“Of course we’re friends! I’d hate for anyone to think we weren’t,” said Gil quickly. There was a note of unease in his voice.
“You mean you’d hate to upset Carpie and Weeze.” I knew it was true, and I knew he was embarrassed for it to be true.
“Aw, Jean. Sure, but also you. You’ve been nothing but cool to me. Look, I gotta get back to the Minnows, and then I’m working dinner shift at the yacht club tonight. But I’d really like to see you again.”
Would he? If he really meant it, he’d pick a time. I waited a moment. “So maybe after you’re finished work at the club?”
“After my shift?” He looked surprised. “That’s kinda late.”
“How late would be okay to come see you?”
“Reckon it doesn’t hafta be tonight. I’m here all summer.” He laughed, but when I kept staring at him, hoping, he went on. “Well, look. I guess you could drop by Snappy Boy later on tonight. So long as we were real quiet, and didn’t wake up the house.”
“Yes! I could get away—and you could slip me inside . . .” My head was a jam of thrilled confusion as I tried to envision myself tiptoeing around Snappy Boy.
Gil looked perplexed by the plan. My suggestion had been too bold. “If it doesn’t put ya in a pickle,” he said, slowly.
I smiled. “No pickle at all. Really. I’d love to.”
“Eleven, then?” He stepped back, his brows buckled. But he wasn’t saying no. My daring intrigued him. Suddenly I was that carefree New York City girl again.
“Perfect. Rosamund and Sara and I sneak out to see each other late night all the time,” I lied. “It’d be such a goof—a neighborly drop-in!”
That seemed to do the trick. Gil allowed himself a small smile. “If you say so. I’m on the third floor, the window above the dormer farthest from the path. Toss a pebble, and I’ll let you in quicker ’n a speeding ticket. Okay, I better go check in with the rug rats. Catch ya on the flip.”
“See you later. On the flip.” Even repeating his words had me shaky with anticipation.
Gil turned, but not before he’d leveled me with a last look, that same admiring look he’d given when we slipped through the door at Hollander’s.
Yes, that was me—the sophisticate and the daredevil. I could be that girl for him.
And now the rest of the day was only a string of hours until night.
I went back to the casino, said sorry to Coach for my lateness, and played better tennis than I had all summer. At the candy store, I picked up two cartons of Breyers, chocolate and strawberry, for Sara and Rosamund. The girls weren’t at Bayview, so I left the ice cream in the kitchen freezer with a note. They’d come around eventually; they always did.
Home for lunch, I kept my parents mildly entertained with lighthearted, Daphne-style stories about all the fun I’d had last night at the club. Secretly, I was ticking off each hour. Nap, tea, book, tennis. Was it always so boring here? How had I ever whiled away the hours on Sunken Haven all these years, before I’d met Gil Burke?
After dinner, the rhythms of the house drove me crazy. Why did my parents insist on drinking brandies in the living room? Why did Mrs. Otis, tucked in bed, never turn off her bedroom light? From where I was pretending to read Goodbar on the loveseat, I could see across the lawn to the lit window of Mrs. Otis’s room, a separate lean-to that had once been a potting shed. Where she might be awake all night with her Bible or a romance novel.
Time was officially crawling.
“Good night, I’m turning in,” I said on the dot of nine.
“Sweet dreams, darling,” Mom said, lovingly, to her glass of brandy.
Upstairs, I changed and changed again. Suddenly my white-and-red striped boater shirt looked too conspicuous for traveling by night. I swapped it for my navy shirtdress with the cord sash that Mom had bought for me in Paris.
Last, I prepared my knapsack with a bottle of Beefeater gin—I’d have to water it down when I replaced it later tonight—two limes, a paring knife, a Baggie of ice, a bottle of tonic water, and paper cups.
Was this crazy? Maybe, but no time for the yips. Back in my room, I returned to reading my book in the windowseat, and I listened to the muffled sounds of my parents finishing up second nightcaps and then, finally, thudding off to sleep.
The minute hand inched its journey around my watch dial. My heart beat on a hummingbird’s wings. The rooms of the house seemed to settle in for the evening. A cough, a door shut, a lamp clicked off.
