They ordered lobsters for dinner, and baked potatoes and corn and coleslaw and biscuits. It was Jem’s first-and probably only-lobster of the summer, but he couldn’t help thinking of death row and how a prisoner chose his last meal. They ate on Neil’s deck and watched the sun go down. It was so nice out and so delicious, it seemed like just that, an ending.
“Tomorrow I get back into the suit,” Neil said. “I’ll get married, set up a trust fund for my daughter, fly to Nepal and die.”
“Fly to Nepal?”
“Once things get really bad, I’m going to Pangboche. I’m going to stay in one of the teahouses until the end. The Nepalese will cremate me right away and scatter me in the mountains.”
Jem tore the claws off his lobster. “You know what pisses me off?”
“What?” Neil poked a fork into his baked potato. “They didn’t give us any sour cream.”
“You’re giving up. And that sucks. You don’t care about anyone else, do you? You don’t care about your daughter, or Desirée, or me. If you cared, you wouldn’t give in.”
Neil didn’t look up from his dinner, but his voice was low and serious. “I have cancer, Jem. It’s all through me. I don’t have a choice here, buddy boy.”
Jem stood suddenly, and drawn butter dripped down his leg. “You’re not upset enough. You’ve accepted the fact that you’re going to die and that’s fine with you. But what if it’s not fine with the rest of us?”
“Sit down and enjoy your lobster,” Neil said. “And let’s have another drink. I am getting married, you know. Let’s have a toast.”
Jem stormed into Neil’s room. The garment bag had been opened and Neil’s suit was laid neatly out on the bed. It was spooky almost, prescient, the empty suit. Jem picked up the bottle of vodka and drank from it straight. He gasped for air. Horrible burning, a big fat mistake. I’m not giving up, Jem thought. I will fight for Maribel until the end. He slumped in the leather chair.
After a while, Neil came in, pushed the suit aside, and sat on the bed. He removed his glasses, breathed on them, wiped them on his shirt, and put them back on. His face had changed; it was stripped of all confidence. It was a human face, a scared face.
“What would you have me do?” Neil asked.
“Stay alive,” Jem said.
“Stay alive,” Neil said, as though he had never considered it before. “Stay alive.”
Jem almost called in sick the next day. He woke up with his hand on his erection, thinking of Maribel. Then he remembered Neil, and his insides filled with a heavy sadness. He could barely get out of bed. Neil’s flight left at nine, and Jem knew he had to get down to the hotel on time to say good-bye.
Jem put on his red shorts, his last clean white shirt, his messed-up shoes, and left the house. Normally he liked the walk down North Liberty Street-it was shady, the houses were kept-after, he passed blackberry bushes, and now that the berries were finally ripe, he picked a handful and ate them. He started down Cobblestone Road. Usually, this was where he considered his day: would anything interesting happen? What would be left after breakfast? Would he see Maribel? Today he thought about Neil, and how after only three days, Neil had become his friend.
Just before Jem turned onto North Beach Road and walked the last hundred yards to the Beach Club, he heard a car horn. Jem saw Neil, wearing a suit, sticking his whole torso out the window of a cab, but the cab didn’t slow down. Neil was leaving.
“Hold on!” Jem said. “Wait!”
Neil cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, “I’m on my way, buddy!” Neil’s tie waved good-bye in the breeze, and the cab disappeared around the bend. Just like that.
Jem stopped. He listened to the gulls. North Beach Road was sunny and still. Okay, Jem thought, so it’s over. He’s gone. Jem expected the devastation to hit him any second; he took tiny steps forward, waiting for it. He thought about taking a cab out to the airport, or even asking Mack if he could borrow the Jeep and drive out there himself to say good-bye. But the road was still and sunny, the gulls cried out. Neil was gone, and for a second, Jem felt something he thought might be peace.
There was an envelope at the front desk with his name on it.
“That man was so handsome,” Love said. “Especially in his suit. He was single, right?”
“Engaged,” Jem said. He held the envelope up to the light of the window. Definitely not cash in there. It was probably a letter. Jem thought of Neil dressed in his suit, heading back to New York to get married and settle matters for his daughter-it made Jem happy. He didn’t want to read any letter that might ruin this feeling.
Jem ate two mixed-berry muffins and a chocolate doughnut and then he threw the envelope into the trash and covered it with dirty napkins and banana peels and half-eaten pieces of wheat toast, just to be sure he wasn’t tempted to pull it back out. It was a very manly thing to do, he decided, throwing the letter away. A woman would never throw away an envelope unopened.
Jem saw Maribel right before quitting time. She was in her yellow bikini top and her jean shorts-the exact outfit she wore on their first date to Miacomet Beach. Jem watered Therese’s plants on the lobby porch and Maribel slogged up the three steps in her flip-flops, her damp beach towel slung over her shoulder.
“Too much of a good thing today,” she said. “The sun in August. How was your lunch date yesterday?”
Jem was on the verge of saying, “I didn’t go. It was all made-up.” But he didn’t want to be disloyal to Neil. “It was fun,” he said.
“Yeah?” Maribel said. Jem studied her. Did she seem jealous? “Mr. Rosenblum was so nice. Is he still around?”
“Left today.”
“He really seemed to like you,” Maribel said. “He seemed to believe in you.”
Jem stopped watering and looked at Maribel. “He did like me. He did believe in me.”
“Jem, what’s wrong?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look strange,” she said. “You look upset. Are you all right?”
“Now that you mention it,” he said, “I’m not sure.” He put down the watering can, walked past Maribel, through the lobby and into the galley kitchen. He held his breath and dug around in the trash until he pulled out the envelope. It was stained with coffee, smeared with strawberry jam.
Inside was a check for fifteen thousand dollars and two one-way tickets from Nantucket to Los Angeles, courtesy of Rosenblum Travel. The note attached said: “Get her. NR.”
8 Heat Wave
August 14 (not sent)
Dear S.B.T.,
I have notified the authorities about your harassment by mail. Your letters-all of which I’ve saved-insinuate that you’ve been stalking me, spying on me, spying on the hotel. The police will uncover your identity and your pursuit of me and of the hotel will be put to an end. Leave me alone!
Bill Elliott
August 15 (sent)
Dear S.B.T.,
Do you read poetry?
Bill Elliott
In the middle of August, a heat wave hit Nantucket like none Lacey Gardner could remember, and she had been on the island for close to a century of summers. In general, Nantucket was a place to escape the heat because of the sea breeze. It could be in the nineties in Boston and New York, and Nantucket would be a comfortable seventy-seven. Lacey had only noticed the heat once before-in 1975, on the day islanders called Hot Saturday, when the thermometer hit one hundred degrees. Lacey and Maximilian had stayed inside, running the fans at full blast, playing cards in the guest bedroom of their house on Cliff Road, because that room stayed dark most of the day. They drank three pitchers of lemonade and at four o’clock started with Mount Gay and tonics, heavy on the ice. Lacey felt as though she were on vacation-staying in the one room of the house she never used, sliding aces and queens across the quilted company bedspread. When it grew dark, she and Maximilian slipped into their bathing suits and walked to Steps Beach for an evening swim. They felt like teenagers, sneaking around in the night, although even in 1975, they were senior citizens, and had to grip the railing tightly as they descended the stairs to the sand.