Looking in the mirror she thinks: Breaker, not broken.
She thinks: A hundred times hotter than you’ve ever been.
She thinks: Girl, yes!
Mario knocks on her door at quarter to eight, his silver pickup idling in the driveway. He’s wearing jeans, a white linen shirt, a slate-blue blazer, and flip-flops, which in Lizbet’s opinion is the perfect outfit on any man. His smile when he sees Lizbet is so…naughty that Lizbet flushes.
He whistles. “Do I need to say it?”
“Yes.”
“You look…wow. Just wow.”
Lizbet’s flirting skills were dormant during her years with JJ, and she needs to wake them up now. She winks at him. “I brought something for later.” She hands him a cooler bag and hopes he doesn’t think she’s being presumptuous.
He peeks inside and grins. “I like where your head is at.” He reaches for her hand. “Let’s go make people jealous.”
When Mario pulls into the parking lot of the Deck, Lizbet panics.
She’s back.
She sees JJ’s big black Dodge parked in its usual spot, and next to it is the juicy orange Jeep that belongs to Christina. Lizbet can recall dozens of times when that Jeep would pull into the Deck and Lizbet’s spirits would lift. Lizbet had liked Christina; she was charming, funny, modest. She and Lizbet would talk about wine, of course, but also about trips they wanted to take to Italy and South Africa, restaurants they wanted to try the next time they went to New York, and they both loved celebrity scandals （they were verklempt when JLo and A-Rod broke up, and Christina called Lizbet, screaming, when JLo was spotted with Ben Affleck）。
Lizbet’s eye is drawn beyond the restaurant itself to the Monomoy creeks. She misses this view—the meandering paths of shallow water through the reeds and cattails, the dinghies tied up to colorful buoys, the distinctive cupola of the Nantucket lifesaving museum in the distance. There are a few kayakers out tonight, paddling through the creeks as the sunset turns the sky a soft pink. Lizbet can hear the laughter, the clinking of glasses and silverware, the happy chatter that was the soundtrack of her former life. It’s surreal being an observer, being an outsider. This isn’t her place any longer. What is she doing here?
Well, it’s too late to back out now. Mario reaches for her hand again; he must understand how difficult this is for her.
He stops right before the door. “You ready, Heartbreaker?”
She nods and they step inside.
Everything is the same. Off to the left is the arched entryway to the airy, rustic dining room. Other people might notice the cathedral ceilings, the exposed beams, the huge stained-glass window salvaged from a church in Salem, Massachusetts, at one end of the room, the plate glass on the other side offering unimpeded views across the water. What Lizbet sees is tables 25 through 40, including a twelve-top in front of the cobblestone fireplace that the staff fondly calls “the Bitch” because, well, that’s what it is. Peyton is taking orders at the Bitch and Lizbet wonders if it was a mistake not to warn her former staff that she was coming in.
Mario leads Lizbet past the dining-room entrance to the hostess station and Lizbet feels herself hanging back like a child who doesn’t want to start kindergarten. She sees the Robert Stark painting that greets every guest of the Deck—a wide canvas of bottle-green sea with one red-sailed boat on the horizon. They’re at command central, Lizbet’s former cockpit, her Oval Office, a place as familiar to her as her own bedroom. When Lizbet started working at the Deck as a server, they had a standard-issue lectern, straight out of a high-school auditorium, but Lizbet replaced it with an antique drafting table that she found at Brimfield.
“Good evening,” Lizbet hears Mario say. “Subiaco, party of two?”
Lizbet is hiding behind him, trying to summon her affirmations. What are they? She can’t remember a single one, not even the silly one about the pineapple. She hears Christina’s voice, and while she’s too addled to listen to the exact words, she can tell Christina is fawning: My name is Christina…so honored to…I’ll tell Chef…please let me show you…
Mario ushers Lizbet forward. Girl, yes! Lizbet thinks. She smiles at Christina and says, “Hey there, how’s it going?”
Never underestimate the element of surprise. Christina doesn’t seem to recognize Lizbet at first （ha-ha—no braids）， but then it lands, and Christina’s eyes ricochet between Mario and Lizbet. She fumbles the menus, and one drops to the floor. Lizbet watches as Christina crouches to retrieve it while trying to make sure her very short, very tight black skirt doesn’t hike up her ass.