Revenge of the Lobster Read online

  “I cannot do anyting,” Guillaume had shrugged. “She ees covered. That is supposed to make ’er for silence, but does not work always, when she ees under stress.”

  Guillaume was fussing over the parrot now, lifting the cover on her cage and showing Jasmine her new “’ome.”

  Parker appraised Ian, respectably if not fashionably dressed in wool pants, sturdy leather boots and a merino wool sweater under an LL Bean barn jacket. Acceptable. Ian’s hybrid car, parked just off the lane leading to the house, told Parker he was an environmentalist. Parker had no particular objection to that—he just didn’t like fanaticism.

  “Let us go in.” His collar was up against the wind, so much worse here on the cape. The house shivered in it. He hadn’t considered it when he bought the place. He’d lived by the ocean most of his life, just never so close to such a desolate shore and at such a height.

  The odd, camouflaged vehicle had followed the Mercedes all the way from the ferry to the top of Wild Rose Lane. It stopped there, and the driver—also in a kind of camouflage—watched Parker’s car weave off the road, bump up the lane to Vanishing Point and snake through the small passage out onto the triangle of land where the house stood.

  The jeep stayed a long time. The driver watched as Parker, Guillaume and the parrot got out, as Ian came down to meet them and continued to stay there, even after they had all gone into the house.

  After a while, the jeep started up again, bumped along to the top of the Shore Lane and onto The Way, before dipping down Cottage Lane and weaving along private lanes and drives, keeping as close to the coastline as possible. It moved slowly, as if the driver were reconnoitering, until it disappeared.

  Shortly after, a sleek white lobster boat slipped into the waters on the far side of Big Bay. It dropped anchor in a hidden cove nestled in behind the sand spit that sent a sheltering arm around the west side of the bay. It was a poor choice: it appeared serene, sheltered, but it was well-known by the locals for its strong ocean-bound current.

  Ian was not the least bit prepared for what he saw inside the house. The room was full of primitives:

  Mayan and Aztec fertility gods.

  Life.

  A black basalt Anubis, the embalmer, as a jackal with long pointy ears.

  Death.

  An armless Venus. Not de Milo, but authentic.

  Love.

  Parker was watching Ian examine the collection. He smirked. Parker’s smile always came out like a smirk.

  Ian touched the couch. Kid leather. There was only one discordant note—at the opposite end of the Great Room, a six-foot square oil painting. It was like an ink blot, only brilliant red, splashing out across the white canvas, with just a tiny splotch each of yellow and green in one corner.

  “What’s that?” asked Ian, his tone not at all polite.

  “That—” Parker gestured toward it “—is, like all my treasures, rather ancient. Circa 1960.” His tight smile suggested he felt he’d made a rather clever joke. “It is, perhaps, an existentialist cry for help.”

  “It looks like ketchup to me, with a dash of mustard and relish.”

  “Precisely. Man’s hunger now must move from its primitive impulses. We no longer have the hunger for food. We are sated. Now we must hunger for the banquet of life itself.”

  This guy’s a real phony. Still, there was some good stuff here—much of it of borderline legality, Ian thought.

  Guillaume was unzipping the birdcage cover. Ian was eager to see the parrot. From the looks of the things Parker liked to collect, Ian bet it was a rare and endangered species, possibly an illegal acquisition.

  “Have you got a license for that bird?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Parker stuck out his chin defensively. “That’s a garden-variety African Grey. I would have gone for something more exotic myself, but Guillaume insisted.”

  “Guillaume?”

  Parker had not even bothered to introduce them.

  “My chef.”

  “And partner,” said Guillaume.

  “Yes, and…uh…partner.” Parker had a hard time with that word. It sounded so corporate—hardly a word to describe a loving relationship. But it was hardly a loving relationship anymore. Partner: a useful word, when the passion had ebbed or when you wanted to blur the relationship to the outside world.

  Guillaume took the cover off the cage.

  “Say bonjour, Jasmine.”

