Page 21 of Under the Stars

“Three hundred bottles?”

“Give or take. Some whiskey, too.”

“Fuck Mike,” says Sedge. “ I’ll buy them from you.”

“Fuck Mike ? Fuck you, Sedge,” says Mike, walking in from the kitchen. He points at me. “ And you. Summer season starts in a month and I’m going to have to rebuild my entire fucking kitchen.”

“You’re not blaming me, are you? I didn’t start the fire—”

“ It was always burning, since the world’s been turning. ” (Sedge, in falsetto, as he sticks a corkscrew into the Burgundy.)

“One, the place is a firetrap—”

“ Was a firetrap,” Sedge murmurs.

“Two, you were the one who hired a fry cook who couldn’t make a decent burger from a pound of freshly ground Kobe, even if he wasn’t stoned out of his mind. He’s an insult to the craft, frankly. The people of Winthrop deserve better.”

“The people of Winthrop don’t give a shit as long as the beer’s fresh.”

“Bro,” says Sedge, “speaking frankly as a person of Winthrop, the burgers here are shit. My cousin’s pretty sure she got E. coli here last August.”

Mike throws up his hands. “Yeah, but you keep coming back, right?”

“Because there are no other options. Except the Club.” Sedge hands me a lowball filled with wine and lifts his bourbon glass to clink against mine.

“That sounds like a you problem, Peabody. A rich-guy trust-funder problem. My problem is I got to get my kitchen back up and running by Memorial Day. With a new fry cook I’m going to find nowhere on this fucking island .

” He turns and points to me. “Thanks to you ! Fucking California hippie chick with your organic everything and your goddamn turmeric ! Whatever the fuck that is! Sitting there on my barstool drinking a glass of wine, for God’s sake! ”

“Hey, man. Don’t talk to Audrey like that,” says Sedge. “She’s been having a rough time.”

“She’s my daughter, asshole. I’ll talk to her—”

“ Whoa. ” Sedge holds up both hands. Looks from Mike to me to Mike again. “Stop. Your daughter ?”

“And you stay the hell away from her, by the way.”

“You have a daughter with Meredith Fisher ? Are you kidding me?”

“I’m the youthful indiscretion,” I tell him. “Obviously she came to her senses and bolted for the opposite side of the country.”

Sedge reaches for the bourbon bottle and refills his glass, neat. “This fucking island.”

Mike looks at me. “You come in here with your bougie top chef attitude. Thinking you can fix what ain’t broke to begin with.”

“Oh, now you’re a chef ?” Sedge asks me.

“CIA trained.”

“No way. You studied at the culinary institute ? Mike, do you realize what this means?”

“Unless they taught her how to build a new kitchen in four weeks flat, it’s no use to me whatsoever,” says Mike.

“Mike, chill out, all right? The important thing is everyone’s okay. The kitchen will be fine. I know a guy who can get the job done in time. I’ll give him a call.”

“Oh yeah? And I pay him how?”

“Insurance’ll cover it. My guy’s a good guy, he’ll let you pay when the check comes in.”

Mike turns around and reaches for a half-empty bottle of Old Grand-Dad off the shelf.

“Mike,” I say, “please tell me you had insurance.”

“Fuckers were going to charge me a fortune—”

“That’s probably because they saw the condition of your kitchen!”

“Jesus Christ, Audrey,” says Mike, “I think I’m starting to understand why that dude of yours bolted.”

I set down the wine, half-finished, and lock eyes with Mike. He lifts his bottle and throws back a long slug.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” says Sedge.

I slide off the stool. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to walk out that door and, you know, never ever fucking come back.”

“What did I say?” Mike yells after me. “Just like your mother!”

—

Rooting around the Greyfriars garage yesterday morning, I found a couple of bicycles piled in the corner under a blanket of cobwebs.

The old-fashioned kind, like the Von Trapp kids rode around Salzburg singing Do, a deer, a female deer, bearing these gigantic wicker baskets fastened to the front bar with a couple of soft leather straps.

I untangled the bikes from each other and brushed off the cobwebs and rode one all over the southwestern end of the island, down gravel lanes and around rocky points and along the cliffs that look out across the sound to Long Island, and that was when I discovered this airfield that looks as if it was built for the Second World War or something.

A couple of dinky single-propeller airplanes sit near the rickety control tower.

Cessnas or whatever they are. You follow the boundary road around the cracked asphalt runway and come to some grassy dunes, where you leave your bicycle, and on the other side of those dunes you find the quietest beach in the world.

