Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“Learn to fly,” Sheriff, who used to be Air Force, said. That would be nice, but I get sleepy a lot. The boat can be anchored and the truck parked, but planes need somewhere where they can put themselves down. There are strips in Maine, but mostly they are private and the owners use trespassers for target practice.

I let that go, too.

Dolly smiled at me in her special way. In between lovers, was she? Beautiful woman, Dolly is.

Maybe Dolly wasn’t what I needed either.

Priscilla said we were getting close here. Female companionship would be the answer.

“Right,” Tom Tipper agreed. “I can come over for dinner.”

I said Tillie, sitting next to me on her own barstool, needed to go out, and please excuse us.

The subject came up again when the Big and Little Bitch Islanders, led by the Sisters, their lead lobstermen, showed up for refreshments.

The Sisters also suggested I should look for intimate company. “Be like us, get yourself a woman.” The Sisters are powerful personages, housed in powerful bodies, who use the young ladies they refer to as their “squeezes” as stern men. They own powerful fishing boats (Bad Cat is the leading vessel), and a refurbished WWII landing craft. The landing craft ferries their motorcycles and pickup trucks to the mainland and back. They stomp about armed.

“Get yourself a squeeze or two,” Big Sis told me.

“Sure thing,” I said.

I wasn’t too sure.

Shouldn’t I know better? There was the high-school teacher who got me to get her into trouble and we might have married if I hadn’t found a helpful medic. The Vietnam masseuse didn’t mean well, either. There was the one-night-stand in a Boston singles bar where lonely secretaries, nurses, some widows, maybe, a divorced woman or quietly dressed twenty- and thirty-pluses, in sensible shoes, toting handbags, looking through intellectual-looking paperbacks, glance at men shyly. The glancer I ended up with told me she was a biologist’s assistant, single, no complications, the last boyfriend was long gone. She preferred a motel until she got to know me well enough to invite me to her apartment. She had booze in her bag. I was alone when I woke up late the next morning. No wallet, no car keys, even my twenty-dollar watch was missing. No goodbye note, either.

The police reminded me we live in a bad, bad world. A fellow veteran lent me a Franklin to get me home.

Still. A woman. You never know. Someone from away, perhaps. A fleeting relationship. Or a long-time prostitute with manners. Some lady looking for a break.

I started thinking about the Sisters again.

I suppose, being a minority, the third gender has to prove superiority. Maybe the Sisters overdo their act a tad. The Sisters give me lobsters from time to time. They let me blunder about in their territory at will. They have me visit on their boat, and baby-talk to Tillie, who lets them hold her upside down and nuzzle her bare belly.

I advertised in the Washington Post, Tom Tipper’s hometown. He said government women get frustrated. He helped with the ad’s text; so did Dolly, who writes a supportive column in the Greater Bunkport American, a weekly. She also wrote a Harlequin novel. Larry the lawyer was the copyeditor. Doc Shanigan took digital pictures and created a Web site. I showed up as the kind, grizzly outdoorsman with his cute little doggie. The cabin and its neat interior, the boat and the pickup truck, both shiny in late sunlight, the snowmobile and the all-terrain vehicle, everything was there against a backdrop of islands and mountains in the distance. Odd man out, maybe, but a man of substance.

Tom Tipper told me to mention jazz. I visit his trailer to listen to the CDs he makes me order and we play duets. His keyboard blends with my sense of percussion. “Jazz attracts the sensitive, the intelligent, the spiritual, yet cool,” he whispered, “and the beautifully erotic.”

LOBSTER YACHT’S, named YOU TOO, OWNER/SKIPPER, MAINE COAST. VIRILE ONE-LEGGED VET MARINE. NO DEBT OR TV. SHORE CABIN WITH PLUMBING. IN NEED OF SINGLE WOMAN. AGE 30–40. LOG FIRES. THE CHICKADEES SING ALL WINTER.visit www.james.holbert.com for pictures and ‘contact me’

My publisher called. He said we had to talk. He knew he had specified crime but on second thought there had to be romance, too. “Put that in, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Priscilla calls him Walrus. Bald head, big moustache, obese, waddles, very persistent. Walruses must be persistent to get all the food they need to gather that weight.

You’re familiar with Alice in Wonderland, are you? She’s in the public domain so I can quote without permission:

The walrus said,
The time has come
to speak of many things:
Of crime and ships and sealing wax
and cabbages and kings.

(and a romantic entanglement, okay?)