The woman was wearing a positively ridiculous outfit, a fitted summer dress and heels that, if Joy had known anything about shoes, she was sure she would have been able to identify as a four-hundred-dollar-plus set. Jimmy Choo or maybe that Italian guy, Ferra-whatever. Her eyeliner was perfect (tattooed? didn’t people do that?) and her arms were uniformly smooth and bronzed. She wore perfume that Joy, who knew even less about perfume than she did about good shoes, would only have described as expensive. She looked like she could be Bridezilla’s slightly older sister.
This, of course, must be the estranged Cassie. Who else would show up here, looking rich and well attired, acting presumptuous, asking for Anthony? Having such ridiculously long eyelashes? Wearing lipstick? People didn’t wear lipstick in the daytime on Block Island—they wore Banana Boat lip balm, or nothing at all. They wore flip-flops, they wore beach cover-ups or shorts and tank tops, and they wore a light coating of sand.
“Anthony?” A low drumbeat of panic began to play in Joy’s ribs. Did Cassie want Anthony back?
“Anthony Puckett.”
“I don’t know an Anthony Puckett.” This couldn’t be Cassie. The last name did sound familiar, though—where had Joy heard it recently? Puckett, she thought. Puckett, Puckett, Puckett.
“He’s here for the summer,” said the woman. “Or, ah, maybe longer, I don’t know. Sandy hair, about this tall . . .” She indicated with her hand. “Super-cute.”
Then again, could this be Cassie? The physical description of Anthony was spot-on.
“I know an Anthony Jones.” Super-cute was absolutely right. But something else felt very wrong.
The woman sighed. “Fine. Whatever. I’m sure it’s the same guy. He might be incognito.” She narrowed her eyes at Joy.
“Why would he be incognito?”
“Do you know an Anthony or don’t you?”
Now Joy was certain this was Cassie. She was caught exactly halfway between feeling threatened and feeling angry. If she’d had the guts, she would have smacked Cassie across her gently made-up face, smearing her lipstick. How dare she leave Anthony for another man! How dare she make him sad? How dare she, how dare she, how dare she? And also, what did she want with Anthony now, after all this time? Joy didn’t like feeling threatened.
Joy raised her finger and said, “Yes. I think I do. Do you need his number?”
“I have his number. I’ve been trying to call him since I got on that ferry. He’s not taking my calls.”
Joy picked up her cell phone from behind the counter. “Let me give him a try.”
Anthony answered on the first ring. “Joy!” he said. “I’m so glad you called. I was just thinking about last night. It was such a strange ending to a great night, and I know that’s because Maggie was home, but I never got to say—”
“Not now,” interrupted Joy. “Anthony, not now. I have to tell you something. Cassie’s here.”
“She is?” said Anthony. “Cassie?”
At the same time the woman with the colored tips to her hair said, “What the fuck are you talking about? Cassie?”
“Aren’t you Cassie?” Joy asked. She was definitely very confused.
“Absolutely not,” said the woman aggressively.
“You’re not?”
“I know Cassie, Cassie hired me. But I am definitely not her. She— Whatever. I can never remember how that goes.” Not-Cassie sighed and held a business card out between two fingers. Her nails were cut square and painted an extravagant turquoise, like they were trying to match the color of the water off Scotch Beach.
“Scratch that,” said Joy into the phone. “It’s not Cassie after all. My mistake.” She took the business card and squinted at it. “It’s Shelly Salazar, book publicist.”
“Oh, God,” said Anthony. “Really?”
In a quick and decisive motion Shelly Salazar took the phone from Joy and pressed it to her own ear. “I heard that, Anthony,” she said. “And I don’t know where you are on this tiny island but you’d better get yourself down to where I am, a place called . . .” She looked around. “What is this place called?” she asked Joy.
“Joy Bombs,” said Joy. She tilted her chin up in a small display of pride and ownership.
“Joy Bombs,” she said into the phone. “You know it?”
“He knows it,” said Joy. “He definitely knows it.” Out the window she saw Maggie pull up on her bike. Reinforcements, thank goodness. She watched as Maggie steered the bike into the bike rack and wound the lock carefully around it, locking not just the tire but the body of the bike to the stand, the way Joy had shown her. Good girl. During the winter they wouldn’t dream of locking anything on Block Island, but in the summer you just never knew.