Another ten minutes, and at a quarter to eleven, I was out the back door like a spirit, my knapsack of goodies slung over my shoulder.
On my bike and whoosh, wheels hissing.
Sunkies didn’t grow up fearing the dark. We enjoyed our black nights, with their sounds of cicadas and barn owls. My flashlight unspooled a rope of light to guide me as I shot down from our private lane off Ocean Walk, straight past the church, and past the casino’s outdoor courts. I leaned into the fork, onto Ridge Way, around one bend and then the next. Downshifting. I lifted forward and pushed up over the handlebars as the incline grew steeper.
As familiar as I was with every path and turn on Sunken Haven, my nerves had me in a jumble. Twice I was sure I’d missed the turn. Had this mile marker always been right here? Was that a shrub or a raccoon?
The driveway to the Burke property was marked only by a chunk of Cumberland rock, painted white, with the number 58. The low swoop of a night heron rattled me as I bumped over the bridge, as did the mournful tink of the knife blade against the gin bottle in my backpack.
What if the Burkes caught me out? What would I say? I’d had some mischievous moments with Sara and Rosamund and Bertie—but lone acts of rebellion weren’t my usual sort of thing at all.
I didn’t notice until pain bit my lungs how long I’d been holding my breath.
Snappy Boy rose up like a fortress. What if Weeze and Carp were outside? Or what if Junior was awake, watching me right now with that telescope he used to brag could let him see all the way out to Jones Beach?
Off my bike, I wheeled around the back wall of the Burkes’ massive three-story cedar shake house. I picked up a flat pebble and tossed it at the square window above the second dormer, where it hit the shutter.
Gil’s face appeared immediately—he’d never doubted me.
He pointed for me to meet him at the kitchen door, and I nodded.
The darkness was intensified by the buzz of katydids, along with the occasional sleepy croak of a toad in the cordgrass. Snappy Boy’s quiet was absolute. No ghostly flicker of a bedroom television. No hush of talking through the walls. The Burkes didn’t have dogs or live-in help, but I imagined all sorts of unsettling scenes involving me, caught on their property, attempting to explain what I was doing here.
I pushed off those thoughts. I had pressed Gil for this meeting. I’d been brazen about it. And now that I was here, I could feel how much I craved another chance with him. I wanted to sit on the edge of Gil’s bed, pick up his hairbrush, peek inside his bedside table drawer or his shaving case. I wanted to touch the things that he touched. I wanted to prop a pillow behind my head and treat myself to his morning view out the window. I wanted to let the space that was Gil’s space hold me, too.
And of course I wanted even more than that.
Gil opened the screen door with a finger to his lips. In deep shadow, in his sweatpants and a T-shirt, his body was less intimidating than by day, all sun-bronzed in his swim trunks. He reminded me of how he’d looked on our first night, when we’d stood in the darkness of Hollander’s, and his arm had wound me close and our hearts had pressed together.
“Everyone’s sleeping,” he whispered. “Cross your fingers we can keep it that way.” But as he led me through the house, he didn’t seem fazed, which calmed me a little.
Weeze Burke had always been more interested in her bridge game and backhand than interior decorating, and while she and Carpie had made some additions to Snappy Boy, building a patio and a sunroom, I couldn�
�t remember the last time anything had changed inside. The furnishings reminded me of the Burkes themselves—heavy, solid, with an old-fashioned frill. We passed closed doors and kept moving, up the staircase, around two corners and to the end of a short hall, then up a steeper flight of steps.
We held our breath against every creak in the floorboards. We smiled at each other in the shadows. At the end of the hall, Gil opened the door, then moved past me, deep into the room, to snap on his bedside table lamp.
“This is me.”
The glow of the lamp was forgiving, and the room itself was scrupulously neat, but the cramped space and mismatched furniture could not hide how dismal it really was, and I wondered if Gil knew this had been Junior’s old nanny’s room. It seemed mean that the Burkes had stuck him here. As if he were more of a servant than family.
I imagined Fritz sitting on the bed. Fritz, with her bracelets jangling, her sly gypsy moves—except I was the sly one tonight, wasn’t I?
