Host(chuckles): Let’s make sure anyone who’s just tuning in to the episode is caught up. We’re talking to four members of the Block Island Town Council about some startling events that took place last summer. In June and July last year Block Island was the scene of some pretty wild parties, right?
Kelsey:Verywild.
Host:And at the same time Buchanan Enterprises was trying to get a proposal passed to tear down an old motel and build a boutique hotel and spa. And then what?
Betsy:At the beginning of August, all of a sudden the parties stopped. That was it. You didn’t hear anything more about parties at the house on Great Salt for the rest of the summer. I don’t know what the people who always called in about the noise ordinance did with themselves, without that to complain about.
Lou:August is when the you-know-what really hit the fan.
Kelsey:I was super bummed. I was planning on going to another one. All my friends from nursing school are living in big cities,like Boston or Seattle or Chicago, and I finally had some nightlife to tell them about. I was going to post! I didn’t post the first time, and I really regretted it. I heard there was a Kardashian at one of those parties.
Evan:Yeah?
Kelsey:Not like Kim. But maybe one of the lesser Kardashians. I heard Gertie Sanger was there too. She’s like Hollywood royalty!
Betsy:I’m with Lou. I’d say the beginning of August is when things really fell apart. In my house, at least. One day in the beginning of August, Henry came home from work and sobbed in his truck. My Henry never cries. He didn’t cry when the basketball team lost in the playoffs his junior year. Didn’t cry when that surfboard fin sliced his calf when he was fourteen and he needed eleven stitches. But that day in August, he cried. Something had changed. He wouldn’t even talk to me about it—and Henryalwaystalks to me. He doesn’t always talk to his mother but he alwaysalwaystalks to me.
(Pause.)
Nobody likes to see their loved ones gutted.
Evan:A lot of what was going on behind the scenes was lost on me. We had our busiest summer since the pandemic at the Hangry Angler. Between that and the kids and these town council meetings, I was straight out. I barely knew my own name. Until the very end. Until the death. That snapped everyone to attention.
August
Nicola
David calls on the first Saturday in August and says, without preamble, “Taylor wants you to come to dinner tomorrow night. Six o’clock.” Nicola is sitting on her patio in her bikini, wondering if she can get rid of the tan lines she’s acquired from spending too much time in her BIMI polo.
She almost laughs. Has David dialed the wrong number? “Me?Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. She said she enjoyed talking to you at the party. She wants to get to know you better.” (Nicola wonders if the unspoken sentiment is:she thinks she underestimated you.)David goes on: “She wanted to do more entertaining this summer, but, I don’t know, time got away from everyone. It’s already August!”
“It is,” confirms Nicola.
“So she settled on dinner tomorrow. Sundays are pretty chill for us. I think she’s doing some sort of a cocktail party too, in a week or two. That one’s more for the locals.” (Nicola wonders if the unspoken sentiment here is:you won’t be invited to that one.)
“The locals? Taylor hangs with the locals?”
“Well, no. But she’s trying to win over the planning board, to get this hotel approved. And I guess the way to the planning board—”
“Is through its stomach?”
David snort-laughs. “No. Through town council.”
“Ah,” says Nicola. “All politics reallyarelocal, I guess.”
“So you’ll come tomorrow?”
“Sure. Sundays are chill for me too.” Monday, she is leading a field trip to Andy’s Way, where the kids are going to try their hands at clamming. They’ll also find horseshoe crabs and hermit crabs, and even though you get to Andy’s Way by following a dirt road off Corn Neck, so it’s not so far from anything, they’ll feel like they’re a million miles away from the hustle and bustle of downtown. She’s excited for the field trip, possibly more excited than the kids are. She wants to re-remember what it is she’s come to love about this island: not the giant houses and the showy parties and the cocktails (okay, sometimes those things are nice, especially the cocktails) but the pleasure in unadulterated nature, in the simplicity of a clam—to be fair, though, clams have the most sophisticated heart of all the mollusks.
“I’ll send Jack to pick you up.”
Nicola’s stomach drops. She hasn’t spoken to Jack since the last party. He didn’t apologize, but he did send her a meme of a humpback whale breaching with the wordsWHALE HELLO THERE. She left the text onread. In moments of strength, she’s completely fine with the dearth of real communication: they were never exclusive; they owe each other nothing; he can kiss whomever he wants. But in moments of weakness she simmers in disappointment, nay, anger. She’d thought at least he washonest, thought he’d at leasttell her when he was back on the island.It stings that he wasn’t, that he didn’t. No, it more than stings: it burns. She hates when she allows herself to think better of people than they deserve.
To ease the burn, she’s kept herself busy at work and hanging out with the interns. Wednesday they hit Poor People’s after work, and Thursday they went horseback riding at Rustic Rides. On Sunday, they have plans to hear some musician at Mahogany Shoals who apparently could pass for the love child of Ray LaMontagne andShakey Graves. If she goes to Taylor’s dinner she’ll have to miss this, even though she loves Shakey Graves. She tries to sound chill but her words come out in a yelp. “Jack’s going to be there? At dinner?”
“Why wouldn’t he be? He’s living here.”
