Helen wondered if Humphrey had ever been in love. They were down by the lake, by the pavilion, which stood next to the little dock. Humphrey’s boat, a long low cabin cruiser elegantly crafted in rich, dark woods, had been brought out of storage in the boathouse for the first time this year and moored alongside the wooden catwalk. It was such a nice day, an incredible seventy-five degrees— Detroit got these days in March, sometimes—that they were actually talking about taking the boat out.
Humphrey was not fully convinced that it was a good idea. He kept asking the young fellows whose job it was to take care of and handle the boat if they didn’t think it was a little early. Wouldn’t there still be ice out there on the lake? No? But what about debris, all that flotsam left over from when the ice went out, some of it pieces of docks from as far away as Lake Huron? No problem, he was assured, they would keep a good lookout, wouldn’t be running fast enough to damage anything even if they should encounter a log, to say nothing of a stray shingle or a net float. Heck, they said, it was worse in the summer, all the beer bottles. Clearly, they were eager.
Even Soke, Mrs. Sid, looked anticipatory. She had accepted one of her daughter’s windbreakers, a shiny red one with a slick finish and a lightweight lining. Helen found her a pair of white canvas boat shoes and a bright Red Wings baseball cap. She said that she thought the Red Wings played hockey, not baseball, and they all laughed. But when Helen tucked her frizzy mass of iron-gray hair up into the hat, Soke looked ten years younger. Helen was very eager for her to go out on the water in this great boat. Roman was not eager. He was stolid, his dark suit bulging over his shoulder holster. But he said nothing, just watched.
At last, Humphrey agreed. Just for a little run. If it got too cold, if the water was too choppy (it was blessedly still, nothing more than an occasional warm flutter), they could come right back. But there were a few things to be done. Always some fussing by the boatmen, tinkering with the engine, testing the radio, the depth finder, something. And then there was the food and drink to be prepared and brought down. The boating party stood about on the dock, or the lawn, talking and watching.
Helen asked where the name of the boat had come from, Kiddle-Dee-Divey. Boat names were often silly, Humphrey told her. But had he named her? Yes, he had. He’d bought the boat a long time ago. He used to keep it down at Bayview, but when he bought this house with its boathouse, he’d moved it up here. He was quite proud of the boat. He said it was the only one of its kind. It had been built by a legendary boatwright from up near Traverse City. This master builder was famous for his many beautiful and fast sailboats, but sometime after the war he’d tried his hand at what he called a motor cruiser. He’d wanted to recapture the classical lines of powerboats from the twenties and thirties, and this was the lovely result. As far as Humphrey knew, he’d never built another. The builder had given the boat to his wife for an anniversary present. When she divorced him, she put it up for sale. Humphrey had bought it from her.
“But how did you come up with that name?” Helen demanded.
He reluctantly confessed that it was a lyric from a goofy song that was popular when he was a child: “Mairzy Doats.” As a boy, he had thought at first that it was “Mairzy Boats.” He had stubbornly insisted that everybody was mispronouncing the title. The grownups were so amused they often asked him to sing it. So when he bought a boat…. Helen thought that was funny and she begged him to sing the song. He refused. But he did finally recite some of the lyrics: “Mairzy doats and dozey doats, and little lambsy divey … a kiddle-dee-divey too, wouldn’t you?” He added, “I still think it should be ‘boats,’ but that wouldn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“The words are just a goofy way of saying ‘Mares eat oats,’ and so on,” he explained.
Helen cocked her head, smiling as she digested this example of an earlier generation’s idea of comic wordplay. And then, for no reason that she could supply, she asked him if he’d ever been in love.
Humphrey was startled. “Well, I guess so,” he said. “Everybody’s been in love, once.” But when she pressed for details, he would only say, “A long time ago.”
“But you never married, or anything, did you?”
No, he’d never been close to marrying.
“It must have been that first love,” Helen said. “What was her name?”
“I don’t even remember,” he said.
At last, the boat was ready. They all went aboard and found places to sit while the young man, Jamie, took the boat slowly out. The boat was surprisingly roomy inside, for all its sleek, low profile. There was a large open area on the back, or aft, with cushioned bench-type seats. But then you stepped down to an enclosed bridge, where the helmsman stood. Another door opened into an amazing saloon, so to speak, complete with a tiny galley, tables, booth seats, and beyond that sleeping compartments. Everything was marvelously worked out in deep, rich hardwoods. There were tiny windows that looked out onto a narrow catwalk on either side of the cabin roof. The builder had obviously not departed much from the design of a sailboat.
