“Summer’s over, go home,” finished Kyle, the bartender. He was new to The Undertow, just a month or so into this job. Kat had only seen him a few times before that night.
“Summer’s over, go home!” repeated the group. It was a rallying cry for the locals, but there was no malice behind it. On that night, it felt jubilant.
Sean took a seat at a sticky table in the center of the room and a dozen other revelers joined him.
Kat ordered three plates of fries and another round of pints from Kyle before sitting down.
They were ticking through everyone’s plans for the coming months; that was the last thing Kat remembered really clearly.
Erika, who was normally a chef at a high-end farm-to-table restaurant, was moving to a fried fish joint in Oak Bluffs for the winter. Erika’s friend Colleen was going to work at a gift shop on Chappy, which she was bereft about because Chappaquiddick may as well have been a different continent in the dead of winter.
Sean would be at the boatyard, of course, and also doing one-off refurbishing projects on some of the yachts in storage.
Sean’s buddies Jeff and Rakim were going back to stay with their families in Quincy while they looked for work.
Hunter was reportedly perfectly happy with the landscaping job he’d picked up since rehab, which meant mowing grass in the summer and shoveling snow in the winter. It seemed a waste of all that expensive schooling to Kat, but Hunter said the physical work helped to keep him “on track.”
Kat would be at the glass studio, cranking out the stuff that sells well in winter—holiday ornaments, cocktail glasses, champagne flutes—and minding the shop for whatever light traffic might wander in.
This was the rhythm of everyone’s life on the island, driven by two tides, both beyond their control: the ocean tide and the tide of tourists. The latter rose like a tsunami in late May, multiplying the population sixfold and changing everything for four crowded, messy and occasionally dehumanizing months of the year. It assigned everyone to the category of buyer or seller, taker or giver. You were either there to play and spend, or you were there to serve—waitress, line cook, cashier, dockhand, ferry attendee, bar back, weed dealer or landscaper. And if you were any of those things, you were probably two or three of them because everyone had at least one side hustle. That’s how you survived the year. And when that tide of consumers finally receded, what was left was the heartier life. It’s a gnarlier creature that stayed on all year, with more grooves to show for the shifting salt and sand. The grooves were where the stories lived.
“Fries are here!” someone yelled.
Timofti, the Romanian line cook, brought three steaming plates to the bar and went back to the kitchen. He didn’t stop to talk that night, as he usually did. Kat realized that most of the other seasonal workers were long gone, which meant that Timofti was probably in a legally gray area with his J-1 visa. The Undertow wasn’t one to turn down cheap labor.
Kat stood up to get the fries. She remembered balancing the three plates on her arms, the way she used to do when she waitressed.
Kyle the bartender had called it “impressive.”
Hunter came up behind her. “Only professional foosball players and chronic masturbators could do it better!” That was his joke about her forearms. They were, by comparison to the rest of Kat’s reedy body, rather brawny. Hunter took the plates back to the table.
“I’m a glassblower,” she said to Kyle by way of explanation.
Kyle raised his eyebrows. “Cool.”
This was the first conversation Kat had with him since he started working there. The sound of his voice was a surprise, deeper than his youthful face suggested.
Kyle had questions about glass working, which Kat remembered going on a bit too long about. He wanted to know what sort of tools she used, and how she got into it. He’d done some carpentry, apparently, said he built a doghouse for his mom a while back. Kat asked about the dog, but Kyle couldn’t recall its name or breed. Just a mutt, he’d said. Kat remembered a few people coming up to the bar with drink orders, which Kyle filled, but he never took his attention away from her. Something felt familiar about him—the way he held himself away from the crowd, comforted by the barrier of the bar. Kat identified with that distance—as if he wanted to be there, but didn’t believe he belonged there. She knew that feeling. It seemed weird that she’d never really talked to Kyle before. This intense, eager outsider was a curiosity to her.
Sean came over at some point and put his arm around Kat. She remembered feeling embarrassed by how intently she’d been listening to Kyle. Surely he’d noticed.
“What are we talking about?” Sean asked.
“Glass working,” she said.
“And carpentry,” Kyle added.
No one made eye contact.
Sean squeezed Kat’s shoulders. He seemed satisfied with this answer, and had a few questions for Kyle about his carpentry. It was the sort of work Sean respected. He liked people who did things that mattered. Because to Sean, glassblowing and woodworking were the same; they both added real and tangible value to the world. Painting, building, fishing, cooking, child rearing—he considered all these to be critical skills, none lesser than the other. Most other things, though, were utter bullshit.
Sean had no patience for frivolity or vanity. He expected a lot from everyone and his righteousness would have been intimidating had Kat not passed all the high bars. She felt safe in his moral world. It was as if she wanted to soak in all of Sean’s rules and boundaries to salve her younger self. His boundaries were something firm to lean against.
Kat went back to the table with Sean and rejoined the group. More pints came. It seemed like people were drinking fast. She remembered Sean running his hand down her long, sandy-brown hair as they both spoke loudly to other friends.
