dropped him off at the entrance to the Steamship Authority lot in Falmouth, where they said their awkward guy-goodbyes.
“I wish you’d listen to reason,” Teddy told him. “Hell, I’d go to Canada with you if it’d keep you out of Vietnam.”
Mickey, moved by the offer, had deflected it with humor, assuring both friends that he was really more worried about them than himself, especially Lincoln, given how pussy-whipped he already was and not even engaged yet. With Mickey gone, he’d be without a male role model.
To which Teddy said, “Thanks a lot.”
In the end, Lincoln had refused to allow either a joke farewell or the offer of a handshake, saying only “Come here” and pulling Mickey into a tight embrace, whispering, “Good luck, man,” which meant that Teddy had to hug him, too.
Once they drove off, Mickey, feeling like a heel for deceiving them, retrieved his car and drove back to Woods Hole.
“So,” he told Jacy. “Explain what we’re doing here, because I don’t understand.”
“All in good time,” she said. “Let me see your hand.”
He flexed his fingers for her, trying not to wince. “It’s better today. Not so swollen.”
She just shook her head and gave him her why-are-men-so-full-of-shit smile, one of his favorites, though he loved them all.
Her Bloody Mary looked like just the thing, so when the waitress came by he ordered one, too. “I’m assuming we have time?” he said.
Jacy nodded. “I got nowhere to be.”
“I thought you were spending a day or two with Kelsey in New York.”
“So I lied.”
When the truth is found, Mickey thought. “Next you’ll be telling me you aren’t getting married.”
“An excellent prediction!”
He tried not to beam at this news, but he could feel he was. “Does Vance know this?”
“Not yet, but he won’t be surprised.”
“How about your parents?”
“They’ll be shocked.” Now she was beaming.
“So what happened?”
Jacy sighed. “We couldn’t decide where to live. I was thinking Haight-Ashbury. His idea was Greenwich, midway between our parents’ houses.”
“You could’ve compromised. I keep hearing that’s what marriage is all about.”
She shook her head. “Vance laid down the law. Which, if you’re a woman, is what marriage is about.”
The ferry, loaded up again, sounded its horn and pulled away from the slip, island-bound people waving from the upper deck. When the waitress brought Mickey’s Bloody Mary, he swilled a third of it and felt his hangover instantly recede. “Teddy said he’d go with me to Canada, if it’d keep me out of the war.”
“Poor Teddy,” she said, looking away now, her eyes glistening.
“Did something weird happen at Gay Head yesterday?”
“We went skinny-dipping.”
“Yeah? Whose idea was that?”
“Mine,” she said, meeting his eyes now, and there was a challenge in this admission. Was it some sort of a test? Don’t ask, he thought, but of course he had to. “Did anything else happen?”
She was still looking directly at him. “That was it.”
Well, he thought, that would explain Teddy’s funk. He’d looked guilty, but he was really just broken-hearted. No wonder they’d had to coax him into singing “Chances Are” with them on the deck. His own slim chances had just been rendered null and void, whereas Mickey’s own were now magically revived.
“Anyway,” Jacy said. “You can’t go to Canada with him.”
“No?”
“It’s out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going there with me.”
* * *
—
“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN to Bar Harbor?” she wanted to know two days later. She’d lapsed into silence an hour earlier, and Mickey sensed she didn’t want him to fill it in with chatter. It was possible, he thought, that the gravity of what they were doing—running off to Canada without money or even a real plan for what they’d do when they got there—might finally be dawning on her. He’d been expecting the next words out of her mouth to be Okay, turn the car around. This was a dumb idea.
Since leaving Woods Hole, they’d made it halfway up the coast of Maine, with the Atlantic always on their right, sometimes only a hundred yards off, then disappearing completely for an hour or more. When he’d pointed out that there were more direct routes into Canada, she said, “Your days of going anywhere directly are over,” a statement he took to be metaphorical, though its meaning still eluded him. She’d promised to answer the question he’d posed back in Woods Hole (What are we doing?), as well as a host of others that had occurred to him since (Shouldn’t you call your parents so they don’t worry? Shouldn’t you let Vance know