“Cute title,” Shelly Salazar said, when she was off the phone. “Joy Bombs.”
“It’s not a title,” said Joy. “It’s a name. Aren’t titles just for books?”
“Or movies,” said Shelly Salazar. “Or magazine articles.”
“Not for bakeries, though.”
“A bakery,” repeated Shelly. “You guys sell gluten-free chocolate chip cookies?” She turned to scrutinize the display cases.
“No,” said Joy. “We sell just one thing. Whoopie pies. Here, try one.” She put a classic chocolate cream on a plate and held it out over the counter. Normally she cut samples into small pieces but she gave Shelly a whole one.
Shelly Salazar reared back like a spooked horse. “Oh, I couldn’t,” she said. “Gluten.”
“Allergy, or preference?” That was something you had to ask, in case ingredients got mixed.
Shelly blinked at Joy and said, “Both.”
Joy wanted to say, You have to pick one, but she held herself back.
Joy hadn’t heard Maggie come in. Maggie liked to use the back door, the one that led into the kitchen, because she said it made her feel more legit. Suddenly she was there, and she was saying, “We have gluten-free whoopie pies,” and when Joy turned around she saw that Maggie had already donned an apron and plastered on her best customer-service smile. Her purple streak was pulled back into a ponytail, along with the rest of her hair. Her T-shirt said My Other T-Shirt Is a Ferrari. She looked fresh and wholesome, like a Swedish milkmaid.
Shelly Salazar nodded and said, “Do you have gluten-free sugar-free dairy-free?” Her expression was optimistic, as though she actually expected that they might have something so useless and ridiculous in a bakery.
“Absolutely not,” said Joy, under her breath.
“No,” said Maggie. “I’m sorry, we don’t. Maybe try, uh—the farmers’ market? I can give you directions.” She met Shelly’s gaze square on, and she smiled.
Shelly handed the whoopie pie back to Joy and for a split second she looked legitimately disappointed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It looks delicious. I wish I could, I really do.”
Then the door opened: Anthony. He was wearing faded jeans and a plain gray T-shirt that looked exactly like the T-shirt he’d been wearing that day at Poor People’s Pub and really almost all the other days of the summer. Joy could feel a faint blush rise to her cheeks. All of Anthony’s T-shirts were the kind of T-shirt that tried to pretend they were from Target or Olympia Sports but really cost ninety-five dollars and were made from silk spun by a thousand exotic caterpillars. That was why they were such a butter-soft place to lay one’s head.
“Anthony,” said Shelly. Big smile, open arms.
“Shelly,” said Anthony. Smaller smile.
Joy watched them closely as they embraced and did that New York cheek-kissing thing. She didn’t observe any kind of spark between them, any chemistry.
Anthony looked her way and—what was that? Some kind of a salute? Then he turned back to Shelly and said, “You be careful of these things. You eat one, you want to eat ten. They’re little joy bombs, just like the name claims.”
A section of a moment passed and then Shelly said, “Ohhhh!” She smiled. “Joy bombs. I get it.”
“Also my name is Joy. It’s a p
lay on words, you see.”
“Ah. A double entendre, if you will.”
“Oh, I will.”
Shelly laughed a little, not insincerely, and then said, “Anthony Puckett, you are a hard man to track down.”
Anthony glanced at Joy again and then back at Shelly. Did he look a little panicked? And what was going on with this last name?
“Wait,” said Joy to Anthony. Where had Joy heard the name Puckett? She searched her memory and came up empty.
“Hang on,” said Anthony to Shelly.
“Mom?” said Maggie to Joy.
“Anthony?” said Joy.
“We have to talk,” said Shelly to Anthony. “I came all this way to see if we could finally do that thing with your fa—”
“Not now,” said Anthony, cutting her off. Not since that first car ride had Joy seen Anthony blush, not even in the heat of, well, in the heat of the moment, but now she thought she saw some color rise to his cheeks, visible even through his impressive summer tan.
“What?” said Joy, miffed.
