Osprey Island

Suzy looked to Squee. “How ’bout Seven-Up?”

Squee shrugged, nodded disinterestedly. Suzy nodded to Morey. Roddy looked confused.

“You don’t want that kid hopped up on caffeine all night,” she said. “Trust me.”

Roddy conceded. “You have those clam strips?” Morey nodded. “And a Bud.” Roddy glanced to Suzy, gestured vaguely toward her drink.

“Sure,” she said, after a moment’s pause. “Maker’s and soda.” She drained her glass and set it solidly on the bar.

Roddy and Morey met each other’s eyes, impressed.

Though the sun was still shining outside and wouldn’t set for another few hours, Morey’s was dark and cavernous, the Christmas lights twinkling in a sort of sordid merriment. Squee and Mia twittered together, and Roddy tapped his foot on the bar rail, feigning interest in the muted news on a TV mounted high in a corner.

Morey set drinks in front of them, and Suzy began to lift hers in a toast, then thought better and paused, the glass half raised before her. “Ever considered matricide?” She looked at him. “Murdering your mom?”

Roddy shook his head. “My dad.” He nodded now. “Yeah. Never my mom.”

“I should take out both of mine, maybe—two birds, one stone . . . God, why do I do this to myself?” Suzy whined.

“Do what?”

“Come here.” She drank. “Agree to live with their bullshit. I don’t know what possesses me to think it’s going to be OK. It’s never OK. I never should have let them know I’d had a kid in the first place. I was gone; I was free. We were on perfectly lovely nonspeaking terms . . . and then I had to go and ruin it all!”

“Hmm,” Roddy said.

“You’re not much of a talker, huh?”

“Sometimes,” he said.

“Sometimes you are, or sometimes you aren’t?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

Suzy laughed. “Are you always this difficult?”

“Probably,” he said.

“So I shouldn’t take it personally?” Her eyes were still laughing, though her face had stopped.

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes, you should take it personally.” He looked at his beer. Down the bar, the kids were in their own world.

“I should?”

Roddy smiled now, took a sip of his beer, watching it steadily, as if it might morph into something else if he lifted his eyes. “It’s personal.”

“It’s personal?”

“Yeah,” he said, and smiled a little. “It’s very personal.” He looked right at her.

“You,” she said, and she drank again. “You’re going to have to forgive me for saying so again, but you are a very difficult man to have a conversation with.” She smiled this time, peering up at him from her glass, suddenly shy to face him straight on.

“Yeah, I know.”

“You know? So you’re trying to be difficult?”

“No,” he tried to explain: “I mean, do you try to make me nervous?”

“What? You? No. Why would I do that?”

“That’s my point,” Roddy said. “I don’t think you do. I don’t think you try and make me nervous, but you do anyway—”

She cut him off: “Why do I make you nervous? What do I do that makes you nervous?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not such a bad nervous. It’s an OK nervous.” He paused. “It’s a nervous I’m willing to live with.”

He took a deep breath, let it go, and then changed his mind about what to say just as the words were coming: “You . . . would you like another drink?”

She lost her composure, lapsed into nervous laughter. “You just did it again. That’s not normal conversational practice.”

There was too long a pause. Then he said, “What exactly do you want from me?”

“Nothing.” She was surprised. “I’m sorry, I don’t want anything from you. I didn’t . . .”

“That’s the thing,” he said.

She waited, but he offered nothing more. “What’s the thing ? I don’t understand anything you say!”

“Yes, you do. Of course you do.” He paused, drank, stared straight ahead, and lowered his voice. “I wish you’d stop making fun of me.”