  She wasn’t the least bit illegal. Not exotic, not rare, not endangered—but absolutely beautiful. Grey-blue with the characteristic red tail feathers of the African Grey. Ian approached her, stuck out a finger and got sharply pecked.

  “Silly bugger,” said Jasmine.

  It was then that Ian fell in love. He was so entranced, he completely forgot to ask Parker about setting up the GPS—and left without the units. They were lying on the coffee table beside a pottery sculpture. Within minutes he returned, made his apologies, and swept them off the table. He accidentally bumped the sculpture and, hands full, watched as it teetered on its base. Ian noticed now that it looked just like a penis. Parker quickly scooped it up. He gave Ian a look of fury. Ian kept his lips tight together as he hurried out, so as not to laugh at the prim man holding what looked like a massive dildo to his chest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gus woke up and scanned the obituary page, a daily ritual. Seeing no one she knew, she dozed off again. Her head fell forward and jerked back up, waking her again. The newspaper was lying open at her feet. She reached for it and the effort of bending sent blood to her head, making her pleasantly dizzy. Gus had played spinning games as a child. She had liked that feeling of disorientation. She was disoriented now, not only by the blood rushing to her head but by what she saw outside her window—the village women filing into the hall for the monthly meeting of the Institute.

  My land—it’s gone one o’clock!

  Gus grimaced as she hauled herself out of the purple chair and smoothed her apron. Rose, the minister’s wife, had promised to pick her up, but she must have forgotten. The minister was Mr. Rose. That made his wife Rose Rose. She almost hadn’t married him because of that.

  Gus took off her apron, and looked down at her housedress. She hurried off to change; never mind that she was late.

  Ian’s presence had interrupted their reconciliation, but had also helped to dispel some of the distance between them. That wouldn’t last long.

  “How do you feel?” Parker asked tentatively.

  It was the wrong question. Any question would have been the wrong one.

  “I am fine. Why should I not be fine? You take me from my ’ome, my friends and put me in ’zat place.” He always referred to the clinic that way, refusing to call it by its name, Sunaura Spa, another euphemism, because it was a drug rehabilitation clinic, not a spa. Guillaume didn’t call it by its nickname either. Some inmates referred to it as “Snore-a” because of how it “cured” its patients—administering drug cocktails with a calming effect.

  “To beat drugs, they treat drugs,” was the inmates’ slogan. Guillaume had spent most of his time there asleep. It hadn’t really cured him, just made him too dozy to desire his drug of choice—cocaine. He’d been off the drug just long enough now to appear cured.

  “I put you in that place, as you insist on calling it, for your own good. You went off the deep end and you know it.”

  “I do not know.” Guillaume communicated his displeasure by refusing to look at Parker as he moved Jasmine’s cage over to the window where she could see out.

  “Aaaak,” she screamed, seeing the gulls. “Aaaak.”

  “Oh Lord, shut her up please.”

  Guillaume still wouldn’t look at Parker. He picked up his bag and, with his back to him, said:

  “My room?”

  “Upstairs. In the loft.”

  Guillaume grabbed his
bag and heaved it up the stairs. He didn’t come down all afternoon. He didn’t even eat lunch—the ultimate accusation. Parker had to suffer alone through Jasmine’s entire new repertoire. Besides the call to come aboard and the seagull’s cry, she sang two different versions of Satisfaction—as Mick Jagger or Britney Spears, sometimes alternating the two voices and sounding uncannily like a duet—a clever trick that one of the inmates of the “spa” had thought would be amusing to teach her. Parker didn’t find it the least bit amusing. He hated the sound of Britney and Jagger. He hated the sound of Guillaume’s silence emanating from the loft.

  He hoped things would improve when he showed him the cookhouse.

  When Guillaume finally emerged later in the day, he made a cursory inspection of the kitchen.

  “I am cooking ’ere? Pah!” Guillaume spat out. “A keetchen? Non. An alcove.”

  “This is a summer home.” Parker looked apologetic. “There’s a barbecue on the deck.”

  As if Guillaume would cook outdoors. As if he himself would enjoy eating outside. He was hugging his surprise, nursing Guillaume’s displeasure, knowing he had a way to stop his whining.