Gil adjusted the crooked lampshade. “Russian spy returns to inspect living quarters,” he said. But there was hesitation in his face.
“Now that I’m here, you have no idea what to do with me, right?” I teased.
He took a small step back. “We can play cards—that’s what my friends and I are usually up to, after hours.”
“You’re worried about the Burkes finding us out, aren’t you?”
“Naw. I mean, I don’t think so.”
But he was. I could see it in his eyes. Maybe even to the point where he regretted allowing me to be here. Decisive, I reminded myself. The way Daphne had announced one night at dinner that she was spending her whole summer in Spain.
“Look. I brought us a party.” I set my knapsack on the hooked rug, then sat next to it and unzipped it.
“Oh, yeah? What’s in there?”
“Consider it a housewarming gift.”
Gil pulled his hands through his hair and grinned. “You got some stones, Custis. Prancing in here at midnight with your Beefeater.”
“Please. So easy.” Though I was breathless as I presented the knife, the ice, the tonic, and tossed a lime for his catch. “It’s all very civilized, see?”
Gil, watching me, finally seemed to resolve to the risk. He matched my position, dropping to sit cross-legged opposite me, then reached over to select an album from a stack at the bottom of his bookshelf.
“Too bad there’s no stereo in my room,” he said sheepishly, “and Junior only wants to play Frampton. But we’ll use Tom Waits as our tabletop. Just don’t spill.” He spun the album, then handed it to me.
“ ‘The Heart of Saturday Night,’ ” I read as I placed it between us. “Well, now that’s us, I suppose. You’d mentioned him before, at Hollander’s.” I set the “table” with the paper cups, then carefully poured the gin and the tonic.
“Yeah, yeah. Wish I could play him for you.” Gil cupped the lime in one hand as he cut it into wedges, wiping off the pulp on his sweatpants. “Waits, he’s the real deal. You know he’ll always be a loner, telling it like it is, but from a distance. He’s got this kickass raspy voice, too—damn, I wish you could hear some—”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter!” I cut in. Fritz had a raspy voice. I didn’t need Gil thinking of her in any way tonight.
“Arright, cheers,” he said, accepting his drink and raising it. “To the predictably unpredictable Miss Custis.” He leaned over and tapped the paper cup against mine.
“Cheers.” I did it. I’d really done it. If only my parents could see me like this, so assured and sophisticated! But they never would, because I would always be my best and boldest, my Daphne-est self, when they weren’t around.
We downed our drinks like shots. I fixed two more. The gin rolled along with me like a happy friend. I’d stop at the end of this second drink, though. I really didn’t want to say silly things, too many things, things I’d regret.
“This afternoon, when you suggested it, I gotta say, I was jittery,” Gil said. “I’m always sweating the rules here—fact is, even my manners get on Uncle Carp’s nerves. The other day, he told me to quit it with the ‘no, sirs’ and to stop asking permission to leave the table or look in the icebox. But I’m that unsure.”
I laughed. “You’d do well to stay by me,” I told him. “Carpie’s a big old pussy cat. You just need to know where to scratch him.” I could feel Gil’s envy of this idea, of my genuine ease with the Burkes.
“I’m by you now,” Gil murmured.
“And I was in heaven all afternoon, knowing I’d get to see you later.”
Our eyes held. “Jean, listen,” Gil spoke softly into the moment. “What you said, earlier. That nothing should stop us from being friends? I thought about it all day, and want you to know—I one hundred percent agree with you. But the thing is . . .” He ran his tongue over his upper lip, as if trying the flavor of how to speak his next piece. I was already tensed for it. “I don’t know if you know, but Fritz O’ Neill and I are seeing each other now, if you catch my drift. I reckon I oughta tell you that right off.”
I knew it already, of course. But it didn’t stop my heart from dropping in a free fall. “I understand,” I said, but I didn’t. Why? Why Fritz and not me?
Somewhere outside, an owl hooted, breaking the moment.
We laughed.
Gil stretched his arm to give me the lightest chuck under my chin. I smiled. Sipped my drink and said nothing.
