Blue Moon by Luanne Rice Page B

costume, remembering her own fortieth birthday.
    Her sisters had wanted to give her a party, but Nora had said no, that turning forty was nothing to celebrate. Instead, she and Tony Domingus had gotten drunk on his boat. They’d started on tequila, then changed to vodka. They’d ripped off their clothes—literally torn Nora’s black blouse—and tried but failed to fuck on a berth that smelled of herring. Too far gone to maneuver, Nora had spent the night onboard and had to walk down the dock the next morning, past Mount Hope’s entire jeering fishing fleet.
    Now, after grocery shopping, Nora drove home. She lived at Bensons’ Mill, a condominium complex several piers down from Keating’s Wharf. Pulling her 280Z into the carport, she smiled hello at some neighbors and carried her two brown bags upstairs.
    Unlocking her condo door, Nora felt a tingle of anticipation. It started on the top of her head, where she parted her hair, and shivered down the backs of her thighs. “Hello?” she called, though she didn’t actually expect anyone to be there. She had left the air conditioning on low; it hummed reassuringly. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t had a cigarette in several days, the room smelled like smoke. The first thing Nora did, even before unpacking her food, was to unwrap the air freshener and place it smack on her black marble coffee table. Breathing in the lemony scent, she sank onto her overstuffed white leather sofa and closed her eyes.
    Every time Nora stopped moving, she thought of Willis Randecker. He swirled through her mind, making her head swim. Ina way, it seemed as if their time together had been much longer than simply part of one evening. She remembered the vulnerable angle of his eyebrows, his gentle southern drawl, the way he had put out her cigarette, his words when she had told him she’d never been married: “That surprises me.”
    Nora remembered feeling that he wanted something from her. Her first impression of Willis had put her on guard. Now that she’d had time to consider it, she thought she knew why: because Willis had seemed to like her right off the bat. She wasn’t used to men simply liking her.
    That night, after a dinner of sautéed chicken and broccoli, she wrapped herself in her peach silk robe. She stood on her balcony, facing out to sea. Across a dimly lit asphalt parking lot and the tall silhouettes of construction cranes lay Mount Hope harbor. A summer breeze fluttered Nora’s robe against her legs; it carried northward the scents of Spanish moss, azaleas, black-bean soup laced with sherry, and mud flats in the Savannah River. Halyards clanked against flagpoles and the wire stays of sailboats on their moorings; the bell buoy at Minturn Ledge Light groaned.
    The sea sounds filled Nora with longing. She gazed at the sky, a blanket of gray flannel, and knew that beyond the loom of harbor lights were constellations full of bright stars. In the middle of the North Atlantic, men had filled their holds and were charting courses home by those stars. Billy, Gavin. Al, Tony, John, all the others. She wondered whether Willis Randecker knew anything about celestial navigation. She wondered whether the night sky over Willis was hazy with the lights of Savannah, or whether he had a clear view of the stars.
    Independence Day always brought out the patriot in Mary Keating. Summer was the Keating family’s season, and Independence Day was summer’s best holiday. All three of her daughters worked at the restaurant that day. Every Fourth, Mary played show tunes—her idea of patriotic music—over the Lobsterville loudspeaker. All day long, the cast recordings of “The Music Man,” “South Pacific,” and “Oklahoma!” would alternate with songs by George M. Cohan, a born-and-bred Rhode Islander—“Over There,” “You’re a GrandOld Flag,” and “Yankee Doodle Boy.” Mary would wear a red dress with a blue-and-white sailor collar; when folks ordered twin lobsters, they