Osprey Island

Morey presided over the bar daily from noon, when he opened, until about seven, when Merle Squire, Lance’s mother, showed up for her shift. The Lodge staff were traditionally renowned for copious drinking, often starting out the night at Morey’s, then returning to the porch of the Lodge when the bar closed, by legal decree, at one a.m. The bar had four taps—Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite—but when the Irish girls arrived in June Morey switched one tap over to Guinness. His local crowd was steady and loyal, more family than clientele, since his was one of only three island bars, not including restaurants that served bottled beer and wine, and his was the only one that stayed open through the off-season, which was everything but the summer. For three months a year, renters from New York City and its moneyed environs invaded Osprey with their private-schooled children and their au pairs and their Volvo wagons, and pumped enough cash into the island economy to keep it nominally running for the nine intervening months until they came crashing back for another season.

When Roddy and Squee walked in that evening, Suzy and Mia were seated at the bar. Squee swung himself up beside Mia, who was rationing sips of a tall Shirley Temple, climbing up onto her knees to drink from the straw and then ducking down to check the level of pink in the glass. Roddy hovered awkwardly, then finally took the stool next to Suzy.

“What do you want?” Roddy called to Squee. Morey stood behind the bar twitching his mustache.

“Chicken fingers.” Squee didn’t take his eyes from Mia and her glass. “And a Coke.”

Suzy looked to Squee. “How ’bout Seven-Up?”

Squee shrugged, nodded disinterestedly. Suzy nodded to Morey. Roddy looked confused.

“You don’t want that kid hopped up on caffeine all night,” she said. “Trust me.”

Roddy conceded. “You have those clam strips?” Morey nodded. “And a Bud.” Roddy glanced to Suzy, gestured vaguely toward her drink.

“Sure,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “Maker’s and soda.” She drained her glass and set it solidly on the bar.

Roddy and Morey met each other’s eyes, impressed.

Though the sun was still shining outside and wouldn’t set for another few hours, Morey’s was dark and cavernous, the Christmas lights twinkling in a sort of sordid merriment. Squee and Mia twittered together, and Roddy tapped his foot on the bar rail, feigning interest in the muted news on a TV mounted high in a corner.

Morey set drinks in front of them, and Suzy began to lift hers in a toast, then thought better and paused, the glass half raised before her. “Ever considered matricide?” She looked at him. “Murdering your mom?”

Roddy shook his head. “My dad.” He nodded now. “Yeah. Never my mom.”

“I should take out both of mine, maybe—two birds, one stone . . . God, why do I do this to myself?” Suzy whined.

“Do what?”

“Come here.” She drank. “Agree to live with their bullshit. I don’t know what possesses me to think it’s going to be OK. It’s never OK. I never should have let them know I’d had a kid in the first place. I was gone; I was free. We were on perfectly lovely nonspeaking terms . . . and then I had to go and ruin it all!”

“Hmm,” Roddy said.

“You’re not much of a talker, huh?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Sometimes you are, or sometimes you aren’t?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Suzy laughed. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Probably,” he said.

“So I shouldn’t take it personally?” Her eyes were still laughing, though her face had stopped.

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, you should take it personally.” He looked at his beer. Down the bar, the kids were in their own world.

“I should?”

Roddy smiled now, took a sip of his beer, watching it steadily, as if it might morph into something else if he lifted his eyes. “It’s personal.”

“It’s personal?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled a little. “It’s very personal.” He looked right at her.

“You,” she said, and she drank again. “You’re going to have to forgive me for saying so again, but you are a very difficult man to have a conversation with.” She smiled this time, peering up at him from her glass, suddenly shy to face him straight on.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know? So you’re trying to be difficult?”

“No,” he tried to explain: “I mean, do you try to make me nervous?”

“What? You? No. Why would I do that?”

“That’s my point,” Roddy said. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you try and make me nervous, but you do anyway—”

She cut him off: “Why do I make you nervous? What do I do that makes you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not such a bad nervous. It’s an OK nervous.” He paused. “It’s a nervous I’m willing to live with.”

He took a deep breath, let it go, and then changed his mind about what to say just as the words were coming: “You . . . would you like another drink?”

She lost her composure, lapsed into nervous laughter. “You just did it again. That’s not normal conversational practice.”

There was too long a pause. Then he said, “What exactly do you want from me?”