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THE WOMEN FROM EMMA’S crew, with their various companions and spouses, crowded around a long table at the outdoor bar. It looked like most of the party had been there for a while. Their faces shone with the effects of sun and alcohol. There weren’t two empty seats together, let alone three, so Emma, Yoshi and I had to squeeze in where we could. Sherry gave Yoshi a friendly swat as he walked ahead of me. I don’t think Emma saw it. Sherry motioned me toward the empty chair beside her.
It was just as well I wouldn’t be seeing Donnie for dinner. I didn’t like the way he seemed to blame me for the mortifying incident with Davison. And come to think of it, Donnie’s following me over to this side of the island didn’t seem so much like a charming romantic whim. It was more like Donnie was keeping an eye on his investment. In case—what exactly? In case some big-bellied biker threw me over his shoulder and went roaring off into the sunset? That wouldn’t even make sense, because driving into the sunset from the leeward side of the island would mean going straight into the ocean.
I could puzzle this out later. Right now I had to concentrate on making innocuous small talk. Just the two of us, me and a woman who might be Donnie’s ex-wife, about to have a nice drink and a chat. Nothing weird about this.
“So Sherry,” I ventured, “Nice job out there today.” I had no idea exactly what they did “out there” today other than paddle, but they had all made it back alive, and Emma had seemed pleased with how things had turned out. It seemed some kind of congratulations were in order.
“Thanks, Doctor B. You know, I could kinda feel Kathy’s presence today. She was out there with us. I know it.”
As little as I cared for Kathy, I didn’t like thinking she’d been doomed to an afterlife of floating around on the ocean. Trailing after boring canoe races for all eternity sounded worse than Purgatory.
“I’m realizing I never knew Kathy well at all,” I said.
“Kathy was amazing. When I first came back to school here, I was so lost, I was ready to quit. She was the one who got my financial aid straightened out, with my student loans and everything. When I got to Mahina, I couldn’t even afford to buy my textbooks. I have a—a ton of student loans.”
I wanted to ask Sherry whether there wasn’t someone in town who could have helped her out. An ex-husband, for example? Or a grown son? But I couldn’t think of any tactful way to do it.
“Back to school?” I asked. “So you’d had some college classes already?”
“Yeah. I went to college for a while back on the mainland. When I graduated high school, I didn’t think about college. But I started seeing these ads on TV, and it got me thinking. They were right off the turnpike. I useta drive by and see their sign every day, and one day, I dunno why, I decided to stop in. The people at the front desk were real friendly, and they made it super easy for me to sign up.”
I tried not to wince at the phrase “graduated high school.”
“But you didn’t finish your degree there?” I asked. “I’m sensing this story doesn’t end well.”
“Nah. Long story short, I ended up with seventy thousand dollars of debt. And that’s right, no degree.”
“That’s unfortunate.”
“And my classes didn’t even transfer,” she added.
“So which school was this?”
She told me. It took me a moment to figure out why the name sounded familiar. It was one of the group of for-profit institutions that were being sued—the case that had inspired Bob Wilson from the history department to write his indignant letter to the editor. Maybe their graduation rate was in the single digits and their classes didn’t transfer, but they did one thing remarkably well: They took federal student loan money and transferred it quickly and efficiently to the pockets of their executives. Any actual education that happened to take place along the way was incidental.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said.
“Yeah, not as sorry as me. Anyhow, Kathy didn’t make me feel stupid for getting myself into this situation. She went out of her way for me, whatever she could do. She was real understanding.”
“She was understanding?” I repeated. “Kathy Banks?” Was she talking about the same Kathy Banks who, the first time I turned in our departmental student satisfaction report, sent the whole thing back and made me start over because I’d turned in the canary copy instead of the goldenrod one? And then, because she had bounced it back after the deadline, wrote me up for turning it in late?
“We found out we’re both type 1,” Sherry was saying. “I think that’s when we bonded for real.”
“Type 1?”
“Yeah, cause you know how it seems like everyone around here is type two?”
I nodded as if I knew what Sherry was talking about. It probably had something to do with the way people used to get their colors analyzed, to find out whether they were a “winter” or whatever. My mother had taken me to the cosmetics counter of a local department store to get my colors done when I was a teenager. I was an autumn, the Color Consultant informed us, and should wear warm hues like oranges and yellows.
“Oh, nonsense,” my mother had rebuked the Color Consultant, whose suggestion had instantly demoted her in my mother’s eyes from expert to incompetent fraud. “Molly can’t wear yellow. She’d look like a corpse.” Mom swept out of the department store, bristling with indignation, as I trailed sheepishly behind her.
“Type 1 diabetes,” Sherry said. “Insulin-dependent. You’re not diabetic, are you?”
“Type 1 diabetes. Right. What else would it mean? No. I’m not diabetic. So you can’t eat sweets?” I tried to imagine not ever eating sweets. Now that sounded worse than Purgatory.
“Nah. You just gotta make sure to cover whatever you eat with the right amount of insulin. I mean, don’t go crazy with the cheesecake or anything. It’s kind of a pain, but you get used to it. You know, when Kathy—oh hey doll! You’re back!”
Sherry turned her attention to Glenn, effectively ending our conversation. He was certainly dressed to attract attention. He wore a red leather bomber jacket with no shirt underneath, and formfitting, low-rise skinny jeans.
The chair I was sitting in was the one Glenn had vacated a few minutes earlier, but he apparently didn’t need it back. He and Sherry seemed happy to share Sherry’s single chair.
Freed from the obligation of making small talk, I sat quietly and watched the sunset. Davison was already at the airport and would be flying out in a couple of hours, so there was at least one disaster averted. Maybe I’d be able to enjoy part of this weekend after all.