“Hello?” The doorknob turned.
“Kay, it’s me,”
said her brother’s voice.
“Bill? Hang on.” Kate
got up off the bed and unlocked the door.
“You have the door
locked!”
“Bill. Jerry’s here!”
“Oh right. Creep.
Well, at least you’re not sixteen anymore.” He sat down on the bed. There
wasn’t anywhere else to sit.
“I still haven’t
forgiven him for hitting on me! I was a kid!”
“Probably thought
you should be grateful. He is good
looking.”
“Have you seen him
since you got here?”
He shook his
head.
“Well he’s not
looking so great any more.”
“He’s gotta
be—what—fortyish? Catherine is.”
“I actually felt
sorry for her. She seems broken up, for
real.”
“I’m telling you.
She’s not so bad.
“ Kay, I don’t
want to stay inside. It’s nice out. Let’s go rent a boat or something.”
It was so early
in the season that the boat rentals at Champlain’s had a full selection. There
were paddle boats and jet skis and kayaks and inflatables. Bill ordered a
mudslide and a cigarette boat.
“High roller,”
said Kate.
“Look,” said Bill.
“Our father just died. We feel like shit. Let’s cheer ourselves up.”
“Do you know how
to drive this thing?”
He certainly
seemed to. He made a slow circuit of Great Salt Pond, past the Block Island
Club, where his father had tried to make him take sailing when he was a
teenager, past Andy’s Way, where the windsurfers used to go, past Bean’s Point,
where the kid was busted for growing weed and the land taken away by the feds,
past The Cut and the Coast Guard Station. He was headed back towards
Champlain’s, when Bill decided he wanted to wind it out.
“This thing is
built for speed. It’s not rough. Let’s go out and crank it, just for a little
bit.”
He made a steep
curve and blasted out through The Cut.
At one time, Great Salt Pond had been fresh
water. But The Powers That Were decided that, to increase tourism, the island
needed another, more protected harbor. And so, in the1890s the Army Corps of
Engineers made The Cut, a channel through the spit of land that separated the
ocean from the fresh water lake.
“Here we go,” said
Bill. He cranked the throttle up high as he came into the open ocean.
“What’d you do to your hand?” Kate had to
shout over the noise of the engine and slap of the water.
“Stupid cat. It
gets mad when it sees me packing.”
Kate looked at his
hand. The scabs were peeling off. “Those scratches look old. You just got here
yesterday.”
He kept straight
on, giving the Northeast Light a wide berth. Bad rip tides there. “I didn’t
want Mom to know I was on the East Coast. You know how she is. So I didn’t tell
you.”
“Where were you?”
“New York.”
“And you didn’t
tell me?”
“Well I had this
audition. For a show in Greenpoint, no less. And it would mean I could be
spending a lot of time in New York. I just didn’t want to jinx it by talking
about it.”
“So you’ve been
East how long?”
“Ten days. I was
supposed to go back, but my agent said she thought they wanted to test me
against a couple actresses, so to stick around.”
“And you didn’t
get in touch with me that whole time?”
“I was going to go
home, but then this happened.”
“This.”
Another cigarette
boat, with two men in ball caps, roared past them, towards The Cut. Kate
wondered why men wore those things—it made them all look the same. Maybe it was
a macho thing, along with fast cars and boats. She glanced at her brother, in
sunglasses and a ball cap, and sighed.
