“Honey, don’t drown,” she said. “Nothing’s that bad.”
I watched her go inside the Aquidneck Lobster Company at the end of the wharf, and I chose to follow her because she had been friendly. I watched her go into a small office behind a partition of glass so smoky and taped with invoices that I could see only dyed curls and hands moving between the slips of paper.
To get to her I passed green tanks the size of boats filled with lobsters, clams, and crabs. They reminded me of the way we stacked gurneys in the morgue. Tanks were stacked to the ceiling, and bay water pumped through overhead pipes poured into them and spilled onto the floor. The inside of the lobster house sounded like a monsoon and smelled like the sea. Men in orange bib pants and high rubber boots had faces as weathered as the docks, and they spoke in loud voices to one another.
“Excuse me,” I said at the small office door, and I did not know that a fisherman was with the woman because I had not been able to see him.
He had raw red hands and was sitting in a plastic chair, smoking.
“Honey, you’re drenched. Come in and get warm.” The lady, who was overweight and worked too hard, smiled again.
“You want to buy some lobsters?” She started to get up.
“No,” I quickly said.
“I’ve lost my niece. She wandered off or we got our directions mixed up or something. I was supposed to meet her. Well, I just wonder if you might have seen her. ”
“What does she look like?” asked the fisherman.
I described her.
“Now, where was it you saw her last?” The woman looked confused.
I took a deep breath, and the man had me figured out. He read every word of me. I could see it in his eyes.
“She ran off. They do it sometimes, kids do,” he said, taking a drag on a Marlboro.
“Question is, where’d she run off from? You tell me that, and maybe I’ll have a better idea about where she might be.”
“She was at Edgehill,” I said.
“She just got out?” The fisherman was from Rhode Island, his last syllables flattened as if he were stepping on the end of his words.
“She walked out.”
“So she didn’t do the program or her insurance quit. Happens a lot around here. I got buddies been in that joint and have to leave after four or five days because insurance won’t pay. A lot of good it does.”
“She didn’t do the program,” I said. He lifted his soiled cap and smoothed back wild black hair.
“I know you must be worried sick,” said the woman.
“I can make you some instant coffee.”
“You are very kind, but no, thank you.”
“When they get out early like that, they usually start drinking and drugging again,” the man went on.
“I hate to tell you, but it’s the way it goes. She’s probably working as a waitress or bartender so she can be near what she wants. The restaurants around here pay pretty good. I’d try Christie’s, the Black Pearl over there on Bannister’s Wharf, Anthony’s on Waites Wharf.”
“I’ve tried all those.”
“How about the White Horse? She could make good money there.”
“Where’s that?”
“Over there.” He pointed away from the bay.
“Off Marlborough Street, near the Best Western.”
“Where would someone stay?” I asked.
“She’s not likely to want to spend a lot of money.”
“Honey,” said the woman, “I’ll tell you what I’d try. I’d try the Seaman’s Institute. It’s just right over there. You had to walk right past it to get here.” The fisherman nodded as he lit another cigarette.
“There you go.
That’d be a good place to start. And they got waitresses, too, and girls working in the kitchen. ”
“What is it?” I asked.
“A place where fishermen down on their luck can stay. Sort of like a small YMCA, with rooms upstairs and a dining hall and snack bar.”
“The Catholic church runs it. You might talk to Father Ogren. He’s the priest there.”
“Why would a twenty-one-year-old girl go there versus some of these other places you’ve mentioned?” I asked.