Shawn obliges and when Kacy gets the phone back, she laughs. “I think he’s into you.” She shows Coco the picture: It’s all of Coco and just a sliver of Kacy.
“Here, I’ll take it,” says a pretty, dark-haired girl who has just popped in between them. “Shawn takes terrible pictures. Trust me, I know—he’s my brother.”
Coco recognizes this chick. “You’re Olivia from the Lovely,” she says. “You’re the one who sold me this dress!”
“Oh, hey!” Olivia says. She looks from Coco to Kacy and back. “Yes, I remember you.”
Because Coco and Kacy are four cocktails in, bumping into Olivia seems like the world’s most insane coincidence, and they order shots of Fireball all around.
“We need food,” Kacy says. They’re now too drunk to sit down at anyplace respectable, so off to the Strip they go. Coco says she might want Steamboat pizza or a Reuben from Walters but Kacy calls her an amateur and yanks her into Stubbys. Ten minutes later, they’re across the street on a bench scarfing down double cheeseburgers and a pile of hot waffle fries. Has food ever tasted this good? Coco wonders. A stream of cars passes them, people just off the ferry.
“The August people are arriving,” Kacy says.
The vehicles are mostly Jeeps and luxury SUVs; they’re filled with kids who point at the Juice Bar and golden retrievers that hang their heads out the windows. One car has boogie boards strapped to the top; another one has three bikes hanging off the back. Coco sees lacrosse sticks, golf clubs, Provençal-print duffel bags. She can’t help but think back to how bewildered she was the day she arrived—and now look at her!
“Let’s take a selfie,” Kacy says.
Thank god she met Kacy, Coco thinks. And she smiles.
Coco feels like she’s entered the cantina in Star Wars, but really, it’s the Club Car. Instead of aliens, Coco finds a woman in a lime-green linen sheath and pearls and a gentleman wearing a bow tie embroidered with watermelons. Kacy weaves through the crowd until they’re standing by Mike the piano player. He’s singing “Rich Girl,” and everyone singing along agrees that she’s gone too far but they know it don’t matter anyway.
Kacy says, “You stay here, I’ll get drinks. What do you want?”
Coco wants Lamont to call her and confirm that Leslee is staying at the Charlotte Inn, where she’s seduced the bellman, and Lamont is heading back to the boat alone. She wants him also to say that he misses her and wants their romance to be public, that he’ll tell Leslee in the morning, come what may. “Whatever you’re having,” Coco says.
Mike the piano player glissandos an end to the song and calls out, “Requests?”
A dude in a navy polo and a pair of dusty-pink Nantucket Reds (not only can Coco identify the pants now; she also knows if they’re authentically weathered) puts a hundred-dollar bill in the tip jar. “Would you play ‘Just Like Heaven’?” he says. “And dedicate it to Sharon?”
Mike’s eyes light up when he sees the blue Benjamin drift down on top of the fives and tens in his jar. “Sharon!” he calls out. “This song is for you!”
Blond Sharon and Romeo are enjoying a tequila cocktail called the Mr. Brightside and a plate of light, cheesy gougères at the Club Car bar when Sharon hears Mike the piano player say, “Sharon! This song is for you!”
“Ha!” Sharon nudges Romeo. “There must be another Sharon here.” She and Romeo have already planned to request “Hooked on a Feeling” once they finish eating.
“Show me, show me, show me how you do that trick,” Mike sings.
Good god, she thinks. It’s “Just Like Heaven.” That used to be her song with Walker.
It was the early nineties. At a bar called the Mill on the Upper East Side, Sharon and Walker danced to “Just Like Heaven” and ended up making out on the dance floor with all their friends watching. When the lights of the bar came up, Walker asked for Sharon’s number, which she wrote on a cocktail napkin; Walker shoved the napkin in his back pocket. Sharon figured the napkin would end up lost or go through the wash, but—surprise, surprise—Walker called the very next day. He invited Sharon to a West Side pub crawl with the rest of his Columbia MBA classmates. (Sharon almost didn’t go because she hated taking the crosstown bus.) During the pub crawl, they stopped at a bar called Wild Life, and Walker asked the DJ to play “Just Like Heaven.” Then he said in Sharon’s ear, “We’ll dance to this song at our wedding.”