“Not you, not now,” said Anthony, looking at Joy. He turned to Shelly. “I mean, you, not now.”
“Oh, come on,” said Shelly. “This is ridiculous. I came all this way! That ferry trip takes fifty-five minutes, you know! To go what, thirteen miles?”
“Why does she keep calling you Anthony Puckett?” asked Joy.
Shelly ignored her. “My feet are killing me, Anthony. I’m not leaving unless it’s to go to a bar and figure this thing out once and for all. I’ve got five different publications lined up for this, ready to rock.”
“Publications?” said Joy. “What kind of publications?”
“Nothing,” said Anthony. “No publications. Shelly, why don’t you come back in a little while? I want to talk first to Joy here.”
“No way,” said Shelly. “We’ve been talking about this all summer. I want to lock this down, Anthony.”
“All summer?” said Joy.
“Joy—” said Anthony.
There were prickles on the back of Joy’s neck and up and down her arms. “You know what?” she said. “You guys go to your bar. Maggie, Olivia is in the back. You call her out here the minute things get busy. I’ve got to run home for a few minutes.”
“Joy—” said Anthony again.
“Anthony?” said Shelly. “What’s going on here? I’m getting a vibe.”
“Joy,” said Anthony, more urgently.
“Uh-uh,” said Joy. “Nope. You, not now.”
Chapter 31
Anthony
It was still daylight but inside Poor People’s Pub it was perennially twilight. Anthony called Joy six times as they walked over; she didn’t answer even once. His heart was hammering, and he was sweating through his gray T-shirt. He felt the same smoldering fear and regret he’d felt when Huxley Wilder had called and said those five words: Puckett. We have a problem.
“What do you have for tequila?” Shelly asked the bartender, whom Anthony recognized as Joy’s friend Peter. Peter rattled off a list of names, most of which were unfamiliar to Anthony, who was not by nature or habit a tequila drinker. It had always seemed so unnecessarily complicated, the business with the lime and the salt: one more thing to figure out in an already abstruse world. “Ohmygod, you have Herradura?” She grasped Anthony’s arm. “Have you ever tried Herradura?”
Anthony had not, and said so.
“You. Will. Fucking. Love it. I promise.” To Peter she said, “Two,” and also held up two fingers; Anthony supposed this was in case the word two was somehow unclear.
“Ah,” Shelly said when the bartender put the shots in front of them. “God, I love the smell of a tequila shot, don’t you, Anthony?”
Anthony hadn’t done any kind of shot since the night before his wedding, when his groomsmen had taken him to Three Needs on Pearl Street in Burlington and gotten him inauspiciously loaded on Jack Daniel’s. “Sure,” he said politely. “Tequila. Love it.”
The bartender brought over a small plate with two slices of lime, a saltshaker, and two cocktail napkins; Shelly waved him away. “We don’t need the chasers,” she said. “Not with Herradura.” She lifted one of the shot glasses and handed the other to Anthony; she tipped hers into her mouth and indicated with one hand that Anthony should do the same. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin slightly: a gesture of ecstasy. “God, that’s good,” breathed Shelly. “It’s bold, I mean, you can taste it, but it’s so smooth. Doesn’t leave you cringing.” She flagged down the bartender. “Two more.”
“I’m all set,” said Anthony, who hadn’t done his first shot. Shelly shrugged and made no corrections in the order. She seemed entirely unaffected by the tequila. She was so very thin, he didn’t understand how this was possible.
When the next round arrived, Shelly dispatched her second shot as efficiently as she had her first and smacked her lips together. “So,” she said. “This place. Block Island. It’s so funny. What’s it like, for real?” She pushed his shots closer to him.
Anthony took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s . . . amazing,” he said at last. “It’s really an amazing place.” Amazing was such a vague and banal word, and it didn’t begin to describe the blue-green water, the juxtaposition of the farmland with the ocean, the beach grasses blowing on the way to Scotch Beach. Mohegan Bluffs at sunrise. North Lighthouse at sunset. “Amazing,” he said for the third time. His father would have been ashamed of him. Specificity over vagueness was one of Leonard Puckett’s tenets. You had to be specific, when you were writing two thrillers a year. Your readers wouldn’t stick around otherwise. “I mean,” he finished lamely, “it’s a really nice place to take a break. Let’s put it that way.”
