Osprey Island

“Like I’m blind!”

“I don’t know. She’s totally hot. But kind of prickly too, you know? Like she’s super smart or something. Kind of sneaky, sort of.”

“Yeah,” said the new boy, “you get the feeling, kind of, when you talk to her, like she’s listening kind of too carefully or something. Like she’s memorizing things or something.”

The other boy let out a long negative sigh, shaking his head and considering his reply as it slowly escaped. “Naaah,” he said, “I don’t think she’s that smart . . .”

They were quiet.

“Dude, you got another smoke?”

“Upstairs.” A moment later the door slammed.

Lorna lay in her house under the old dirty yellow blanket. It wasn’t anything she didn’t know, really, and nothing she hadn’t heard before. Nothing worse than she’d done herself. And still, it hurt. Because there was nothing in the world—even joy—that didn’t hurt.

ON THE LODGE PORCH THAT NIGHT, Peg and Jeremy sat off to themselves, away from the rest of the staff on the edge of the deck, their feet dangling. Squee and Mia were playing Ping-Pong at the table underneath the deck, and their squawks and cries of victory and defeat rushed up through the planking. Gavin was playing Spit with a waiter named Joe who didn’t talk much and seemed even less happy with where he was than Gavin. Brigid sat around a table with three guy waiters who were playing I Never and seemed thrilled to have a girl, especially Brigid, join their ranks.

“I never had sex with someone I worked with,” said one of the waiters, who looked fifteen and had probably never had sex with anyone at all. The group paused, collectively considering their own checkered pasts. Brigid was the only one to drink. Never mind that she hadn’t actually shagged the boy, only messed about with him once at a party somewhere. But these boys didn’t need to know that. Brigid liked how impressed they looked, all agog at a girl who’d freely tell them whom she’d fucked and how. She liked that she could look down on them now: so immature to be impressed the way they were.

The next boy took his turn and upped the ante. “I never had sex with my boss.” He had on a pink Lacoste shirt and looked to be feeling mischievous.

Again, Brigid drank alone. The boy whom she hadn’t actually shagged hadn’t actually been the boss, only a coworker, but Brigid felt a sense of obligation to give these boys something to fuel their little dreams.

The third boy said, “I never watched someone else having sex.”

Brigid turned to him, coy. “Does that include the person you were having the sex with then? Like: I never kept my eyes open?”

The guy laughed. “I never watched two other people, who were not me, having sex,” he said.

“Live?” Brigid asked. “Or pornography as well?”

“Live,” said Lacoste boy.

No one drank.

“All right, then,” Brigid said, “so I’ve got to think up something I haven’t done, is that right?” She pretended to be racking her brain.

“Don’t tax yourself,” said the boy in the pink shirt.

“I’ve got it: I never rented pornography,” Brigid said. All the boys drank, and she laughed at them and they laughed back.

By the time the game broke up there were at least ten of them playing and Brigid was plastered—there were actually plenty of things she hadn’t done, involving all manner of relatives and root vegetables, that she was all too happy to admit to never having done. Jeremy and Peg, who were clearly about to become the new staff lovebirds, had gone for “a walk on the beach,” and there was much speculation among the rest of the group as to what that meant. Gavin had made his way over from the card game and sat in a chair just behind Brigid, close enough that she could feel him shift and sigh, not close enough that she was sure he’d done it deliberately. She liked the feel of him close to her. He was driving her a bit insane. She liked that some. Not too much. But some.

“YOU THINK I DON’T KNOW, LANCE? You make an ass of yourself— you think I sit here with no fucking clue?”

“You talked to my mother?”

“I never talked to your mother. I don’t talk to your damn mother.”

“So what the fuck are you talking about?”

“You come in blasted out of your fucking mind, three in the morning . . . You think Squee doesn’t hear? You think I don’t know what you’re doing?”

“What am I doing? You tell me what I’m doing. Waking up your goddamn baby? Oh! Oh!” Lance threw his hands in the air, his voice high and squeaky. “Oh, don’t hurt my baby!”

Lorna looked as if she might strike him, but then she sank down to the table and buried her head in her hands.

Lance’s body released. He went to kneel by her chair, pushed his face into her lap, his cheek against her leg. “Baby,” he said, “Lorna.”

She let one hand fall to his head, ran her fingers through his hair, soft, greasy at the scalp, but so soft for a man, softer than anyone would think. “Go,” Lorna said quietly, “just go. Fuck whoever you want. Just go.”

“I didn’t fuck anybody.”

“Sure you did,” she whispered to the table.

“No I didn’t.” He opened his mouth on her thigh below the seam of her shorts. “I didn’t.”