She was hungry. Wrapped in the blanket, pillow in hand, Brigid hurried back to the staff building. She walked into the room without knocking—it was her room too, wasn’t it?—and found Peg and Jeremy asleep in Peg’s bed. Even in sleep, Jeremy seemed to be trying to envelop Peg’s body like a human cocoon. He stirred as Brigid entered and struggled to focus. He lifted his head, a nod of greeting or acknowledgment. Brigid flashed a split-second mockery of a smile and proceeded to change her clothes without giving a bloody fuck whether he watched or not. She found some flip-flops under her bed, took a sweatshirt from the hook on the back of the door.
In the dining room she sat alone at a table near the windows. The other girls weren’t yet up—which was fine with Brigid, as she’d decided that they were, to a one, boring and insipid—and she’d certainly no intention of sitting at the long east wall table with the lot of Neanderthal construction workers who looked about ready to whip out their waggling cocks whenever she passed by. Hello, she had a mind to tell them, did not mean oh please let me blow you. She thought she’d rather sit about with Jock, the cook, who liked to tell them all to suck his fat French dick but at the end of the day was really quite a sweet man, who’d been a young widower and raised, on his own, two teenage girls, whose photographs hung in plastic-wrapped frames by Jock’s workstation in the kitchen. Once Brigid had inquired about his “girlfriends up there,” and Jock had wiped his hands on his apron, motioned Brigid over, and told her all about Margeaux and Jeanine, both married now, one in Cleveland, the other in France, with a grandchild on the way. “The first,” he beamed, thumping his chest.
When she finished eating, Brigid picked a cheap paperback from a shelf of guests’ discards in the office and went out onto the deck to smoke. The novel turned out to be in Italian, so she just smoked and watched the birds instead. There looked to be ospreys in two of the nests she could see from the Lodge, busy with their breakfast as well, taking off from the nest and looping out over the water, just swooping and gliding, hardly any motion to their wings at all. Even after two cups of Jock’s industrial coffee, the broken night of sleep on the Squires’ couch caught up with her, and Brigid began to doze off in the deck chair, Italian novel open face-down on her lap, half-smoked cigarette falling limply from her fingers and onto the deck, where it went out, unnoticed and meaningless.
When she woke again, the girls were all inside, eating around a circular center table with the waiters. The construction workers had gone up the hill, and soon the boys went to join them, leaving the girls to clean up the mess of the meal while they waited for Suzy to come down and give them the day’s directions.
At eight-fifteen when Suzy still hadn’t shown, Peg was dispatched to go knock on her door upstairs, and returned reporting no answer. She sat back down, and someone dealt her in to a hand of rummy.
At eight-thirty Reesa Delamico came in, and when someone asked if she knew where Suzy might be, she got a funny, mischievous look on her face and went into the office to make a phone call. She got Eden, who said that no, the driveway was empty and as far as she knew she was home alone. Reesa reentered the dining room, frowning, shaking her head with a shrug, saying, “I’m sure she’s on her way,” but she didn’t look sure at all as she left them to their vigil and went about her own business in the salon. Cybelle Schwartz and Janna Winger got to the Lodge a few minutes behind Reesa, but neither of them had any idea where Suzy Chizek might be. Peg—as she was wont—began to worry.
At eight-forty-five Bud Chizek came down the hill, through the back kitchen door, and into the dining room on his way to the salon to see if Reesa was in yet, when he came upon the table of card-playing Irish girls. He stopped in his tracks, as though he’d happened on some infestation of vermin he’d forgotten to exterminate. Bud stood there in the middle of the dining room, trying to say something, with a look on his face that was—a number of the girls would later note—just this side of sheer hatred. He stammered, then finally spat out: “Take the day off—all of you!” He scowled, as if his words alone should have succeeded in removing them from his sight instantaneously. “Just get out of here!” he cried, and then he stormed toward the salon, leaving the girls with a distinct sense that when he reemerged they’d better have been long gone.