At first they all sat in the sunny rear cockpit. But Humphrey went to stand right next to the helmsman, in the cabin, directing him out to the northeast.
It was such a great day that soon they were all sipping drinks and eating grilled sausages, fancy cheeses, and a variety of crackers and tiny sandwiches; there was even a fancy genoise layer cake with caramel-hazelnut icing. Humphrey, true to his peppers despite the loss of Pepe, favored the jalapeño poppers, stuffed with pepper jack cheese.
Soon enough, Helen found an opportunity to bring up Humphrey’s lost love. They were sitting side by side on the fantail, as it were. The others had drifted inside. Roman was playing a card game with Soke in the saloon.
Humphrey confided, finally, that the “lost love” had actually been his “first love”—maybe only love would have been more accurate. He had last seen her when he was fourteen and she was thirteen.
“My gosh,” Helen said, “it’s sort of like, what’s his name, Dante and Beatrice. Or am I thinking of someone else?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Humphrey said. “We were just kids. But she was very nice to me.”
“Ooh, that sounds a little risqué,” Helen kidded.
“It wasn’t like that,” he insisted. “She was just nice. We didn’t do anything. We traded books—I forget what. King Arthur, or something. Maybe it was Robert Louis Stevenson. Something like that. Poetry, maybe.”
Helen was intrigued. She could see that it had meant a lot to him. It was sweet, she thought. A childhood romance, and then … “Well, what happened?” she asked.
He shrugged. “We moved away,” he said. “Carmine’s folks moved into the city. We grew up on the east side. Things got a little crazy. You know? Growing up, gangs, I had a little trouble. That kind of thing.”
“Whatever happened to her? Didn’t you ever call, or write?”
“I don’t know why I never called,” he said. “Maybe it was … well, I just don’t know. She was too far away. She was history. I was into other stuff, like I said. She wouldn’t have liked what I was doing.”
“But you never forgot her,” Helen said. It was sad, but cute. Still, he had never gotten married. She asked him why not.
“You know,” he said, in a hopeless tone, gesturing at his torso. “I was a fatso. I had a few times with the bimbos, but it wasn’t my thing. I wasn’t into it.”
Helen didn’t understand. She knew Humphrey had been terribly obese; that was how she remembered him from her own youth—nice, fat, jolly Unca Umby. It was hard to believe, in fact, that this rather handsome, distinguished-looking man had once been a sweating, panting mess. But lots of heavy men, she thought, managed to get married, have children. Why not Humphrey?
He explained. Lots of men just gave up on sex and love, all of that. They channeled their energies in other directions. In his case, he got interested in the business. Carmine was enough of a playboy for all of them, him and her father. He apologized if it sounded disrespectful, but her dad was a lover. Humphrey wasn’t. He realized in his early twenties that he had a lot of catching up to do, having dropped out of high school. He studied, he watched and listened and learned. He saw that he was going to have to be the brains behind Carmine, who was being groomed to take over. He had accepted this. He thought that his chance might come someday, and it had.
“But maybe too late,” he added. “The business is all changed.”
But Helen wasn’t having another business pep talk. They were on an outing. She wanted to know how a man just “gives up” romance.
“You mean sex,” he said. He was uneasy, but also excited. He had expected to have this conversation with her, as they had gotten closer these last few weeks. He hadn’t dared to hope that anything could actually come of it, but it was hard for a man not to dream. He hadn’t imagined that the conversation would come up just like this, on the back of a boat with her mother and Roman and the crew not far off. But they were effectively alone. Maybe it was the right time.
He gave it some thought, then said, “It’s hard, at first. A man has natural feelings, of course, and you see these babes hanging around … I mean, they’re there for the taking. Good-looking, too, a lot of them. I had a couple … well, I was coming up in the world, I had power, already. They had to go to bed with me. That’s the way it was. I’m not gonna ’pologize. They were looking out for themselves, too. But it was no good. I could see why they were doing it. Eh? I couldn’t do that, after a while. Besides, it was getting in my way.
