“Both legs were folded under like a doll's,” Lila said and pushed the wooden door open.
They climbed into a round room with windows. Three giant bulbs in cone-shaped silver reflectors elevated in the middle spun and flashed. “Like a spaceship, I always think,” Lila said as she walked to the side with the view of the Atlantic. Eddie thought of sea captains in heavy wool coats with velvet collars looking up to the light on shore. Maybe in a split second, this one captain in his boat, at the wheel near Bermuda or farther, would see Lila and him leaning against each other by the window. Eddie looked down to the jagged shoreline, rocks below thinning threads of water.
Lila broke from him. “Look at the island,” she said, and walked barefoot to the other side. The view flashed of white cottages, small sailboats, a few motels, the community store, the bar, and even the beginnings of the beach — a hint of motion on the far side.
“It's like it's play from up here,” she said. “I think the lighthouse keepers were really afraid of water. I think they came up here, not really looking to the water for ships in trouble, but instead standing and looking over the island trying to see their wife's tiny hands in the kitchen window drying a dinner plate.”
Eddie wanted to say something. The wind keened around the lighthouse. Quickly he spidered his fingers up Lila's back and felt for the hook of her bra. It came undone easily, slackened, and fell lazily. Light pulsed on their mouths pressed like kissing fish. He and Lila kneeled together on the floor like children, then fell under the beams of strong light flashing above them and out over the sea for miles.
EIGHT. THE FOURTH
The firecracker, tossed from the cracked door of the men's room, rolled like a cigarette, then exploded.
“Get ‘em out of there,” John Berry said from outside to the boy's father who lay flat out, bare-bellied, on the hood of his car.
“Let the kid have some fun. It's the U.S. of A.’s birthday,” he said, cocking one eye as he spoke.
John Berry shook his head. “Look,” he said. He smelled barbecue and Budweiser on the man's breath. “We're not on solid ground here.”
The boy in the bathroom opened the door. John Berry saw his thin arms and hands lighting the tip of another firecracker. John Berry lunged for him, but the boy tossed the cracker, slammed the door, and laughed. The firecrackers rang and smoked near the car's front tires. “Bring me some more matches, Pop,” the boy said.
“Get out of there, kid,” John Berry said. He pounded on the door, then looked pleadingly at the boy's father, who gave him a lazy stare and calmly tipped a beer to his lips. “I'd bet today must have been hell for a guy like you.”
John Berry stared at the father. He could see, even in the dusk, the white lines on his stomach that in the sun had been shaded by fat.
“Tell your kid to get out of there,” John Berry said.
The door cracked open and he saw the boy's face. “You don't own this boat,” he said. He lobbed a whole row of firecrackers past John Berry's arm and all the way to the railing. Rat-a-tat-tat. John Berry's neck tightened. He really didn't want to hassle the kid. He was afraid to see even a shade of that expression, the one Emily'd had before he threw the bottle — pretended innocence and then fear.
“I've got some sparklers,” he said to the boy. “Would you come out for that?”
The boy didn't answer and John Berry heard his feet scuffing on the tiles as though he was shadowboxing.
John Berry turned. “Yeah,” the father said. “We're driving straight through to Jersey tonight.” He gestured in the air with an open hand.
John Berry shook his head and walked down the metal steps. Opening his locker, he grabbed the sparklers out of the bag that contained his beer and cigarettes. The long red and white box reminded him of last year when he'd gotten off for the Fourth and Emily and he had gone to a cookout. He remembered her bare shoulders in a sundress and how, as it darkened, her skin blurred as if she were underwater. Most of the night she sat on a low-slung wooden porch chair with a floral cushion, talking to Tom's wife, and he'd sat across and watched her. Even then he was beginning to suspect that there could be others.
As he climbed the stairs back to the deck, he lit the end of two sparklers: long, metallic cattails that buzzed and threw sparks every which way. He stuck one into the crack between the boat wall and door so the boy would see tiny stars shooting into the men's room.
“This man brought you something,” the father said, his eyes still closed.
The door opened slowly. John Berry watched the kid, shirtless in cutoffs and tennis shoes, walk over and take the wire handle from him.
He wrote out words in orange cursive: Bird, Sand, a swirling Water. He announced each one.
Both flames went out then with a tired crackle and whiff. The boy eyed the box of sparklers in John Berry's pocket.
John Berry took three more out, lit them with his lighter, and passed one to the boy and another to his father, who put the handle into his mouth and shut his eyes. It made his face reddish and sparks tattered over the edge of his brow onto his bald head.
The boy wrote out his name, Billy, then his father's, Paul, then girls: Ann, Sue, Cathy. .
John Berry tipped his and wrote Emily in the dark, etched it slowly, and saw it float there.
“Turn that shit off,” Birdflower said, his hands moving over the grill like a magician.
Lila walked over to the cassette player which was balanced above the microwave and ejected a tape. “You wouldn't think you'd be so grumpy, now that you got yourself a girl.”
Birdflower turned toward her and she thought she saw a smile edging up around his mouth.
The owner yelled out: “Three Fourth of July fish fries.” She hustled to the grease bin, dropped the frozen fish patties into the metal basket, plopped them down with a sputter. Birdflower was wiping his face with a bandanna and sticking little toothpick American flags in a line of burgers.
“I don't know what your problem is lately,” he said, shaking his head.
“I did it,” she said casually. She waited for him to move. His wet T-shirt clung to his back. After a moment he turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder. “Did what?”
Lila walked over to him, leaned her stomach on the black knobs, and bent around, over the grill, so she could see his face. “You know,” she said.
Birdflower flipped a hamburger, rolled the hot dogs, and pressed the cooked onions into a tighter pile.
Lila got closer to his face. “I said—”
“I get it,” Birdflower said. “What do you want me to say?”
A kid screamed out on the porch and Lila moved away from him. “I don't know,” she said, reaching for the prongs to get the fish. “I just thought you should know.”
Emily wet a dish towel and put it on her neck and wrists. “There are millions out there. The seating list is two pages long. I never should have agreed to wait tables.”
“You'll make good money for just wiggling your tail,” Neal said.
She threw the towel across the counter at him.
“Very funny,” he said, rocketing it back. “Your platters will be up in a minute.”
Neal turned to check the scallops whitening in a skillet on the stove. The kitchen was damp with steam, and other waitresses hurried in and out without speaking to anyone.
She watched Eddie separating silverware into plastic canisters; knives, forks, soup spoons, the occasional long iced tea spoons all lay scattered under his hands. He'd worn jeans to work, and Emily knew that meant he was meeting Lila later.