“How’s it going, Gracie?” Sandra said aloud.
“Very well. You will reach your destination in five minutes.”
The four Arrivals stopped within milliseconds of each other. Sandra watched with interest as the car approaching from the opposite direction moved on first, then the one from the right, then Gracie. Halfway into the intersection, a woman on a bicycle zipped across their path and Gracie hit the brakes.
Bicycles and skateboards and scooters were still allowed. Arrivals were expected to know how to deal with them, even if conventional cars were banned. As the Arrival continued on, Sandra glanced behind her to see the fourth car move out.
“Impressive,” Sandra said. “You didn’t hit the cyclist, and all the cars moved through the four-way with military precision. How did you know when it was your turn, Gracie?”
Gracie explained, “The car approaching from the north arrived first, one second before the car approaching from the east, which arrived two-tenths of a second before us, and the car approaching from the west stopped one-tenth of a second after us.”
“So you all just instantly calculated that, like you were all talking to each other.”
Gracie did not reply. At first, Sandra wondered whether Gracie was being rude, then realized she had not actually asked a question, or issued a command. She’d made a comment. Arrivals were not programmed to respond to comments. You didn’t want your car joining in on conversations, offering political opinions.
Ahead, the Garrett Island Community Center came into view.
Sandra took another deep breath, glanced at her watch. The ferry full of media types, if it hadn’t already, would dock momentarily. A fleet of Arrivals was waiting to bring them here, about a ten-minute drive.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, reassuring herself. “It’s going to be—”
Gracie hit the brakes. Sandra let out a short scream as the car came to an abrupt halt, pitching her briefcase from the back seat and down into the footwell. Out of the corner of her eye she saw why Gracie had done what she did. A deer had darted across the road. It went past in a flash, disappearing into the woods at the side of the road, its back legs kicking high into the air as it leapt over a crumbling wire fence.
“Jesus!” Sandra said. “Nice going, Gracie.”
There was a deer “harvest” every year on the island — a nice way, Sandra thought, of saying “slaughter.” But the animals were a major carrier of ticks, and the incidence of Lyme disease was up, so there hadn’t been much public outcry about reducing the size of the herd. There were believed to be about five hundred of them on the island, about fifty per square mile. She’d read recently in the Garrett Gazette that more than seven hundred had been killed this year.
The car started to move again and, seconds later, was turning into the community center parking lot. Gracie got as close as she could to the main doors without actually driving up on the sidewalk.
“You have reached your destination,” Gracie said.
“Great. Open up.”
The back door slid open. Sandra reached down and retrieved the briefcase. “Find a place to park, Gracie. See you later.”
Sandra got out. A second after the door closed, the car, without a passenger, moved over to the parking lot and slipped into a spot between two other Arrivals. One of them, she noted, bore the logo of the Garrett Island Police on the side. Even the cops had had their regular rides replaced. Joe had told her that only one traditional island cop car had remained on the island, and that was because it was in the shop for service. About the only vehicles on the entire island that were still actually driven by real people were the fire trucks and the island ambulance.
She smiled inwardly at seeing the police car. So, she thought, Joe is here.
“Hey, about time!”
Sandra whirled around. Given that her thoughts at that moment had been of Joe, she half expected it to be him, but was not surprised when she saw that it was Albert Ruskin. She’d had countless Zoom chats with the assistant to Arrival president Lisa Carver, plenty of FaceTime discussions on her phone. But this was their first in-person face-to-face.
It struck her, almost instantly, how he was just as unpleasant in the flesh. He wore a permanent expression of disapproval, as if, as a child, his face had frozen at the moment he was being force-fed broccoli.
“Hi,” she said.
“We’ve been here since dawn,” he said. “Caught the first ferry. Lisa’s inside, a nervous wreck. And she was just sick to her stomach, for Christ’s sake! What the hell’s in the water here?”
Sandra’s mouth opened in shock. “Oh my God, that’s awful. Is she okay?”
“We were in that area you hilariously refer to as a green room and she was all set up with her laptop. She’d had some coffee that your caterers — more like poisoners — brought in and within seconds she was running for the ladies’ room.”
“I can’t imagine... maybe it’s just nerves or—”
“I’ll bet it was the cream,” Ruskin said. “You can’t get fresh cream around here.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what happened. You can be sure I’ll look into it. Let me talk to Lisa — Ms. Carver — and see if she’s okay. I feel just terrible about this.”
Ruskin shook his head in disgust, then said, “Come on.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the main doors. The man had a quick, nervous walk — like his legs were on fast-forward while the rest of him moved at a normal rate — and when he opened the door he went through first, failing to hold it open for Sandra. She grabbed it before it swung shut and scurried to keep up.
Ruskin was talking without turning his head and Sandra wasn’t picking up all of it. But she did hear, “Maybe it was the coffee. What’d you use? Seawater? And I swear, really, is it so hard to have a proper green room?”
Sandra wanted to tell him that the Garrett Island Community Center was not a TV studio, that this was not the Jimmy Fallon show, but held her tongue. She’d chosen this place, as opposed to one of the local hotels, because they needed a large room to display a small fleet of Arrivals, and the center’s gymnasium fit the bill. Other areas of the facility — a kids’ day-care room, an exercise room, the administrator’s office, a dining area — had become makeshift media centers and conference rooms and, yes, a green room.
Ruskin went down a hall to a door marked ladies, opened it an inch, and said, “Lisa? How are you feeling?”
Seconds later, the door opened wide. Lisa Carver, mid-fifties, silvery blond hair. Sandra, no stranger to Vogue, recognized her smartly tailored jacket and skirt, in dark blue, as Donna Karan. Lisa was dabbing the corners of her mouth with a tissue and looked at Sandra as if she were a cockroach sitting atop a cupcake.
“Are you the one?” Lisa asked.
Ruskin nodded a confirmation. “This is Sandra Montrose, our event coordinator.” His voice was tinged with sarcasm, as if to say, Can you believe it?
Sandra pasted a smile onto her face and offered a hand. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet. How are you feeling? Mr. Ruskin told me you—”
“I’m fine,” she said, ignoring the hand. “At least I think so.”
“The queasiness passed?” Ruskin asked her.
“I think.” She looked at Sandra. “There’s something wrong with the coffee. Is there no Starbucks on this island?”
“I’m so sorry. Are you sure it was—”