People continued to arrive and the room became hot. Someone bought another round. Three people with early morning jobs had to go, and others took their seats. Eventually, the only people left in the bar were their friends. All the faces were familiar, if not the names. They all shared the common ground of winters on the island and a friendship with Sean. Tequila shots were passed around. Kyle turned up the classic rock that played in the background, driving the volume of conversation up with it, until the roar of the room could surely be heard from the street below.
Kat remembered glancing at Kyle as he worked behind the bar. She was hoping to pick up their conversation later.
At some point, Timofti emerged from the kitchen, his coat in hand and face still dripping with sweat from the oven heat. He sucked two bottles of cold beer down at the bar. It must have been about midnight.
The lights came on soon after that.
People stumbled around looking for their coats.
There were back slaps and hugs as the crowd filed down the steep staircase to the cobblestone street below.
And then it was just Sean, Hunter, Kat and Kyle left in the bar.
Sean blinked into the screen on his phone. “Shit, I gotta run back to the boatyard. There’s rain coming in soon and I didn’t cover everything. I’ll walk you home first.”
Was that part right? Kat wondered. Had he offered to walk her home? He must have, but she couldn’t remember for sure.
But she’d said no, that was okay. She’d be fine. It was just a short walk.
They kissed goodbye, probably, and then he was gone.
Her memory of this part of the evening wasn’t great, but Kat could guess how that interaction had gone, and how Sean probably felt about it. He hated that they were still living in separate places. There were good reasons to live apart, like Sean’s eleven-year-old daughter who lived with his ex-wife in Boston, and the convenience of Kat’s current apartment right above the glass studio. But Kat knew those were thin arguments. They’d been together for six years. Sean was a thirty-nine-year-old man who knew exactly wha
t he wanted. He had made it clear he thought they should be living together by now, if not married.
“Who’s up for a nightcap?” Kyle had said. The lights in the bar were glaring on them.
“I am.” Hunter was drunk. “Let’s take a bottle to my boat.”
Kat found her coat wedged between a stool and a filthy bar wall. “You should go home, Hunter. We probably all should.”
“C’mon,” Kyle said, pulling a half-full bottle of Maker’s Mark from behind the bar. “This might be our last night to get on the water this fall.”
This wasn’t hyperbole. Any day of the year, it could be ten to thirty degrees colder on the Vineyard water than the mainland. October at midnight flirted with the end of outside drinking season.
Kat remembered thinking as Kyle came out from behind the bar, that she’d never seen the bottom half of his body before. He was leaner and taller than she thought. And with the addition of a charcoal peacoat and long silk scarf, he looked significantly more polished too. He wrapped the speckled blue scarf loosely around his neck three times with great flair. It seemed a bit absurd to Kat, stepping into such dandy clothing after a shift at The Undertow. Who is this guy? she wondered.
“It’s a plan, then!” Hunter led the way down the stairs to the street.
Kat followed while Kyle locked up.
She and Hunter stood alone for a few minutes and waited under the soft glow of the streetlights. A fog was just starting to roll in. Being with Hunter was like being with herself. It required no work at all.
“Hunter, you should go home,” she said. Hopefully that’s what she’d said. It’s what her sober self would have said.
He put a firm hand on her shoulder. “I promise you I will, soon. Let’s have one more round on the water to celebrate your big sale, and then I’ll go home. You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I know that. But I don’t want to contribute to your demise, either.”
He cocked his head. “My demise will not happen with bottom-shelf whiskey. I promise it will be much more impressive. Anyhow, it’s virtually on your way.”
Kat should have listened to her instincts at this point. She should have recognized what an odd plan it was: the three of them, tipsy at best, on a boat after midnight on a cold and foggy October night. And hadn’t Sean mentioned rain? She said nothing.
Kyle caught up with them and slapped Hunter hard on the back. “Let’s go.”
They walked down the center of the little street, past the last quaint shop, a bed-and-breakfast and a row of old Cape Cods in cedar shake.
After that, the sidewalk pitched up at a thirty-degree slope and there were no more houses; just tall grasses separating them from the Atlantic Ocean on their right. At the top of the hill sat the glassblowing shop, an aging Cape Cod that had long ago been converted to a glass studio and retail space. It was right at the edge of the sharp bluff, the only structure on that side of the road, alone and exposed at every angle.
The hanging wooden sign out front said Island Glass, though you couldn’t make it out in the dark. The sign squeaked as the wind moved it back and forth on its hinges. The entire place was dark.
Technically, Island Glass belonged to Sean’s mother, Orla Murphy, but Kat spent more time there than anyone. Her whole life was there. The garage was her studio, where she made all the inventory for the shop and had spent thousands of sweaty hours among the enormous and treacherous tools of her craft. A furnace, oven, refractory and dozens of smaller instruments were obsessively organized behind the faded garage door that opened to the street.
The main part of the house, the retail shop, was set farther back from the road, hovering at the edge of the receding ocean bluff. To get to it, you had to walk through the garage or around to the side entrance.
When Sean’s father bought the house forty years ago, it had fifteen feet of grass on the ocean side, or so the story goes. They tore down the interior walls of the house and made it into one big open retail space, planted flowers all the way around the outside, and replaced the windows with Orla’s exquisite stained glass creations. It still looked just like the pictures from those days, even as the frontage shrunk.
