have told her a dozen times that he docked his boat at the Fisher Island Marina and that they would be stopping off at Fisher Island Fisher Island Fisher Island to board it for today’s cruise way out to Elliott Key for the Columbus Day Regatta. Obviously the significance was supposed to register on her… so obviously that she didn’t dare admit her ignorance of Fisher Island, either.
Norman turned off the causeway and headed down a ramp that led to a ferry slip. The great white hulk of a ferryboat, at least three stories high, already docked, dwarfed everything else. In the immediate foreground three lines of cars were forming for inspection, apparently by guards at booths just ahead. Why was Norman pulling up at the rear of the longest line? Should she ask him—or would that merely betray some spatial dimension of her ignorance?
She needn’t have worried. Norman couldn’t wait to tell her himself. “See that line over there?” He extended his arm and his forefinger as far as they would go, as if the line were a mile away rather than fifteen feet or so. The mammoth midnight shades obscured the upper half of his face, but Magdalena could see a small smile forming.
“They’re the servants,” he said.
“The servants?” said Magdalena. “Servants all have to take that lane? I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“Servants and masseuses and personal trainers, and hairdressers, I guess. The island is private property. It belongs to the people who own real estate on it. They can make any rules they want. This is the same as a gated community, except that it’s an entire island, and the ferryboat is the gate.”
“Well, I never heard of a gated community that had a lane for the lower class,” said Magdalena. She didn’t know why the whole thing riled her so much. “How about a nurse? Suppose I was assigned to a case on Fisher Island?”
“You, too,” said Dr. Lewis, smiling even more broadly. He seemed to be enjoying all this… especially the fact that he had gotten her goat.
“Then I wouldn’t do it,” said Magdalena, a bit haughtily. “I wouldn’t take the case. I’m not going to be treated like ‘the help.’ I’m just not. I’m a professional. I’ve worked too hard to be treated that way.”
This caused Norman’s smile to move up to the chuckle stage. “But you’d be breaking your vow as a nurse.”
“All right,” said Magdalena, “then what about you? If you had to make a house call on Fisher Island, would you get in that line?”
“I never heard of a psychiatrist making a house call,” said Norman, “but it’s not totally improbable.”
“And you’d get in that line?”
“Technically,” he said. “But of course I’d drive right to the head of the line and say, ‘This is an emergency.’ I’ve never heard of anybody yet with the guts to tell a doctor he has to abide by the protocol when he says it’s an emergency. All you have to do is act like you’re God. That’s what doctors are when it’s an emergency.”
“The problem is, you actually believe that,” said Magdalena rather crossly.
“HahhhHHHockhockhock hock hock! You’re funny, Magdalena. You know that? But you don’t have to worry. Every time you come to Fisher Island you’ll be with meeeeuhuhhuhock hock hock hock!”
“Haha,” said Magdalena, “I’m having a convulsion, I’m laughing so hard.”
That made Norman even merrier. “I’ve got you going, haven’t I, babe…” She hated that. He was mocking her.
“If you want to know the honest truth,” he said, “I don’t have to play God in the servant’s line. You see that little medallion up there?” It was a round thing, about the size of a quarter but not as thick, stuck to the inside of the windshield on the upper left. “That’s an equity owner’s medallion. This line is for equity owners only. You’re in the upper class now, kid.”
Magdalena grew still more irritated. Suddenly she didn’t care anymore whether Norman thought she was uneducated or not.
“So what’s equity owner supposed to mean?”
Norman was grinning right in her face. “It’s supposed to mean, and in fact it does mean, you own real estate or real property on the island.”
Magdalena grew aggravated on top of irritated. He was mocking her—and at the same time he was burying her in words she didn’t know. What the hell was a medallion? What the hell did real property mean? Was that different from real estate? What the hell did equity mean? And if she didn’t know