Timothy starts to reply sulkily that he doesn’t want to dine withSam,he wants to dine withGertie,but then he thinks about it and realizes that he does in fact want to dine with Sam. Even though they’re living in the same house, they don’t spend much time together. They pass in the downstairs hallway, outside the bedrooms, and sometimes they happen to be at the espresso machine at the same moment, but that isn’t quality time. It isn’t real conversation. He’d love to gather Sam’s thoughts on Leonato’s performance, maybe pick her brain a bit about Amy’s mood.
Gertie leaves the barn, and Timothy texts Sam, and he’s surprised and delighted to receive a reply almost immediately:Yesssss. Love 2. Meet u there? Plan B4.
Timothy sighs. How is it that everyone’s life but his seems to be so full of plans? Ah, well. He’ll take what he can get.Meet you there, he replies. He can’t bear to try for theU.
Timothy arrives at the Spring House before Sam. He’s a little nervous, as though he’s meeting a blind date. In L.A., of course, he would have asked Alexa to make the reservation, but here, on his home turf, he’d called himself, requesting an outside table, private if possible. He’s pleased when the hostess—streaks of pink in her hair, rows of piercings in her ears—leads him around the corner of the porch, where there are only two tables, both unoccupied.
“This other table is reserved for eight o’ clock,” the hostess tells him. “So you’ll have plenty of privacy until then.”
Does the hostess recognize him? Timothy has gotten pretty good at reading expressions over the years, and looking at this girl, he has to admit... no. No, she does not recognize him. Shhhh, he tells his ego. Don’t worry about it. This girl is, what? Fifteen? Sixteen? Obviously not his demographic. And, anyway, how tiresome it would be to get accosted when he wants only to have a quiet dinner with his niece. Yes, that’s exactly what it would be. Tiresome. It’s so much better this way!
While he waits for Sam he orders a martini, dirty, double olives, and casts his eyes upon the glorious, glorious view: the sweep of winding road leading to Mohegan Bluffs; the majestic ocean beyond that; the ferry, in the distance, making its slow and deliberate way. Closer to him is the wide semicircle of Adirondack chairs, their substantial arms populated with cocktails, the chairs themselves with people. Then there is the vast green lawn, sloping toward the street, a single, shrieking child rolling down it, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump. Doesn’t look like a bit of fun, to Timothy. But there you are.
The martini arrives—icy, briny, perfect—and soon after the drink, here comes Sam. She’s in a short sundress with spaghetti straps, hair in a bun, suntanned, and she looks both glamorous and grown-up and also exactly like the little girl who played Scout to his Atticus all those years ago. She’s smiling. Timothy stands when she gets to the table, and he takes both of her hands, and she kisses him on the cheek.
“Hey, Uncle Timmy! This was such a nice idea, to have dinner together. Sorry I’m late. Am I late?”
“I believe I was early,” Timothy says graciously, even though, yes, Sam is nine minutes late. The hill-rolling child has reached the bottom and sits for a moment (stunned? Delirious with joy? Possibly concussed?) before beginning the trudge back up.
“Nothing looks less fun to me than that,” observes Sam. “Even when I was a kid I didn’t like rolling down hills.”
“I was just thinking the same thing! Must be a genetic disinclination.” Timothy beams. Sam is here; the night is beautiful; all, for now, is right with the world.
When the server comes to take Sam’s drink order Sam smiles at him and says, “Vodka and Red Bull, please. Tito’s.” The server is Sam’s age or a little older, and he stares at Sam, maybe starstruck, maybe smitten, maybe trying to decide if he should ask her for ID. Maybe all three. A lot of people watched the Disney Channel when they were young, and those people have aged into young adults who are not immune to nostalgia.
Sam turns back to Timothy and smiles so widely and innocently that he doesn’t have the heart or the courage to point out that she is not, in fact, of legal drinking age. He knows from reading theBlock Island Timesthat underage drinking is becoming more and more of a problem on the island. Instead he says, “Won’t the Red Bull keep you up?” and Sam chortles and says, “That’s the point.”
“I see.” Timothy is officially old, as it turns out: few things sound more unsettling to him than caffeine past noon.
