Home > The Hare

The Hare
Author: Melanie Finn

 

 

THE BOATHOUSE

1983

Bennett was a slow driver. He peered through the windshield. The BMW was missing a headlight, and the single beam, alone on this dark road, meandered like a shy child, head down. There were no houses, just dark, dark woods over flat ground. In the passenger seat, Rosie was trying to read Bennett’s handwriting with a lighter, as the interior lights did not work. She didn’t want to be lost. She wanted to be at the party.

“It says three miles past Hayley Road.” Rosie’s thumb was burning from the flame. “Have we passed Hayley Road?”

“Jesus, I hate the countryside.” Bennett lit up another cigarette, an expert choreography with one hand: the car lighter, the cigarette, never taking his eyes off the road, his other hand on the wheel. His hands were beautiful, Rosie thought, large, strong, smooth-skinned, and it was absolutely true what was said about hands.

“Birds,” Bennett exhaled the smoke. “Cow shit. Farmers.”

The party was at an old millhouse way out here in Meriden, four turns off the Merritt Parkway according to the directions. Mick and Keith might be there, Bennett had told her, and Rosie played it cool by not asking the Mick, the Keith? She wondered what they were like, and if she’d get to talk to them, even a few words, “Is there any more ice?”

“Can you stop,” she said. “I think I need to be sick.”

Pulling over, Bennett rushed around to open her car door. He was insistent in this way, his old-world manners — doors, chairs, drinks, pulled open, back, delivered. He took her arm, as if she were an invalid, she pushed him away so he wouldn’t get hit with the splatter.

Her stomach heaved and released. “It must have been that chicken salad.”

When she was back in the car, Bennett offered to open the wine they’d brought, if she needed to rinse her mouth out. She had some gum somewhere in her purse. Bennett hated gum, he’d told her she looked like a cheap hooker. Secretly, she slipped a piece into her mouth now, letting it dissolve, allowing only the most furtive chew. He was pulling back onto the road: “It must be up here. He said there’s a red barn with a big hex painted on the side.”

He? Someone interesting, cultured, traveled, rich. Someone who might look at Rosie and wonder why Bennett was with her. At such a party with Mick and Keith, there would be beautiful girls — women who wore backless red dresses and spoke fluent French and modeled in Milan. Don’t ever order maraschino cherries, Bennett had told her, not with ice cream, not with cocktails.

The only cocktails to drink are gin martinis or greyhounds.

They drove on. Sure enough, within five minutes, there was the barn. Bennett turned up the long, narrow drive, winding through pines. Eventually, they arrived at the house, on a river — a millhouse; but it was completely dark.

Rosie glanced at the napkin as if this might suddenly reveal new information: “Did we get the wrong night?”

“I guess the party was canceled.” Bennett got out, stretched. He was a big man, tall and bulky with muscle, for he’d been a star athlete some years ago — lacrosse, Rosie recalled — and his frame held the shape. He got cramped in the small car. Ambling off toward the house, he peered in through the dark windows, then disappeared around the back. She saw his figure crossing the moonlit lawn to a barn tucked up against the trees. Briefly, there was the flare of a flashlight, and then he reappeared. He was carrying a small package.

Taking his place again behind the wheel, he tossed the package on the back seat, and opened the wine with the corkscrew on his key ring. This had belonged to his father, who’d brought it back from Berlin right after the war. Bennett was proud of its provenance: stolen from Himmler’s private bar.

For several minutes, they sat in the car while Bennett drank and Rosie wondered about the package and if she could ask him about it. The river, visible through a stand of trees, toppled down a series of rapids, inky dark, the foam silvery in the moonlight. “It’s beautiful here,” she observed.

“It is bumfuck.” He took another drink.

“Maybe they write sitting by the river.”

“Who?”

“Mick, Keith.”

Bennett snorted. “Whoever lives here crochets antimacassars.”

“What is an anti-massacre?”

“Maccass-ar. Little doily thing you put on the arm rest and the back of the chair to prevent soiling of the chair’s fabric.”

Yet the image held in her mind of a bit of lace waving in the wind, so pretty and delicate that soldiers stopped killing women and children. “Why would anyone want a doily on a chair?”

“In ye olde days, middle-class people —” he said middle-class with a fancy English accent clahs — “middle-clahs people wanted to keep things nice in the parlor.” Pah-luh. “They had all kinds of shit in their hair including grease and lice and didn’t want the whole couch ruined.”

Bennett was a trove of such information. He was an appraiser of fine art for a select few and spent his days steeped in paintings, jewelry, porcelain figurines. He knew what a soup spoon was — and that “one” must scoop the soup away from “one.” Never slurp. He knew about shoe-horns, French cuffs, fish forks, Windsor knots, and the best bistro in Cap d’Antibes, France. Rosie assumed he came from money, but she didn’t know where or how much; money, to her, was Gran at the table with a stack of bills, her lips set as she wrote out checks and put them in envelopes. Gran did not talk about money.

Rosie swallowed another bout of nausea. She was disappointed about the party and felt foolish for having had all the conversations with Mick and Keith in her head. The very notion that they’d even notice her to offer her a drink or ask her to pass the olives was absurd — a girl who had nothing to offer, not even beauty. At this very moment, they were at another party with famous actors. Had there even been a party here? Possibly, Bennett had been joking when he said, “Mick and Keith might be there.” Probably, now that she thought about it; Bennett’s humor came around blind corners.

“What is that?” She tilted her head to indicate the packet in the back seat.

“Jewels. Including a small, delicate piece from Tsarist Russia. The owner is a dear lady requiring a divorce. She has no money, only the family jewels, and she needs to procure the finest lawyer. So she’s cashing in.” He handed her the bottle, started the car.

They were on the road again, Rosie was drinking, too. It was good wine. Bennett knew his wine, a robust Bordeaux in this instance. She had found a Steely Dan tape and slipped it in the deck. Rikki Don’t Lose That Number. Even if this wasn’t the night they’d planned, at least she wasn’t in her dorm room. She drank, she sang a few bars, she imagined the jewels — the rubies, sapphires, diamonds nestled casually in the box in the back. Bennett might let her see them.

“Roll me one,” he said and put his hand on her thigh, possessive, and she was possessed. She rolled him a smoke, adding in the tiniest bit of Mary Jane, just like he’d taught her, scooching the contents in, pulling the paper tight, then a firm roll, a twist of the ends. She didn’t like either kind of smoke herself. She had the roll-up in her mouth, she was lighting it for him, when she saw a dark shape across the road in front of them. Bennett’s hand lifted off her lap, she could feel his body begin to react, but as they were rushing toward the object — an old carpet? — and the road was ribboning it toward them, there was no time to react, he could not have swerved. He had both hands on the wheel.

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