between the north and south ferries

“ARE YOU REALLY SURE you want to do this with me?”

“Quite sure, honey pie.”

“Don’t call me that. It makes me feel like I’m in high school.”

“But two years ago,” she said and kissed his ear, “I was still in high school.”

“I really prefer not to think about that.”

“You admitted you had girls younger than me, when you were in Mongolia.”

“That was part of a tribal ceremony. I only did it for the job!”

“I almost believe you, honey pie.”

She was Miss Enid Bryant. He was Garcia the Photographer. They were seated in Garcia’s 1979 blue Volkswagen convertible, the one of many automotive attractions and curiosities that lined the road that led out of North Haven to the South Ferry on a Tuesday in July. It was summer now and the ferries were always more or less full and there was nothing to do but turn off the engine and wait one’s turn. Beside the car, two men in crisp polo shirts walked back and forth in the road, while their tanned girlfriends sat in an adjacent Porsche, staring at their smartphones through sunglasses. Further down, a Saint Bernard hanged out a back window, panting. Someone’s luxury pet. The South Ferry, operated by the South Ferry Company, actually traveled in both directions, heading north and south. There were two ferries, and when one would arrive, the other would depart. Travel time was about 10 minutes. Enid and Garcia were heading north. To the north was Shelter Island, and on the other side of the island was the North Ferry. The North Ferry, operated by the North Ferry Company, would take them to Greenport, where Garcia had booked a room for a night in a Front Street boutique bed and breakfast called Blake’s Place to consummate their entirely legal but also entirely immoral and indisputably unethical romance. Enid was a music major at Berklee in Boston. She was 20. Garcia was a world-renowned photographer. He was 40. He was also a family friend. It was a relationship that checked every box on the midlife crisis questionnaire and yet it was also a relationship that satisfied them both. Intensely. Lovingly. It flowered with portent like the labyrinthine gardens of the Bourbon kings. Love might not have been the appropriate word, but lust did not suffice either. And despite many nights of cuddling, caressing, and eventually kissing in the sands of Barcelona Point, they had not yet made full love, the kind of love that lovers make in Greenport B&Bs on Tuesday nights, the kind of heat, fervent, and early morning clamor that startles old ladies as they walk downstairs in the morning for Blake’s freshly baked zucchini bread and tart cisterns of locally sourced cranberry juice.

At last it was their turn, and a young man in a yellow vest signaled for Garcia to drive his Beetle to the front right. He pulled it tight to the edge, turned off the engine, and he and Enid walked to the side to watch the swells of the Peconic River pass before the ferry as it grumbled away toward Shelter Island. Enid reached out and touched his hand and then walked farther along the bow of the ferry. A light wind played with her curly chestnut hair and sky blue summer dress and Garcia watched her through his shades and bit his lip. How long could this go on without anyone finding out? And how long would Enid stay with him until she met some nice boy her own age and left him too? Love, lust, or whatever this was called had two possible ends. One was a disappointing but painless fading out, a forgetting, a releasing of the feeling. The other was a bloody clubbing that left both former partners traumatized. Garcia liked her too much and it was starting to vex him. This wasn’t just some nomad in a tent.

He wanted this thing to last forever.

THE SOUTH FERRY arrived to the small port and Garcia idled in traffic before he began the drive north to make the ferry connection for Greenport. An idea then came to him, and he made a quick turn near the Vine Street Cafe and sped off toward the Mashomack Preserve on the east side of Shelter Island. Enid had taken the ferry route to the North Fork enough times to take the Cross Sound Ferry to school, and immediately gripped Garcia by the arm.

She said, “Where are you taking us?”

“I know a little private beach down here,” he said. “Off Coxswain Road. Only a few old-timers live in cottages out there. There will nobody around and we can go for a swim. We can catch the next ferry. We’re in no rush anyway. Your father is on a business trip in California. Your mom is wherever she is again.”

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

“I just thought we could have a nice swim at a secluded beach.”

Garcia turned down Coxswain Road and then passed some of the old cottages, which once belonged to a Manhattan hunting and fishing club in the 1890s before they were taken over by an actors’ and artists’ colony in the 1920s. Supposedly Georgia O’Keefe herself had spent a summer painting clams here. There were also the obligatory poets and anarchists making the rounds. Now this handful of dwellings belonged to aging stockbrokers and the like. They led quiet lives and had little to do beyond balancing their check books. Garcia turned down a sandy road which led to a white beach on Coecles Harbor. There was just one small house here through the woods, covered in shakes, built in the old fashion. It looked like one of the Dune Shacks that nestle in the hills outside Provincetown. There were still a few of them left on Shelter Island. The windows of the structure were dark, but there was a Toyota Corolla parked beside it, speckled in mud and tree debris from a recent rain storm. The windows were half open.

“Do you think anyone lives there?” said Enid.

“Probably,” said Garcia.

“Do you think they’re home?”

“Doesn’t seem so. Maybe someone’s part-time summer place.”

Garcia and Enid walked down to the beach. At one end, a local deer briefly appeared from some high reeds and then disappeared back into the nature. Enid looked back at Garcia, and he removed his sunglasses, revealing his light eyes. Many Galicians had dark hair and light eyes, just like him, he had said. She smiled and then at once pulled her blue dress over her head. She was completely nude underneath. She laughed and ran for the water and dove in. Garcia discarded his trunks and joined her in the sea after. It was just July but the water was soothing and warm. Light waves tickled their ribs. They kissed. Enid wrapped her legs around his waist and he held her from the back. There was something so deep and relieving about these embraces for both of them. She rest her head on his shoulder and Garcia stroked the back of her neck. Both of them smelled and tasted of the salty sea. She said nothing but played with the hair on Garcia’s chest, and Garcia wondered at her pink breasts.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“You want to say something?”

