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Taylor looks at her watch and says, “Let’s eat, okay? I have a meeting.”
David grimaces. “Another evening meeting?”
Taylor nods. “This permit thing is no joke. It’s turning out to be much harder than Daddy thought it would be, and guess who
gets to do the grunt work?” Nobody answers; figures she and David are both assuming the question is rhetorical. A grown
woman calling her father “Daddy” freaks out a little, but, like so many other things, she attributes this habit of
Taylor’s to the money. The rules are different for the rich.
“Where’s Jack?” asks David. “Does he know we have a dinner guest?”
“Who’s Jack?”
“He’s our lodger,” says Taylor, rolling her eyes. , still burning from the Country Cousin comment, turns to David for
the real explanation.
“My college buddy,” corrects David. “You’ve met him. He was the best man at our wedding!”
shakes her head and says, “There were so many people at your wedding.”
“But he was the best man ,” insists David.
“Well, I have the worst memory. ”
“He’s a playboy without a mansion, is what he is,” says Taylor. “Jack Baker, the golfer?”
“Am I supposed to know that name?”
“You follow the PGA?” David asks this.
“Nope.” If it’s not the Twins or the Vikings, she doesn’t follow them. The old David would have known that. David lowers his
voice and says, “He’s sort of a celebrity in the golf world. And he should be on the Tour but he had a thing—well, I won’t
get into it. An injury of sorts.”
“Achilles,” says Taylor.
“It’s a lot of pressure,” says David.
“Pressure,” says Taylor, “is dealing with the people on this island who control everything. Pressure is the planning board.”
She shakes her head and scowls prettily.
has never understood how people who make millions of dollars feel pressure—real pressure, she thinks, is what people
feel who have to decide between turning on the heat and buying insulin for their child. But so much about this world is relative.
“The TV cameras love Jack,” says David, not acknowledging Taylor’s complaint. “Whether he’s playing or not.”
More footsteps, another hallway, and then David says in a loud, overly cheerful voice, “There he is! The man himself. Come
meet my cousin, you old bastard.”
The old bastard comes out, and David introduces to Jack Baker, who puts out his hand. And , who tries to avoid
clichés, she really does, feels for at least three seconds like her heart stands still.
Jack Baker is hot.
A flop of blond hair, dark brown eyes, suntanned skin, an easy, jaunty smile revealing white, white teeth. He is almost the
genetic opposite of Zachary, who is pale of skin, Keto-thin. You have to work to get a smile out of Zachary, not because of
his moods, though there are those sometimes too, but also because he is self-conscious about his smile. found that
endearing, until she didn’t.
“Pleasure,” Jack Baker says, and says it’s a pleasure for her too, trying not to let on just how much of a pleasure
it really is.
David says they’re going to eat outside, so follows him to the patio, where two enormous fans usher the air from Great Salt Pond toward them. David and Taylor take the two ends of the table, and Jack and sit across from each other. A glass of cold white wine to ’s right, a tender butter lettuce salad set before her by the woman she’d seen in the kitchen. Then, as soon as they’ve eaten the salads, plates of poached salmon with a cucumber-dill sauce appear.
She leaves the talking to the others—more about the same permit, or a different permit, something about the wedding of a friend
Jack and David and Taylor went to college with, something about a sailing trip to somewhere—and digs into her food with gusto.
The salmon is phenomenal, but even so, she isn’t sure what lapse of logic causes her to say, “Taylor, this is amazing.”
Taylor stares at for an instant and says, “I’m glad you like it. I’ll tell Caroline.”
“You didn’t think Taylor cooked this, did you?” asks David.
“No, sorry, of course not,” says, flustered. She can’t seem to get her footing with her cousin: he’s familiar, and
also a stranger. David used to eat gherkins right out the jar at the lake and call it dinner. feels herself blush for
a second time.
“You should see your face, !” David chortles. “Man oh man. Taylor cooking. I’d like to see that.”
For an instant Taylor looks like she might be hurt, and wonders if she, Country Cousin or not, should defend her. Then
Taylor says, smiling sweetly as can be, “It would be almost as shocking as seeing you mowing the lawn.”
Ah, okay. Taylor can hold her own: she doesn’t need .
Jack’s laugh is loud, almost a guffaw. guesses that if this were a book it might be described as infectious, because
hearing it makes her laugh too. They’re laughing still when the slider to the house opens and out comes a young woman leading
by the hand Taylor and David’s three-year-old daughter.
“Felicity!” says David, and Felicity says, “Daddy,” and launches herself into his arms so fervently that the uneaten portion of his salmon is at risk. David takes her elbow and moves it gently away from the plate. He kisses her on the back of the head, and a look passes between father and daughter that is so tender, so loving, that tears spring unexpectedly to ’s eyes. And she is not, by temper ament or habit, a crier. Two of her sisters are, but if you’ve ever lived in a house with four girls, you’d know that not all can be criers. One house can hold only so many tears.