  Guillaume swept an angry hand across a small square of counter by the stove, opened and slammed closed the few cupboards. Jasmine, charmed by the banging of the doors, took up the sound. She made the small kitchen sound like it had many more cabinets than it did. Parker frowned. Guillaume folded his arms across his chest.

  “I can do nothing ’ere!” He loaded the last word with contempt.

  “Perhaps it’s time for your surprise.”

  “Surprise?” said Guillaume. He uncrossed his arms, thawing just a bit.

  “Surprise!” squawked the parrot and slammed another cupboard door shut.

  Parker took Guillaume down to the cookhouse. Guillaume did not like walking in the fog or the sand and he didn’t like the look of the building either. He eyed it with suspicion and despair as they approached. Is this the surprise? It doesn’t look like much. He sniffed. The chill spring air made his sinuses run. He could use a snort. In spite of the weeks of rehab, Guillaume was far from cured. He was just good at hiding it.

  Parker swung the door open. He hit the light switch.

  Guillaume gaped.

  For a moment, he said nothing. Just stared.

  The room shone with stainless steel everywhere: a three-foot-long shallow sink; appliances and shelving that sparkled under the light; a Jenn-Air six-burner stove; a steel grey refrigerator; a walk-in freezer. Countertop gleamed everywhere you looked—brilliant black granite contrasted with the white ceramic tile floor and faux tin walls.

  “Incroyable.” He took a step forward and then another, until he was in the centre of the room, surrounded by everything a man could possibly want in a kitchen. A thin smile crossed Parker’s face.

  “But ees perfec’!” said Guillaume. He pirouetted around the island in the centre of the kitchen. It was topped with a massive butcher board and held an industrial dishwasher and two sinks. He gave the countertops, stoves, the fridge, little taps with his hand, taps of delight, as he danced around from one lovely bright shining new appliance to another.

  Now this was a kitchen.

  “Look at this.” Parker was caught up in Guillaume’s excitement. He opened the cupboard doors that lined one wall to reveal racks of copper, cast iron and stainless steel pots and pans and small appliances. Filling one set of shelves, specially designed to fit them, were boxes and freezer cartons in a variety of shapes and sizes. Parker pulled one out and handed it to Guillaume. On the top was a graphic of a chef’s hat. Angled a certain way, it looked like a lobster. Guillaume moved it back and forth in his hand, delighting at the trompe d’oeil effect. First a hat, then a lobster, then a hat! At the top was printed, in an elegant script: Specialties St. Jacques and along the brim: Homme aux Homards. Loosely translated it meant man of the lobsters. It sounded better in French.

  “The company will market the line for you.”

  Guillaume frowned.

  “No pressure,” said Parker, reassuring. “Treat it as a hobby. Make only what you want, when you want. I certainly don’t care if it makes any money. Whatever you create is what is available. The customers will just have to line up and wait for inspiration to strike you.”

  Guillaume was unable to speak. They were out of the habit of speaking kindly to one another. He didn’t know how to say thank you. Thank you didn’t seem enough for all—all this.

  Parker wasn’t finished.

  He flicked the switch that illuminated the far recess of the cookhouse. The floor had been removed at the back of the building and a deep pond dug into the ground, rust red sandstone rocks piled up around it, forming a dark grotto. Parker flicked another switch and water began to ripple down the island stone, a waterfall cascading into the murky brine, filled with more rocks of the same sandstone.

  “The Lobster Grotto,” he announced.

  Guillaume moved with unusual speed across the room. He caressed the stone. He splashed water onto the rocks. He examined every detail of the structure, so superior to a tank, designed to replicate lobsters’ natural habitat on the ocean floor with crevices where they could hide. A place they would wait to be put to death.

  Parker had known what to do because Guillaume had dreamed out loud about all this for years, right down to the name of his specialty line. He still wasn’t finished. He pulled out a long black box from one of the cabinets.

  “Your invention,” he said. “I have had it manufactured.”