“So … I just made up my mind: to hell with it. Forget about it. And it went away. I don’t know just how it came about, but pretty soon I could see it was an accepted thing: the Fat Man ain’t into broads. Something like that. And then, it’s funny, the babes started coming around.”
Helen didn’t get it. “Coming around? You fell in love?”
“No, no,” he said, with a snort of laughter. “Get over this falling in love thing. No, they saw … I guess … that I was safe. It was okay to horse around and be a little flirty, because it wouldn’t come to anything. I was the Fat Man, right? I didn’t like babes, not that way. I liked to kid around, but nothing funny. Right?”
She saw it, all right. It sounded awful, but she didn’t say anything.
“And it was all right,” he went on. “It didn’t bother me. I forgot about it. But now …” He looked at her in a strange way.
Oh dear, she thought. This is it. She’d been afraid of this. But if he’d gotten over sex, a long time ago…. Maybe he was thinking of something else.
He was. Nonetheless, he took a breath and launched into a little speech. He had deep feelings for her, he said. Yes, very deep feelings. It went beyond their former relationship. He wanted her to forget about that. This was different. He wasn’t her Unca Umby, see? But before she got any ideas…. He raised his hand, to stop her from replying. Just let him finish. He wasn’t some dirty old man.
He actually used those words. “I’m not some dirty old man,” he said. “I’m not interested in that kind of stuff. Oh, maybe a little kiss, a little squeeze.” He laughed uncomfortably.
She sat there, gazing at him, wondering. Was she supposed to jump up and kiss him, hug him? She liked him. She thought he was smart, a strong, deep, mysterious man. She thought that, if it came to that, she would go to bed with him. She had long ago decided that sex didn’t commit you to anything. But what did he want?
What he wanted, it seemed, was an intimacy. He felt they were practically there already. He wanted, he said, someone he could level with.
Well. That wasn’t much, she thought, at first. But then she began to see what he meant. He hadn’t had anybody for some time with whom he could talk unguardedly, someone he could trust and believe in. He was willing to eschew certain physical liberties to have this. He wouldn’t be pawing her, wouldn’t expect…. He left it unsaid.
Maybe he’d never had this intimacy, she thought. He’d had some kind of rapport with Carmine, his lifelong pal, almost a brother. That wasn’t the same, at all, couldn’t have been. He needed this intimacy with a woman, but a special kind of woman. Someone like her. Perhaps there wasn’t any other such woman on the planet, she thought. She felt strangely proud to be that one person, that woman. Her heart filled with empathy toward him.
He had stopped talking. The boat rumbled along, its powerful engine nearly silent, but felt. The water was blue and the waves were light. The sun danced on occasional sprays. It was warm on their backs. They had turned and were angling toward the distant shore, toward home. He must have given some kind of signal to the helmsman. She hadn’t caught it.
“So, whaddaya think?” he said, comically. He smiled sadly at her. He had brown eyes, she noticed. Well, she’d always known they were brown, but now she saw that they were. So this man wants me, she thought, gazing at him. She felt fond. He wants a—what was the word? morganatic? no—wife who can be intimate in a wifely way, but with a difference. An intimate. But not ultimately intimate. An arms-length romance.
“I could do that,” she said.
They both laughed. He gave her hand a squeeze and she kissed his cheek. “You’re sweet,” she said. And suddenly, she was filled with affection for him. She wanted to say, “You know what? I love you, you big lug,” or something coolly, movieish. But she didn’t.
“I think we can be great together,” she replied. “But one thing. What about this what’s-her-name? Are you still pining for her? You know, I can’t have that.”
“Oh, no way,” he assured her, solemnly, shaking his head. “I’ve never even seen her again, I swear.”
“Well, you don’t have to swear,” Helen told him. “Anyway, for all we know she might be dead.”
He didn’t like that thought, she saw instantly. That had been a mistake. But then he seemed to brush the thought aside.
“What about Joe?” he said abruptly. “You still carrying a torch for him?”
She almost gulped. She’d forgotten about Joe. Just thinking of him now made her feel like a fool. What had she been thinking of? Romancing Humphrey, imagining some kind of weird affair, and all the time…. What about Joe? Her foolish heart was wrenched.