I’m sitting there now, knees drawn up to my chest. Arms wrapped around my legs.

From the sea hurtles this damp, blustery wind that tastes of brine.

When we lived in Malibu, I used to avoid the beach because of what Meredith called the OPs—Other People.

To have a whole entire beach to yourself, each wave stampeding to meet only you, feels like the most sublime luxury.

Until I hear a pair of footsteps whispering into the sand behind me.

“ There you are,” croons the radio voice of Sedge Peabody.

I aim my stare straight ahead, to the fat, lonely finger of the Fleet Rock lighthouse that flips off the sky. “Hey.”

“I know you probably want to be alone.”

“Yep.”

He remains respectfully behind me, a little to the right. I imagine him standing there, maybe hands on hips, a dozen feet away. Loafers oozing with sand.

“I just had this idea I want to run by you. Real quick, I promise. Then I’ll scoot and leave you to ruminate in peace.”

I swivel my head and discover he’s exactly as I pictured him. Wind whipping the dark hair. Eyes squinted. “ Ruminate? ”

“You know.” He waves his hand to the twitching sea. “Alone with your thoughts.”

I turn back. “So what’s your big idea, Peabody?”

“Well, it’s not a new idea, to be honest. I’ve been chewing on it for a while now. Ruminating, if you will. How to put some money to work locally. And I thought, well, we’ve got some cool old buildings in the village. The old saltworks, the army barracks—”

“Barracks?”

“Way back during the war? They had a little fort here to guard the entrance to Long Island Sound. That’s what the airfield is for. You know, if you look around these dunes, you’ll find—”

I smother the smile that pops at the corners of my mouth. “Peabody, can you get to the point?”

“Right. So my idea was, let’s maybe buy up some of those old buildings and fix them up into—I don’t know, some affordable housing for the year-rounders, the lobstermen and teachers and marina workers, maybe a shop or two.

Community event space. Just help to develop the island a bit.

Make things nicer for the people who live here so they’ll stay for a while, instead of going batshit over the winter and moving on. ”

“And? This has to do with me how?”

“Well, as I cast my beady gaze over the smoking ruins of Mike’s kitchen a moment ago, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe the Mo might be an appropriate starter investment.

Seeing how many pints of beer I’ve enjoyed there over the years.

How many overcooked burgers I’ve muscled down. I feel like I owe the place, you know?”

“Peabody, I don’t know if you heard me clearly back there? But whatever you care to do for the Mo is between you and Mike. I’m done.”

“Look. I realize the situation is complicated. But he is your dad.”

“You know literally nothing about the situation.”

“Audrey—”

“I’m sure you had a mom and a dad and a happy little photogenic family, like on the Christmas cards, where everybody hugs each other and says I love you .

As a result, you think family comes before everything.

Fine. I’m sure that’s true for you. And I’m here to tell you that you were just lucky, that’s all.

You were lucky that your mom and dad wanted you.

That they wanted each other. For me, it was a different story.

Mike didn’t want to be a father to me back when I was a kid, and he’s not interested now. So, you know. Whatever.”

Maybe Sedge sighs, maybe it’s the wind. There is a piece of driftwood nearby, the trunk of a tree that must have washed into the sound during a storm some time ago and rode the waves until it came to rest here, polished and bleached—a perfect bench for Sedge Peabody to settle on.

So he does.

He speaks slowly. Changes the subject deftly. “I have a proposition for you, Audrey.”

“Oh, so now you’re propositioning me?”

“Hear me out. I happen to agree with you that Mike’s missing a big opportunity here.

I’m not talking about turning the place into some trendy vegan bistro or whatever.

I just mean some decent pub food, cool atmosphere, somewhere the locals and the summer folks can enjoy together, you know?

Still a dive, obviously. Not messing with the overall vibe.

But with an amped-up food offering that you can enjoy without fear of total digestive collapse. ”

“Dream big, I guess.”

“What do you say? Mike provides the venue, you provide the kitchen wizardry, I write the check?”

I bring down my knees and settle myself into criss-cross applesauce. The wind pulls some hair from the knot at the back of my head. “Are you sure your trustees are going to approve this use of funds?”

“What makes you think I live off a trust fund?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What Mike said. Or maybe because you’re hanging around Winthrop Island at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon in April in pink pants and a pair of boat shoes, with no formal employment?”

“For your information,” he says, “it’s called Nantucket red . Not pink.”

“The answer is no, Peabody. I’m not going into business with my father.”

“Not even—”

“No. Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

“All right. All right. I get it.”