Twelve
“CALM DOWN MISSY, you’ll make the two o’clock,” the Santa Claus look-alike at the ticket counter said as he slid me my change and added, “but you’ll have to step lively. The heavens are about to open.”
“Thanks.” I stuffed the bills in my pocket, grabbed my roller bag, and pivoted toward the door. The rain slicked the pavement as I darted to the boat, handed my ticket over, and clambered up the metal ramp, the last one aboard. As I yanked my bag over the gap between the ramp and the deck, my lacrosse stick slipped out of the loop on my backpack.
I bent down to pick it up and my purse slammed against the cold, wet deck. My picture of Nina, I thought. I slid to my shins. My hood fell off just as the rain escalated from shower to downpour. I shoved the purse inside my raincoat, gathered my stuff as best I could, and pushed my way through the heavy door to the inside part of the ferry, where the air-conditioning, set to arctic frost, sent a chill down my back like a zipper.
The knees of my jeans were soaked through to the skin. Water dripped from my ponytail and the hem of my raincoat. I looked around for a seat, or at least a corner to shove my bags in while I tried to rescue the picture. As the steam whistle blew and we pulled away from the dock, the people who had missed the heavy rain settled in. Dry and comfortable, they removed their moisture-wicking jackets and opened hardcover books and well-respected newspapers. Kids stared into their iPads or lined up to order hot dogs while their parents typed into their phones. Chocolate Labs and golden retrievers curled on cozy fleece beds. I stood dripping in my own private puddle.
“Is someone sitting here?” I asked a guy whose guitar was taking up a seat.
He looked up, blinking, like I’d just startled him out of a dream. He was older than me, but not by much. He had messy dark blond hair with a few strands of gold and lines that went from the corners of his bright blue eyes to his cheeks. He was cute and he knew it. He smiled up at me, pulled out his earbuds, and asked, “What’s that?”
“Is this seat taken? I mean, by anyone besides your guitar?”
“Oh, no,” he said, laughing a little as he stood up to get his guitar. He was wearing a gray wool sweater with a hole in the elbow. There was paint on his jeans and a little in his hair. As he leaned over to place his guitar under the seat, his T-shirt lifted, exposing a tan, muscular back. Was he doing that on purpose? “Looks like you’re headed to the island for a while.”
“Yeah,” I said, arranging my stuff in an awkward pile.
“Me, too,” he said. “What are you going to be doing?”
“Working,” I said, peeling my dripping jacket off. “You?”
“Working, yeah, but also just taking it all in. Surfing. Writing music. Resetting, you know? There’s nothing like a summer on Nantucket to shake things up.”
“That’s true,” I said, thinking about how last summer had completely changed my life. “Um, can you watch my stuff?”
He patted my suitcase. “I’ll guard it with my life.”
A little girl sucking on a Popsicle watched with interest as I held the picture over the trash can and freed it from its ruined case. I brushed it off with the soft, dry sleeve of my sweatshirt. The photo looked so small and vulnerable without the frame, but except for a tiny corner piece that had torn off with an apple-seed of glass, it had survived. I turned it over to check the back and gasped. Written in faint ballpoint pen was a list.
Nina’s Life List
1. Visit Rodin Museum in Paris.
2. Learn to drive and then drive Route 1 to Big Sur.
3. Drink Campari on Amalfi Coast with Alison.
4. Be in a Woody Allen movie.
5. See St. Francis from altar.
I traced my finger over her familiar architect’s handwriting. I felt Nina’s presence for the first time since her death. It was like she was leaning on the counter wearing brown duck boots and a Fair Isle sweater, her hair down and her brown eyes laughing at my discovery.
I’d never heard of this list before, and I wondered where and when she’d made it. Since it was on the back of her graduation picture, it must’ve been right after she’d finished Brown. They all had a check mark next to them except that last one: See St. Francis from altar. Maybe it was the faintness of the ink, or the small, girlish hearts drawn in each corner, or the checks next to the first four items on the list, each marked by a different pen, but I had a feeling that no one else knew about it. It was her secret, and now it was mine.