“Joe?” she said, faintly. “Ah, well, Joe … I haven’t seen Joe. I don’t even know where he is, what he’s doing.” Firmly, she declared, “I haven’t given a thought to Joe in weeks. That’s over. That’s past.”
Humphrey looked at her closely, then nodded. He seemed satisfied. “Okay,” he said. “Good. I like Joe. I always liked Joe. Me and him, we got along. The best I ever saw at what he does. So it wouldn’t bother you to see him?”
“You’ve seen him!” She throttled back her sudden enthusiasm, tried to sound indifferent: “You heard from him?”
Humphrey elected to ignore her sudden excitement, she was relieved to see. “No,” he said, offhandedly, “but I got a feeling.”
“What kind of feeling?”
“A feeling like we haven’t seen the last of Joe Service,” he said. He wouldn’t say any more. He had a feeling.
They soon docked. It had been a fine day. Her mother stayed for supper. Roman stayed too, of course, but he acted kind of funny around Helen. He looked at her almost reproachfully, she thought, but he didn’t say anything. The new chef had prepared grilled salmon with two sauces, one of them a peppery one for Humphrey. Soke talked recipes. She sampled the peppery one. She used to cook with peppers, she said, Hungarian and Italian ones, but not this hot. This was too hot, she said. It was too much for the salmon. Humphrey disagreed, but politely. He had a theory that peppers never really masked other flavors but actually brought them out. Now, heavy cream sauces, he said, that could mask flavor.
After that day, things changed. There was a new intimacy. Not only did Humphrey begin to tell her inside things about the business, sometimes shocking her, but he began to act more possessive, in public. They would be talking to other men, his underlings, men with position, and he would insist that Helen be included in the talk. He’d ask her opinion, or voice “their” opinion—“We think …” or “In our opinion….” And he’d sometimes rest his hand on her shoulder, or her waist.
She liked it. She was beginning to know her way around. She would talk about business practices, informatively, authoritatively, and Humphrey would beam at her, agreeing with her. Telling the other men, “You see? She’s a bright one. That’s the ticket. That’s what we gotta do.”
The one area where they didn’t agree was the cigar business. He couldn’t see her scheme. He listened to her spiel, discussed it with her and Berta. Unfortunately, Berta wasn’t her best ally. She claimed that the problems were too intractable. Sure, Humphrey still knew people in Cuba, he could get tobacco, it could be smuggled in. But what was the point? They couldn’t make as good a product as the Cubans, or even the Dominicans. And where was the market? Guys weren’t going to pay the kind of prices they’d have to ask to make it worthwhile, not while they could get Dominicans and, even, smuggled Cubans. At best, over a period of time, they might build up a small, loyal customer base, but they could never be big while they couldn’t go public.
The problem was, their major market consisted of guys who liked Cuban cigars, and even liked the added sense of adventure and danger that went with smuggling them in from trips to Canada or overseas. They couldn’t compete with that. And these guys tended to know their cigars. They wouldn’t accept a homemade version, even if somehow you could convince them that this cigar was what it was: a cigar hand-rolled by rollers from Cuba, using Cuban tobacco. It was not going to be a top-of-the-line Cuban cigar, not for a long time, anyway. But with the cost of production, her cigar— he called it “LaDonna Detroit”—would have to be priced up there with the real goods. It couldn’t compete. And once the embargo was lifted, as it had to be, someday, the whole game was up. Who could compete then?
He finally conceded that maybe, what the hell, if she really wanted it, they could make a cigar and sell it at a loss. He figured the quality of the tobacco would guarantee at least a five-dollar price, maybe a little more. The cigar business was booming, after all, crazier things were happening. They’d lose money on every cigar they sold, but he could afford it. If that’s what she wanted.
No, she didn’t want that. She was too good a businesswoman. She believed that with Berta’s help she could get her girls to turn out a quality cigar. They could go two ways: her girls would slap labels on them, any label she wanted, and they could be peddled as “illegal” Cuban “seconds”; and they’d also work on a public, over-the-counter cigar, the LaDonna series. Five bucks. Basically the same cigar, quality tobacco from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and so on; they’d be good cigars; they might lose money for a while, but they would slowly build a clientele. You could consider it a form of advertising, buying a market. Then, who knows, a year or two down the road … they could maybe jack up the price, get in the black.
She was satisfied, for now.
And then, Joe called.