The server returns with the drink; they order. They decide to share two appetizers, the clams casino and the Point Judith calamari, and, for entrées, Timothy chooses the cod bianco and Sam the pappardelle Bolognese. They clink their glasses.
“This became my drink in New York,” Sam tells him. “Scooter? One of the guys at Xanadu? He got me into it. I thought it sounded gross at first, but you know what? It’s an acquired taste, and I totally acquired it. Like your bourbon, maybe!”
“Xanadu?” Timothy is genuinely confused. He spends some time choosing a clam and moving it onto his plate. A squeeze of lemon, the tiny fork. It’s all sublime.
“The house. The apartment. The TikTok house, where I lived all of last year?” She pauses. “Wait, did you literally not know that’s what I was doing last year?”
“Of course I knew.” I literally knew, he thinks. I literally knew, but I hated to think about it, so I tried not to, and also I didn’t know the house had a name. Sam meets his gaze over her own clam. Timothy isn’t sure if she can read the disdain inside of his and, if she can, if he wants her to or not.
He doesn’tnotwant her to.
But he also doesn’t want to destroy the evening. Moving swiftly, he changes the subject. How does Sam think Amelia is doing as Hero? What about the scene in act 3 where Hero begins her plan to trick Beatrice into falling in love with Benedick? Does Sam think Amelia is laying it on too thick, or not thickly enough? Sam thinks it’s just about right; she might lean just alittlebit heavier on the line “Some cupids kill with arrows, some with traps.” They both agree that Gertie is slaying (Sam’s phrase) as Beatrice. Sarah Trail as Margaret has promise, but is struggling with the language.
When they are each halfway through their entrées Sam finishes her drink, and the server comes out of the shadows to ask if she’d like another. Should Timothy stop Sam from ordering another? Should he stop himself? Oh, why the hell presspauseon thefun? The night is gorgeous; his companion is engaging; the food is a dream. He’s eating well, and he’s drinking slowly, so certainly he can make the short drive home after a second martini.
“I’ll have one more as well,” he says. He tilts his glass toward the server. “Doubledouble olives this time, please.” He thinks about that and says, “I suppose that’d be quadruple.” The server laughs, and Timothy congratulates himself. He’s still got it, the ol’ charm.
It’s not until the eight o’clock reservation arrives that things start to move southward. It’s a family of five: three teenage daughters, ranging in age maybe from thirteen to seventeen, plus a father and a mother. As they sit and open their menus they all glance in Timothy’s direction—getting the lay of the land, the way you do when you’ve just entered a new place. The whispering commences, and, Well, here we go, thinks Timothy. He may even say it aloud. Yes, he is saying it aloud, albeit quietly, to Sam—“Here we go, Sammy”—to prepare her, because there’s no question now (the repeated glances, quick and jerky as a squirrel’s over an acorn) that the family has recognized him. He clears his throat, straightens his spine, casual, playing it cool. He takes a small sip of martini number two, for fortification.
“Don’t turn around,” he tells Sam in a low voice. “One of them is approaching.” Surprisingly, it’s the middle girl. He had been expecting one of the parents. Maybe they’ve sent the girl as an emissary. Or maybe not. He’s been told his early work remains quite accessible. Perhaps this girl is, as they say, a “film geek.” Truth be told, though, she doesn’t look like a geek of any kind. She looks—well, she looks like Sam. Similar dress, similar hair, similar confidence. She’s holding not a cocktail napkin and a pen for an autograph, as Timothy had expected, but a bejeweled phone. On her face is not trepidation, but what Timothy could only describe as familiarity, perhaps even excitement.
“Excuse me?” she says. “Can we get a selfie with you?”
It takes Timothy a few seconds to absorb and translate the wordselfie, converting it from the wordautographhe was expecting, and thank goodness for those snippets of time, because they save him the humiliation of saying yes to the girl, who, it turns out, is looking at Sam, talking to Sam. Wanting a selfiewith Sam.
“I can’t do that, I’m sort of taking a break from social media,”says Sam kindly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Please?Pleaseplease? It’s my sister’s birthday.” The girl points to her family, and the youngest sister waves and giggles. “We won’t post it, if that’s what matters. We just want to have it for ourselves.”
