“Corn Neck Road,” said Joy. “That’s my favorite road.” It wasn’t, actually; her favorite road was Coast Guard Road—one of the most coveted, most private roads on the island—but she wanted to be polite.
“Is it?” said the man.
“It is,” she said firmly.
After that, a silence fell, and Joy thought about how she might as well become an Uber driver and make some money for her efforts. The bill from the dairy in Vermont that supplied her with cream had just come due, plus there was the impending rent increase, and the threat of the macaron truck. The fact was that she could probably use the extra income from driving an Uber.
Joy stole small, furtive glances at her passenger. She wondered if he was going to keep his end of the bargain. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, just as he had been the other times she’d seen him. No wedding ring. Finally she said, “Well? The drink? Why’d you return it?”
“I . . .” Long pause.
“It was a really good drink.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I had to drink mine and the one I sent to you. I had a headache the next day.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
She glanced again at him and thought he might be blushing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a grown man blush. It was kind of adorable. She wondered briefly if Leo of Dinner by Dad ever blushed; it seemed like just the sort of thing he might do, given the proper circumstances. There was that time when the four-year-old had pulled a can of beans from the bottom row of a bean-can pyramid in the grocery store and that older lady had said that awful thing to him . . .
Her passenger said, “I’m not—I’m not drinking.”
It occurred to her that this man might be a recovering alcoholic—after all, Peter said he’d had seltzer at the bar. Joy scolded herself for what might have come across as insensitivity. She’d known plenty of alcoholics in her life: Dustin’s mother, her first roommate out of college, half of her mother’s extended family. “Did you come here to dry out?”
He coughed. “In a way. Sort of.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I tried to tempt you.”
But I’m not drinking was different from I don’t drink. I’m not drinking implied a past, and maybe also a future. So Joy was intrigued.
“It’s okay—it’s fine.” A moment passed. The silence resumed. The Jeep bumped along. Finally her passenger spoke again. “Thanks for the ride,” he said. “I really appreciate it. I didn’t know what I was going to do, all the way out there, with a dead phone battery.”
“No problem,” said Joy. “I was heading this way anyway.” This was a lie; she’d been heading to Stevens Cove to walk Pickles, and after that she was going to head back to the shop. Maggie was helping out until eleven a.m., and Joy had told her that after that she was free to go to her mother’s helper job.
“Really?”
“Sure.” No. Corn Neck Road was about as far from Stevens Cove as you could get and still be on the island. “I’m Joy, by the way. I guess I should have mentioned that.” She turned onto West Side Road and gestured toward the back of the Jeep. “And you’ve already met Pickles.”
“Hey, Pickles,” said the man cautiously.
“You can pet her. She’s really friendly.”
“That’s okay.”
“Not a dog person?”
“No.” A pause. “I wanted one, when I was a kid. But I never had one.” His face twisted. Then he said, “I noticed your license plate. What’s it mean?”
“Oh,” she said. “I wanted it to say joy bombs. That’s the name of my bakery. Because my name is Joy. But it was too many letters, so I couldn’t have the O. I mean, I guess I could have picked another letter to leave out, but the O made the most sense.”
“Okay,” he said.
After that he said nothing, so Joy waited a beat and asked, “And you are . . . ?”
“Oh. Anthony.”
More silence enveloped them: this one seemed deeper, more complicated than the first, and Joy decided not to worry about it and instead spend some time appreciating the view. They were surrounded by farmland now, with the ocean barely a blue slash in the distance.
Joy’s thoughts trotted toward dinnertime. Dinner by Dad’s last posted recipe had been a broken artichoke heart salad with pasta puttanesca, but she didn’t know if she felt up to dealing with artichoke hearts. Maggie had a mature palate and an adventurous attitude; even so, artichokes were a lot of work. But then she thought of what Dinner by Dad always said—a good meal was almost always worth the effort it required—and she’d already bought all of the ingredients. She’d wrangle the artichokes.
Just when it seemed the silence might crack under so much pressure, the man—Anthony—spoke again. “How do you know so much about timing belts?”
