Creature Discomforts

you were from the New York Times. Axelrod sucked up to celebrities, not that he knew any, but according to him, he did. He’d drive by Stephen King’s house in Bangor, and the next thing you knew, he’d tell you they were best friends. Easier than admitting he didn’t have any, best or otherwise. Axelrod, of course, not Stephen King.”
    “So, you knew Norman Axelrod?”
    “Christ, everyone in the state of Maine knew him, or knew who he was. And bolted at the sight of him.”
    “Except Gabrielle.”
    Buck flushed. “Gabrielle is an exceptional person,” he said glowingly. Then the flush turned from warmth to anger. “What else do you know about Fairley?” he demanded.
    “Everyone sings his praises. Everyone. Gabrielle. Quint and Effie. And they’re real purists. Last night, Effie didn’t like it one bit that people were breaking the rules of the Beamon Reservation. And for all that Quint has this job as caretaker because he’s Gabrielle’s nephew, he still knows a lot about environmental issues, nature, all that kind of thing. Effie thinks that Malcolm shouldn’t have anything to do with Opal and Wally, because they’re developers, but Quint obviously admires Malcolm. And the guests at the clambake were grateful that they’d made so much money from the Pine Tree Foundation. No one said it quite like that, but if you want to be blunt about it, the clambake was really a thank-you party for Malcolm Fairley for making everyone lots of money.”
    “Nothing else fishy about him?”
    “About Malcolm Fairley? No. Except what I overheard on Dorr. But I was barely conscious. And this business about knowing him. But that was me. Because of Ann’s letter. I might have missed something about him, though. I wasn’t myself. I’m still not.”
    Buck caught my eye.
    “Yet,” I said dutifully. “And besides doing all this financial wizardry, he does hands-on work. He’s organized a volunteer crew to restore the Homans Path, which is this old, abandoned—”
    “I know what the Homans Path is.”
    “Well, Malcolm Fairley has Wally and Opal, and, today, his daughter, Anita, and Steve Delaney working on the trail. Some other people, too, I think. When Malcolm Fairley talks about preserving Acadia, M.D.I., you can tell from his voice that he’s absolutely genuine. About the rain forests, too. He has some involvement with Guatemala. Anita Fairley is a whole other story. She’s the Pine Tree Foundation’s attorney, but she doesn’t necessarily do the work pro bono. Or maybe she does. For all I know, she does it out of dedication or maybe loyalty to her father. And she must be an investor, and in that case, she’s making plenty. So her motives could be strictly economic. If she has some commitment to conservation, it’s strictly to conservation at a distance. Her father apparently put the pressure on her to spend a day working on the trail, and she was anything but happy about it. She isn’t the outdoor type. But you can tell to look at Malcolm Fairley that he’s in great shape, and he spends a lot of time in the park.”
    With no warning, Buck gave an abrupt, military-style salute and headed for the door.
    “Where are you going?” I asked.
    His smile was sly. “Off to keep Maine green.”
     

Chapter Twenty-three
     
    YOUR FATHER ,” Gabrielle began, “is really extremely angry.”
    Despite the peculiarity of my mental circumstances, I was already starting to get sick of hearing about my father. Did people imagine that Buck’s behavior was under my control? I was happy to notice, however, that the sensation of being tackled about Buck was vividly familiar.
    “He came charging in,” she continued, “asking all sorts of questions about Malcolm.” An essential component of Gabrielle’s beauty, I decided, was her obliviousness to it. Objectively speaking, she was too plump to wear jeans, and the plaid flannel lining visible where she’d turned up the cuffs added to her natural bulk. Although the day was still dry and sunny, she had on ugly, muddy rubber duck boots and a frayed yellow oilskin jacket that had probably cost a fortune forty years ago. If she wore makeup, it didn’t show. The flaws in her skin did. Her silver-blond hair was wild. She must have noticed that I was staring at her. “I’ve been digging clams,” she explained.
    My father, I somehow knew, would admire a woman who digs her own clams. Molly the bichon had evidently not gone clamming. Her curly white coat was unmuddied.