“You know?” Roddy said, his composure returned, a clam strip dangling between his thumb and forefinger, “I had a crush on you in high school.”
“You did?”
“Big one.” He nodded at his clams.
Suzy sat there, dumb.
“Yup,” Roddy said, still nodding.
“I have to say,” Suzy managed finally, “that was sort of a surprise there . . .”
“Yeah?” Roddy stuck a clam in his mouth and chewed.
“Yeah.” She laughed.
“Sorry.”
“That’s OK.” She laughed again, nervous. “Well, you have definitely succeeded in making me feel very uncomfortable now, so maybe, while we’re even, I’ll just take my leave.” She drained the last of her Maker’s, called to Mia—“Hey, kid, let’s hit the road”—slapped a few dollars on the bar for Morey, and stood to go. Mia slid reluctantly from her stool.
Roddy chewed his lip, then said, “It wouldn’t be too hard to have a big crush on you now.”
She stared at him for a second, as long as it took him to blanch and turn back to his food. Then she let out another laugh—a laugh of bafflement—and clapped a hand on Roddy’s back like a football buddy or a frat brother. “We’ll be seeing you, Roddy,” she said. “See you, Squee. Morey. Let’s beat it, kid.” And Suzy opened the door and followed Mia out into the disconcerting sunshine.
The kids arrived early that night, so it was Morey who got them started on their drinks and made quarter change for the pool table. By the time Merle Squire showed up for her shift the air was thick with smoke and the din was as dense. Merle wasn’t particularly in the mood for summer to begin. Summer folk didn’t tip worth shit, and though some customers were better than none, she wasn’t sure she even cared. She didn’t mind tending bar when it was just George Quincy ordering his same old Jack and Coke for hours every night before he stumbled back up the hill, or the girls from the IGA who came in after work. But the summer folk set her on edge. They didn’t even try to fit in. The summer folk treated the year-rounders like mosquitoes: summer pests, inevitable but tolerable if you slathered on enough repellent and didn’t wander out of your screened-in gazebo. One summer Merle had gotten to talking with a chatty and particularly stupid housekeeper—and in Merle’s opinion those Irish girls were as bad as the New York lawyers and their skinny wives. The girl had asked where Merle lived.
“Here,” Merle told her.
“No, but during the year,” said the girl.
“Here,” Merle said again, her patience rapidly waning.
“People live here?” The girl seemed genuinely surprised.
“What do you think?” Merle asked. “You think it’s like Disney World? You think we shut down after Labor Day, pull the docks in out of the water, put a big tarp over everything and pack up and go home?” The girl listened, drunk and bleary-eyed. “Like this is some summer camp for assholes? And what am I? An actress? They pay me to dress like a waitress and pour beer!” Merle laughed loudly, and clearly to herself.
The first person Merle spotted when she arrived at Morey’s that night was her own son, sitting by the bar, drinking a Coca-Cola as though no one knew why he carried his drink with him out to his truck or what he added to it there.
“Hi, Ma.”
“Lance.” Merle nodded. She poured herself a shot of tequila, drank it down, and chewed a lime. Lance glared disapprovingly. “Save it,” Merle told him. He turned back to the Irish girls who swirled around the pool table, carrying their cues like scepters. Merle didn’t know the redhead approaching the bar, but Lance practically jumped out of his skin offering drinks, offering anything. Brigid accepted a beer— Guinness, two of them, actually, both of which Lance paid for— thanked him, and then stepped away.
“You can’t let them know,” Merle told her son.
“Huh?”
“They don’t want to know—ones like that—how bad you want them.”
“Shut up,” Lance said. He was watching Brigid, who handed one of the beers to a college boy skulking in the corner.
“Don’t tell your mother to shut up.”
“Well, shut up, then.”
They were quiet a minute, until Merle said, “So how’s Lorna these days?”
Lance looked at his mother, then pushed his drink away. He shook his head, pulled the glass back, and took a big swallow. “Drunk,” he said.
“Lorna,” Merle said, “or you?”
But Lance didn’t answer, just stared into his drink, shaking his head no.
Brigid had run into Gavin, the waiter she had her eye on, that afternoon behind the staff barracks where he’d sat, smoking, on the fire escape steps. “A gang of us are planning to head over this evening to Morey’s Dinghy, that pub, there . . .”—she pointed—“at the end of the beach, you see?” Gavin had nodded, holding smoke in his lungs, never saying a word. But he’d come, and though he didn’t look particularly thrilled to be there, he seemed the sort who never looked particularly thrilled about anything at all. He didn’t speak much either, which only fueled Brigid’s intrigue. He looked like someone who needed someone to talk to, and though he gave no outward indication that Brigid might be that person, his presence at the Dinghy had her feeling buoyed and hopeful.
She lost the game she was playing and retrieved her beer. Gavin hadn’t moved from his corner, where a corona of brightly colored Christmas lights clustered in the fishing net above his head. Brigid went to him. “Come outside and have a smoke, won’t you?” she asked.
Gavin exhaled a cloud of smoke through the side of his mouth.
“Come for a smoke with me?” she revised.
He smiled slightly, awkwardly, as though his face were unaccustomed to such contortions. Then he shrugged and followed her out the back door.
The deck, too, was lit by Christmas lights: pink, blue, red, yellow, green, strung along the wooden railing, reflected in the water below. Brigid sat and swung her legs over the edge of the dock. Gavin eased himself down beside her and offered a cigarette. She made a show of surprise at his gallantry, and he continued to oblige, making sure hers was lit before his own. Wind ruffled the swamp reeds, and they both looked quickly toward the disturbance as though it might offer a possible conversation topic. A gull flew up toward the moon, half full and ringed with haze. Neither of them thought of anything to say. They sipped their beers. They smoked their cigarettes. You had to be grateful for props at times like this.
Brigid downed her last sip of beer. “Did you love her, then?” she asked. They’d all heard—through a very short and swift grapevine— of Gavin’s decimated relationship with the island girl he’d followed from California. She’d dumped him on arrival.
“I thought so,” he said. The topic ran constantly through his head and needed no intro or segue.
“And now?” she prodded.
“I don’t know.”
He offered nothing more.
“So how long were you two a couple, then?” she tried.
“Since September.”
She nodded, as though she knew what that was like. In truth, Brigid hadn’t had a boyfriend in her life who’d lasted longer than three weeks. Most didn’t last twenty-four hours. She’d slept with three boys and had shared only so much as a postcoital meal with just one of those.
“Yeah,” Gavin said. “Yeah, well, it sucks. Pretty much end of story.” He shrugged again, slapped his palms against his thighs, pulled his legs in and stood. He hovered above her a moment as she gazed up at him.
“Would you be interested at all in getting involved with someone else, then?” she asked. She cocked her head. “Insofar as it might take your mind off things a bit?”
He laughed, a muffled snort, which was dampening but not unkind. When he spoke, it was gratefully. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”