Shelly nodded. She twirled some hair around the tip of her finger, and when she let go the hair maintained a curl. She did the same thing to two more sections of hair and then let her hands fall to the bar, tapping it twice as if to say, There. That’s done.
Anthony needed to get to Joy. By now she would have plugged his real name into Google. She’d know everything. His heart had taken up residence in his throat. His insides were churning. “Listen, Shelly,” he began, “if you came all the way here to talk about the photo shoot, I really don’t know if I can—”
“Oh, that,” she interrupted him. “That’s okay, we’ll get to that later. I mean, I really think it could be a game-changer for you, I have absolutely no doubt, but I totally get it if you’re not ready to do it right now.”
“Okay,” he said, thrown by the later. What did Shelly think they would get to before? “Yeah, I guess I’m not ready.”
“Let’s just talk,” Shelly said, as if Anthony hadn’t spoken. “For now. I’ve never really talked to you, Anthony Puckett. I mean, I’ve talked to you, about the book stuff and whatever, but we’ve never really talked. You never told me, for example”—here she paused to twist one of the many giant rings on the fingers of her left hand—“what it’s like being the son of the Leonard Puckett. The one and only.”
“Oh,” Anthony said. “Gosh.” Same question Lu had asked, but decidedly different circumstances.
“You’re so adorable, Anthony Puckett. I can’t believe you just said gosh. We’ve got to get you out in front of the public again. Now, tell me what it’s like to be a Puckett.”
“It’s . . . hard to explain, Shelly. And honestly not all that interesting.”
“Or, we don’t have to talk, you know,” Shelly said. “I have a room at the Spring House Hotel.”
Oh, God, thought Anthony. He excused himself, walked to the bathroom, and called Joy again. No answer. When he returned, Peter asked, “Another round?”
“Yes, please,” said Shelly.
“Just a seltzer,” said Anthony weakly.
“If you don’t want to go to the hotel,” said Shelly, “I could just . . .” She let one of her manicured hands fall into his lap.
Anthony could feel his skin burning. He glanced at Peter to see if he could see whe
re Shelly’s hand was. Peter was drying glasses with one of those little bar towels and didn’t seem to notice. There was a young couple sitting at a high-top in the middle of a fight. Anthony heard the girl say, “This is just such fucking bullshit, Michael. I can’t even.” At a nearby table a group of bachelorettes were drinking frozen daiquiris and laughing. He shifted and gently lifted Shelly’s hand from his lap, placed it on top of the bar, and gulped his seltzer.
Shelly Salazar took Anthony’s hand and flipped it over so that the palm faced up. She traced the lines on his palm with her manicured finger, closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply.
Anthony glanced around the bar. “What are you doing, Shelly?” he whispered uneasily. “Are you reading my palm?”
“Yes! Look at mine.” She opened her hand. “My left line is higher, which means I prefer a passionate or fiery kind of love. Let me see yours. Put your hands together, Anthony. Line up your little fingers.”
Anthony put his hands together and lined up his little fingers. Shelly frowned and studied his hands. He couldn’t believe he was indulging this. He needed to leave, to hunt down Joy, but he felt bewildered, adrift, and completely incapable of moving out of the way of the whirlwind that was Shelly Salazar.
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“I read it online. You know, when you’re looking for some random thing, like the weather for some vacation you’re about to take, and then all of a sudden you’re clicking links that say ‘Top Ten Ugliest Celebrity Public Fights’ or ‘This Man Cured His Toenail Fungus with This Ancient Chinese Remedy’? Well, I came across a link that said ‘Become a Palm Reader in Ten Minutes.’ So I did.”
“Wow,” he said. “Ten minutes. So fast.”
“Anthony,” Shelly said. “I know you’ve split with your wife. But I have to tell you, your love line is really strong. Very active. So . . .” She looked at him meaningfully.
“I’m not interested,” he said quickly. “I mean, I think you’re a really pretty girl, Shelly.”
“Girl?” She sat back. “I am twenty-eight years old, Anthony Puckett. I am practically an old maid.”
The Islanders Page 18