They conferred quickly among themselves. A moment later Peg stepped from the group and came tentatively through a sliding door and onto the deck toward Brigid, who stared her down as she approached. Peg said, “You heard that, did you? Bud’s told us to knock off work for the day . . . We thought we’d go to a different beach, if you’d like to come . . . ?”
It was a peace offering in which Brigid had little interest. “No thanks,” she said coolly, and picked up the novel on her lap as though eager to get back to reading.
But Peg didn’t leave. She just kept standing there, with something else she wanted to say but didn’t know how. Brigid slapped the book back down: “What?”
Peg looked as if she were swallowing a lemon. “I suppose,” she began, “that I’m the last person you’d want to do a favor for . . .”
Brigid lifted the corners of her mouth into a mean smile that conceded the point.
“It’s not for me,” Peg qualified, then inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a slow wash as if to steady herself. “We’d like to bring Squee—have him come to the beach with us today—and if you might ask his father for us, ask if the boy might come along. It would seem . . .” Oh, she was trying so desperately not to spoil it! “We thought, as you’re . . . perhaps he’d be more inclined to agree if it was you who asked, don’t you think?”
If what Brigid really wanted to say was You pathetic whining coward, she managed to merely nod definitively in Peg’s direction and spit out a curt “Fine,” as she flipped the book back over and attempted to feign great absorption.
Peg still wouldn’t leave. “We’ll be ready to go just as soon as we’ve changed . . .”
“Bleedin’ Christ!” Brigid slapped the book down on the table beside her, got quickly to her feet, and stalked off. And Peg watched after her, unsure as to whether she’d succeeded in getting what she wanted or if she’d simply managed to drive Brigid away.
REESA, JANNA, AND CYBELLE were sitting around the salon drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups when Bud came up to the glass door that divided the dining room from the beauty parlor and stood outside, miming a knock. Reesa waved him in, but already she could see something was wrong. The pieces started to assemble in her mind: Suzy missing in action, Bud looking mad . . . She didn’t know what it added up to, but she couldn’t imagine any way that it might be good.
Bud pushed through the door. He was a man who dispensed with niceties like Good morning, as if it was generally acknowledged that it was his wife who took care of such civilities in their family. “Reesa, I need to talk to you alone” was all he said. He did not acknowledge Janna and Cybelle except to make clear his wish for their absence.
Reesa, equanimous to a fault, reached for her purse and pulled out a few dollars. “Why don’t you guys go pick up some doughnuts from the IGA. We’ve got plenty of work here today . . . we’ll need them.” She tossed Janna her keys. “North lot.”
Reesa stood. “What’s wrong?” she said, before the door had even finished closing.
Bud looked down at his shoes with mild surprise, as if he couldn’t remember how they’d gotten on his feet. “Well, Suzy’s run off again,” he began.
“She’s gone?” Reesa broke in. Then more softly she said, “She did it.”
Bud nodded suspiciously. “Last night, maybe this morning. Left a truck in Menhadenport. Room’s cleaned out.” He gestured to where the proof lay.
Reesa waited for more.
“Look,” Bud said, “here’s what I came down to ask: I need a head of housekeeping. I need someone who knows this place. Someone who can put all those girls to work . . . I don’t know what the hell’s going on with her, but you know Suzy . . .” His words were frothing with bitterness. “I got to assume
she’s not coming back.”
Reesa sat there a moment, not realizing that Bud had already gotten out what he’d apparently come to say. Then she understood. “Are you asking me?”
“There’s you . . . There’s my wife,” he said, as though the absurdity of such a thought was patently indisputable. “I don’t know who the hell else knows this place well enough not to just make more trouble instead of cleaning it up . . .”
“Bud”—Reesa was trying to keep her voice calm—“I’ve got a business to run here.”
“Not if I don’t have a business to run, you don’t.”