Felicity is stunning in the way of certain children who have an old-fashioned, timeless beauty, the sort you can imagine in
long-ago Hollywood stills or in advertisements, in the Mad Men era, for laundry soap or ketchup. Golden ringlets, gigantic blue eyes, cherubic cheeks. She pops a thumb in her mouth and
regards from underneath eyelashes so impossibly long most people can achieve them only from a serum or extensions.
Neither of which, supposes, even someone of Taylor’s means is using on a child.
“Say hi to my cousin, sweetie,” says David, “this is ,” and Felicity says, “Hi.”
“Hi, Felicity,” says . “I can’t believe I’ve never met you.” At one time it would have been unfathomable, absolutely
unfathomable, for and David not to see each other for years. Now he has a whole entire kid who is just laying
eyes on for the first time. “She’s gorgeous,” says. “I mean, obviously.”
Taylor, who has stood to plant a kiss on the top of Felicity’s head, passes a hand over her daughter’s hair and says, “My
beautiful little fool.”
“My favorite book in high school,” says .
“Mine too,” says Taylor, and for a second feels the beginnings of a tentative solidarity between them.
David grins and says, “I thought it was Taylor Swift who claimed that.”
Taylor rolls her eyes and looks like she’s about to say something more, but just then her phone, which has been sitting on the table the whole meal, occasionally buzzing with texts, lets out a proper ring, and Taylor looks at the screen and says, “I’m so sorry, I’ve been waiting all day for this call, I have to take it, sorry, sorry.” She grabs the phone and beelines for the slider. Felicity begins to squirm in David’s lap, and, as if equipped with sensors, the nanny reappears, announcing, “Bath time, my girl!” and leads her off.
Caroline comes back out then, bringing shortbread and small bowls of gelato for all of them. She disappears and returns with
a bourbon for David and one for Jack. She asks if she wants anything. has already had two and a half glasses
of wine; she says no, but thank you, then changes her mind and asks for coffee, which appears without delay along with a tiny
pitcher of cream and a bowl full of sugar cubes. Wow! thinks . The good life!
David sips his bourbon and looks out at the water, so sips her coffee and does the same. At the end of the dock,
can see a green light burning.
“What’s that for?” she asks, pointing.
“Keeps the monsters away,” says David, and at the same time Jack says, “Lets the ladies know where to find me.”
rolls her eyes. It’s impossible to get a straight answer around here. Jack leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.
She asks David, “Are you still doing the race car thing?”
“Not so much,” says David.
Jack’s eyes flip open and he says, “The missus doesn’t approve. She thinks it’s lowbrow.”
“I thought you were into the fancy cars, though,” says .
“I am,” says David.
“Was,” corrects Jack. “But to Taylor it’s all the same.”
“Okay,” says David. “Okay, okay. Can we change the subject?”
“Sure,” says . Even though she wants to know more, she’s sensing something from David, a hurt that’s deep enough he
doesn’t care to have it excavated. After a time he snaps his fingers and says, “You know what you should do, ? You should
come to the Vineyard with us. We take As-Is . It’s a blast.”
“A blast,” confirms Jack. His eyes are closed again.
“ As-Is ?”
“Our boat. Don’t laugh. Real estate term.” He shrugs. “I didn’t name her. There’s space to sleep on her, but sometimes we get rooms at the Winnetu instead.”
“David,” says gently (but she’s also annoyed). “You know I can’t afford to do that.”
David takes another slow sip of his bourbon. “It’s okay, Taylor has an account at the Winnetu.”
“I’m not spending Taylor’s money!”
David shrugs. “Spend my money, then. It’s all the same money.”
knows from her father that David signed a comprehensive prenup, so it’s actually not “all the same money.”
“I don’t know,” she says, and David shrugs and says, “Suit yourself. Or spend Jack’s money.”
“Sure,” says Jack carelessly. “Spend my money. The Tour has been very kind to me.” After a beat, “I’m going to head out. I’m
supposed to meet someone in town. , can I drop you anywhere?” He stands.
You can drop me into your bed, wants to say, but of course she doesn’t. She says she’s going to ride home. She yawns, suddenly exhausted, maybe from
the wine or the bike ride there or the prospect of the bike ride home or maybe from the sheer effort required not to say the
wrong thing in Taylor and David’s beautiful home.
David says, “They’re working you hard over there at the Institute, huh?”
“They are. I mean, yeah. I’m just a lowly intern. You’ve heard of the forty-year-old virgin?” She glances at Jack and blushes. Why’d she bring up virgins? “I’m an almost-thirty-year-old intern. But I love it. I’m learning a lot about aquarium maintenance, and I’m going to lead my first dockside exploration soon...” She’s losing her audience. This stuff is interesting to her—she hasn’t even broached the wonders of the squid dissections they do with the kids!—but Jack’s shoulders are turning away from the table, and when the shoulders go, knows , so goes the attention. She switches gears. “Actually, I haven’t been sleeping well. There’s this house next to me where there’s a party every night.”
She has him back. “Sounds like my kind of neighbor,” says Jack, sitting back down. “Go on!”