  Guillaume’s eyes gleamed. He ripped the box open hungrily. He pulled out a foot-long rod that looked like a giant curling iron—mostly metal, with a clever plastic inlay in the shape of a lobster claw on either side of the handle.

  “Ze lobster stunner.” He stroked it reverently down its length, eyes shining.

  Stimulated, Parker put a hand on Guillaume’s shoulder. Guillaume knew he would have to pay for these gifts later. Right now, he was not thinking about that. He was thinking that now he would be able to kill lobsters. He was too squeamish to slice a knife into the creature’s head the way other chefs did, or listen to its screams as it died in boiling water. The stunner would do the job quickly, humanely. It would not sicken him nor toughen their meat. Because of the pond and this weapon, the lobsters would be happy and healthy until they were killed, cooked and eaten. He would be able to prepare the finest of lobster dishes, for the truly discriminating palate—like his.

  It will be a culinary triumph.

  Parker had replicated, in fine detail, everything Guillaume had ever told him he wanted in a kitchen. Except, he thought, its location. He found he could live with that. With all this—he looked around the room again.

  His eyes were bright with moisture.

  Parker looked into them.

  It was going to be a good reunion after all.

  He could hardly wait to get back to the house.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Homarus Americanus.”

  The woman pointed at the ugly creature looming over her. She stood centre-stage at The Shores Hall, dwarfed by the screen behind her, with its image of a giant-size red lobster lying on a wooden trap. At the back of the stage on either side, half-hidden by the screen, were portraits of a girlish but regal Queen Elizabeth and a no-longer-boyish and balding Prince Philip. To one side at the front, there was an ancient piano that had been played often but never well. Now, in protest, it refused to be tuned and sounded worse with each new player. There was a graceful arch at the front of the stage, set off by red velvet curtains that opened and closed by a hand pulley.

  The thirteen members of the Institute were seated in one row of chairs below the stage, surrounded by pink wainscoting. On one wall was a quilted hanging, made by the women to commemorate the Institute’s one-hundredth anniversary. The rest of the wall decor included irregularly placed group
ings of awards, photographs of visiting politicians, a dedication to local war heroes and ten consecutive Best Float plaques from the Community Harvest Festival in Winterside.

  Hy had arrived late, out of breath, making apologetic gestures with her hands and shoulders as she fluttered in. Gus said Hy was always trying to catch up with herself. It was true. She generally left for a place at the time she was supposed to arrive there. She was greeted by an articulate silence and grim looks that had nothing to do with her lateness. Hy wasn’t sure exactly what it meant, but it appeared almost immediately that the problem was the guest. Looks went from Hy to the stage and back to Hy.

  She looked up at Camilla Samson. It couldn’t be the way the guest looked—almost exactly as Hy had imagined. She wore clothes of good quality, if a bit large—a sweater set, a simple pencil skirt and sensible pumps, along with the predictable strand of pearls with matching earrings. She was slender, average height, with honey-blonde hair worn in a sleek bob, cool grey eyes, a straight nose and good teeth. She looks perfectly respectable, so why the stony looks?

  “Homarus Americanus,” the speaker repeated, as Hy took her seat. “The North American lobster. Not just an item on the menu, a creature with intellect and a social life. Although he is a bit of a loner.”

  Annabelle Mack, sitting two seats down from Hy, opened her eyes wide in comic shock and mouthed, “a loner?” Hy put a finger to her lips, but judged from Annabelle’s cheeky behaviour that the guest had made a poor first impression. It must have been something she’d said before Hy came in. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t have been any worse than what was to come.

  “He also has an emotional life.”

  The screen image changed.

  “And a sex life.”

  The slide showed a lobster mounted on another lobster in the missionary position.

  There was a taut silence.

  The stage of the Shores Hall was noted for its ceilidhs and annual Christmas pageant. Last Christmas, after sixty years, Gus had consented to speak one word in a skit. She did so to the most tumultuous applause of the evening. It had made her blush. She was blushing now for a different reason—and she wasn’t the only one. Sex was not generally a subject that came up in the Hall.