The Purple Isles of Shoals

The Purple Isles of Shoals

Harry Buschman

About this time of day Angela puts on her purple sunglasses and makes herself a whiskey sour. She stares out her kitchen window at the sunset and sees Lar’s house across the bay.

It’s Angela’s 41st birthday. She’s unmarried and the only single man on the Isles of Shoals is Lars, a bearded Norwegian man who speaks very little English and seems to have no particular interest in women ... and none whatsoever in Angela.

The sunglasses soften her normal, everyday bleak outlook of life on the islands, so does the whiskey sour. In fact Angela plans to have another as soon as she is finished with this one. It is a poor substitute for what’s really bothering her of course, but it’s better than no substitute at all. There is no night life out here on the shoals. They are eighteen miles at sea and, weather permitting, it takes the better part of two hours to reach the mainland ... things aren’t much livelier there either. The mainland consists of nothing but fishing canneries and boat yards.

Angela’s biological clock seems to be running low and no one is more aware of it than Angela herself. She casts sheep’s eyes at Lars at every opportunity, but Lars is intent on making as much money as he can in the shortest possible time so he can go back to Norway and marry Ingrid, his boyhood sweetheart who swore she would wait for him ... a reasonable length of time ... but no longer.

During the daily process of consuming her second whiskey sour Angela hatches another plan to snag Lars. She has a past history of sure fire plans to snag Lars and none of them have been successful. Failure to pull down the shades while undressing for bed at night has failed completely, so has hard rock played at ear splitting levels on her phonograph. The bearded Lars seems impervious ... he remains un-seduced.

The purple sunglasses and whiskey sours must remain the only solace for Angela so long as Lars remains true to the promise he made to Ingrid long ago ... so long ago, in fact, that Ingrid is now married and has a son in high school.