Ma gettin up in the middle of the night to give em their aspirin tablets. I’ll bring you the check.” She shuffled off in a pair of sneakers with rundown backs.
“She’s a good soul,” Dave said, having the grace to look slightly shamefaced.
“Yes, she is,” Vince said, “and if we got the rough side of her tongue we probably deserved it. Meanwhile, here’s the deal on this lunch, Steffi. I dunno what three lobster rolls, one lobster dinner with steamers, and four iced teas cost down there in Boston, but that feature writer must have forgot that up here we’re livin at what an economist might call ‘the source of supply’ and so he dropped a hundred bucks on the table. If Helen brings us a check that says any more than fifty-five, I’ll smile and kiss a pig. With me so far?”
“Yes, sure,” Stephanie said.
“Now the way this works for that fella from theGlobe is that he scratchesLunch, Gray Gull, Moose-Lookit Island andUnexplained Mysteries Series in his little BostonGlobe expense book while he’s ridin back to the mainland on the ferry, and if he’s honest he writes one hundred bucks and if he’s got a smidge of larceny in his soul, he writes a hundred and twenty and takes his girl to the movies on the extra. Got that?”
“Yes,” Stephanie said, and looked at him with reproachful eyes as she drank the rest of her iced tea. “I think you’re very cynical.”
“No, if I was very cynical, I would have said a hundred andthirty , and for sure.” This made Dave snort laughter. “In any case, he left a hundred, and that’s at least thirty-five dollars too much, even with a twenty percent tip added in. So I took his money. When Helen brings the check, I’ll sign it, because theIslander runs a tab here.”
“And you’ll tip more than twenty percent, I hope,” Stephanie said, “given her situation at home.”
“That’s just where you’re wrong,” Vince said.
“I am?Why am I?”
He looked at her patiently. “Why do you think? Because I’m cheap? Yankee-tight?”
“No. I don’t believe that any more than I think black men are lazy or Frenchmen think about sex all day long.”
“Then put your brain to work. God gave you a good one.”
Stephanie tried, and the two men watched her do it, interested.
“She’d see it as charity,” Stephanie finally said.
Vince and Dave exchanged an amused glance.
“What?” Stephanie asked.
“Gettin a little close to lazy black men and sexy Frenchmen, ain’tcha, dear?” Dave asked, deliberately broadening his downeast accent into what was nearly a burlesque drawl. “Only now it’s the proud Yankee woman that won’t take charity.”
Feeling that she was straying ever deeper into the sociological thickets, Stephanie said, “You mean she would take it. For her kids, if not for herself.”
“The man who bought our lunch was from away,” Vince said. “As far as Helen Hafner’s concerned, folks from away just about got money fallin out of their…their wallets.”
Amused at his sudden detour into delicacy on her account, Stephanie looked around, first at the patio area where they were sitting, then through the glass at the indoor seating area. And she saw an interesting thing. Many—perhaps even most—of the patrons out here in the breeze were locals, and so were most of the waitresses serving them. Inside were the summer people, the so-called “off-islanders,” and the waitresses servingthem were younger. Prettier, too, and also from away. Summer help. And all at once she understood. She had been wrong to put on her sociologist’s hat. It was far simpler than that.
“The Grey Gull waitresses share tips, don’t they?” she asked. “That’s what it is.”
Vince pointed a finger at her like a gun and said, “Bingo.”
“So what do you do?”
“What I do,” he said, “is tip fifteen percent when I sign the check and put forty dollars of thatGlobe fella’s cash in Helen’s pocket. She gets all of that, the paper doesn’t get hurt, and what Uncle Sam don’t know don’t bother him.”
“It’s the way America does business,” Dave said solemnly.
“And do you know what I like?” Vince Teague said, turning his face up into the sun. When he squinted his eyes closed against its brilliance, what seemed like a thousand wrinkles sprang into existence on his skin. They did not make him look his age, but theydid make him look eighty.
“No, what?” Stephanie asked, amused.
“I like the way the money goes around and around, like clothes in a drier. I like watching it. And this time when the machine finally stops turning, the money finishes up here on Moosie where folks actually need it. Also, just to make it perfect, that city fellowdid pay for our lunch, and he walked away withnones .”
“Ran, actually,” Dave said. “Had to make that boat, don’tcha know. Made me think of that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. ‘We were very tired, we were very merry, we went back and forth all night on the ferry.’ That’s not exactly it, but it’s close.”
“He wasn’t very merry, but he’ll be good and tired by the time he gets to his next stop,” Vince said. “I think he mentioned Madawaska. Maybe he’ll find some unexplained mysteries there. Why anyone’d want to live in such a place, for instance. Dave, help me out.”
Stephanie believed there was a kind of telepathy between the two old men, rough but real. She’d seen several examples of it since coming to Moose-Lookit Island almost three months ago, and she saw another example of it now. Their waitress was returning, check in hand. Dave’s back was to her, but Vince saw her coming and the younger man knew exactly what theIslander ’s editor wanted. Dave reached into his back pocket, removed his wallet, removed two bills, folded them between his fingers, and passed them across the table. Helen arrived a moment later. Vince took the check from her with one gnarled hand. With the other he slipped the bills into the skirt pocket of her uniform.
“Thank you, darlin,” he said.
“You sure you don’t want dessert?” she asked. “There’s Mac’s chocolate cherry cake. It’s not on the menu, but we’ve still got some.”
“I’ll pass. Steffi?”
She shook her head. So—with some regret—did Dave Bowie.
Helen favored (if that was the word) Vincent Teague with a look of dour judgment. “You could use fattening up, Vince.”
“Jack Sprat and his wife, that’s me n Dave,” Vince said brightly.
“Ayuh.” Helen glanced at Stephanie, and one of her tired eyes closed in a brief wink of surprising good humor. “You picked a pair, Missy,” she said.
“They’re all right,” Stephanie said.
“Sure, and after this you’ll probably go straight to theNew York Times ,” Helen said. She picked up the plates, added, “I’ll be back for the rest of the ridding-up,” and sailed away.
“When she finds that forty dollars in her pocket,” Stephanie said, “will she know who put it there?” She looked again at the patio, where perhaps two dozen customers were drinking coffee, iced tea, afternoon beers, or eating off-the-menu chocolate cherry cake. Not all looked capable of slipping forty dollars in cash into a waitress’s pocket, but some of them did.
“Probably she will,” Vince said, “but tell me something, Steffi.”
“I will if I can.”
“If she didn’t know, would that make it illegal tender?”
“I don’t know what you—”
“I think you do,” he said. “Come on, let’s get back to the paper. News won’t wait.”
2
Here was the thing Stephanie loved best aboutThe Weekly Islander , the thing that still charmed her after three months spent mostly writing ads: on a clear afternoon you could walk six steps from your desk and have a
