The Hare - 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