The Harbor

By Natalie Mills · Estimated Reading Time: 10 Minutes

One evening when they were first married and his office job was still a mess, they were walking home from his work, where she had met him with a sack of take-out pasta and a Thermos of tea, weapons against the angry weather of the day. As they walked along the harbor’s edge, they stopped briefly under an overhang to give their arms a rest from carrying their umbrella. Rain gushed over the shingles above them, splattering onto their rain boots and overflowing the cracks in the sidewalk before hustling off to dampen some lower piece of earth.

On sunny days, the harbor across from their sidewalk was still and cheerful while tourists buzzed around it, determined to devour the views while they could. Today, the sidewalks were calm and empty, but the surface of the harbor buzzed and jostled, as if stirred by a hundred antsy sightseers slapping the water below. Rain pummeled the boats, and even the whitest stern looked smoggy in the graying dusk. 

They paused and looked out over the harbor, the noodles in their bag wafting up a scent of garlic and parmesan that interrupted the damp world with its warm smell. Smiling at him, she suggested that she just wanted one bite. But the warmth would get out and the rest of the food would be cold before they got home. Just one bite, she teased. He relented, and there, under the overhang, they each ate one bite of noodles and cheese, looking out at the harbor, the boats, and the sky dropping its rain, invisible until it joined the army of water on the ground. Their one bite each lasted until their forks hit the bottom of the plastic container and cleaned up all the stray snips of parmesan that huddled in the corners. 

Looking at the empty container, he laughed. “Tastes better outside,” she remarked. He agreed. 

Tossing the bag in a nearby trash can, they linked arms, popped the umbrella overhead, and jaunted back out into the rain. Later, his office moved and they no longer walked home by the harbor. His job got more difficult, and she no longer ordered dinner. They had kids, and she cooked at home. The kids grew up, and they didn't like the same foods anymore. She grew too old to update her wardrobe. He grew too old to walk on his own.

Forty-seven years later, he was gone and she moved back into the city alone, to a place not too far from where they had lived when they were first married. The neighborhood was rougher now, not so nice after dark. The tourists never lingered past dinner, and the boats looked gray even on sunny days. The nice Italian restaurants had turned into prepaid cell phone stores, and the flower shop where they had eaten their pasta in the rain had been turned into a cigar store with warehousing space above it.

She had a rhythm in her new life. A slow morning at home, lunch of leftovers. Coffee at the corner place with the sticky plastic tablecloths. A walk to the store or the park, taking the long way home past the harbor. If she stopped for pasta in the evenings, she always took it to go in a stiff black take-out bowl and ate it outside on the bench across from the old flower shop.

Her few conversations in a day were trite greetings to stave off the over-eager grins of tourists who felt their hometown cheeriness was appreciated here in the city and her daily conversation with the man who worked at the coffee shop. A young man in his twenties, he was too savvy to be talking with her, chagrined that his job even necessitated it, working at this cheap coffee shop every morning. Not even a trendy one with health benefits. A corner café with plastic-coated menus and elderly customers with clattering canes. Every day, their conversation was the same.

Hello. Hello. He would charge her for the coffee and toss it across the counter. Have a nice day. Thanks. You too. Then she sat down near the window, propping her cane against the doorframe and setting her newspaper before her. Someday, she told herself, she would add an extra sentence. But not today. Or the next time. Or the next time.

Instead, she kept to their conversation cards and slipped out when the paper was read, heading toward the park and then to her seat at the harbor’s edge.

During those evenings of sitting on the bench, she could see the harbor with faster, dirtier boats, a higher fence around it, and the rusted hinges of the warehouse door. Or she would lose her thoughts in the distance, seeing the wet sidewalk as she and her husband trudged home, smelling the warm parmesan when they first lifted the lid of the container. She would lose sight of the cigar shop before her and instead remember the flower shop had been there with the overhang they stood under and the neon sign that climbed up the side of the building announcing the bouquets inside.