“It’s just.”

“It’s just,” she mimicked him.

“It’s just that.”

“It’s just that.”

“I.”

“I.”

“It’s just that I like you very much.”

“No. That’s not what you wanted to say. You wanted to say something else.”

Garcia said nothing. Enid kissed the photographer’s cheek and swam away.

AFTER THEIR NUDE DIP, Garcia fetched some towels from the trunk of the Beetle and they both dried off. They stood there for a while, their feet on the sand, eyeing the inlet, listening to the birds among the big trees. In the distance, a small motorboat chugged its way through Coecles Harbor.

That was when they heard the unusual noise. It was low, drawn out, but not aggressive. It almost sounded like a creaking board, or a dysfunctional machine, the way an outboard motor might startle at first and sputter a few times before starting. It was coming from the cottage. That was the direction. Garcia and Enid walked closer to the house. They heard the sound again. The front wire screen door was shut, but the front door was actually a crack open. Just a few inches.

Garcia knocked. “Hello? Hello? Is there anyone there? Is anyone at home?”

That noise again, but it was louder and this time more clearly human. Garcia walked into the house and Enid followed him. It had a small kitchen. Brown tiled floors, green-patterned wallpaper, an old Swiss cuckoo clock. Some newspapers were scattered across the table, along with a half-completed crossword puzzle. Half a pot of cold black coffee sat ready to be consumed. Two cups were set out beside the pot, a small jar of sugar, some cream gone bad. A few dirty plates were piled in the sink, and flies nipped away at the remnants of a forgotten breakfast.

“Something’s not right,” said Garcia. “You stay here in the kitchen.”

“I want to come with you.”

“No. You stay here. I’m going into the rest of the house.”

Garcia walked into the living room and again heard that sound. Now he heard something move, a kind of scuffling, as if a dog or cat was trying to get out of the bedroom. The living room had an old television set, including one of those mounted remote controls from the 1970s, and a single gold crucifix watched over it. The living room table was covered with old National Geographic magazines. Garcia recognized the work of Steve McCurry, a childhood idol. He had actually met McCurry at an awards ceremony in Italy once, but he was almost certain the “Afghan Girl” star photographer didn’t remember him.

The sound came again, and that scuffling. Garcia walked through the room to what apparently was the sole bedroom in the house and knocked. “Hello?” A groan came in response, and Garcia finally pushed the bedroom door open.

Two hours later, he told Shelter Island Chief of Police Jimmy Kovalenko exactly what happened next in a deposition at Eastern Long Island Hospital.

WHEN GARCIA ENTERED the room, he saw an older man lying on the floor on the right side of the bed, wedged between the bed and a small closet. The man had white hair and his face was covered in blood. He appeared to have been beaten very badly and his face was swollen and disfigured. His hands were also also covered in dried blood from trying to free himself from handcuffs. An old sock had been stuffed in his mouth and covered in Teflon tape, the kind that plumbers use to fix a leak. He could only breathe through his nose. He was still wearing his clerical collar, the white part of which was also stained red with blood. Garcia told Kovalenko that the man was aware that he was in the room and could speak when the sock was removed at last, after he called the police.

“What did he say?” asked Kovalenko.

“That was the weird part. He just kept saying ‘Suzuki, Suzuki, Suzuki …’”

Kovalenko frowned. “But Father Visser drives a Toyota.”

“I know, it makes no sense,” said Garcia. He drank from a cup of coffee. Enid sat across from them in the waiting room of the hospital. She had already spoken with the chief and was distracting herself with an old copy of Edible East End. The thought that her parents might very soon find out that she had been riding around with Garcia distressed her. There were articles about Peconic wineries, but Enid could barely read them. People often might say, “My father is going to kill me when he finds out,” but in the case of Enid Bryant, the reality was that her father might actually kill Garcia when he found out.

“Is there anything else you can tell me?” Kovalenko asked Garcia. “Did you see anything else you thought was unusual about the place when you entered?”

“Nothing,” Garcia said. “Whoever did this to him didn’t seem to be looking for anything, or if he did steal something, then it was something he found quickly. I mean there were no drawers open, or furniture overturned. Those things.”

“You’ve seen too many detective shows,” said Kovalenko. He looked briefly behind Garcia at a doctor who had just entered the hospital waiting area. The doctor signaled to him and he got up. Garcia turned and watched the police chief, a small man with a mustache, confer with the young doctor on emergency room duty that evening. Kovalenko nodded a few times and returned to Garcia. “The old man died a few minutes ago. I’ve got to go.”

Garcia seemed for a moment a slightly smaller and more subdued man. He processed the death of the old clergyman. He remembered that disfigured bloody face. The small hands, with the wrists torn up red from struggling. The half pot of cold coffee. The Swiss clock. The dim light of the old living room.

“Oh,” was all he said.

“It’s been a long day and is about to get even longer. You can take Miss Bryant home, get some rest,” Kovalenko said. “Got a place to stay in Greenport?”

“Blake’s Place,” said Garcia.

“Ah, Blake’s. He makes excellent zucchini bread, I hear.”

“That’s what it says on TripAdvisor.”

“Something else comes up, I’ll call you in the morning. But be available the next few days, Mr. Garcia, don’t disappear to Mongolia or wherever you go.”

“I’ll be around all summer.”

“And don’t worry,” Kovalenko added, before heading off to chat with the attending physician. “I won’t tell Miss Bryant’s parents about this. Not yet.”