“Apparently you don’t have to be invited to go. You just... show up. It’s all courtesy of Juliana George.”
David and Jack exchange a look. And it’s there— feels it, as sure as a pinch on her arm—that the night, in fact the
entire summer, takes a turn.
“Did you say Juliana George? She’s your neighbor?” David is sitting up straight, his hand gripping his bourbon glass.
“Apparently. I haven’t met—”
“Here? On Block Island?”
“Yeah. Yup. I guess. That’s what someone told me. So what? Who is she?”
“LookBook!” say David and Jack together.
“Sorry?”
“LookBook.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Jack taps on his phone and holds it up for to see a website on the screen. “It’s an online fashion portal. The Expedia
of fashion.”
“How do you guys know this stuff?”
“I may look like a golfer,” says Jack (actually he looks like an underwear model), “but deep down I’m a business ho.”
“He’s hot for startups,” David concurs. “Company valuations are his porn.” tries not to snicker but snickers anyway.
“That, and regular porn.”
“Oh, please. I spend more time reading Businessweek than you want to know,” says Jack.
Without really noticing, the table has been cleared; her napkin, which had fallen to the ground, is folded neatly in the shape of a swan. Was this what it was to be rich? Invisible people moving quietly around you, tending to things you didn’t even realize needed tending? Making birds out of your napkins? Jack rises again, ready to leave for real this time. He kisses on the cheek, and she’s weirdly, irrationally jealous of whoever he’s going to meet. Stay here, she wants to say. Right here. Instead she says, “I should be going too. Do I say goodbye to Taylor?”
“Nah.” David waves a hand. “She does a lot of work at night.”
“I never even thanked her for letting me use the cottage.”
“You’ll have plenty of chances for that. She’s probably still on the phone.” He leads around the house to the front,
where her bike is waiting. “She’s on the phone so much if I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was stepping out on me.”
looks sharply at him, thinking he’s joking, because honestly, what person in their early thirties uses a phrase like
“stepping out on”? But he’s not joking. has been reading David’s expression her whole life; she can see that his smile
is a little bit wry but a little sad too.
“Stop it. David. You don’t mean that, do you?”
“’Course not.” He slips his armor back on so fast. “Don’t ride home in the dark, Nicky. I’ll get someone to drive you.”
laughs at that. The front yard is illuminated with all sorts of soft yellow lights in the grass, each pointed in its
own specific direction. “You sound like a mobster.”
“Not some random person.” He laughs too. “I meant Joe. The handyman. I’d drive you, but that bourbon hit me. You know how
much I like to drive.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. But I think they have speed limits here.”
“Depends on who you ask.”
guffaws. Same old David. When was learning to drive, her mother hired David to teach her. He’s only two years
older, so this plan was possibly more efficient than legal, but they had a blast. (In retrospect, though, maybe don’t ask
a burgeoning race car driver to teach a newbie.) “Back up, though. You have a handyman who works at night?”
“We don’t usually ask him to do stuff at night. But he lives here, on the property, so he’s often around, and he doesn’t mind running out here or there.”
“I’ll take my bike,” says, thinking that the night air might revive her. She taps the handlebars. “I have a bike light,
a helmet. Legs. I have all the things I need.” She pauses. It’s a natural time to take her leave, but she can’t help but ask,
“Do you ever miss the lake in the summer? I mean, it’s hard to compete with this...” She waves her hand back toward the
house, toward Great Salt Pond, toward the intersection of nature and luxury that David and Taylor have somehow figured out
how to inhabit.
“It’s not hard,” he says instantly. “I miss the lake every day.”
“The smell of the pine needles,” she ventures.
“The roar of the lake trout.”
She snorts and climbs on her bike.
The ride home, in the dark, with the air lighter and clearer than it had been on the way to David’s house, goes by quickly.
There’s a fingernail of a moon hanging over Great Salt Pond. The tanks at the aquarium are fed directly from the waters of
Great Salt, which, if you stop to think about it (and here does), is quite remarkable. She loves it here! She feels
approximately one thousand times more alive than she ever felt at the law firm.
Maybe it was seeing David, or maybe it was something more nebulous that transpired over the course of the dinner, but for
the first time since leaving Zachary, feels like a kid again, coasting along some wide midwestern street, all of her
decisions in front of her, yet to be made. No law degree, no breakup.
She dismounts in front of her cottage (Taylor’s cottage) and strains to discern what she’s hearing. Then she realizes: nothing.
She’s hearing silence. No party next door. Scarcely a light on. She’s surrounded by a quiet so obtrusive it seems almost like
its very own noise.
She walks around the back to the little patio, the small table that came with the place, two chairs, none of it fancy, and she sits for a moment, letting the night air settle around her. She sees the green light flickering on the far edge of Great Salt Pond: the end of Taylor and David’s dock. Then she notices another light, much closer—a light at the end of the dock at the house next door.
Maybe it’s a flashlight, maybe it’s a cell phone, but either way it’s held by a solitary figure whose shape can just make out, legs hanging over the edge of the dock, facing out into the great, grave darkness.