40 – Brooklin, Maine
The Lowenstein house was far more than a “summer cottage.” Besides the six bedrooms, each with bath, the exercise room, the media room, the sauna, and the various entertaining areas, what made the house most attractive to Levi was the long dock that extended out on stone pilings into water deep enough to motor the sailboat to the float.
He’d spent the better part of the afternoon carefully cutting away the fiberglass covering he’d built in Spain over the starboard settee water tank, exercising extreme caution not to let his battery-powered circular saw - the house had an excellent woodworking shop in the basement - come anywhere near the metal shell surrounding the device inside the water tank.
The boat’s cabin was filled with dust and shards from the cut fiberglass, but the metal cylinder, 18 inches across and three feet or so long, lay on the cushion on the cabin berth across from where Levi was working. It was still sealed in the clear plastic he wrapped heavily around it in the hope of keeping the device dry when he filled the tank with water. He left it wrapped. It looked less ominous that way, like some sort of kitchen trash can still in its bubble wrap after being lifted out of the shipping box from Amazon.com.
Besides, Levi liked the idea of having something, even if it was just a few layers of clear plastic, between the device and his hands. He had no idea how much radiation leaked from the thing.
I suppose that is the least of my worries, he thought. I’ve been sleeping on that settee, a few inches of wood and foam rubber above that thing, for the past two months. He wasn’t so much worried about glowing in the dark as he was about his manhood. He’d tried to sleep on his back, rather than his stomach. There was something unsettling about having his testicles pointing at who knew how much radioactive material.
It was getting dark as Levi finished his efforts inside the cabin. He walked up the dock and into the house, looking for Reuben. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.
“Nancy Lowenstein and I must be about the same size,” Reuben said, smiling. “Although her tastes are a bit flashier than mine.”
Reuben looked well scrubbed, well manicured, well made up and well, to Levi, well sexy to put it simply. She wore an extremely short and extremely tight black skirt made of some material that looked as if it could have been carefully folded to fit into an ordinary postal envelope. Her stomach was bare. She wore a black leather halter top that tied in the rear, leaving most of her back bare. Her red hair shone and smelled faintly of an organic herbal shampoo.
On her face she wore a broad grin.
“It is so wonderful to get off that boat,” she said. “I felt like dressing up. Sarah and Abram stocked up the fridge before they left, and the Lowensteins have a pretty impressive wine collection. Why don’t you clean up – you’re filthy - and we’ll celebrate our first night on shore.”
“Not yet,” he answered. “I have a bit of heavy lifting to do first. I’ll feel better with that thing off the boat and stashed away on shore. I’m going to carry it into the basement and leave it there tonight. We’ll find a place for it tomorrow, and then we’ll figure out what to do with the boat.”
“As far as I’m concerned,” Reuben said, “you can take it out and sink it. I’m ready for a long break from the deep blue sea.”
“That’s not a half bad idea,” Levi said. “We’ve got to get rid of it somehow. You can start on dinner. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Then I’ll clean myself up and we can really and truly celebrate.”
He laughed, half to himself.
“Get a couple of bottles opened. We deserve it.”
Debra lifted a tall glass half filled with white wine. She pointed at a bottle on the counter, which Levi noticed was more than half empty.
“Way ahead of you on that, sailor,” she said, grinning.
Forty-five minutes later, the cylinder, still wrapped in plastic, lay on the basement workbench. Levi scrubbed his arms and hands with extra energy in the shower, hoping to wash away any radiation his body had absorbed. While Arthur Lowenstein’s clothes were far too small for Levi, he was surprised to find that Reuben had laundered the few clothes Levi had brought in from the boat. He appeared downstairs for dinner, dressed in freshly cleaned khakis and his one collared shirt, also freshly cleaned.
A huge round pot sat on the stove, steam coming from it as the water inside reached a boil. On the counter lay two two-pound lobsters, their claws wrapped in wide yellow rubber bands. Their antennae waved from side to side and their fantails opened and closed. They were quite obviously alive. Two ears of fresh-shucked corn were in a ceramic bowl near the stove.
Two bottles of New Zealand Marlborough sauvignon blanc stood upright in a bucket of ice, two wine glasses next to it. Diana Krall sang “I’m thru With Love” on the best stereo Levi ever heard.
Reuben stood behind the kitchen island, her arms spread wide, her hands on the counter, leaning forward toward Levi, her cleavage enhanced by Victoria’s Secrets best engineering. She smiled at him and said softly, “Well, sailor, what do you think?”
Levi struggled to bring his eyes up to her face. He, too, smiled.
“To quote Richard Thompson, whose songs made it all the way to Eretz Yisrael, red hair and black leather is my favorite color scheme,” he said, “I think I just might be able to forget about the atomic bomb in the basement for a little while.”