And they did.
Romeo lifts the plate of gougères. “Do you want the pope’s nose?” This is what Sharon’s mother used to call the last remaining hors d’oeuvre on the platter. Sharon told Romeo this at the Richardsons’ Pink and White Party, and it’s cute that he remembered. She pushes thoughts of Walker from her mind and pops the last gougère into her mouth. That one warm, cheesy bite while sitting next to Romeo is just like heaven.
Sharon feels a hand on her back. The Club Car bar is narrow—it was originally one of the Pullman cars on the old Nantucket railroad—and hence there’s no such thing as personal space. All night, people have been jostling Sharon and Romeo and saying, “Vodka soda, close it,” right between them. But Sharon and Romeo don’t mind; singing at the Club Car is a Nantucket tradition.
The hand presses; someone wants Sharon’s attention. She turns just as Mike sings her favorite line: “Why won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you?”
Standing there is… Walker. It’s as though she conjured him.
Sharon is so stunned, she can’t speak. She looks past Walker for a person who might be Bailey from PT. Did he have the gall to bring the little vixen to the island? It doesn’t appear so. In the next instant, she understands that she’s the Sharon this song is dedicated to. Walker appeared on the island unannounced, found her at the Club Car, and requested their song as some kind of… grand romantic gesture?
“What,” she says, “are you doing here?”
He holds a hand out. “Dance with me.”
Sharon is immediately swept back four and a half months to the Day Her Marriage Fell Apart.
It’s a typical March day in Connecticut—dreary, raw, raining sideways—and Sharon is parked in front of Centrality Physical Therapy and Wellness, waiting for Walker to emerge from his final appointment. Sharon mindlessly scrolls through her phone, but she’s also recalling how reckless Walker had been on their Christmas vacation in Breckenridge—he’s nowhere close to the skier he thinks he is—and how he’d torn his ACL ten seconds into a run down George’s Thumb. Sharon doesn’t have anything planned for dinner, so after they pick up the twins from debate and Robert from basketball practice, the whole family can go to Tequila Mockingbird to celebrate Walker’s healed knee. This improves Sharon’s mood; she could use a margarita.
When Walker gets into the car, his expression is a tragedy mask. Has someone died?
“Are you okay?” Sharon asks. “Did they add another week? Two weeks?”
“I’m in love with Bailey,” he says. “My physical therapist.” He swallows. “I love her, Sharon, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m leaving you.”
In Sharon’s mind, the windshield wipers stop, the car’s engine cuts out, the rehabilitation center crumbles. She feels like a block of ice despite the seat heater toasting her bottom. She has heard all about Bailey: twenty-seven years old, a graduate of Fairfield University, hands of a healer, brought chocolate eclairs from the Silvermine Market every week so she could reward Walker for his hard work. Sharon had thought, Cute, he has a crush on Bailey. She supposed that was typical at their age, and their marriage was strong enough to withstand a crush; it made things a little spicy, even.
Sharon knows Walker is serious by how devastated he seems. He knocks his head against the car window, saying, “I just cannot believe this. I am such a douchebag!”
Sharon gets a text from Colby: Where u at? She starts to drive toward the high school, saying nothing. Walker brushes his tears away, takes a shuddering breath, and manages to collect himself before the twins pile into the car, both of them so deep into their phones that Sharon and Walker could be on fire—they are on fire, Sharon thinks—and they wouldn’t notice. She asks a desultory question about debate that receives no answer. She proceeds to the middle school and picks up Robert, and when he’s settled in the car, jockeying for space with his sisters, who won’t budge, Sharon makes the big announcement: They’re going to Tequila Mockingbird for dinner!
Sharon is shocked at how normal—even pleasant—their dinner is. She allows herself to believe that Walker was experiencing a moment of temporary insanity earlier, that all it will take to right the ship he seems so desperate to capsize are some sizzling fajita platters.
But when they get home, Walker packs a bag. He leaves that very night to stay at Bailey’s one-bedroom apartment in a sketchy section of Norwalk.
“Are you crazy?” Sharon says to Walker now. “I’m not going to dance with you.” The song has come to an end anyway; a few people cheer, and Mike launches into “Philadelphia Freedom.”
