by A. S. Green
“Not exactly what I was thinking, but fair enough. So what’s your greatest non-planet-populating ambition?”
“To know who I am,” I answer, realizing exactly how cliché and trite it sounds, but if he knew what it was like to have the perfect American family—complete with an always-sober mother and a doting, homework-helping dad—ripped away by a tawdry Tampa produce broker, then he’d understand. That said, I’m not getting into any of that with him.
Bennet measures the expression on my face and, thankfully, it doesn’t look like he intends to make fun of me. “You don’t know who you are?” he asks.
“Of course I know who I am. I mean, more like what I’m supposed to be. Or do. I don’t know. I want to figure out what makes me happy.” I’m rambling. Shutting up now. I glance away, hoping he doesn’t ask any more questions. “Never mind. It’s stupid.”
“Do you think personal happiness is stupid?”
I draw the back of my hand over my upper lip. When did it get so hot in here? After a few tugs, I get one of the kitchen windows open. A cool breeze blows in from the lake. Salvation.
He pushes me to answer his question, but I hold up my hand like a shield, so he drops it.
“Fine,” he says. “Next question: what’s your greatest flaw?”
I fold my arms and lean my hip against the table. “What is this exactly? Do you interrogate everyone you meet? Or am I special?”
The smile falls from his face. My question seemed legitimate enough, but by the way he’s looking at me now, you’d think I confessed to eating babies for breakfast. It’s the first time I’ve seen him so startled, and I wonder what I said to dispel all his earlier teasing. So I push. “I mean…what’s going on here, Bennet?”
He stands up quickly, and I step back in surprise. “You know,” he says, frowning down at me. “Hell, if I know.”
He pushes the chair back and makes for the door. He can’t be going already, can he?
“According to my friend Macie”—I talk quickly. I don’t want him to go—“my greatest flaw is that I can’t make a decision for myself.”
Bennet stops in his tracks. His back is to me, and his head bows. A second passes before he slowly turns to face me.
“The fact that you came up to Little Bear on short notice seems to negate that a bit, that is…unless you’re here under court order?” He’s back to the teasing, and I relax. He scribbles something more in his notebook. Afterward, he shuts it with a decidedly conclusory snap and puts it back in his pocket.
The phone rings.
“Wait. That’s it?” I ask in alarm. Ring. “That’s where you’re going to leave this? On my flaws?”
I pick up the phone on the third ring and hear Andrew’s voice on the other end. “Hey, oh wow, it’s you!” I say, my eyes darting to Bennet, commanding him to stay.
Andrew starts in with the latest update on everything I’m missing. I want to sit down and have a good long talk with him, but I can’t concentrate with Bennet standing there, plus the static has kicked in again, and I’m only catching every third word.
“Hey, um, Andrew? Can I call you back? There’s someone here, and… Of course I want to talk to you.”
I duck my chin and whisper into the phone. “Well, it’s Friday. Isn’t this your day to volunteer at the golf course? I knew you’d be gone all day. That’s why I didn’t call.” Lie. Lie. Lie. I hate myself.
Bennet rips a page from his notebook. He scribbles something down and slides the note across the table to me.
He’s not worth your time.
I crumple the note into a ball and throw it at his chest. It bounces off and falls to the floor. Bennet shrugs and heads for the door. I cover the receiver with my hand, saying, “Come back here,” then I say to Andrew, “What? Oh, yeah. Mom said she saw you shopping. She thinks you have a date.”
Andrew laughs, which is comforting—not that I was really worried—while Bennet writes another note.
Why do you want me to stay?
I cover the receiver again with my hand and say, “You’re not leaving on my flaws. Ask me what my greatest asset is.”
“But I already know what your greatest asset is,” he whispers, his swimming-pool-blue eyes twinkling.
“You do?” I don’t even know that. I am desperate to know his answer. “Andrew, I’ve got to go. Can I talk to you tomorrow?”
He sighs. “Yeah, sure. Love ya.”
Bennet takes the receiver from my hand and moves to hang it up. I yell “Bye” to Andrew before it clicks off. “Hey!” I yell at Bennet, who looks way too smug for his own good.