I stepped outside. The air was balmy compared to the dank, clammy cabin, and the rain was now a hesitant drizzle. I stood under the overhang and studied the list again, considering the first item. Visit Rodin Museum in Paris. Nina had spent a year in Paris after college graduation. I Googled it on my phone. The museum itself seemed grand but human-size, with ivy-covered walls, wooden-floored galleries, and huge, arched windows that opened. There were gardens divided by neat, leafy pathways and a reflecting pool. I scrolled through the collection. There was one sculpture called The Walking Man. It was a headless body of a man, well, walking. The body was so exquisitely defined, so muscular, so alive. The Walking Man is a hottie, I thought.
Then I saw the sculpture called The Kiss. My breath caught. The way the man was holding the woman’s hip, how they leaned back, the tilt of her head. It reminded me of Zack. It reminded me of what it was like to want someone so badly you feel every cell in your body turn to face him like a field of sunflowers. That’s what we felt, I thought. No matter whom he was going out with now or the high-five crime, he had touched me like that. He had leaned like that. I knew it and he knew it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t think about Zack. I shut my eyes and started counting backward from one hundred by twos until the feeling passed, a trick I’d learned sometime after Christmas.
Thirteen
“THERE YOU ARE,” A VOICE SAID. “Better grab your stuff, we’re almost here.”
“Huh?” I said, opening my eyes to bright sunshine. Guitar Guy was standing over me. How long had I been asleep? Two hours? Twenty minutes? I looked around to get my bearings. The deck was crowded, and we were almost at Brant Point. The lighthouse greeted us in its snappy white jacket and black top hat.
“We’re almost to Nantucket. And you got a sunburn.”
“Where?” I asked, blinking awake. My lips were dry. I needed some water.
“There,” he said and gently touched the tip of my nose.
“Oh,” I said, covering my nose with my hand. “Oh.”
He didn’t seem to think anything of it. He tipped his face to the sun and said, “Don’t you love how the weather on Nantucket is almost always the opposite of the mainland?” When I didn’t respond he turned to me, grinned, and bit his lip as if trying not to laugh.
“What?”
“You’re adorable.”
“Thanks for waking me up,” I said, standing and straightening my sweatshirt, which had twisted during my nap. “But you really shouldn’t go around touching people’s faces.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you—” He was trying not to laugh.
“It’s actually really rude.”
“You’re right,” he said, giggling.
“I’m going to Brown University in the fall.” I’m not sure why I said this except I wanted him to know that I was a serious person, an Ivy League woman. But now he was laughing harder.
“Excuse me,” I said and went back inside to get my stuff.
The ferry pulled in to the harbor and I strapped on my backpack, secured my lacrosse stick, and dragged my bag out from the spot I’d wedged it into. As I stood in the line of people impatient to get off the boat, I used the camera on my phone to check my sunburn. That’s when I saw that my nose wasn’t just red. Oh, no. Its tip was bright blue. Of course. The eight my mom had drawn was smudged and running and I had rubbed it off on my face. As I tried to wipe
off the perfect circle of blue on the tip of my nose, my face burned red around it. Had I really needed to brag about Brown?
“Cricket!” I heard Liz call, and I searched the crowd for her. The dock was now a beehive of sherbet-colored pants as people reunited with friends, relatives, and luggage. I was almost the last one off the boat. Even though I’d wiped every trace of blue off my nose with the help of a brown paper towel and some pink industrial soap in the bathroom, I didn’t want to run into Guitar Guy again.
“Cricket, over here!” Liz’s voice seemed to rise above the others and lift me an inch off the ramp, but I still didn’t see her. What a difference this was from last year when no one was there to meet me.
