the other tables began gathering up their trash. These benches didn’t push back, so it took a while for the older folks to extricate themselves. “Our driver’s got us on a real tight schedule,” Ruthie said. “Keeps threatenin’ to leave and go back home without us.”
“Well,” Teddy offered, “there are worse places to get stranded.”
“Anyhow, nice talkin’ to you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to like people up north, but so far they’ve all been nice. Not like home, but nice.”
“Nantucket’s next,” said the man who’d suggested locking Hillary up. “Basically the same thing as here, or so they tell us.”
Teddy smiled innocently. “Right. Like Georgia and Alabama.”
“Actually, those two are nothing alike,” said John Deere, sounding as if he must be from one or the other.
“I believe that was Teddy’s point,” said Ruthie, and just that quickly her veil of sociability fell away. “I believe he was having some fun at our expense, Roger. After we were nice enough to make room for him.” Give her credit, too. She met Teddy’s eye and didn’t look away. “Don’t make like that wasn’t what you were doing, either, because I know better.”
“Plus, you smell,” said the woman sitting next to him.
Along one shingled wall of the restaurant there were separate rubber barrels for trash, aluminum cans and paper, but the old people just shoved everything into the nearest receptacle until there was no more room, then moved on to the others and filled those up. When they were gone, a waitress came out of the restaurant and surveyed the situation. She regarded Teddy as if the mess were something he might’ve prevented. “Not my people,” he assured her. He was still a bit unnerved by how quickly the whole table had turned on him.
“Assholes,” she said.
“Christians,” Teddy clarified.
The woman shrugged, evidently willing to split the difference.
Ruthie had been right, though, Teddy had to admit: he had been making fun of them. Gentle fun, but still. No doubt they’d feared running into snobs here in New England and he’d proved them right. Theresa, at St. Joe’s, had more than once accused him of elitism. “You think people don’t catch on, but they do.”
“What do they catch on to, exactly?” he’d inquired, genuinely curious.
“That you take a dim view of people in general and them in particular. And yourself most of all.”
“I’m supposed to think better of myself? Wouldn’t that make me more of a snob?”
“No, you’re supposed to cut everybody some slack.”
She had a point. Though outwardly courteous, he was sometimes privately and, it seemed, transparently judgmental. When their metaphorical bus tooted, the people he took a dim view of quickly gathered their belongings, like these Christians had done, and moved on, relieved to be shut of him.
There was, however, an upside. Right now, for instance, he had the whole patio to himself, and from it the most stunning views on the island, sparkling blue water and cloudless sky stretching all the way to Cuttyhunk. He’d stopped sweating, and the breeze, which atop the cliffs seemed to come from several different directions at once, lifted his hair pleasantly, like a lover’s caress, only the lover herself missing.
Finished with his clam roll, he deposited the paper boat and napkins in the trash bin, then went over to the fence that discouraged dimwits from attempting to climb down the cliffs. Peering over the rim, he was immediately overcome by vertigo, the white surf below impossibly far away. What jellied his knees, though, had less to do with height or distance than the swift collapse of time.
* * *
—
MONDAY MORNING OF Memorial Day weekend had found all of them hungover and out of sorts. In truth, Jacy hadn’t seemed quite herself since the moment she stepped off the ferry, though she insisted nothing was wrong. They’d assumed it must have something to do with the wedding, now mere weeks away. Maybe she and her asshole fiancé had been quarreling. As the weekend progressed, her mood had improved a little, though to Teddy her mind still appeared to be elsewhere.
Mickey’s own sour mood that morning had been predictable. As usual he’d drunk more than the others the night before, so he had the worst hangover, but there’d also been an incident the previous afternoon. A guy named Mason Troyer, whose parents owned the house down the hill, had showed up uninvited with his townie girlfriend. They knew him from previous visits and didn’t much like him. He was invariably boorish