At some point, I hear the ringing of a bell. The rise and fall of voices. The creaking and clacking of footsteps on stairs. My mom appears in the doorway. “That’s dinner.” She’s expecting movement—close book, stand up, walk out of room. Her eyes go to the Absolut bottles, then back to me.
“Claude.”
“Mom.”
She frowns at the bottles, so I pick them up, place the book back on the shelf, and brush past her. I return the bottles to the bar, which is now empty. I don’t look to see if the boy took my number. I just walk right out and keep going, Mom on my heels, down the stairs to the dining room.
* * *
—
We sit at a large table with three sisters, a photographer from Nashville, and a family of four. Jared from the dock, with the glasses and friendly face, is one of the servers. He waves at me from across the room. I wave back.
And then I look around at each person and think, How many floors have you pulled out from under people? This photographer, this mother of two, these sisters—somewhere in this world there is probably someone who’s missing a floor right now thanks to them.
The conversations are the same: What brought you to the island? Where are you from? What do you do back in the real world? How long are you here?
I tell them: “We’re in hiding.”
“Witness protection.”
“We witnessed a murder.”
“My father was a serial killer.”
“We’re here indefinitely.”
“Probably for the rest of my life.”
With every comment, Mom comes along behind me, cleaning up my mess, assuring everyone that I’m a writer, too imaginative for my own good. She gives me a look and I ignore it.
After dessert we all begin to trickle out, and as I walk past Jared, he says, “There’s a group of us that works here. If you get bored, come to the kitchen. You can find us there till around midnight, sometimes later.”
“Is this your summer job?”
“I’m year-round. Most of us are.”
“How old are you, anyway?” I’m not sure what makes me ask this, maybe because he looks too young to be here full time.
“Twenty-one.”
“You look sixteen.”
“I know.” He laughs like, Oh well, like this is something he’s used to hearing. “People usually don’t take me seriously till they get to know me. I’m everyone’s little brother. How old are you?”
“Eighteen.”
“You look sixteen too.”
“I know. It’s annoying.”
“Yeah.” And I think maybe, just maybe—if I were planning to get to know anyone here, which I’m not—we could be friends. I glance over at my mom, standing by the stairs, talking to the photographer and the sisters. I say, “So where’s the kitchen?”
“This way.” I follow him into this little room with baseball caps and photos and books for sale, and beyond it is the kitchen, which is enormous and homey, and bustling with cooks and staffers my age or a little older, laughing and talking and joking around as they work. I want to be a part of it—of them—and suddenly I feel left out of everything everywhere. I picture Saz and Wyatt back in Ohio at some huge, raging party.
“There’s really no phone service here?”
“Only for inn guests and emergencies.”
“And no Wi-Fi?”
“Just at the general store, but the hours are weird. The good thing is, you get used to it after a while, being offline. It helps you be here, as in here”—he waves his hands at the room—“and not out there.” He waves them broader, as if encompassing the whole world. “You’ll see. Time moves a little differently. People move differently. Here you can just be, well, you. It’s one reason we stay. Or if we do leave, we end up coming back.”
“Is there a map of the island?”
He hands me a map from one of the gift-shop shelves and says, “You can have it.”
“Thanks. Jared, right?”
He grins. “Yeah. Claude?”
“Yeah.”
* * *
—
Outside, the hot, heavy air is humming—Mom says the sound is cicadas, but they’re ten times louder than any cicadas I’ve heard before, a rattling, pulsating sound you feel in your skin and your bones. As we walk through the dark to our house, she doesn’t mention the vodka, but she does tell me to curb the witness-protection, serial-killer talk.
“Just making conversation.” And the meanest part of me, the part that is furious and hurt and wants her to make things right with my dad so we can go home, the part that thinks maybe some of this is her