“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not the first to strike out with Piper Parrish.”
“Mm,” Anders said, not wishing to dwell on the experience any more than necessary. “Could I get my check, please?”
“Sure,” the guy said, whipping a dingy terry-cloth rag out from his back pocket and wiping down the space on the bar right beside Anders, even though there wasn’t much to wipe as far as Anders could tell. Anders silently urged him to hurry. “She tell you she was married?” the guy asked.
Anders looked up at this. “Yeah,” he said, then cocked his head when the man grinned again in a way that suggested this may have been a lie. It suddenly dawned on him that of course it was a lie. The girl couldn’t have been more than twenty, and really, who on earth gets married that young these days? Anders inwardly groaned at the prospect of being found so lacking that instead of just saying no, the woman felt the need to create a husband out of thin air, but still he found himself saying: “Is she not?”
“Depends on who you ask.”
Anders considered this for a minute and wondered then if she was really married—and if this waiter was alluding to some kind of marital strife, maybe a separation or something the couple was trying to work out. Whatever it was, it was definitely none of his business and all the more reason for him to leave, before her husband showed up and she pointed Anders out as the man who had been hitting on her. But though the waiter took the hint and tucked his rag back in his jeans pocket, he still took his sweet time getting the check, and when he did bring it and Anders gave him a twenty-dollar bill, he disappeared once again, making Anders wait on the change.
The minutes ticked by, and Anders picked up his spork—that infernal tool that got him into this embarrassing mess—and poked at one of his chicken fingers, half-eaten and now cold. The tiny prongs didn’t pierce the breading, and it occurred to Anders that sporks were one of those inventions that sounded good in theory but in real-life application were positively useless.
Finally, the waiter returned with his change, and Anders left a few bills on the bar top and pocketed the rest. But as he quickly rushed out of the restaurant, head down, he couldn’t help but notice that though at least fifteen minutes had passed, the woman—what had the bartender said her name was? Piper?—was still sitting very much alone.
* * *
—
It took two long blinks for Anders to recall exactly where he was Friday morning. He lifted his head off the pillow. Radiant sunlight beamed through the rips in the canvas window shade and directly into his face, causing him to squint as if injured.
“Freakin’ Frick Island,” he muttered to the water-damaged wallpaper, the Bible on the nightstand, the silent air. He let his head fall back down on the pillow, then eyed the Bible once more. Did the Gideons really come all the way to Frick Island just to deliver them to a five-room motel? That was dedication.
Then he sat straight up, remembering the times of departure BobDan had quoted for the buy boat (5:30 a.m.) and the mail boat (7:00 a.m.). He checked his phone—6:36 a.m.—and realized he’d missed one but may still have time to catch the other. He stuffed his feet in his loafers and left the room, dropping his key in the rusty metal box beside the glass front door—and not even glancing inside to see if the mirthless woman working the front desk when he checked in was still there. (When he inquired about a room, she had waved her hand to five hooks on the wall behind her head. Four of them had keys hanging from them. “You can take your pick,” she said, her eyes never leaving the magazine she was lazily flipping through. “Except the penthouse. It’s booked.” It took Anders ten seconds longer than it should have to realize this was a joke.)
Carrying his still-damp shirt in one hand, he eyed the road back into the main strip of town and, seeing the cracked, potholed, sun-bleached asphalt in the light of day, wondered how on earth he hadn’t turned an ankle during his dark walk to the motel the previous night. Quickly, he realized it wasn’t the only thing in need of repair. The houses all were in their own state of disrepair—slanting staircases, grimy windows, splintered wood, missing shingles. They weren’t abandoned-looking—no broken glass or boarded-up doors—just worn, lived in, loved. The Velveteen Rabbits of real estate.
Air always feels fresher after a storm, and the air on Frick Island was no exception. As it was too early in the morning for the mugginess to have set in, Anders might have enjoyed the stroll, appreciated the cloud-streaked morning sky, the rustle of wind through the blue-green seagrass between the houses, but he was too focused on getting away from it all, and he didn’t want to miss the boat. He picked up his pace and was out of breath by the time he got to the marina at 6:51.
The docks were alive with men attending to various duties, tossing metal cages and ropes around as if they were as light as footballs. Anders scanned the various skiffs tied up, searching for a mail boat, but supposed it might be too much to ask that it would actually say that on the side. He spotted BobDan Gibbons wearing the same faded ball cap he’d had on the day before, talking to a man in waders in front of a bench. Anders approached him, and both men fell silent. BobDan looked him up and down.
“Found the hotel, I reckon?”
“I did,” Anders said. “Is the mail boat still here? I was hoping to catch a ride back to the mainland . . .”
“No. Left about ten minutes ago.” BobDan looked back to the man in waders, picking up where he left off about the rising price of gasoline. “Fifteen cents more than last week and prolly go up again ’fore August is over.”
Anders’s shoulders fell, and he turned on his heel to leave, before realizing he had nowhere to go. He had half a mind to jump off the dock into the water and attempt to swim the twelve miles in his khakis, or drown trying. Instead, he bent his knees and plopped down on the bench to wait. For four hours.
The two men talked for a few minutes longer and then the one in waders walked off in the direction of the boats while BobDan turned toward the marina. Anders shoved his hands in his pockets, closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and exhaled a long breath. His stomach gurgled, demanding its daily slug of coffee and twosome of raw Pop-Tarts. He wondered, briefly, if the One-Eyed Crab served breakfast, but wasn’t eager to return to the restaurant, especially on the off chance that he might run into—
“Hey, Piper! Morning, Tom!” a voice called from the direction of the water, and Anders’s head snapped back up, his eyes immediately clamping on the one woman he hoped to never see again. He inwardly groaned. She looked more beautiful in the morning light, fresh like the air itself. She was dressed simply in a purple tank top, the thin straps climbing over her tawny shoulders. Long khaki shorts stopped at her knees, the hems frayed, threads dangling down her legs. Her sturdy calves curved into delicate ankles, ending in gray canvas shoes tied neatly in bows. A wide smile stretched her lips as she waved back to the watermen in their boats—Anders just now noticing that the one greeting called out to her had created a domino effect. A chorus of gruff voices were shouting their hellos to Piper.