“You coming up here all by yourself…that says a lot about you, D’Arcy. I thought I had you pegged, but I was wrong. Your greatest asset is that you don’t settle, and whoever that was on the phone is settled with a capital S.”
“You think I’m settling for him?” I ask, suddenly uncomfortable about all the times I settled for what Andrew decided was best for me. Maybe Bennet is completely wrong about me. I do settle. Quite often, actually. But then again, maybe not. I am here, aren’t I?
“I mean he sounds settled,” Bennet says. “As in predictable. A conformist. It’s Friday so you automatically know what his plans are?”
Hammer meet nail, but I feel the need to defend my best friend. “You don’t know him.”
“I know plenty like him,” he says, his voice losing all expression.
“You know what? I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.”
He shrugs. “I get that a lot.”
“I can’t imagine why,” I say as I push him out the door. “And you never did apologize!”
He turns and says over his shoulder, “That’s because I changed my mind.”
I watch him disappear over the grassy bluff, descending what I can only imagine to be a sheer cliff all the way down to the water. Who does that?
And, come to think of it, what’s wrong with “settled” anyway? Predictability has its advantages. Predictable people do not take off with produce brokers from Tampa…or empty your bank account…or appear out of nowhere and disappear over cliffs. Yeah. Predictable sounds awfully good to me.
Chapter Sixteen
Bennet
By the time I get back to Sully’s cottage, I still can’t shake my conversation with the new summer girl. D’Arcy. Katherine D’Arcy. I want to understand her. That’s how I got onto all those questions. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I’d hoped she’d take it as a game. But she saw through that. Called me out on thinking she was special. Scared the shit out of me when she did it, too. Seems like no one’s looked past the surface of me in years.
The honest truth is, the more I see of her, the more I learn, the more I don’t trust my initial impression. There’s a lot more going on there than prep-school princess. She’s here, isn’t she? On Little Bear.
Even so, I stand by what I said to her. There is no value in a life that’s so scheduled you know what you’re doing just by the days of the week. My parents were like that. Their lives planned out to the nth degree: standing manicure appointments every Tuesday, drinks with the Johnsons on Wednesday, golf on Saturdays.
It was never the life I wanted, but it worked for them, as messed up as they were. Are. Still, I can’t help envying people who know what they’re supposed to do. Direction and certainty aren’t completely overrated.
Jordan’s call has helped in that regard. Not only does Nashville give me a physical destination, it gives me a goal. So it’s weird that the lure of home would still tug at my throat. I miss them. Or at least…I miss one of them.
The sky over the lake is dusky. Dad won’t be home yet, despite the hour. Even if I know better than to tell him about Nashville, Mom might want to know. If I call now, I could find her and Buddy home alone. Maybe our conversation would go better than last time. Maybe the last time I called, Dad had been right there. Maybe he’d been hovering behind them, limiting what they could say to me. My childhood fears shudder over my skin.
“Bennet?”
“Yeah.” I exhale. “Mom, it’s me. Is Buddy around, too? Is he okay?”
There’s a pause. An intake of breath. “You have some nerve, mister, calling here like this.”
And just like that, I realize I’ve made a huge mistake. But I can’t hang up. I’m like a wild animal standing in a spotlight—frozen, unable to move—waiting for the bullet.
“Do you have any idea how much I’ve worried?” Mom is ranting. I can hear her high heels clicking on the tile as she paces back and forth. “Do you think these sporadic, guilt-induced phone calls can undo all the damage you’ve caused us? Do you even care?”
“Is Bud there?” I ask.
“Everyone is working. Something you might consider doing, someday when you’re tired of wasting all your potential. Goofing around on a guitar is—”
Slowly, I lower the phone until there’s a click. Then all I hear is silence.
Outside my window, a sailboat is anchored about thirty yards off shore. It’s bobbing there, peaceful like, and for some reason this pisses me off.
I pick up the first thing my hand lands on and throw it across the room. The ceramic coaster shatters into a million pieces, and that feels so good I throw another one.