Joy flicked on her turn signal, turned onto Center Road. “My dad owns an auto repair shop,” she said. “Off-island. My brothers worked in the shop, and in high school I worked the phones, but every now and then they’d let me help out back there.”
She felt him hesitate, even bristle. This was common—a man did not like to depend on a woman for car advice, she’d learned that years ago. But clearly he didn’t know a broken timing belt from a broken heart.
She forged ahead. “Anyway. Bob Herbert is the best on the island, and he can tow you to his shop. I’ll call him for you. But I don’t know if he’ll have a timing belt for a ’95 Le Baron in stock. He might have to get it off-island, order it for delivery. It could be a couple of days.” She looked back at the road. They passed a young couple on rental bikes with big wicker baskets bobbing. They wore sunglasses, no helmets, and the girl had blond hair that swung back and forth as she pedaled.
“Just my luck,” said Anthony. “Stuck in a place with no timing belts.” Joy rolled her eyes. Nobody was stuck on Block Island; people, in her opinion, should feel lucky to be here. But just as she’d known plenty of alcoholics in her life, she’d known plenty of people who considered Block Island second-rate. Lesser.
When Joy was a girl, growing up in a crowded three-bedroom apartment in Fall River (one bedroom for her parents, one for her four brothers to share, if you can believe it, and the smallest one for her), she’d craved space more than anything else. Everything was so crowded in Fall River—the smells from people’s cooking intermingled, cars parked so close to one another that their bumpers kissed, tempers wound around each other like snakes. It never ceased to amaze Joy that here she could look out from every edge of the island and see nothing but land, space, and water. Long ago she had promised herself that she’d never take it for granted, and she never did. “Well,” she said, “in the island’s defense, a ’95 Le Baron is not exactly common these days.”
She cut across Old Town Road. Traffic! She should have stayed on West Side the whole way.
Her passenger didn’t seem to have heard her last sentence. “What’s that line for?” he asked, looking out his window. “Is that a food truck?”
“Oh, come on,” said Joy. “Are you kidding me?” The line for the Roving Patisserie was even longer than it had been the other day, and she didn’t think they were giving out anything for free this time. These were paying customers, wallets at the ready.
“What’s it sell?” asked Anthony.
“Nothing,” said Joy quickly. “Just some silly . . . promotional thing. Nothing important.” But she slowed down, because from the back she thought she saw . . . no, it couldn’t be . . . yes, it was. Maggie and Riley, heads tipped close to each other, probably bent over some Instagram video of a kiwi growing inside a banana or something. “No way,” she breathed. Maggie was a customer of the Roving Patisserie. Not only that, she’d left Joy Bombs before Joy had given her permission.
“What?” asked Anthony.
Pickles, sensing drama, lifted her ears.
“Nothing,” said Joy. She shook her head, hoping to dispel the sight. Maybe she’d imagined it, after all. Then her phone buzzed. She glanced down. Can I eat at Rileys after I babysit. Maggie. She sighed. She looked again at her passenger and thought about the artichokes. Maybe . . .
No, he was potentially abrasive and possibly an island snob. She couldn’t.
Then she saw him reach a cautious hand out to pet Pickles. Okay, maybe he was trying. And he had been so sad the last two times she’d seen him. Maybe he was a good guy in a bad situation, a guy who deserved a break.
Her mother said Joy always saw the good in people who didn’t deserve it. But didn’t that mean she sometimes also saw the good in people who did?
She made up her mind. “Are you free for dinner tonight?” she asked. “I’m making a pasta puttanesca with a broken artichoke heart salad. I’ve already bought the ingredients, and now my daughter isn’t going to be home. It’s too much for one person, and I wouldn’t mind some company. I promise I’m not creepy or pathetic. I just don’t like to waste good food.”
He eyed her warily at first and she regretted her question almost instantly. How many times did she need to be turned down by a grump in a gray T-shirt before she got the message? But just as she was starting to say, Never mind, forget it, his face opened up and he smiled. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, that sounds delicious. I’d really like that.”