“Liz!” I called when I finally spotted her, arms waving overhead like a drowning woman. I darted through the crowd and hugged her. She smelled exactly the same, like rose perfume and cookies, but she was dressed like a different girl. Gone were the jean shorts and neon-colored bra straps. Liz had gone business casual in a navy knee-length skirt and a white button-down blouse. At least her jewelry was still Liz-style. Big red earrings and matching plastic bracelets.
“You look so proper,” I said.
“Well, I’m the manager now, aren’t I? I need to look responsible. And what about you? Turn ’round.”
“What? Why?”
She motioned for me to hand her some luggage. I gave her my backpack.
“Panty-line check. Go on. I want to know how my pupil has fared without my guidance.” I sighed and did a little turn for her. “Well done.” She put on my backpack, handling my lacrosse stick like it was a strange artifact. “And is this a weapon? Gavin left his rain stick in the cupboard. We can have a battle!”
“It’s my lacrosse stick,” I said, taking it back. “I need to practice, like, a lot.”
“I’m kidding. You don’t think I could live on Nantucket and not know what lacrosse is, do you?”
“I never know what you know or don’t know.” Liz could explain the rules of American baseball with absolute clarity and knew certain Nantucket billionaires on a first-name basis and three good ways to create a smoky eye, but she didn’t know how to ride a bike or why, exactly, we celebrated Thanksgiving.
“Someone’s got to keep you on your toes. Come on now,” she said, linking her arm through mine. “We’ve got to get back to the inn. I have a couple coming in on a flight from New York, and I need to be there when they arrive. The Nutsaks.”
“That’s not their name,” I said, laughing.
“N-U-T-S-A-K, from the eastern bloc, perhaps? And I’ve got to have the balls to look them in the eye and welcome them.” We laughed as we wove through the SUVs driving off the boat and walked into town. The scent of waffle cones wafted from the Juice Bar. I drifted toward it, but Liz pulled me back.
“But there’s hardly a line,” I said. “And there’s always a line.”
“I have to get you stowed away before the guests arrive.”
“But chocolate peanut butter cup in a waffle cone…”
“Soon enough,” she said, steering me onward. “I haven’t even heard about your love life yet.”
“Nothing to tell,” I said. “Zack is going out with Parker Carmichael.”
“Bastard!”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Very well.”
I was grateful for her British reserve as we headed up Broad Street and the old sights came into focus. It was busy, though not nearly as busy as it was going to be in July and August. I saw the bench where I’d eaten pizza alone my first week here. I hadn’t known what else to do for dinner. There was the corner where Jules had pretended not to see me, her hair flying from the passenger side of a Jeep blaring a hip-hop song I hadn’t recognized.
My heart sped up when I saw the tiny, hidden-in-plain-sight park where Zack had first held my hand in public. The very late-afternoon June light was as yellow as lemon cake, and green leaves and small blooms were climbing the gazebo, creating a woody, magical frame for kissing. The memories were flying in like slanted raindrops through an open window, and I was powerless to stop them. How was I going to make it through this summer knowing Zack was here in our paradise but no longer mine? How was I going to make it to the inn? We hadn’t even hit Main Street yet.
Just as we were rounding the corner of Centre Street, I caught a glimpse of Guitar Guy stepping out of a bakery with a coffee. He seemed to be smiling at nothing in particular as he removed the lid of his coffee cup to blow into it. He sat on a shady bench and tapped something into his phone.
“Turn back,” I said under my breath.
Liz followed me back down Broad Street. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I met that guy on the ferry,” I whispered.
“The bloke with the coffee? He’s quite fit.”
I shushed her, but that only made her louder.
“Okay, what’s the story? Did you leave your knickers on the ferry? Is that why you have no panty line? Please say yes. Then the pupil will have surpassed the master, like in the movies.”
“No, no. It was nothing.”
“Doesn’t seem like nothing,” she said, and pinched my butt. Where was her British reserve now?