“Goofing around?” I yell. “You. Have no. Idea what I’m doing.” I throw a pencil. “You’ve never asked. You don’t care about me, or my music.”
I throw something else. Not sure what. It’s heavy, but it doesn’t break like the coasters when it hits the wall to the left of the sliding glass door, which—at that exact moment—slides open a few inches.
“Um…everything okay in here?” It’s Natalie O’Brien from the post office, and I am humiliated. I must look like a stark raving lunatic. I’m sure my face is red, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a vein popping down the center of my forehead. It doesn’t help that I’m still in yelling mode.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Oh, nothing,” she says calmly, completely unaffected by me, my words, or the mess I’ve created in the living room. Her red-and-blue hair is piled high, exposing a forehead that is furrowed in worry, or possibly dread. She steps gingerly over the rubble as if she expected nothing less. “I’m delivering another package. It didn’t fit in your PO box so… Are you sure everything is okay?”
She sidesteps a pile of black dirt. I guess the heavy thing I threw was the potted plant.
“Peachy,” I answer, taking the box from her. It’s the blank staves-and-tab sheet music I have to order online because Art Musique doesn’t carry it. “Just exercising my artistic license.”
“Sounds good,” she says, kicking a piece of broken coaster with the toe of her boot. “You wouldn’t want that to expire from lack of use.”
She’s laughing at me, I can tell. But she’s also wary. I know what the islanders say about the guys who work the ferry. It’s not completely unwarranted. Mooshy is a piece of work for sure, but the rest of them are okay. Nearly normal. Right now, it must look like I’m holding on by a thread.
“Sorry you had to walk into this,” I say, trying to redeem myself. “Thanks for making the trip.”
“No problem,” she says. “I live for this shit.” Then, with one last look around, she’s out the door. I get a broom. I should have all my troubles swept up before the sun sets.
Chapter Seventeen
Bennet
The next evening, Doyle, Mooshy Moran, Don Barry, and I are sitting in a booth at Paddy’s Grille, the little hangout that’s set on the south hill and decorated in chrome hubcaps, rusty license plates, and flamingo yard ornaments. The walls are covered in years of graffiti, like: paddy’s, where you’re only as young as the woman you feel and may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.
The last of the day’s sunlight streams through the door, which is held open with a brick. A cool breeze lifts the malty smell of spilled beer from the pine floors.
We’re here because the ferry is down for repairs, which is bad news for weekend visitors and ferry revenue but a welcome reprieve for me.
I was glad the guys asked me to come along, but I still manage to set myself apart. Doyle, Don, and Mooshy are all still wearing their ferry uniforms. I’m the only one who bothered to change. I’m drinking Jameson; they’ve all got beers garnished with skewers of olives.
Doyle is sitting to my left, Don across the table from him, Mooshy across from me. Don is dealing out a shorted-deck of playing cards. The game is euchre.
“What do you think, Cappy?” Don asks as he flips the top card on the kitty. “Think they’ll need to pull the prop?”
I adjust the cards in my hand. Two sevens and three nines. Nothing.
“They pull it,” Mooshy says, “and she’ll be in dry dock for days. Think they’ll bring in a replacement ferry from Bell Harbor?” He knocks on the table to indicate his pass.
I knock, as well.
Doyle studies his hand, indecisive. Then he spits into an empty beer can he has tucked up against the wall by the condiment caddy. “Dick called. It’s just the exhaust. Propeller’s not as bad as we thought. Won’t have to pull the prop. We’ll do a trial run early tomorrow mornin’. She should be runnin’ on schedule by nine.”
Don orders trump and we go around the table, laying our cards, picking up tricks. I’m not paying that much attention because there are no winners in my hand. That gives me the opportunity to look around the restaurant while its fifteen or so small, round tables start to fill.
The room is dimly lit by only the fading sun, battery-operated candles, and white Christmas lights strung from the ceiling. In fact, the lighting is so bad I almost don’t see her.
Katherine D’Arcy. At Paddy’s. Alone. Tucked away in the corner. Why is she here?
