“No? You sure? Think about it, Sam.” She thinks about it. Henry might have a very small point. Very small indeed, but still a point. “‘We are what we repeatedly do,’”says Henry.
“Huh?” says Sam.
“Aristotle. And the rest of the quote goes, ‘Excellence, therefore, is not an act—’”
“Henry!”
“‘But a habit,’”he finishes.
“That isn’t helping.”
“Have a good night, Sam,” says Henry. “Be careful out there, okay?”
“Out where?”
But there’s no answer: Henry is gone.
A car passes her on the other side of the road, going in the same direction she’s going. Deep breath. Get ready. This is probably Uncle Timmy. The driver lowers the window and whistles and says, “Hey, baby girl. Need a ride?”
“No,” Sam says.
“I’ll give you a ride you won’t forget!”
“Fuck off,” says Sam, and the passenger says, “Oooh, looks like she’s a spicy one!” And thankfully the window goes up and the car continues on and out of view.
“Ugh!”says Sam to the car. She is so. Over. Everything.
Uncle Timmy is just going to leave her to die on this road? Okay. Fine. Won’t he feel bad about what he said to her when sheturns up kidnapped, possibly murdered? Won’t her parents feel bad too, when Timmy tells them he told her the truth about L.A.? She runs through her mental contact list and wonders who she can call, where she can go to avoid Uncle Timmy tonight. Tomorrow, he’s already told her he’s going to Newport to have dinner with Barry Goldman. But what will she do when (if) she ever makes it back to the house on Mohegan Trail? Sit in her room?
Sam hasn’t tried her fake ID anywhere on the island, though she knows it’s a good one because she used it in New York. She had enough of going out in New York to last a while, and most nights she’s happy to lie on the couch in Floyd’s living room, avoiding social media and enjoying some of the shows on the many streaming services Floyd has. (Floyd subscribes to everything; she’s halfway through season two ofOzark.) She’s purchased a couple of “beach reads” from the front table at Island Bound Bookstore, and she might even read one soon. (Whatever a beach read is!)
But tonight? Tonight, noOzark. No beach read. Tonight, she’s not going home. She doesn’t want to talk to her uncle, and she doesn’t want to go through the work of avoiding him either. Tonight, she’s going out. She turns around, crosses the street, points herself toward downtown.
She knows that some of the cast members have become regulars at McAloon’s, where she had lunch with her parents just a week ago. What the hell, she’ll give it a try. Actors know how to make a night of it. She remembers that from her Broadway days. When she was inMockingbirdshe was far too young to do anything after the shows but go home with her mother and go to bed, except for Wednesday nights, when she and her uncle went for a slice of cheesecake at Junior’s, but she heard plenty of chatter about the shenanigans the rest of the cast got up to. They used to go out with the cast ofHamilton,the cast ofFiddler.Sam was witness to the hangover talk and the drunken-hookup talk.
She opens her Uber app and inputs McAloon’s as her destination. Are there even Ubers on Block Island? She peers at her phone, walks into the yard at the 1661 Inn.
There seem to be only three Ubers available on the whole island. Eventually, after a couple of tries, she secures one of them, a Nissan Sentra driven by a Dan. She watches Dan’s Nissan crawl toward her on the screen. Deep breath. Okay. She’ll be fine. Where there’s an Uber, there’s a way.
Once Dan drops her outside the bar, under the sign with the two shamrocks, Sam pauses, momentarily paralyzed. What if nobody she knows is in there? Will she go home, or sidle up to the bar all by herself? Will she make friends, or be shunned? Will anyone in the bar who’s not part of the cast recognize her (this could be bad) or not (this could be worse)? If she changes her mind and decides to spend her evening with Jason Bateman after all, will she be able to get that Uber back? Dan mentioned that he was headed out to a house party near Grace Point, all the way on the other side of the island. How long will it take him to return?
She’s contemplating these questions when someone opens the bar’s door and exits. It’s a couple of guys, maybe forty or so, and they hold the door open for her. It’s practically an invitation: she feels that she has no choice but to enter. Almost immediately she hears her name and sees a hand waving from the back of the room. The hand, it turns out, belongs to Jack Marshall, who plays Leonato. Next to him are Sarah Trail (she plays Margaret) and Charlie Andrake (a local kid, nonbinary, who plays the Messenger). Charlie looks sixteen, so either Sam has underestimated their age by a lot or they also have a very good fake ID. At the other end of the bar are a few more cast members: Don Pedro, Borachio, Claudio. They’re talking to three girls in identical white shorts with identical, purposeful rips and frays. She recognizes a couple of the set guys too. Okay.Okay.She knows enough people here. She should stay. One drink! Then she’ll Uber home, and by then her uncle might be in bed, and they can avoid each other.
Leonato and the Messenger move apart to make room for Sam, and she slides in and waits for the bartender to turn his attention to her. When asked, she shows her ID and holds her breath. The bartender doesn’t question it. It’s a really good fake ID. She buys a round for all of them, plops down her credit card, and the night, like a baby bird in a nest, starts to look up.
The third Red Bull and vodka of the night goes down easy—even easier than the first two, and she didn’t exactly have to choke those into submission. The mood in the bar is upbeat, and soon enough all of theMuch Adopeople are clumped together in the small bar. Little snippets of conversation reach Sam:
“...not even sure that the props department can...”
“You can’t tell me that I wouldn’t—”
“So I told him that I felt triggered butthen—”
“Three catsand an iguana all in one—”
This last conversation is the one Sam thinks she might want to get in on, but when she looks around for its source she can’t find it. Next thing she knows Borachio has his face really close to hers and he’s asking what it’s like to haveTimothy Flemingas an uncle.
“I mean, he’s so famous!” says Borachio. “It’s like—it’s like having Tom Cruise as an uncle or something.”