Just as she would be truly lost in that place, a dog would pull at his leash or a car door would slam shut. She would look up to see the doors of the cigar shop opening and closing, the overhang gone, the neon sign still there but unlit.

✷

It was all over the news that week: the story of the art thief striking in their very own city. A collector came forward and announced the theft of his newest item, a marble statue of a young man, over seven feet tall, with his hands palms up and his feet astride, standing over ruins of the world beneath him. On the evening it arrived in its crate from Europe, he signed for it, scheduled movers to help him set it up the next day, and went to sleep. The next morning, the crate and the statue were gone. Security cameras had been disabled, all of his staff had been called away for emergencies that had turned out to be fake, and the only remaining sign of the statue was a dusty rectangle left on the ground where the crate had sat the day before.

The statue, over several hundred pounds, couldn’t be moved by fewer than three men. One neighbor saw a truck come and go, but it appeared to be the gardener’s. When questioned, the gardener verified that he had gone to the hospital the night before, and his truck had been stolen that morning. The police report marked the truck stolen at 7:00 a.m. The statue was reported missing by 8:00 a.m. 

The newspaper photo of the statue showed a blurry face, a tunic-clad torso, and the tops of marble knees. The photo cut off there, leaving the ruined world unseen. She considered what the rest of the statue could look like, crumbled buildings or toppling amphitheaters. Skyscrapers tumbling around his ankles or homes and overhangs slowly decaying and falling apart as he stood helplessly above.

✷

As she sat reading, the sun set, the harbor grew quieter, and the shop in front of her seemed to smell less of cigars and more of flowers and pasta. This evening brought about the usual changes to the street. The traffic would die down. The streetlights would flick on. Music would drift in from the clubs on the other side of the harbor.

Sitting on her bench, the cigar store before her darkened, its windows turning into sleepy eyes. Her own eyes scaled the building, moving up from where the overhang used to be, tracing the neon sign that still hung along the building’s edge. At the top, she froze. A figure looked out at her from one of the darkened windows on the top floor.

Surely no one would have reason to watch an old lady eat dinner on a bench. One of the few perks of aging was the anonymity it brought. No one looked twice at her, so she could sit anywhere and watch anything without anyone noticing. Yet there, on the top floor of the old building, a face peered down at her.

The street lamps hadn't turned on yet and the streets were dark. Someone was in that window looking down at nothing, yet directly at her. She felt her hands and forehead go cold, looking back at this face in the window high above. Reaching for her cane with one hand, she kept her eyes fixed on the blank face above her and tightened her fingers around her bag of takeout dinner.

Just as she readied herself to stand, a light turned on in the room and lit up the face that watched her. The face was so gray and so pale that it couldn’t be human. Voices drifted out the window, and two shapes moved around the room, men inspecting the face. The eyes that met hers were those of a statue, a young man, tortured as he watched the world crunch under his sandals.

Suddenly understanding, the woman stood and clicked down the street to the police station. Coming up to the glass doors, she thought at first that she might be sick, but then she remembered this feeling: adrenaline. The rush of a mission, a challenge to overcome, a danger to avoid.

She entered the station, holding her newspaper and plastic pasta bowl in one hand and her cane in the other.

✷

Dee Finch, the woman working the desk that night, was not a woman with patience for time-wasters. She considered anyone who wasn’t her boss a time-waster. When the old woman approached her with a food container in one hand, a newspaper tucked into her coat, and a cane clacking up the stillness of the station at night, she sniffed at everything she despised in this person.

“May I help you?” Her voice was too sweet as she looked up from her desk, her lips wiring into a thin smile.

“I have information. About the stolen statue. I just saw it. I was eating my dinner near the harbor, and I saw it in one of the warehouses when they turned the lights on.”

“Really? Can you tell me what it looked like?” The sweeter Dee Finch’s voice became, the tighter her face pinched into dislike.

