Nantucket Blue

Twenty





“YOU’RE THE BEST,” George said, lowering the noise-canceling headphones from his ears as I put a six-pack of Coke Zero, peanut butter pretzels, and turkey jerky on his desk—the three items he claimed gave him special writing powers. He was sitting in an old office chair that Gavin had found in the basement, behind his makeshift desk, which was really a card table, on which sat his digital voice recorder, laptop, a few files, four notebooks, and the laser printer his wife had shipped and I’d set up yesterday. The windows were all the way up, the door was propped open, and his good foot was in a bowl of ice water. But it was sweating weather inside the annex. George had started calling it the hot box.

“Crack me open one of those sweet, sweet man-sodas,” he said, rubbing his hands together. I laughed, opened a Coke Zero, and handed it to him. He tipped his head back, guzzled half the can, and then held it up with a big smile like he was in a commercial. “Like a refreshing mountain stream.”

“Wait, there’s more,” I said, and unveiled my big prize: a fan I’d found at the Nantucket Hospital Thrift Shop. It only had one speed, and the blade tips were covered with a layer of dust, but it would take the edge off.

“What? What? Am I hallucinating?” George said as I propped it on his dresser and plugged it in. “I was told there wasn’t a single fan or air conditioner for sale on this god-forsaken island. The guy at the hardware store laughed in my face when I asked if he had any.”

“I found it at the thrift store,” I said, getting on my knees to plug it into the circuit breaker. “It was way in the back, behind a framed poster of a whale they were trying to sell for four hundred dollars.”

“You’re resourceful and intrepid, and I like it,” George said, pulling out his wallet and handing me a twenty-dollar bill.

“It was only five dollars,” I said, dusting my hands off on my shorts.

“Keep the change,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I said, holding the crisp bill. “It doesn’t oscillate.”

“I like my warm stale air blowing in a steady stream right on my face.”

“Okay.” I folded the twenty and tucked it in my back pocket, then handed him a manila envelope from my bag. “And here are the pictures.” I’d gone to the Nantucket Yacht Club to pick up some old photographs of Boaty from when he was in his twenties and just married. There was one of him at a clambake, shaking hands and smiling thoughtfully, a golden afternoon glow on his serious face. The people around him gazed at him adoringly. One guy had his hand on his shoulder and was looking at him like he was his favorite son. Boaty definitely had what Edwina MacIntosh would call “star quality.”

“He was so popular,” I said.

“With most people, yes. But not everyone was a fan. Some people hated him.”

“Like who?” I asked. “I mean, besides Republicans.” And my mother, I thought.

He pointed to the guy with his hand on his shoulder. “That guy. Tom Frost. Boaty met him out here on Nantucket. Frost was the first person to hire him. He took him under his wing in the state Senate, showed him the ropes, treated him like a son. Tom Frost was gearing up to make a run for Congress. Boaty decided he wanted to do the same. And after five years of friendship, Boaty planted a story about him in the press.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “What was it?”

“An affair with the nanny.”

“Sounds like a soap opera.”

“It ruined Tom Frost, and Boaty got elected.”

“That’s terrible,” I said.

“Well, technically, Boaty didn’t plant the story. ‘His people’ did, but one of those ‘people’ told me Boaty signed off on it,” George said. “Some of that is just par for the course in politics, but not generally with people you know and love. Boaty had spent Christmases with the guy.”

“Why’d he do it?” I said.

“To win.”

I thought that the feeling of wanting to be popular went away after high school. Our parents and teachers were always telling us that “winning” and “being cool” didn’t matter. What mattered, they said, was being a good, happy person who did the right thing. Edwina McIntosh gave the same speech every year, in which she took a poem about a man in the mirror and changed the words to be about a girl in the mirror. “The only person who needs to think you’re cool,” Edwina MacIntosh said, “is the girl in the mirror. The approval you need is your own.” So, were they all lying, not telling the truth about what it was really like to be an adult?

“On the other hand,” George said as he cracked open another Coke Zero, “Boaty made huge strides in health care reform, and Tom Frost was an old fart. It’s all very complicated, which is why it will make a good book, which is why I need to get writing.”

“Well, do you need anything else?” I asked.

“I think that’s it for today. I’m good to go,” George said. “I just need to crank out another, oh, twenty pages, and I’ll be right on schedule.”

“Good luck with that, and don’t forget to drink some water in between your man sodas.”

“You’re a good influence, Thompson,” he said, and I was out the door—where it was a whole five degrees cooler—thinking of the beach, a yellow butterfly of anticipation circling my chest, half hoping, half dreading, that I’d see Zack again.

As I walked back to the beach, I thought about the other day when I’d run into Zack. We stayed in the water for what felt like hours, just talking and swimming around, following the warm patches, until our fingers and toes were puckering. I knew Jules wouldn’t like me hanging out with him. And I know it had only been a week of feeling so alone in the world, but a week is actually a long time to feel like that.

I honestly tried to walk away from the Zack situation twice, but the first time he’d made me laugh, pretending to rescue me when a tiny wave pathetically knocked me on my ass, and the second time, right when I’d gotten too cold and come to my senses, he promised me half of his Something Natural sandwich if I stayed. It was turkey with cranberry and avocado. “On sourdough,” he added. My teeth were chattering, partially because of the cold and also out of fear of what Jules would say when she found out we’d spent a whole day together.

He looked up. “If the sun comes out in the next five seconds, you have to stay.” For some reason, I acted like this was a real rule.

“Five, four, three.” We started counting, and by “two” I was squinting into bright sunshine, floating on my back, once again under its spell. We stayed until he had to go to work at Gigi’s, the restaurant where he was a busboy. We shared my towel because his was sandy. And then we shared his sandwich.

When I arrived at Steps, I scanned the beach looking for him. He wasn’t there. I reminded myself that that was a good thing.