“Hey, Clyde,” I finally said.
He glanced up. “Emaline. How’s it going?”
I nodded for my answer and we were silent for another minute or so. Then I said, “You know there’s some people down here shooting a documentary about you, right?”
He didn’t take his eyes off the pump. “I believe I have ignored some phone messages to that effect.”
“They seem pretty persistent.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
When I hit twenty-five bucks, I stopped pumping and replaced my gas cap. As I did so, I looked at Clyde, who was as much an institution in Colby as the pier and the bacon at the Last Chance Café. He’d grown up in Colby, worked doing maintenance for my grandmother in the summers, ran a framing crew my dad was on in high school. I’d met him hanging around the bike shop by Clementine’s, which he owned and had run until a couple of years earlier. He was recognized and referred to by all of us, and yet nobody really knew him that well, which was just the way he’d liked it since he moved back from New York about ten years ago.
On my way in to pay, he nodded at me, and I waved. From inside, I watched him climb into his truck, crank it up, and pull onto the main road. Maybe he was going back to the sound-side house where he lived, or to check on the Washroom, the all-night Laundromat/café he owned. Whatever it was, though, it was his business.
That’s what Theo didn’t understand, what I couldn’t tell him when he first starting asking me questions. It was one thing for all of us here to wonder about Clyde, speculate what his story might be. This was a small town, and that’s what people did. When someone from outside started prodding around, though, it was different. This was the coast. We understood about secrets. And Clyde’s, whatever they might be, would always be safe with us.
6
“OH MY GOD. Look at that.”
There was an appreciative murmur. “Oooh, the scenery here just keeps getting better and better!”
“Melissa, the beach is in the other direction!”
With that, the four girls gathered at the check-in desk burst into loud, squealing giggles. I was pretty sure I knew what they were gawking at, but just to be sure, I glanced out the window. Sure enough, there was Luke, moving some stuff around in his truck bed in the parking lot, shirtless.
“Honestly,” Margo said out loud, adding a couple of cluck-cluck noises as she tapped away at her computer. “Can’t you keep him dressed in public, at least?”
“It’s not up to me,” I said, glancing at the girls again. They were here for a wedding, or so they announced when they’d come in a few minutes earlier. We were used to the kind of pre-vacation exuberance that people let loose after being cooped up in a car for a few hours: voices raised, footsteps hard, the lid to the ice cream cooler being banged, not eased, shut. Everything took a beating in high season.
“Have you stayed with us at Fancy Free before?” Rebecca, one of our reservation specialists, was saying to them now.
“Never,” the tall brunette who first noticed Luke replied. She had that deep brown tan that you just knew was cultivated in a bed all winter. “We usually go to Hilton Head. We could barely find this place! Leave it to Tara to decide to get hitched in the middle of nowhere.”
Margo tsked again, shaking her head. I agreed with her, sort of—not only did these girls show up demanding early check-in, now they were insulting our beach—but she still sounded like an old woman. Then again, as long as she was distracted by them she wasn’t noticing that I was here and not out in the sandbox, where I was technically supposed to be.
The front door banged and Luke came in, pulling a shirt over his head as he walked. He had a sheaf of papers in one hand.
“Oh, no,” too-tan Melissa said to him as he passed her. “Don’t do that!”
Luke yanked it the rest of the way down, then smiled at her. “Sorry?”
“Your shirt,” she replied, nodding at it. “You don’t really need it, do you?”
“Afraid so,” Luke told her. “No shirt, no shoes, no service. You know the drill.”
“I hate rules,” she said, smiling at him. Her friends, behind her, exchanged looks as he kept walking, over to my grandmother’s open office door. She was on the phone, so he stopped just outside, smoothing his hair down with one hand.
“Hey,” I called out, my voice low. He looked over, surprised; he hadn’t seen me. “What do you need?”
He glanced at the girls, his face flushing slightly, then held up the papers. “Invoices from my jobs this week. Carl said I needed to come by and get a check.”
“She might be on forever,” I said, nodded at my grandmother, who was talking shop with one of our more chatty owners. “Come on over to my mom’s. Are they readable, at least?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding annoyed. I doubted it, though. We both knew his handwriting was the absolute worst.
As he followed me across the office, I was distinctly aware of the girls watching not only him but me as well. I was not the jealous type, but that didn’t mean I didn’t notice. I said, “Your fan club just keeps growing.”
“Hardly,” he replied. “They’re on vacation, would look at anybody.”
“Not everybody’s putting on a show, though.”
I felt him slow his steps, and instantly hated how petty I sounded. More and more lately, we kept hitting each other with these little jabs. Like we were siblings or bickering friends, not a couple supposedly in love. “It’s hot and I work outside, Emaline.”