Grabbing the newspaper from under her arm, the woman pointed to the picture on the page. “It looked like that.”

“Now why were you there again? That’s a bad area. You shouldn’t be out there at night.”

“I was eating dinner.”

“And do you usually eat dinner in bad parts of town? Watching dark buildings in case lights turn on?” Dee Finch tilted her head to one side. 

The old woman felt warmth flush to her face for the first time. Not the shock of the face in the window, the surprising reveal of its true owner, or the hike up to the station had turned her red, but this did. Some people lose their mobility when they get older, and some lose their judgment. But some lose only their youth and gain a world of people who don’t believe them. The woman hoped Dee Finch was not one of those people.

“I eat dinner there a lot. It’s…a place that I go. I don't actually look at most buildings, but I look at that one.” 

“Hmm,” Dee Finch hmmed in a way that is usually reserved for disobedient children and that is even a little insulting to them. “You really shouldn't do that. Why would you want to be in that area at night? Is that really wise?”

The woman looked at Dee Finch and knew that this woman didn't know how good garlic could smell, how delicious parmesan could taste, or how precious meals could be when they were eaten out of nothing but desire in the moment.

Narrowing her eyes, the old woman turned toward the door and clattered out. Stillness reentered the station, and Dee Finch sighed in relief.

✷

Her route home didn’t need to take her near the harbor, but the woman could not stop from going that way. Reaching the bench and seeing a light still on in the upstairs window, she marched toward the building. She had no plan, but her mind filled with each object she saw as she walked toward the building. The cigar store door. The corner of the old overhang. The narrow alley. A delivery truck with the back open. A green city dumpster. A wooden crate. Her eyes paused on the crate. It was at least seven feet tall. 

She reached her hand onto the top of the crate. It was open. From inside, she pulled out some cardboard, a few pieces of foam, and scraps of shredded newspaper, all in a foreign language. 

Peeking back around the building, she tugged at the rough wooden slats of the crate. Five decades ago, she would have found a way to haul the empty crate back to the police station, shoving it at Dee Finch’s upturned nose. 

But now, she knew she couldn't drag it more than a few yards; she’d be lucky to get it to the street. Without thinking, she went behind the crate and pushed it toward the road, her bench, the harbor.

The wood scraped across the concrete, wailing in the quiet night. The men from upstairs might come down at any time. With one final shove, she tipped the box over into the road. 

Foam and cardboard tumbled out of the open top, and small strips of foreign newspaper fluttered onto the street. Digging into the open end, she tugged out all the newspaper she could, letting it fly every direction as the harbor wind whipped it down the street.

Then she stood up, grabbed her cane, and clicked away. Resting in a patch of darkness between two street lights a few blocks down, she looked back and saw the box on its side, newspaper strips flying over the grass and her bench, landing serenely on the surface of the glassy harbor.

✷

The next day, she was back at the coffee shop with her newspaper, settling into the front page. The missing statue had been recovered. The thieves who were so clever at breaking in were not so clever at getting away. The crate for the statue had tipped over in front of the building where they stored it, sending strips of the foreign newspaper used for packing all over the street. A neighbor reported the box in the road and when city employees came to clean it up, they realized what it was. Strands of inky newspaper were still being found blocks away and on top of the seaweed in the harbor.

The young man who worked at the coffee shop, wiping down a table nearby, glanced over when he heard her laugh. “Crazy, isn’t it? How could they be so smart and then be so dumb? Karma, I guess.”

She chuckled. “I guess.”

That evening, the old woman went back to her bench with her bowl of noodles and her newspaper. She drifted off as she ate, smelling the flower shop and remembering the pounding of the rain around her feet. Once again, she remembered the smell of garlic and the taste of parmesan. But then, she was pulled back to the present in an instant, smiling as a stray strip of newspaper tumbled by in the wind. 

✷

Story by Natalie Mills · Photo by Makoto Tsuka

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