She sets her phone on the table and checks her texts. It makes me smile. Based on our shitty cell service, she’s probably pretending there’s something there to look at.
“Rookie. You calling trump?” Mooshy asks. I jerk my head toward my coworkers, check my cards, and knock the table.
Doyle’s eyes narrow, then he looks past me to see what had my attention. He grumbles and picks up the top card from the kitty, discarding.
I chance another glance at Katherine. She’s rolling the edges of her paper napkin into a long thin tube, then unrolling it again, pressing it flat. My thoughts go back to our last conversation. I’d dared her to get outside her comfort zone. Is that what she’s doing? Is she accepting my challenge?
If she is, that has to rank with one of the top sexiest things I’ve ever seen. That, and the cleavage show she gave me when she fell over the couch. And the way she lifts her chin in protest when I get under her skin. What I wouldn’t give to touch that skin. Taste it. Fuck. What is going on with me?
By now, Katherine’s napkin is nothing more than a shredded memory of its former self.
Doyle elbows me hard in the ribs. “You playin’ or what?”
“What?” I ask, rubbing the spot where he jabbed me. “Yeah, I’m playing.”
“Your head somewhere else?” Mooshy asks with a laugh. He plays a card, and now it’s my turn.
“No,” I say. I play a card without any strategy. I don’t even remember what trump is.
Mooshy turns in the booth and glances behind him. “Ah,” he says. “That the new summer girl?”
Don rises out of his seat so he can look over the back of the booth. “Yep. That’s her.” He drops back into his seat and plays a card.
Mooshy’s eyes are back on his hand. “It’s a waste, a pretty thing like that, stuck up at Calloway’s for the summer.”
“Christ, are we playing euchre or peckin’ like a bunch of old hens?” Doyle asks.
“Do you ever wonder if it’s safe for them?” I ask. “For the summer girls? Being up there all alone?”
“Safe?” Mooshy asks, playing a card.
I follow suit. “Yeah. Safe.”
“Little Bear strike you as a high-crime area?” Don asks, laughing. “Shit, we got one police officer, and he’s only part-time when he’s not working at the bakery.”
My mouth tightens. I’m annoyed that no one else seems to have given this any thought. Didn’t Calloway notice his phone line was compromised before he left? Why didn’t he arrange to have it fixed? “I’m just saying, cell service sucks, and her landline’s even faulty.”
“And you know this how?” Don asks.
“She told me.”
Don and Mooshy raise their eyebrows at me. Doyle’s body is rigid.
“You going to be the one to do something about that?” Don asks suggestively, leaning into the table toward me.
I shake off his question. “No. But someone should, don’t you think? What if she had an emergency and couldn’t get through to anyone?” My thoughts take off, imagining much darker things than a rogue bear in search of scraps.
“Emergency?” Mooshy asks. “Like what? No one to rub sunscreen on her back?” Don slaps Mooshy on the shoulder, and they both dissolve into raucous laughter. I cringe at the sound.
“Where’s that waiter?” Doyle asks, clearly tired of this conversation.
“Dunno,” I say, my eyes going back to Katherine. I don’t think she’s seen me yet. She doesn’t act like it, anyway. “I’ll go put our order in at the bar. You all sticking with the same?”
My intent is to use this as an excuse to talk to Katherine. See what’s up. If she needs some company. I hate seeing her sitting all alone. But two things happen at once: first, the waiter shows up at our booth; second, Natalie O’Brien walks in, waving excitedly and making a beeline for Katherine.
Chapter Eighteen
Katherine
Bennet thought Andrew and I lived a “settled” life? Well, tonight I’m proving to myself how “unsettled” I can be. I’m twenty years old, for God’s sake, not some crabby old lady who has to keep to a schedule (well, except for Calloway’s). If Natalie doesn’t show, or regrets inviting me to Paddy’s, well, that’s fine. I can eat alone. In a strange place decorated in hubcaps, of all things. And I am not bothered. Not at all. The fact that I’m a little sweatier than the air temperature calls for…that means nothing.