Fritz mattered, of course she did. But she didn’t matter every single moment. Not this moment. Fritz had moved fast, but it wasn’t over. The last set might have gone to Fritz, but there was still time to save the match.
Gil had finished his drink, too. The cups were pretty small. When he topped us up, I didn’t say no. “My tolerance is already higher since I got to Sunken Haven,” he said. “You Sunkies get soused. Uncle Carp and Aunt Weeze and Junior looked wiped out this morning at breakfast. But they were planning to get right back to it by lunch.”
“Being buzzed all day is like a hobby here,” I said. Fresh drink in hand, I unbent to stand, and to prove that I was mostly sober, I walked a straightish line to the bookshelf. “Gosh, look at all of those boring history-of-law books. And are you really planning to read these old magazines?” I riffled through the stack, mostly Carpie and Weeze’s old New Yorkers and Saturday Evening Posts.
“They’re a good education. I feel like I’ve got a whole lifetime of civilization to catch up with.”
“Well, I don’t know how you do it. All work and no play.”
Above his desk, shoved among the shabby spines of the complete works of the Bronte sisters, was a photo album, the plasticky binder kind that was sold in drugstores. I glanced over at him. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
I’d think about it later, that momentary sharpening in Gil’s face. At the time, I’d assumed it was only about my prying; my desire to ooh and ahh over Gil’s baby pictures. I prided myself on being observant, but sometimes I didn’t see the importance in the things that I noticed. And when my mind returned to consider all that happened this night, I’d rewind right to here. I’d stare into the quicksilver memory of Gil’s expression as intently as if it had been a crystal ball.
The drinks had rubbed and softened my edges. Gil watched as I pulled the album from the shelf, then slid and stretched out on his narrow bed. Had anything happened between Gil and Fritz here? On this mattress, hard and musty as stale bread?
Don’t think about them. You’re the one who’s here now.
Gil stood and took his drink to his desk. He began to push through his papers and straighten his notebooks. I knew he felt strange about all this, me lying on his bed, flipping through his album.
I felt strange, too. But not so strange that I could give it up.
So I stayed where I was, peering at every page of curl-edged Kodak prints pressed to sticky paper and protected by clear plastic covers. I skimmed faces. Many of the pictures were of Gil and his mom, and a pair of grandparent
s. No father anywhere. Not that I was going to touch that—Gil’s last name was a good indicator that his mother had been single when she’d had him. Surely that was why they’d never been invited here, with all of the embarrassment Carpie’s sister and her out-of-wedlock child must have caused him.
The stepfather entered the pictures when Gil was a baby, along with a small, ugly house and a muddy patch of yard, and then, in quick succession, two more kids.
So poor. I didn’t think I knew anyone who was poor like this.
“Such sweet little boys,” I said. “What are their names?”
“That’s my half-brother Trevor.” Gil pointed. “He’s seventeen; my stepdad let him join the navy. And that squirt is Tommy. Fourteen now, starting high school. He’s the one who’ll take over my stepdad’s business.”
The kids looked fine, but the stepfather looked hard. He matched the squat, ugly house and the skinny dog and rusted car.
I knew Carpie’s parents had died years ago, and it seemed almost cruel of Carpie to let his little sister live like this, so far away and on the edge.
“Come over here,” I said. “Come tell me more about your family.”
“Aw, you don’t want to know more about my family.”
“You’re so super-wrong. I do.” My voice slurred. Almost three gin and tonics in less than ten minutes. I could feel my wheels starting to come off, as Mrs. Otis would say.
Gil finished his drink in a gulp, then pushed in beside me on the bed. Our shoulders grazed. Our elbows and forearms. He flipped the pages backward to start the book over. “Okay, here’s me as an infant.” He pointed. “Me as a toddler. Here’s me on my fifth birthday, when my mom and stepdad gave me a Radio Flyer.”
“That’s you leaping through a sprinkler.” I turned a page. Our ankles touched. Hip bones. A lot of parts of us were touching now. “And you in a turtleneck and double-breasted blazer that make you look like a like a . . . like a . . . television preacher! A child talk-show host!” I could feel my words slipping out carelessly. Had I insulted him, the way I’d hurt Sara the other night? I took a breath.
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