“Monday?”Taken abackis a gentle term for what Nicola feels.
“We’ll take the mopeds out. Maybe... fourp.m.?”
“I work until five.”
“You’ve got meetings on Monday,” Allison reminds her. “Until five-thirty.”
“Let’s make it six, then.”
“Okay,” Nicola says, too much on her back foot to really consider if she wants to accept or not. She’s annoyed at Jack for depositing her in the library and not coming back for her. She’s peeved at Juliana for not revealing her identity right away. She doesn’t like feeling duped. She’s bothered by Allison for being so together.
Allison says, “We should...” and looks meaningfully at Juliana.
“Right.” They sweep out of the library, leaving Nicola alone. She stands there for a few minutes, looking at the books, wondering if they’re real. They’re arranged by color, a style she’s seen on Instagram, and it looks fantastic, but she wonders how you could ever find anything you’re looking for. Nicola pulls out a few, one by one, randomly: a blue, a light pink, a green. She checks them. Real.
Then she decides that if Jack isn’t coming back she’ll go enjoy the party on her own. Or at least she’ll observe the party on her own. The DJ is going strong, and the dancers are still at it, and there’s still a line at the bar. She overhears somebody say:
“Ordinance—”
And another person say, “He’s a celebrity watcher, which is the same as—”
And another person say, “Fuck ifIknow, Katie—”
A couple is in the middle of a heated argument, whose flames alcohol are definitely fanning. Heneverwanted to go out with her friends even though she went out withhisasshole friends all the time, even to that stupid hockey...
Who hasn’t been there? I mean, seriously,who hasn’t been there? Once Nicola and Zachary got into a fight at the Public Garden in Boston, when they’d gone for an overnight to celebrate their second anniversary. A Public Fight in the Public Garden, which, when she looks back on it, is utterly humiliating. In the moment, though, she remembers the way the rage overtook her, and how she didn’t care who in the world was listening. Maybe she was even exhilarated by the sidelong glances of strangers, and the way they both refused to let the fight end. Zachary was a champion one-upper; had it been a D1 sport he’d have gotten a college scholarship.
Now that she’s on the other side of it, she can see that it’s not a great look, airing your grievances without checking to see who might be around. Nicola wants to take this couple aside and tell them to go to bed and talk about it in the morning. Or maybe don’t talk about it! Maybe just forget it, and go out for coffee and bagels to soak up all of the alcohol, and get on with your weekend.
Nicola is feeling her drinks—ho, boy, is she feeling them. She only had two! What wasinthem? She wants to go home. She has work in the morning, even though it’s Saturday; they’re hosting a dock exploration, and she’s in charge. The interns each take a turn with the Saturday shift. She’s about to leave when she feels a hand on her arm. She turns. Jack! It’s Jack. She pulls her hand away and cries, “Where’d you go for so long?” She actually sputters this; had she been a cartoon there would have been an exaggerated back-and-forth motion of her head, rubbery lips.
“Here and there,” he says, looking infuriatingly sexy-chagrined.
She tries her best to ignore the sexy part. She folds her arms, hoping this gesture, pedestrian though it may be, sufficiently conveysthe depth of her frustration. “You left me! I was talking to Juliana but I didn’t know it was Juliana and younever came back, and then she had to go talk to someone, and you never came back!”
“Sorry,” he says. “I am sorry, darling Nicky, I am. I got caught up talking to some guys I know.” Jack strikes Nicola then—as he will even more later in the summer, after everything—as someone who remains smoothly impassive in the face of others’ agitation. Even grief, probably. She’ll learn more as time goes on, but she can see already that he’s shellacked all over with an impermeable coating that allows nearly every outside influence to slide off him like water from oilcloth. Then he says, “You won’t believe the story I just heard.”
“Well, what is it?” Nicola tries sticking her lip out like a grumpy toddler, realizes it’s not playing the way she wants it to, puts the lip back where it belongs.
“Never mind, I can’t tell you all of it right now—but I will eventually.”
“Aw, come on! I was waiting all this time and you won’t even tell me?”
He shakes his head. “It’s a story for another day. But I’ll definitely tell you, because it has to do with you.”
“With me?”
The music stops, and Jack looks at his watch. “Right on cue. Elevenp.m.”
“What’s right on cue?”
“The end of the party. Block Island noise ordinance.”
Where was this noise ordinance, Nicola asks, last week and the week before? Where was the noise ordinance when she couldn’t sleep? Jack tells her that Juliana hadn’t followed it, and had been given a warning, and was now compelled to comply. Or else.
“Or else what?”
Jack yawns. “To be honest with you, I don’t know. Come on, I’ll walk you home.” The partygoers begin to leave, calling out toone another, or simply scattering into the darkness, the reverse of the moth-to-the-light actions from earlier. Nicola doesn’t see Juliana anywhere. She hears engines start up from the driveway. The DJ has his equipment almost dismantled. It’s amazing how quickly the scene goes from a party to a not-party, as though the whole thing had been merely a stage set and has to be taken down to move the production to a new city.
