first thought had been that she was talking just to them, putting them in their place. But no, it was Jacy she was addressing. “Are you doing all three of these clowns, or what?”
Mickey stiffened at this, but Jacy stepped in front of him and got right in the other girl’s face. “Nooooo,” she said, “but what a great fucking idea!”
Christine took a step back, ostentatiously fanning away the alcohol fumes. “Your fiancé would be absolutely heartbroken if he could see you now,” she said.
“And wouldn’t you love to comfort him!” Jacy said, poking the girl in the chest with her index finger.
“Hey,” Christine objected, slapping her hand away. “I’m not the slut here.”
“Too true!” Jacy told her. “Watch and learn, bitch.” Then, turning to her terrified companions, she said, “And just where do you think you’re going?”
Though she’d failed utterly at shaming Jacy, Christine was having better luck with Teddy, Lincoln and Mickey, all of whom had begun backing toward the open door.
“Come here,” Jacy ordered, so of course they obeyed, lining up in front of her, as if this were a military exercise and she meant to inspect their uniforms.
She kissed them in order, Lincoln first, full on the lips, then Teddy, her breath somehow sweet despite all the beer, and finally Mickey, whose knees buckled. With alcohol, sure, but not only alcohol. “Steady, big fella,” she told him, and in his mind’s eye Teddy could still see the goofy grin that bloomed across Mickey’s face.
“Disgusting,” Christine said. “Forgive me if I don’t stick around for the blow jobs.”
Later, back in the car, Teddy’s keys dangling from the ignition, all three friends had sat in silence, stunned into sobriety by Jacy’s kisses. Mickey spoke first. “Okay, we draw straws,” he said. “I don’t see any way around it. One of us is going to have to murder the prick.”
“Fine,” Lincoln said, seemingly for the sake of argument, “but then what? There’s still three of us and only one of her.”
“Good point,” Mickey conceded. “And you know what? If there were three of her, I’d want all three.”
Had it really happened like that? Teddy wondered. The clarity of this memory made him dubious. Could something that happened so long ago be that vivid now? Or had he and Mickey and Lincoln burnished the memory’s details by recalling it so fondly over the years?
At the State Road T-intersection, Teddy faced a choice. Turn left and he’d be headed toward Menemsha, a quaint fishing village where he could eat greasy fried clams out of a paper boat. Right meant the Gay Head cliffs, the one place on the island he should avoid at all costs. Why risk it? he thought, even as he turned right.
Lincoln
The newspaper office, located on a quiet, tree-lined street, was locked up tight, and why not? Labor Day had come and gone, and the Vineyard Gazette was a sleepy weekly newspaper, not the New York Times. Served him right, Lincoln thought, returning to his curb-parked rental. Instead of chasing phantoms in Edgartown he belonged back in Chilmark, doing the job he’d come here to do, though the more he thought about it, the more he feared the whole trip was misbegotten.
The case he’d made to Anita for coming to the island in person was so persuasive that Lincoln had ended up persuading himself. It had been almost a decade since they’d visited, and who knew what kind of damage ten years’ worth of seasonal renters had inflicted? Did it just need a little sprucing up? A fresh coat of paint? Or something more serious, like a new roof? How could they settle on a listing price without seeing firsthand what needed to be done?
Yet what the trip was really about—and part of him had known this from the start—was his need to say goodbye to the Chilmark house. He owed his mother that much, surely. Nor, if he was honest, was this all. He had, it seemed, unfinished business here, the precise nature of which continued to elude him, though it seemed to involve his friends. Because no sooner had the idea of coming to the island in person occurred to him than he’d invited Teddy and Mickey to join him. And if the three of them were there, how could Jacy not be, at least in spirit? It was her ghostly presence that made the symmetry between this weekend and the one on Memorial Day back in 1971 inescapable.
Whose idea had that weekend