I could have flown, thinks Timothy. Why didn’t I fly? There’s a good chance nobody would have found out about the chartered flight.
He’s so very tired.
“Wait until I tell Anthony I met you!” Joy says. “Anthony is my boyfriend. I feel silly saying that, I think I’m too old to have aboyfriend, but I don’t know what else to call him.”
“Some people saypartner,” Timothy ventures, because she’s looking at him so expectantly.
“They do! Yes, they do, Timothy Fleming. When I hear someone saypartnerI always assume they’re talking about a same-sex couple. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! But I feel like I’m misrepresenting my relationship.” She taps the cooler again, as if she’s letting it know she’s still there, and then points to the teenagers. “That’s Maggie, my daughter, and her friend Riley. They’re obsessed with TikTok.” Involuntarily Timothy winces. TikTok took his niece, Sammy, away from him. “And this is Pickles,” Joy says, pointing to the dog, who settles her chin between her two front paws and closes her eyes. “The girls actually do know how to make eye contact, I promise, but they don’t like to show off about it, in case the other teenagers get jealous.”
Despite his best efforts to detach himself, Timothy chortles and Joy, obviously pleased with herself, beams.
“Where are you staying? I’m sorry, I shouldn’t ask you that, that’s a very personal question. For a famous person. Maybe for any person.”
“A friend’s house,” he says. “An old friend.” He decides to leave it at that. Block Island is avery smallisland. No need to advertiseto the paparazzi. (Does Block Island have paparazzi? He imagines the photographer for the weeklyBlock Island Timeshiding in the bushes, waiting for Timothy to emerge.)
“Ahhhh,” Joy says. She nods sagely. “Smart. Away from the riffraff. How long has it been since you’ve been home?”
“It’s been a while. About four years.” Those had been dark days for Timothy for a number of reasons. His mother had just died, and they were on the island to scatter her ashes. He’d lost a role to Colin Firth, and his marriage was over. Amy was barely speaking to him.
“Well, I’m sure the whole island will be abuzz when they hear we have a celebrity in our midst. Once you get yourself settled, you’ll have to come by the shop so you can try a Joy Bomb or two. On the house.” She winks. “I should let you get back to what you were doing.”
Timothy nods. Over the years he has perfected his celebrity nod. It’s polite and perfunctory without being dismissive; the nod, he hopes, says,Thank you for turning your attention elsewherewhile also saying,Please remember me fondly when it’s time to choose your next viewing experience.He has also perfected the fan handshake (fandshake), wherein he puts his left palm over the other person’s hand, like a priest or a politician, indicating warmth and caring while signifying an appropriate amount of personal remove. During the pandemic he set the fandshake aside, so he’s out of practice.
Joy rummages in her bag and pulls out a paperback. A thriller, by Leonard Puckett.No Time Like the Present.On the cover a slender black-gloved hand holds a gun. Long ago Timothy was up for a part in an adaptation of a different Leonard Puckett book. The part had gone to Tom Cruise. Timothy never saw the film; he’d heard the book was better. The book was almost always better. He never read the book either.
With Joy immersed in her paperback, Pickles the dog now snoring, and the teenagers paying him no mind, which he triesnot to take personally but sort of does, Timothy deems it safe to duck outside onto the lower deck of the ferry. Crowded, but not as crowded as the upper deck must be. Timothy sidles up to an empty spot at the railing, pulling his cap down even lower so that he has to peer up under it to see properly. Here come the announcements about disembarking and where to pick up luggage and bikes. And here, as the fog seems to part, revealing what would be the proscenium arch if this were a theater, come the familiar shops lining the main street, the awning of the National Hotel, the bikes and people and dogs and mopeds, and it seems to Timothy Fleming that all the world really is, as the great Bard wrote, a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
The scent of the air tugs at his nostalgia, bringing him back to long-ago summer days, girls in bikinis, the salt water in his hair, on his bare skin, in his heart. When he first moved to California he didn’t understand how to navigate that foreign place. But he’s been there far longer now than he hasn’t, and it’s all familiar to him: the scrubby vegetation; the endless, twisting drives up to the canyons; the wide flat path along the ocean in Santa Monica, where everyone is perpetually twenty-three; the heart-stopping promise of driving into Malibu—always a promise, even if you’ve been there a thousand times.
Nowthislandscape seems, for an instant, alien. And yet it’s not. “Home,” he whispers. This goddamn island. How far he’s strayed in his life, such highs and lows he’s lived, and yet it gets him, every time.
His phone buzzes, breaking his reverie. He doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a Rhode Island area code, so, what the heck, he answers.
“Fleming,” he says quietly, lest someone at the railing recognize his voice or his name and turn around.
“Uncle Timmy!” cries a voice—familiar, yet not exactly. “It’s me. It’s Sammy. I’m home!”
“Sammy. You’re home? What about New York?”
“New York is over.”
He smiles into the phone. He’s so happy to hear Sam’s voice again. It’s been a long time, nearly a year, since he’s talked to her. It’s hard to believe that years ago there were months at a time when he saw her more than he saw pretty much anyone else. “I hadn’t heard.”
“It’s over forme,” she clarifies. “For now.”
“Fair enough. Anyway, nobody wants to spend summer in New York.” The passengers are all moving toward the exit now. He’ll join the end of the line.
“Exactly.” A pause. “That’s why I’m calling. I heard you might have extra space where you’re staying. Your friend’s house?”
“Floyd,” he says. “Yes, I’m using my friend Floyd’s house.” Floyd, he understands from the photos of the house he saw online, has come a long way since their high school days, almost as far as Timothy has. “It’s a big house.”
“I’m sort of, well, not sort of, I’m definitely looking for a change of scenery.” A pause, an audible inhalation. “I’ll just come right out with it. I’ve been here for almost two weeks, and I don’t know how much longer I can stand it. Could I spend the summer with you?”
“With me?”
“I could help with whatever you need, or pay rent, or both...”
Timothy hesitates. It’s not about rent, obviously. It’s also not about Sam—he’d love to have Sam! He’s delighted that she’s left New York, left all that silliness behind, possibly come to her senses. It’s about Amy. “Does your mom know you’re asking me?”
