Chapter 3
JOEL
The hotel stood proudly beneath a copse of oak trees, three stories of red brick.
When Joel arrived on the golf cart with his girlfriend, Carmen, she let out a low whistle.
There was an old glamour to its exterior, with its Ionic columns and a porch lavish with potted palms, but inside, everything felt a bit too worn.
There was a water stain bruising a ceiling corner, spider cracks in the walls, even though the floors had been polished, the pillows feverishly fluffed, so you wouldn’t notice. Joel noticed.
The groom Andrew’s family, the aunts and uncles who looked just like the petty, wealthy relatives Joel had grown up with, were undoubtedly ticking off the same flaws, and the thought irritated him as he checked in at the front desk.
He’d never felt at home in that world, and he certainly didn’t wish to be a part of it now.
On the ferry, he’d seen how their postures shifted when they talked about Synanon, how close they stood to one another, like their bodies could form a protective shell.
. . . And I read they sued that journalist who wrote about them.
Threatened their family, he’d overheard a middle-aged woman in a baby blue pantsuit say.
On catching Joel’s eyes, she’d snapped her mouth shut so quickly he imagined her swallowing her own tongue.
Everyone seemed suspicious of everyone else. He was grateful to finally be alone with Carmen in their quiet, softly lit hotel room.
“How many people live on this island?” Carmen asked, unlatching the window.
She had asked questions like this of him since they started dating six months ago.
Why do they no longer call it Persia? How many feet in a meter?
What year was Warren Beatty born? As if, because he had copyedited and fact-checked manuscripts, he was an authority on the world.
When he said he didn’t know, she’d nudge him with her elbow, as if he was withholding.
“It can’t be much more than a thousand,” he said, laying their suitcases on the bench buttressed against the edge of the bed.
“Such an inconvenient place to live. Also an inconvenient place to get married.”
“I guess Andrew’s family has a house here. They were one of the first families to settle on the island, back in the 1700s. And then they made some absurd amount of money by inventing a piece of navigation equipment for ships.”
The faucet groaned in the bathroom when he turned it on, chuffing out air before releasing a torrent of cold water.
He removed his glasses to splash his face, pressed his wet hands to his neck.
Even though his skin was always tan—his blue-blooded grandfather had shocked the family by marrying an immigrant girl from rural Greece—the heat had made Joel flush red.
“What do they do if someone breaks their leg?” Carmen opened her toiletry bag next to him, taking out her toothbrush.
“I’m sure there’s a doctor on the island.”
“Not a hospital, though.”
She caught his eye in the mirror. Her sweat had glazed her T-shirt against her stomach, so he could see the gentle curl of her bellybutton through the cotton.
This trip would be the most time they’d ever spent together.
They had never left the city, and their weekends were always abbreviated by one of her bar shifts or play rehearsals.
Now he had five days to learn her private rituals, what she smelled like every hour of the day.
It alternately excited and terrified him.
She spat in the sink, a vein of pink darkening the foam. Tender gums, she’d once said.
“Well, we’d better wait to break any bones until we’re back on the mainland then,” he said as he dried his face and reset his glasses. She laughed, and flopped on the bed, unbuttoning her shorts. Her feet were pointed as punctuation.
They had met at an office party for the publishing house where he worked.
He noticed her long black hair and thick lashes from across the room, and how even though everyone else was in oxfords and corduroy skirts, she wore a T-shirt and jeans.
He was uncharacteristically jubilant after just receiving news of his promotion to assistant editor, and they talked about where they’d been mugged in the city, which poets they hated.
She untucked his perfectly pressed shirt and told him he should grow his hair long, that he looked like someone’s father.
The next morning, after she’d finished her cup of coffee in his bed, when he finally asked which department she worked for, she’d said, Oh, I don’t work there.
My dentist was in the building and I wanted a drink afterward, and you all obviously weren’t charging.
In the hotel room, he leaned against the doorframe, unsure what he wanted to do now that they had the freedom to rest. The day had been too frantic for much thought.
He’d arranged and paid for everything, directing them from a subway to a train, another train to a taxi stand, a taxi to the ferry.
As the oldest of three brothers, he was used to leading the way.
Carmen rose from the bed. “I’m going to shower before dinner, all right?”
“Of course. Do you need anything?” he asked.
“Just hot water and steam. I need to purge the train air from my lungs.”
He smiled and nodded at her bare thighs, her triangle of white underwear, and kissed her chastely on the mouth.
He hadn’t told Carmen everything about Shay, only that she was his friend from college, and in a world of strict definitions, that’s all they had been.
But as the trip drew closer, as he thought that maybe he should have said something more, it felt impossible.
He prided himself on his honesty—with his authors, he was direct with both praise and criticism—but his omission till now would imply something he did not want implied.
And he wanted Carmen there. He wanted her with him, in this hotel room, at the church, beneath the tent.
At the sound of rushing water, he went to look out the window, over the flat roofs of nearby houses, the skinny trails of roads and waves of marshland undulating out to the coast. He hadn’t seen Shay since she’d left Synanon’s building on Riverside four months ago, and he wondered where she was at this moment.
If she was also in one of the hotel’s showers, running her fingers through her wet nest of auburn hair.
“Stop it,” he said quietly to himself.
Beneath his hand, the window frame was sticky. When he lifted his arm, a slick of white paint stained his palm.