Juliet Was a Surprise Read Online Free Page A

Peppercorns were good, but he found none, and in the end he settled on wooden matchsticks. He dumped a couple dozen from the box and snapped them in half. With duct tape he painstakingly taped all the jagged bits to his bare ankles and feet, tops and bottoms, binding them tightly.
    Two perched crows watched him try to take normal steps as he navigated the lawn. The flip side to the matchsticks and duct tape was that he’d had to don shoes and socks to hide things. They were brown leather shoes and white socks and didn’t go with his bathing suit or, he guessed, with paddling a canoe. He didn’t mind being ugly but feared his outfit might give away that he was on to them and would not be distracted, no matter what lure or drama they used.
    Halfway down the lawn he had an idea. He turned painfully and doubled back. In the fridge he found some mustard, the brownish European kind, and applied an earnest layer to his nose. He checked himself in the hall mirror and with a finger fashioned a pointed little flip of mustard at the nose tip. He would tell them it was a new and superior sunscreen from Germany. If they saw past this shield and asked about his wearing dress shoes in a canoe, he would tell them that the last time he’d been fishing his son hooked him in the foot, right between the toes. Anyone who’d suffered that would never fish again without shoes, he’d say.
    He caught sight of himself in the mirror, and he smiled at the man with ball cap and sunglasses and ochre nose with its elfishly curled tip. Of course, if they were on his side—he still held out hope that they were—they’d understand these precautions. They could all laugh together after they revealed themselves. But he mustn’t be deluded by this hope. That was what usually got him in trouble.
    HE STROKED STRONGLY and alertly from the rear while Adam dipped a seemingly calmer paddle up front. In the middle, Eden kneeled in a regal posture, having joked about being an Egyptian queen. Her arms hung straight down from her shoulders.
    He’d forgotten to bring water or beer but they’d forgiven him and Adam had sprinted up for three beers after Eden comically batted her lashes. Her top was back on. When Adam returned with three cans (and where had they come from?) hetried to commandeer the rear seat, saying he’d been a camp counsellor and could scull a canoe into a dock sideways, and quipped that men with yellow noses couldn’t be trusted to steer. Neither of them mentioned his feet. But there was no way he was going to let both Adam and Eden sit behind him, let alone steer. He refused and told them that he was also expert, and once they’d cast off and paddled a small distance, he saw what it took to steer. Though he jolted them a few times he thought he did a fairly convincing job, but after the failed negotiations there on the dock, Adam and Eden pretended to be angry and neither spoke to him.
    The water, the naked fact of floating on it and moving through it, was thrilling. Anyone’s small shift of balance was instantly felt by the other two, a communication so intimate it wasn’t unlike sharing one long body. When they approached the middle of the lake, he didn’t like it when a fish jumped right beside them. It was a ridiculously large trout and such a blatant lure to “come fishing” that it felt heavily portentous and dark, especially as it happened in the deepest, most isolated part of the lake. Adam pretended to be excited by it. The plan had been to paddle to the span of reeds on the other side, because that was where most boats appeared to gather, but after the trout jumped, Adam wanted to fish right there and then. Eden had the rods lying to either side of her, and Adam asked her to pass him one.
    But he ignored Adam and kept paddling, even when they questioned him. When he ignored them long enough, they stopped talking. So he was succeeding. They were learning who exactly