Nantucket Blue

Twenty-five





“DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING,” George said when I walked into the annex later that week with his cheddar and chutney sandwich in one hand and a cold lemonade for myself in the other. The sandwich was his reward for finishing three chapters in one week. One look at his dishevelment and you’d have hoped he’d done something significant. There were big circles under his eyes, his T-shirt was rumpled like it’d been slept in, and I could see the plaque on his teeth. He needed a hot shower with some powerful deodorant soap and a vegetable brush. And I’m no neat freak, but it was gamey in the annex. Liz and I had been instructed not to clean in there, for fear we’d mess something up, but now the smell was a little too human. I took a step toward the window. George put a hand up to stop me. “Seriously, don’t touch. I have a system. Each pile is a zone. The zones cannot be messed with.”

“George, it’s a toxic zone,” I said, and opened the window.

It was true that while there wasn’t one patch of clear space in the whole annex, there did appear to be a strange order to the room. The index cards I’d brought him yesterday covered the floor in a rainbow. The bed was blanketed with documents on which I could see George’s now-familiar chicken scrawl. His dresser was stacked with papers, and by the bathroom door was a pile of magazines that were marked with Post-it notes. The one on top was a Vanity Fair opened to a picture of Boaty and his wife, Lilly, sitting in what I now recognized as a classic Nantucket garden, with a weathered wooden bench and a trellis climbing with roses.

“And where should I put this?” I held up the sandwich.

“Oh yeah. Um”—he put a finger to his lips and scanned the room—“there.” He pointed to a chair covered with clothes.

“Really? Like on the clothes?” George nodded as if this were perfectly normal. “Oookay.” I cleared a little spot on the chair for the sandwich. He spun around in his chair and focused on the computer like it was about to tell him the secret of life.

“Come on, Bernie, you said four o’clock; it’s four eighteen. I love you, buddy, but don’t make promises that you can’t keep.” George tugged at his hair with one hand and refreshed his e-mail with the other. He studied the screen with intense concentration, refreshed again, and then hooted with glee. “Yes,” he said, pointing to the computer screen. “You the MAN!”

“Who’s Bernie?” I asked.

“The guy who does my transcribing.” He hit a button and the printer sprung to life, spitting out pages. “And I need these interviews now, because I’ve got some momentum, Cricket, and I’ll be goddamned if I lose it. I’m actually on schedule.”

“Who are those interviews with?” I asked as he collected the papers from the printer and scanned them quickly with his eyes.

“Lilly Carmichael,” he said, stacking the papers on his desk. “We talked about their courtship and his proposal. Gotta have romance. The ladies will love it, and let’s face it, they’re going to be the ones buying my book.”

“She looks kind of…”

“Uptight?” George asked.

“Yes,” I said, picking up the Vanity Fair with the picture of Boaty and Lilly. She was pretty, but in an overly delicate way. Boaty was leaning forward, animated, like he was in the middle of a story, and she was sitting back, looking to the side. I couldn’t help but think that the photographer was making a statement with this picture.

“Yeah, well. She’s not exactly the life of the party,” George said, tilting his head and raising his eyebrows.

“That’s kind of weird. You would’ve thought he could get any girl he wanted.”

“What can I tell you? Love is strange.”

“Where did he propose?”

“Nantucket, of course. Her family’s been coming here forever. He washed ashore for a summer job and they fell in love. It was a quick engagement. People thought she was knocked up, but she wasn’t. Not for another ten years.” He slapped a Post-it note on the transcription, scribbled something on it, and then looked up with big happy eyes. “Oh, guess what? I got an interview with Robert next week.”

“Awesome.” We high-fived. I knew he’d wanted to interview Robert Carmichael, Boaty’s brother and Parker’s father, for a long time, and that Robert had been hard to nail down. He was going to run for Boaty’s seat in the Senate in the special election next month and was crazy busy.

“I’m going to need you to drive me to their home and pick me up. I’m finally going to use that damn car.” Before he’d broken his ankle, George had arranged to rent a car, but of course he couldn’t drive it and he couldn’t get a refund. So it sat in the inn’s driveway, swallowing money. George claimed he could hear it make a ka-ching! cash register sound effect each evening. “You might have to hang out there and wait for me. We’ll get a sense for what the scene is.”

“Right,” I said. Where would I “hang out”? I was picturing some sort of maids’ quarters. Possibly a pantry area stocked with gourmet canned goods. Would Parker be there? Would Jules? I’d stay in the car, I told myself. I’d park in the shade, bring a book.

“And please, please, please remind me to use both my phone and digital voice recorder,” he said, his hands pressed together in a prayer. “If I lost that file, I’d be screwed. In the next few weeks I may need your help a little more than usual. We’re in the thick of it, Cricket. We’re right in the thick of it.”