The Line Between

So when Henry Lee's young wife shows up at me door, all by herself, no husband, no servants, just her parasol and a whole great snowy spill of lace down her front, I asked her in like she were me long–lost baby sister. We weren't close, didn't know each other much past the salon and the dining room, but she were pretty and sweet, and I liked her the best I could. Like I tried to tell Henry Lee, I don't belong in the same room with no lady. Even when it's me own room. Any road, she comes in, and she sat down, and she says, «Mr. Ben, my husband, he miss you very much.» Never knew a woman quicker off the mark and to the point than little Mrs. Julia Caterina Five–other–names Lee. I can still see her, sitting in me best company chair, with her little fan and her hands in her lap, and that bit of a smile that she could never quite

hide. Henry Lee said it were a nervous thing with her mouth, and that she were shamed by it, but I don't know.

«We're old partners, him and me," I answers her. «We was sailors together when we was young. But I'm done working with him, no point in pretending otherwise. You're wasting your time, ma'am, I have to tell you. He shouldn't ought to have sent you here.»

«Oh, he did not sent me," she says quickly. «I come — how is it? — on my ownsome? And no, I do not imagine you to come back for him, I would not ask you such a thing, not for him. But you … I think for you this would be good.» I gawk at her, and she smiles a real smile now. She says, «You come to us alone — no friend, no woman, never. I think you are lonely.»

Not in me life. Nobody in me life has ever spoke that word about me. Nobody. Not me, not nobody, never. I can't do nothing but sit there and gawp. She goes on, «He has not many friends either, my Enrique. You, me — maybe one of my brothers, maybe the abogao, the lawyer. Not so many, eh?» And she puts out her hands toward me, a little way. Not for me to take them — more like giving me summat. She says, «I do not know what he have done to make you angry. So bad?»

I can't talk — it ain't in me just then, looking at those hands, at her face. I nod, that's all.

No tears, no begging, no trying to talk me round. She just nods herself, and gets up, and I escort her out to where her coachman's waiting. Settling back inside, she holds out one hand, but this time it's formal, it's what nobby Portygee ladies do. I kissed her mother's hand at the wedding, so I've got the trick of it — more like a breath, it is, more like you're smelling a flower. For half a minute, less, we're looking straight into each other's eyes, and I see the sadness. Maybe for Henry Lee, maybe for me — I never did know. Maybe it weren't never there.

But afterwards I couldn't stop thinking about her. I don't mean her, not like that, wouldn't have occurred to me. I mean what she said, and the way she looked at me, and her coming to see me by herself, which you won't never see no Portygee lady doing, high nor low. And saying that thing about me being lonely — true or not ain't the point. It were her saying it, and how I felt to hear her. I plain wanted to hear her again, is all.

But I didn't. It would have meant seeing Henry Lee, and I weren't no way up to that. I talked to him in me head every time I saw one or t'other of our ships slipping slow out of the harbor in the morning sun, sails filling and the company pennant snapping atop the mizzenmast. And her hold full of poison. I had time enough on me hands to spend with sailors ashore, and shillings enough to buy another round of what's–your–fancy, and questions enough to keep them talking and me mind unsettled. Because most of them hadn't noticed nothing — no shipmates turning, no buyers swimming out to sea, no changelings whispering to them from the dark water.

But there was always a couple, two or even three who'd seen summat they'd as soon not have seen, and who'd have to down more than a few jars of the best before they'd speak about it even to each other. Aye, I knew that feeling, none better.

They wasn't all off our ships, neither. Velha were still a fairsized port then, not like it is now, and there was traders and packets and merchant–men in from everywhere, big and small. I were down the harbor pretty regular, any road, sniffing after work — shaming, me age, but there you are — and I talked with whoever'd stay for it, officers and foremast hands alike. Near as I could work it out, Henry Lee were right, in his way — however much of the salt wine were going down however many throats all over the world, couldn't be more than almost nobody affected beyond waking next day with a bad case of the whips and jingles. Like he'd said to me, just a few, a very few, and what difference to old Ben Hazeltine? No lookout of mine no more, I were clear out of that whole clamjamfry altogether, and nobody in the world could say I weren't. Not one single soul in the world.