“What about you, sex goddess?” I asked, changing the subject. “How’s your love life?” Liz and her Irish boyfriend, Shane, had practically been living together when I left Nantucket last summer. During our mornings of scrubbing bathrooms and making beds, I’d endured endless stories of their cinematic sex, his intense understanding of great poetry, and his taste for complex whiskey. They were so into each other they’d decided to stay on Nantucket together through the winter instead of returning to the UK, so I was surprised when the briefest shadow crossed her face before she answered, “Ace.”
Fourteen
“GET UP!” LIZ SAID THE NEXT DAY. She handed me a cup of coffee with cream and no sugar, remembering just how I liked it, and a cranberry walnut muffin. It took me a minute to register that I was on the sofa in the manager’s apartment. It was still weird to me that this was where Liz lived now. Last year, this was the boss’s apartment and we lived in tiny single rooms with a shared bathroom. “For a girl who needs a job you’ve certainly had a lazy morning,” Liz said. I sipped the coffee and glanced at the clock. It was almost ten thirty.
“Oh, shit!”
“Oh, shit, is right,” she said. “You have a job interview this morning at one of the island’s most expensive and popular restaurants. So eat up. We can’t have your energy flagging.”
“What?” I almost choked on a walnut. “Where?”
“Three Ships.”
“Liz!” I gasped, spilling a bit of the coffee down my new Brown Women’s Lacrosse T-shirt. Three Ships was on the wharf and had amazing views of the waterfront. It was almost impossible to get a reservation.
“Waitresses make three hundred dollars a night,” she said and I gasped again, “And the position comes with housing.”
“You’re the best. Thank you! How did you do this?” I asked as I stuffed the muffin in my mouth. A job at Three Ships was the best-case scenario.
“I just ran into Charlie, the manager, at the pharmacy. I told him to look out for an athletic blond named for an insect. He said to come by at eleven a.m.”
I glanced at the clock above the TV. “Jesus. That’s in, like, twenty minutes. I’ve got to get changed. I haven’t even showered yet.”
“No time for a shower. A whore’s bath, maybe.”
“A horse bath?”
“Whore’s bath. The bath of a whore. You know, prostitute? Sex for money?”
“Yes, I’m familiar with the term whore, but…” I threw the covers off, hopped into the bathroom, and turned on the water. “Never mind.”
“One little thing,” Liz said as I stepped into the shower. “I kind of told him you worked in New Yo
rk for a year.”
“What?” I grabbed the shampoo.
“Oh, now, don’t say it like that. He said he wanted someone with experience. What was I supposed to do?”
“Where did you tell him I worked?”
“The Russian Tea Room,” Liz said. “I was really thinking on my feet.”
“What’s that?” I pictured furry hats and elaborate porcelain teapots as I rinsed my hair. No time for conditioner. I quickly washed my pits and shut off the water. “Can I have a towel?”
“It’s legendary, a really excellent place to have worked,” she said, opening the curtain and handing me a towel. “Nice tits, by the way.”
“Um, thanks.” I grabbed the towel and covered myself. “But, Liz? I’ve never even been to the Russian Tea Room. I’ve only been to New York once. For the day.”
“Improvise! Do you want to get the job or not?” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, you’d better hurry. And a little mascara never hurts, yeah?”
I made it to Three Ships by ten fifty-nine, in my neatest-looking shirt and skirt, combed, damp hair, and a little mascara.
“You must be Cricket,” said a handsome man who looked like he’d just stepped off of a sailboat.
“And you must be Charlie,” I said. We shook hands and he led me to a table by a window.
“So, tell me all about the Russian Tea Room,” he said.
“It’s an extraordinary place,” I said, doing my best not to lie. I’d Googled it on the way there and memorized a few details. “It’s so centrally located. So opulent. So famous.”
He smiled, tapped his pencil on the table. “What was your favorite dish?”
“The chicken Kiev,” I said, maintaining cheerful eye contact.
“The Kiev, huh? How would you describe it?”
“I would describe it as delicious.” I closed my eyes as if imagining the experience. “Just so, so delicious.”
Nantucket Red (Nantucket Blue) Page 5