Island Glass was also Kat’s home; she rented the small apartment on the second floor. It was never meant to be a permanent arrangement. When Orla had suggested that Kat rent the space seven years before, as she was starting her glass-blowing apprenticeship, it seemed like a smart option for the short term. But Kat grew attached to her life at Island Glass. She liked being close enough to the studio to blow glass until midnight if inspiration struck. And if Orla needed an extra hand in the shop at an odd hour, she could just holler up the stairs to Kat’s door. Everything she loved was right there.
Kat felt a tug of sadness as they walked past the shop. It had been a hard week; they’d lost more of their oceanfront cliffs. Island Glass was a few feet closer to the edge than it had been a week before. She didn’t want to think about those things now, though. She just wanted to keep celebrating.
Kat, Hunter and Kyle walked another five minutes in silence, looking out over the steep bluff of wet earth and beach grass. Kyle lit a cigarette and held his long arm out away from them between puffs. The wind picked up and they moved faster. Kyle’s cigarette went out and he flicked it into the grass.
To their left, the houses had changed from cottages to estates, sprawling and set back, with landscaped yards and latched gates. That’s how it is on the Vineyard: nothing is very far from anything else. And in the length of a scrub oak, you can pass from the rich to the überrich.
Kyle looked up at the estates. “One of these is yours, right?”
Hunter nodded ahead. “The next one.” His was the grandest house in a long line of grand houses. “Technically, it’s my dad’s vacation home. I’m just camping out here indefinitely.”
Kyle stopped and looked up at it. “Fuuuck.”
Hunter kept walking. He regarded his wealth with a mixture of embarrassed humility and self-loathing. He took full advantage of the privilege, from extravagant spending on his friends to the unbridled indulgence for every chemical his body craved. He knew this wasn’t the way most people lived, and he was grateful for what he had. But he wasn’t proud of his wealth. Hunter knew he had done exactly nothing to deserve any of this, and he’d spent most of his adult life demonstrating an unworthiness to inherit it. He was as detached from the origins of his wealth as he was from his father, his father’s second wife and the land baron ancestors who’d earned it all for his family. In fact, his only connection to those roots was his ability to spend their money. So that’s what he did.
“Whaler’s down here.” Hunter led them away from the house and toward the bluff on the right, where a steep line of stairs pointed down to a private dock and motorboat.
Kat and Kyle followed. They walked in a line down the long dock, which bent and bowed ever so slightly, warped by years of changing seasons. The wind picked up, drowning out every sound around them but the banging of the boat against the dock. They braced themselves against a light, cold spray from the water’s chop. And then it was calm again. Water lapped gently at the dock posts. The muted glow of a lighthouse pushed through the smeary fog. Martha’s Vineyard was asleep.
Hunter stepped unsteadily into the boat, holding with both hands to the steel rail that ran around the lip of the vessel. Kat remembered thinking he looked too wobbly to drive a vehicle on land or water, but she followed him anyhow.
He went to the cockpit, which had a low canopy overhead, and turned a key to activate a line of dim interior lights. White cushion seats and white walls glowed against the delicate chrome hardware. The cockpit, which was constructed of glossy grained wood, was at the center of the boat. Otherwise, the Whaler was entirely open. You could walk in a full circle around the perimeter if, Kat imagined, you were reeling in a particularly wild catch. It was a fishing boat, but not the utilita
rian sort that the real sportsmen kept at Sean’s boatyard. This was a vintage model, with countless upgrades and refurbishments that made it distinctly tonier.
The boat could comfortably hold four in the semicircle of the bow, where neat little cup holders had been carved into the wood paneling behind the seats. At the stern, you could lean right up against the wall of the boat and feel the rumble of the hulking outboard motor on the other side. Kat liked that feeling.
Every detail of the craft had been considered. It was so tasteful, Kat thought it a shame to leave it exposed to the elements, just sloshing around in the salt water, bumping up against slimy dock posts. She’d been out on it before and the luxury of it never escaped her.
Kyle was stunned as he stepped aboard. “This is incredible. Is it an antique or a reproduction? This is, what, twenty-nine feet?”
“Thirty-three. It’s refurbished from the sixties, I think.” Hunter didn’t really care about boats, but even he was charmed by this one.
Kyle ran his fingers along a small brass plate fastened to the port side. It was engraved with the final lines of a Yeats poem. Kat noticed the stanza every time she was on the boat. It spoke of the “invulnerable tide”—an idea she’d never heard of before seeing it there, but wouldn’t likely forget. Kat never really understood those lines, but she knew enough to know that they weren’t about the ocean. The invulnerable tide Yeats was referring to was something darker, more ominous than that. It sent a chill through her each time she read it. Hunter said his father had a dark sense of humor.
Kat took a seat across from Kyle at the bow as the engine whirred, and Hunter steered them slowly away from the shore.
“I think we’ve got a little time before the rain comes, but don’t go out far,” Kat yelled toward Hunter in the cockpit.
Everything That Follows Page 2