit. Busted. “Yep, that’s me.”
“I knew it!” he crowed. “I never did like that Billy Morton. Bad apple, that one.”
“He’s the pastor of the church on the island,” I informed Portman.
“You think I don’t know that?!” He glowered at me through the screen. “Mind like a steel trap. What do you want again?”
“The bridge is open.”
“I know! I’m the harbor master! I opened it, didn’t I? Look at these levers and buttons. I know what each of them does. Do you?”
“Nope, I do not.” I folded my arms over my chest. This would take a while. I winked at the driver. He was not amused. Maybe he had a schedule to keep. That would be his first lesson about life on Kesside Isle. Schedules meant nothing to the natives here. There was always time to talk or tell tales or humor Portman.
