Nantucket Sawbuck by Steven Axelrod Page A

shop had been forced to bring the building up to code after a fire. And an explosion in the kitchen had wiped out the old Downyflake. But they were all gone, along with Robinson’s Five & Ten and Cy’s Green Coffee Pot. Cindy complained that there was nowhere to buy a thimble on the island anymore. It wasn’t just stores either; the airport had been given a makeover. It was bleak and sterile now, like the new Steamship Authority building. All the charm of the island was being scrubbed away or demolished. The Historical District Commission tried to protect the outsides of houses, but there was no law about the interiors. Why did rich people feel the need to ruin the things they loved? Maybe they couldn’t feel it was truly theirs until they had marked it somehow. Mike had been part of that process for a long time. He was part of the problem. All that new trim needed to be painted, all those new floors needed to be refinished. Mike had made a pretty good living from the rape of the island.
    He knew that his brother-in-law, Nathan Parrish, was planning to build a mall out in the moors near the Pout Ponds. He had sworn Mike to secrecy, but of course everyone knew about it. The island was too small and the news was too big. Mike had thought of begging Parrish for the painting contract, but the job was out of his league, and asking Nathan for favors would just brand him as a loser. You only got special treatment when you didn’t need it. He hated the idea of the mall, anyway. He knew that the Nantucket he loved was fading but fast, but a Kmart in the shadow of Altar Rock felt like a death blow.
    He didn’t want to be part of that. And he didn’t need Parrish—he had the Lomax job. Of course that was moral sleight-of-hand, too. Nathan had told him, extracting melodramatic vows of secrecy, that LoGran, Preston Lomax’s company, was one of the major investors in the Moorlands Mall. Everything was connected. Pretending to be above it was arrogant and silly. He could scarcely set himself up as a moral paragon. Here he was, driving to a deserted construction site to ogle some girl in her twenties. Of course he wouldn’t put a move on Tanya Kriel. She was almost half his age. It would be disgusting. It would be reprehensible. But he didn’t fool himself that way either. He had stayed true to Cindy during the worst times of their marriage, but it was a circumstantial fidelity. No woman had tried to seduce him; there had been quite a few he would have gladly gone to bed with if they had made the first move. But they hadn’t. So nothing had happened. Hardly something to brag about.
    The thought of Tanya Kriel putting his flimsy morals to the test made him queasy. She was so beautiful: austere Nordic features and a firm athletic body that approached human perfection. Of course Cindy couldn’t compete with that; Tanya was young, her presence radiated health and hormones and fertility, energy and eagerness and grace. He had never seen her make an awkward movement. She had worn absurdly short cutoff shorts all summer. She had dancer’s legs, supple and strong. He would catch a glimpse of the tendons in her thighs flexing as she climbed a ladder. It felt like sunstroke. She had caught him watching her, fighting to keep his eyes on hers as she pulled her shoulders back and stretched as they talked. Now it was winter, she was bundled up and the tension had slacked off a little.
    But she still stalked through his fantasies and speculations: what would he do if she did this, or that, if she touched him, if she said something unmistakable. Which of course she wouldn’t. It was all pathetic and sad. Even thinking about it was asinine.
    But the fact remained: He couldn’t turn down an opportunity to be alone with her for afew hours. He shrugged as he turned onto Eel Point Road. Was that really so bad? He had made love once with his wife in the last three weeks, and just twice in the three