One morning, Adrienne ran all the way out to Madaket Harbor, which was too far on a hot day. She bought a cold Evian at the Westender before she embarked on her limp home. She was on the bike path by Long Pond when a green Honda Pilot stopped; the tinted passenger window went down.
“Do you need a lift?” the driver asked.
It was a man, in his forties, with dark hair. The exact kind of person one imagined offering candy to an unsuspecting young girl.
“No, thanks,” Adrienne said, waving the empty water bottle. “I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“All set.”
“It’s awfully hot. I can drop you in town. It’ll take three minutes.”
Adrienne looked at her dusty shoes. The soles of her feet burned. The guy was right: It was hot. She was out of water and she had three, maybe four, miles to go. She noticed a child’s car seat in the back of the Pilot. So he probably wasn’t a serial killer, and he couldn’t exactly abduct her on Nantucket.
“Okay,” Adrienne said. “Thanks.” She climbed in. The air-conditioning was a blessing.
The man put up her window and hit the gas. “I’ll just drop you in town,” he said. “I’m headed in to pick up my mail.”
“Fine.”
He hummed along to a song on the radio. Adrienne sat up very straight to avoid sweating all over his car.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the man said.
Adrienne fumbled with her Walkman and it fell to the floor. She bent over to retrieve it, trying not to panic. She slid in a sideways look. He looked familiar, but she met so many people on a nightly basis that…
“Drew Amman-Keller,” he said.
Adrienne glanced up. Drew Amman-Keller? Adrienne studied his face. The lips she recognized, but the rest was different. Hadn’t he had a beard? And an awful pair of glasses?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You look different.”
“I shaved,” he said. “My wife insists that I shave in the summer.”
“You’re married?” Adrienne asked.
“Three kids,” he said.
Adrienne stared out the window. They were passing the landfill. She prayed to see another car, but they seemed to be the only one on the road. She tried to parse her fear. The guy was a freelance journalist, not a criminal. And it wasn’t as though he was stalking her; he was on his way to the post office.
“You can just drop me off here, if you want,” Adrienne said.
“At the dump?”
“I can walk home. It’s not far.”
“Did Thatcher tell you not to talk to me?”
A car approached, a red Jeep Wrangler with the top down-two very tan college boys with a couple of surf-boards strapped to the roll bars. They were gone before Adrienne could think of how to signal for help. What, she wondered, would Thatcher do if he learned she’d accepted a ride from Drew Amman-Keller? And why did she care what Thatcher thought?
“I know what’s going on with Fiona,” he said. “I’ve known for years. What she and Thatcher don’t understand is that I want to help. I have an offer on the table from the Atlantic Monthly if Fiona ever agrees to talk to me. Sometimes by writing a feature in a big magazine, you can create positive change.”
Adrienne squeezed her water bottle in the middle, making a plastic crunch. This was the guy who had sent her to the Bistro in the first place. He’d set her up, maybe, hoping she’d spy on Fiona and report details back to him. But what kind of details was he after, exactly? “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said.
Drew Amman-Keller took his eyes off the road for a split second to look at Adrienne. She noticed something funny about the bottom half of his face. It was pink and raw-looking where he’d shaved, as though he’d stripped off a mask.
He downshifted and signaled to the left. “Here’s Cliff Road,” he said. “Is it okay if I drop you here?”
“I thought you were going to take me into town,” Adrienne said. “Are you trying to get rid of me now?”
He laughed. “I’m happy to take you to town,” he said. He pulled back onto the road and turned up the radio.
Adrienne collapsed back in the seat. “You’re happy to take me to town, but you won’t tell me what’s going on in the restaurant where I’m the assistant manager. You must think I’m pretty naïve.”
“I think no such thing.”
Despite the air-conditioning, Adrienne was hot. And thirsty. And angry.
“I went on a date with Thatcher last week,” she said. “But Fiona called at midnight and told Thatcher his dinner was ready and he left me at my front door.” Adrienne watched Drew Amman-Keller for a reaction, but he had none. She kicked his glove compartment and left a mark with her filthy shoe. The restaurant was turning her into a lunatic, the kind of person who confided in strangers and disrespected their brand-new cars. “You told me if I ever wanted to talk, I should call you. You gave me your card. I still have it at home.”
“Good,” he said. “Hold on to it.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll write an article about my date with Thatcher?”
“No,” he said.
“No,” Adrienne echoed. Girl likes boy, boy likes different girl. He’d heard it a thousand times before. Everyone had.
There were only two people in the restaurant whom Adrienne trusted, and one of those people was Mario. This might have seemed counterintuitive, as Mario’s reputation among the staff was for being exactly the opposite-untrustworthy, fickle, a scoundrel. He had dumped Delilah by kissing another woman on the dance floor of the Chicken Box while he was there on a date with Delilah. Delilah had cried for three days, and she begged Duncan to defend her honor. Duncan said, “I told you not to go near the guy in the first place.”
Mario was deadly as a lover, but as a friend he had a curiously golden touch. The afternoon of her ride with Drew Amman-Keller, Adrienne marched back into pastry.
“It looks like someone could use a Popsicle,” Mario said. He pulled a tray out of the freezer and handed Adrienne a creamy raspberry-banana Popsicle then took one for himself. They licked the Popsicles leaning side by side against the marble counter.
“They’re good, yeah?” Mario said.
“Yeah,” she said. She bit off a big piece and it gave her an ice-cream headache. She moaned. Mario rubbed the inside of her wrist.
“This is supposed to help,” he said.
“You just want to touch me,” she said.
“You got that right.”
She said, “Do you know what’s going on between Fiona and Thatcher?”
He dropped her arm. “There’s nothing going on.”
Adrienne threw her Popsicle stick into the trash. “You’re lying to me.”
“No,” Mario said. He moved down the counter to where the dough for the Portuguese rolls was proofing. He worked the dough with his hands. “I would not lie to you. There’s nothing going on the way you’re thinking.”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“I always know what the ladies are thinking.”
“So if it’s not what I’m thinking, then what is it?”
“I wish I could tell you,” Mario said.
The other person Adrienne trusted was Caren, but only during certain times of the day: mornings after Duncan left, in the Jetta on the way to work, as they listened to Moby.
“I am not a jealous person,” Caren said, one morning after four espressos, which was enough to make even her tremble. “You haven’t known me very long, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Usually, I eat men for breakfast.”
“I can tell,” Adrienne said.
“I’m a biting bitch.”
“You’re strong.”
“Right. Except not with Duncan. I’ve known him twelve years and I’ve seen him do all kinds of outrageous things with women at the bar, and before it was always funny. But now it’s awful. They all want to sleep with him, even the married ones. He says he’s in it for the money, but I don’t know, it’s got to be an ego rush for him, right? This is driving me fucking nuts. But don’t tell anyone, okay? Promise you won’t tell.”