Reesa breathed in sharply. “It’s not coming to that.”
“Well, it just might!”
“A hotel does not go under because it’s missing a head housekeeper!”
“Yeah?” Bud said. “Exactly what do you know about what keeps a hotel from going under? What exactly do you know about running a hotel?” He was getting angrier, and it was Reesa’s bad luck to be the one still left on the island to take it. “Why don’t you take over running the damn hotel then?” he spat. “You take the hotel, and I’ll be the goddamn chambermaid! Or we’ll just let the whole place fall to shit and you can cut hair in your goddamn kitchen all year round!” And with that he turned and stormed back out into the conspicuously empty dining room.
LANCE WAS ON THE PORCH SMOKING when Brigid came fuming up the hill. He started to smile, but his expression shifted as hers came into view. “Oh boy,” he said, “that’s one pissed-off girl coming up the way.” The words took on an inadvertent singsong. “That’s one pissed-off girl, I’d say . . . What’s pissing off the pissed-off girl?” He looked almost happy, prattling on. “Come tell me who went and pissed off the pissed-off girl . . .”
He’d actually almost managed to make Brigid crack a smile. “Well,” she said, “we’ve been given the day off for god knows what reason, and the girls”—she sneered—“are heading to the beach and they’d like to bring your son along, only they’ve commissioned me to ask your permission, as they’re rather afraid you’ll eat them if they get a bit too close.” She stood squarely on the ground before him and waited for a response.
“Eat their nasty shit?” Lance puckered up his face in distaste. “No fucking way I’d eat their nasty asses!” They both laughed. Then Lance said, “You going with the girlies, Pissed-Off Girl?”
“Are you joking? I’d rather be working.”
Lance smiled broadly. Then he got an idea. “You been over to Dredgers’ Cove yet?”
Brigid shook her head. She’d not even heard of it.
“Tell you what,” Lance said. “I say we give them the damn kid, and you and me take a cooler of beer and some fishing rods and we go over to the prettiest cove on this island and get the fuck out of this place for a little while. What d’you say, gorgeous?”
And if there was a part of Brigid that said, Don’t do it, there was a bigger part, a stronger part, a part that was more important to her that said, Don’t be like them, don’t be like Fiona, don’t be like the people you don’t want to be, and so whatever fear or dread or caution or suspicion she might have felt got covered in a sleepy, grateful, relief-filled smile as Brigid said, “Mr. Squire, that’d be lovely.”
Dredgers’ Cove was on the far eastern side of the island, an old clam-digging site that had been incorporated into the Manhanset Nature Preserve. It was accessible only via an abandoned logging road, which was now prohibited to cars by a heavy padlocked chain stretched between two thick oaks. Lance yanked up the emergency brake, hopped from the truck and strode ahead. At the tree he stopped, took a ring of keys from his belt, undid the lock, and loosened the chain. It clunked to the ground, and Lance stepped back to the truck, drove over the chain, and then went back to pull it taut again and resecure the lock.
“What do they do—just pass round keys to the lot of you who live here?”
Lance grinned. He hadn’t been so animated since the fire. “Nobody gives out anything around here, baby. You want something, you find a way to get it.”
“You’ve a lot of friends, then,” Brigid ventured.
Lance thought about that. “Nope. But I know lots of folks.”
The road was pitted and bumpy, unmaintained and almost never used. Lance went along at a good clip for such conditions, and Brigid wished she hadn’t opened a beer from the case, since she’d have been far abler to enjoy the ride if not for trying to keep herself from getting drenched. She had a go at drinking off a good portion to get the liquid level down, but the truck hit a rut mid-gulp and sloshed half the can onto her face and neck. Lance glanced over and laughed largely. “Ha-ha!” he whooped. “Starting off the day right!” The truck rumbled along, pitching and bucking, Brigid wiping her face on the sleeve of her T-shirt, still attempting to hold the beer can steady. Finally Lance reached over, grabbed the can, and pitched it from the truck, and Brigid watched it arc through the air behind them, giving off a fountain spray of foam before it landed in the woods beside the road. They barreled on. “That’s why you get a case,” Lance declared. “That’s why you get a cheap-ass case! Afford to give one to the raccoons.”
