“Right across the road,” Pam said. “Both of us do, actually. We don’t live together but in the same apartment building.”
“Colonial Estates,” Janey said. “It’s neither Colonial nor an estate.”
They both laughed, and Pam said, “But they have a pool.”
“And an exercise room that no one uses.”
“Yes.”
“So this is your local bar?” I said.
“Yes, we’d probably come here even if Pete wasn’t here.” The bartender, cleaning a glass during a rare lull, heard Pam say his name and nodded toward us, seeing if we needed anything. “No, we’re fine,” Pam said. “Or maybe we should all get one more drink then call it a night.”
We all agreed, getting one more drink, plus our bills. Pam and I wrangled over who was paying for what drink, and what snacks, then, when we had finally figured it out, we paid up, and the three of us moved with our new drinks to a high-top table where it would be easier to chat.
It was clear that Pam was still imagining Janey and I might be a romantic match, so she kept the conversation going by asking the two of us questions. It got a little awkward when, after explaining again how I was a poet, Janey asked for my full name so she could look me up online and read something I’d written. I gave my name as Henry Dickey and said that I wasn’t sure they’d find anything about me online. If I’d given my real name, they’d find nothing about poetry, either, although they might find a listing for my investigative services, and they would almost certainly find out about my involvement as a police officer investigating the deaths of Ted and Miranda Severson two years earlier.
“Henry Dickey, Henry Dickey,” Janey said aloud, in order to memorize my name. She finished her drink, then told both of us she needed to go tinkle and then maybe Pam and she could walk across the road back to their apartments. “Unless you two want to stay—”
“No, I’m ready to go,” Pam said, and I nodded.
Janey ticked away on heels, and I turned to Pam and said, “This was fun.”
“You should come back here. To the Hong Kong. Become a regular like Janey and me.”
“When do you guys usually come here?”
“Tonight was unusual, actually. Thursday night we are almost always here, for sure. And sometimes on the weekend if nothing else is going on. But, yeah, Thursday night is a good time. It was nice meeting you, Henry.”
Janey came back and the three of us exited into the cold night, the black sky busy with stars. I hugged them both goodbye then watched as they walked together to the intersection, pressing the walk button that stopped the traffic.
Driving back to Cambridge I went over the evening in my mind. I was still wondering what Pam had meant by saying her relationship was more of a threesome than a twosome. Was it her way of telling me she was the other woman coming between a married couple?
When I got back to my apartment, Pyewacket the cat let me know how unhappy he was that I’d been gone all day. He herded me to his food bowl, and I gave him his dinner, then set up my laptop on my desk. I took notes about the day, wanting to put in writing some of the exact phrases that Pam had used in describing her relationship to me. After doing that I leaned back in my chair and thought for a while. Pyewacket, done eating, leapt up into my lap, purring. There are many things I love about cats but one of them is their short memories. After he’d gotten sufficient chin scratches he jumped back down to the floor. I opened the document on my computer where I wrote down ideas for poems. At the top of the page I wrote, “There once was a drinker named Pam.”
Chapter 8
Joan
There had been so little to do over the last few days that Joan had read Gerald’s Game then another Stephen King book called Dolores Claiborne, and now she was reading Pet Semetary. She’d been to the library several times but hadn’t seen Richard, and because of her sunburn, she’d temporarily stopped going to the beach. In the middle of the day she read in her room, propped up on several pillows, drinking cans of Diet Coke. Her mom and dad had developed a sudden interest in going antiquing, driving aimlessly through southern Maine and coming home with lobster buoys, vintage postcards, and other stuff that was going to look ridiculous back at their house in Middleham.
And Lizzie, Joan’s sister, was nowhere to be found. She’d made a friend two days earlier, another female college student visiting her parents who were staying at Windward for the entire month. It seemed as though Lizzie and this girl, Denise or something like that, were suddenly joined at the hip （her mother’s phrase）， and at breakfast that day Joan, reading her book, had overhead her parents whisper something about Lizzie maybe being a lesbian.
Sometimes in the later afternoon, when the sun was lower in the sky, she’d walk down to the beach carrying just a towel and go for a swim. If the afternoon was cool, she’d take a walk first, usually down to the stone jetty then back, just so she’d warm up a little, get sweaty enough so she wanted to run into the cold water. It was on a Friday, when Joan and her family had been at Windward for almost a full week, that she came out of the water, and saw that Duane was watching her clamber up the incline of damp sand that led to the ridge where she’d planted her clothes and her towel.
“I saw you out there swimming,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Joan said.
“The water’s pretty cold.” Duane was wearing a T-shirt that said georgetown prep on it.
“It’s not that bad, actually.” Joan stooped to pick her towel up off the beach, snapping it in the wind to get any sand off it before wrapping it around her torso.
“Yeah, I guess,” Duane said, and stared out at the ocean as though he could tell its temperature just by looking at it.
“Hey,” he said, and jerked his head back, as though he were trying to get his dog to heel. “Sorry if things were a little weird the other night.”
Not wanting to talk about it, Joan said, “Whatever.”
“You didn’t tell anyone, did you?”
“About what? You being a dick?”
“Look, you were the one—”
“Forget it. Whatever. I don’t care.”
Duane nodded, as though he were pondering her words, then said, “Well, if you don’t care then I thought maybe you’d want to come hang out again. At the beach. I’m going to be there tonight with some friends.”
“Yeah, who? You and that creepy busboy?”
“No. There’ll be more kids. Derek’s inviting a couple of his friends. And there are these girls coming. I don’t know their names, but they’re not locals or anything. They’re staying at one of the big rental houses down the other end of the beach.”
“Probably not,” Joan said.
“Hey, whatever. I just thought you might be pretty bored of this place.”
While he’d been standing there, he’d slipped off one of his flip-flops and had dug his foot into the soft sand. She knew he was trying to be nice, that he was remembering the last time they’d hung out, and was pretending it had never happened. She was almost positive he wanted to say something to her like, “Don’t be a baby,” or “What, you don’t drink?” And part of her really wanted to tell him she’d rather read in her room than be out on a dark beach with him and his gross friends, but, instead, she said, “Yeah, okay. Maybe.”