She felt her insides relax. “You would?”
“I would.”
“You have a bike?”
“Yes. There’s one in the garage of the place I’m staying in.”
“Great. You can ride it over. It’s not far. Hopefully the bike is in better shape than the car.”
“Here’s hoping.” The smile really did transform his face.
She turned in where her passenger indicated and pulled up the long driveway. The cottage was set back, not far from the water. It was a shabby little place but the location was killer. She could see where a path from the house connected to one of the main trails down to Scotch Beach. “How long are you staying here?” she asked.
“Up in the air,” he said.
“I see.” This was unusual: most rentals had a start date and an end date. “Are you here alone?”
“Definitely alone,” he said. “Most definitely. My wife, ah—she couldn’t join me.”
Wife. Married. She deflated, recalculated. Maybe it wasn’t worth the artichokes after all. Not that she’d been planning to jump him. But it seemed inappropriate, to invite another woman’s husband to dinner, a stranger at that. She glanced quickly at his hands. No ring, just as she’d thought. Well, not all men wore them. Dustin hadn’t.
“Where’s your wife?”
“At home, in Newton.”
“I see.” She didn’t.
“We’re— It’s complicated.” He stopped and wrinkled his nose. Then he said, “I guess we’re separated.”
“I see,” said Joy again, but what she was thinking was, You guess? Seemed like being pregnant, or drunk: you either were, or you weren’t. She turned off the Jeep. Outside the cottage next door she saw a pretty blond woman getting into a car with two little blond boys. One boy was holding a toy tow truck, driving it through the air. (Joy remembered when Maggie was young enough to drive things through the air—wasn’t it only yesterday?)
Then she realized she knew this woman; she’d met this woman! This was Lu, the woman who had hired Maggie (away from Joy), and these boys were Maggie’s new charges. They were probably going to pick up Maggie now! Maggie had better hurry back to the shop. Go figure, the recovering alcoholic Joy had tried to force a drink on and then picked up by the side of the road was living right next to the woman who was stealing Maggie away from Joy. She sighed and turned her attention back to Anthony. “I’m sorry. I am, really.” Separated. That’s probably why he’d been crying. “Is this a new situation?”
He nodded. “Very new.”
“I’ve been through it. It’s awful, I know. But it gets better, with time. I promise you, it gets better.”
“In my case, I don’t think it will. For a lot of reasons. But thank you.” He opened the door, stepped one foot out. Pickles popped up and over from the backseat, panting. “Are you staying?” he asked.
“What? Of course not. Why?” She put her hand on Pickles’s chest and gently returned her to the backseat.
“You turned off your car.”
“Oh. No, I’m not staying. It’s just that we care about the environment here on our island, so we don’t idle. Locals don’t idle.”
He was standing outside the Jeep now. “That would be a good book title,” he said. “Locals Don’t Idle.” He looked pensive.
“I guess,” she said. “I’m not much of a reader.” Joy pulled a business card out of the Jeep’s side-door pocket, wrote something on it, and handed it to him. “My card,” she said. “My address is on the back. And now you have my number. In case Bob Herbert has any trouble getting the timing belt. I can always call my dad. Also in case you decide not to come to dinner tonight.”
“Why would I decide not to come to dinner? I accepted your invitation.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes people change their minds.” Maggie, for example. Maggie had been planning to eat dinner with Joy, and then she changed her mind.
“I won’t,” he said. “Thank you for the ride. See you later.”
“Sure thing,” she said. She started the ignition and watched him walk toward the cottage, crouch down, and remove a house key from underneath a flat rock. She started to turn around, stopped again.
“Hey!” she called. He had the key in the lock; he turned. “Hey. We forgot to do last names. Mine’s Sousa.”
“Okay,” he said. He seemed to be struggling with the key.
She waited. “So, that makes you . . . Anthony what?”
“Oh,” he said, looking from the lock back to her. “Anthony What will be fine.”
“Why don’t you come at seven o’clock for dinner,” she said. “Anthony What.”