They’d stopped for the beer at the IGA in town, had both gotten out of the truck and gone into the store, ordered sandwiches from the deli, pulled chips from the rack, and Brigid picked up a bottle of sun-tan lotion in the health and beauty aisle. Lance had grandly insisted on paying for it all himself. He was in full social mode, chatting up the cashier, who happened to be the mother of a school buddy of his. It was possible that he didn’t even notice how the people in the store looked at him and at each other as he passed. He was flying, and they were so far below him—specks, dots of fish in the ocean. The cashier looked at Brigid as though she’d have liked to take her into the back room and give her a good talking to, and Brigid felt almost surprised when Lance paid and picked up the beer and they left through a door that slid open and parted before them. The clerks looked on as though Brigid and Lance were shoplifters about to be stopped at the exit. But the door just slid magically open and they walked from the bleak fluorescence back into the bawdy sunshine, leaving nothing more than a wake of gossip.
They parked the truck in a pine clearing where the ground beneath them was rusty with fallen needles, the air infused with a rich, heady evergreen. When a breeze swept in from Dredgers’ Cove—the water was right there, just through the branches—the pine scent swirled with the briny smell of the sea. Lance carried the beer, Brigid the sack of food. Lance had forgotten the fishing poles. Brigid followed him down a narrow path toward the beach. It was strange, that line where the forest turned to seashore, as though someone had trucked a load of sand into the woods and thrown up a trompe l’oeil mural of the ocean horizon.
It was eleven or so, the sun high and hot. Brigid, at Lance’s suggestion, set the food down in the pine-shade.
“Should’ve bought ice . . .” Lance started to say, as he set the beer by the food, but they wouldn’t have had any use for ice, as he’d also neglected to bring a cooler.
Brigid walked toward the water. She took the towel from her beach bag and laid it out on the sand. Lance didn’t appear to have brought anything with him. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, work boots, as though it had never dawned on him to wear something different to the beach. He hung back on the periphery of the woods, inspecting things, checking out the place, jumping onto a great chunk of driftwood, kicking a horseshoe crab over onto its back to expose the brown skeletal legs, its underbelly. Another swift soccer kick, a crunching crack, and the shell launched into the air. Lance lost interest then and wandered, picking up bits of sea glass, then tossing them back down, or skipping them out into the bay. He seemed agitated, or nervous, and it made Brigid feel the same. He didn’t even have a towel to sit on, and Brigid wondered how long he’d actually planned on staying. They had food to last them the afternoon, and beer for a lot longer than that, but Brigid feared that maybe she’d misunderstood his intentions for the day. Back at the
Lodge, she was the sharp-talker, fearless and crude, the only one who could deal with Lance Squire. But out here she felt like Peg—tentative and vulnerable, and pathetic—and it made her loathe herself a bit. She got up and went for a beer.
She downed half the can as she returned to her towel, then nestled it into the sand where it wouldn’t spill. She lay back, face to the sun, to let on like she couldn’t have cared less what Lance was doing, because that’s what made her feel she had power: not caring. And not thirty seconds later, there he was beside her, plunking himself down, the heels of his boots digging into the sand, arms draped casually over his knees, as if he had all the time in the world to just stare out at that horizon.
All across the beach, mixed among the shells and pebbles and seaweed, there were spent shotgun shells—red or green, big as a man’s thumb, with rusted metal rims—and Lance plucked one up, shook the sand from inside, and then put it to his lips like a reed. “You can whistle ’em,” he said, “like a bottle,” and he blew into it: a hollow, deep, mournful call, like the island ferry’s.
Osprey Island Page 25
