“Well, in the absence of data, imagination has to work overtime,” she said. “So if it wasn’t me, then what? I mean, I heard the rumors, so—”
“I’m not gay, Theresa.”
“I kind of hoped you were, to tell you the truth, because then it really wouldn’t have been about me.”
“No, it was more…I don’t know…call it the habit of a lifetime. I guess I’m risk averse.”
“Okay, fine. But when did that start? And where? And why?”
“When? Nineteen seventy-one. Where? Right here. This island.” This exact spot, though he wasn’t about to go into that.
“Which leaves only why.”
“You could probably guess.”
“Yeah, but I’ve worn myself out guessing. How about you just tell me?”
He took a deep breath. This, of course, was why he’d really called her.
* * *
—
AFTER HE AND JACY RETURNED to Chilmark, Teddy turned off the ignition and they just sat for a minute, listening to the ticking engine cool. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the strong undertow of the waves, their come-hither pull coaxing him out to sea. Why hadn’t he just let them?
Finally Jacy said, “Do the guys know?”
Teddy shook his head. He thought she’d cried herself out on the beach, but he saw now that her eyes were full again.
“Well,” she said, “they won’t hear it from me.”
“No?”
She took his hand. “Of course not.”
“I’m not sure I can go in there,” he admitted.
“But you can’t very well stay out here.”
That much was true. “What should I say about…”
“About what?”
About us, he wanted to say, but of course that would be wrong. There was no us and there never would be. “They’ll want to know where we’ve been.”
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and put on a game face. “How about I do the talking?”
They found Mickey out on the deck, drinking a beer left-handed and flexing the fingers of his swollen right hand.
“Where’ve you two been?” he said.
“Gay Head,” Jacy informed him.
“You went without us?” It was the first time all weekend that they weren’t a foursome.
“You were asleep,” she reminded him. “Lincoln was on the phone.”
“What’d you do there?”
Could he tell they’d been swimming? Teddy wondered. They’d driven back to Chilmark with the windows down. Jacy’s hair had been windblown dry. After dressing they’d brushed the sand off their legs and ankles.
“I bought a postcard,” she said, taking it out of the back pocket of her cutoffs and showing him. As if it were proof of something. “We had ice cream.”
“Did you bring us any?”
“Cones,” she explained. “They would’ve melted.”
As Jacy responded to Mickey’s questions, Teddy found himself regarding her with new eyes. She wasn’t lying, exactly, but her poise was unsettling. Where had she learned to dissemble so convincingly? Had she ever used this talent on him? Back at Minerva, had she slipped off with Mickey at some point? Or Lincoln? Was Teddy not first but last to feel her naked body against his? That he should entertain such a possibility, even in passing, filled him with shame and disgust. These, then, were the so-called wages of sin. Having betrayed his friends’ trust, he now suspected them of having already betrayed him, the people he knew and loved best suddenly strangers, the old familiar world grown strange, uncertain. He’d written a paper on the effects of sin in one of Tom Ford’s classes. At the time it hadn’t occurred to him that one day he would know firsthand whereof he spoke.
“Where’s Lincoln?” Jacy was saying.
Mickey made a you have to ask? face.
Jacy sighed. “Again?”
Mickey shrugged. “Yeah, but seriously. Show of hands. Who here really expects him to end up anything except pussy-whipped?”
Jacy glanced at her watch. “Assuming we’re still going to Menemsha, we need to get a move on.” For their last evening, they’d planned a cookout. Burgers and brats on the grill, cold potato salad, even some deli-bought cheesecake for after. Schlep it all down to west-facing Menemsha Beach, where they could watch the sun go down.
“I think there’s been a change of plan,” Mickey told her. “We’ve only got the one vehicle, and there’s no way we get the four of us plus the grill and the charcoal and the beer and the food in that little piece-of-shit Nova.”
“We could make two trips,” offered Teddy, whose piece of shit the Nova was.
Mickey shrugged again. “Talk to Lincoln.”
“I thought the whole idea was to watch the sunset,” Jacy said.