Page 61 of Swan Song

Romeo leans back in his chair and graces Busy with his gorgeous smile. “I do, thank you for remembering.”

Busy’s expression is one of bland amusement, as though a child has spoken. “Sharon,” she says, “we have our membership committee meeting on August fourteenth. I’ll send a reminder to your email.”

“Mmm,” Sharon says. “I think I have a commitment that day. I’ll check and let you know.” She pulls off a frosty tone but Busy will know she’s bluffing. Sharon wouldn’t dare miss the annual membership committee meeting.

“I’ll see you there,” Busy says, “if not before at one of the Richardsons’ magnificent soirées. You seem to be on their permanent guest list.”

“Yes,” Sharon says. “Romeo and I are both on their list.”

“Ta, then,” Busy says. “Good to see you, Roman.”

“Romeo,” Sharon says, but Busy has moved on to her next victim. Sharon takes Romeo’s hand. “She’s awful. I’m sorry.” She feels like an ass for suggesting lunch at the club.

But Romeo seems unbothered; in fact, he looks amused. He leans in, brings his mouth to Sharon’s ear, which sends a thrill right through her. “Subaru Legacy, New York plate BUSY-B,” he whispers. “She’s on the standby list back to the mainland September second, but I have a feeling she’s not going to make it on the ferry that day. Or the next day, or the day after that, poor thing. She might be very inconvenienced.”

Forget the Cobb salad, Sharon thinks. She wants to take Romeo home and eat him for lunch!

On Wednesday afternoon after Leslee leaves for her pickleball game, Kacy comes over to Triple Eight to hang with Coco on the beach. Bull is in his study working; Coco has her cell phone in case he needs anything, but he’s more self-sufficient than Leslee. Leslee can’t seem to change the toilet paper roll or toast a piece of sourdough without Coco’s help.

Kacy loves the private beach. The sand is clean and groomed with a sprinkling of pebbles and shells at the waterline. Two chaises rest side by side, swathed in Turkish cotton towels; between the chairs is a cooler table. Coco lifts the top and pulls out two ice-cold seltzers.

Coco is reading A Separate Peace by John Knowles. “The real tragedy of this book,” she tells Kacy, “is that there isn’t a single woman in it.” Kacy is paging through Vogue when, unfortunately, she sees an ad for Grand Soir, the perfume Isla wears, and this immediately dampens her mood. She and Isla haven’t texted since the Fourth of July, when Isla messaged her at midnight with Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together, the first line of “America” by Simon and Garfunkel. It brought back memories of rainy Tuesday nights, the two of them lying in Kacy’s bed, indulging their shared love of ’70s soft rock. But when Kacy checked Rondo’s Instagram, she saw a picture of Isla and Rondo with Dr. Dunne and his wife, Totally Tami, on a roof-deck in Nob Hill where they were watching the fireworks.

Kacy responded to the text by sending the selfie of herself and Coco aboard Hedonism, and Isla sent back a one-tear crying emoji. But more than two weeks have passed and there’s been nothing else—no texts from Isla, no posts on Rondo’s Instagram.

Kacy is tempted to reach out now—the ad for Grand Soir feels like a sign—but then she hears a motor and looks up to see Lamont puttering in from Hedonism in the dinghy. Kacy isn’t sure where things stand between Coco and Lamont, but once Lamont pulls up on shore, he ambles over, grinning.

“Look at you two, living your best lives,” he says.

“Take our picture,” Kacy says, holding out her phone.

Coco and Kacy hoist their drinks and Lamont snaps a few photos.

“Thanks,” Kacy says. “Why don’t you join us?”

“I’m going home to check on my mom,” he says. “You ladies have fun.”

“We will,” Kacy says. When he’s out of earshot, she turns to Coco. “He’s so wholesome. That’s exotic.”

“He likes spending time with his mother,” Coco says. “That’s exotic.”

They’ve reached the point in their friendship where they can enjoy a companionable silence, and Kacy feels herself drifting off to la-la land until Coco says, “Can I ask you a question?”

Her tone can only be described as portentous, and Kacy thinks, She’s going to ask about the selfies. “Sure,” Kacy says. She has to stop sending the selfies to Isla. It’s not fair to Coco. It’s worse than not fair, it’s gross.

“Why haven’t you said anything about my screenplay?” Coco says. “If you hated it, I want you to tell me.”

Kacy feels like a fish released from a hook. Not the selfies after all—the screenplay! “Oh, Coco, I haven’t read it yet.” Though this, she realizes, might be an even greater infraction. Kacy asked Coco to let her read the script, Coco dutifully sent it, and Kacy has allowed it to molder in her inbox. Kacy has all day free, so what’s her excuse? She isn’t quite the reader Coco is—Coco is reading a classic while Kacy snacks on Vogue—but that’s not the reason. Kacy belatedly realized that she wouldn’t know what to say if she didn’t like it. She would have to fall back on I’m a nurse, what do I know about writing? Or she could lie and say she loved it regardless, but what if Coco sensed she was patronizing her? Don’t do business with friends is a rule for a reason, and another one should be Don’t offer to be the first reader of your friend’s screenplay because it could end awkwardly. “But I’ll read it tonight, I promise. I’ll start it as soon as I get home.”

“Will you?” Coco says. “I’d really love some feedback before I… send it out.”

“Where are you sending it?” Kacy asks. “Do you have any connects?”

“I have one,” Coco says. “But I’m keeping it a secret because I don’t want to jinx it.”

Kacy is true to her word. When she gets home, she takes her laptop out to her parents’ back deck and clicks on Coco’s attachment: Rosebush, an original screenplay by Colleen Coyle.

An hour and twelve minutes later, she’s wiping tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. The script is… breathtaking. It’s raw and honest and poignant. It’s very clearly about Coco’s life growing up in Arkansas (the main character is named Coco), but Kacy wonders if everything in it is true or if Coco embellished. The overall arc is Coco’s desire to escape her small town: Can she do it? Coco the character yearns for the world outside of Rosebush, but everything conspires to keep her there, especially her narrow-minded mother and the family’s lack of resources. Kacy wants to know if Coco really robbed the cash register at the diner where she worked; she wants to know if her mother teased her for bringing home library books. The most powerful scene is Coco’s senior banquet. The senior banquet at Rosebush High School includes a father-daughter dance. Coco is supposed to dance with her mother’s boyfriend, Kemp, but the day before the banquet, Coco’s mother picks a fight with Kemp and kicks him out (the viewer learns that she does this with some regularity). The scene follows Coco as she climbs into a pickup in her banquet dress and drives to each of the remote camping spots that Kemp frequents when he’s been banished, but she can’t find him. She ends up missing the banquet and the next day accuses her mother of intentionally sabotaging her big night. Her mother says, “You act like you have some right to be happy when the rest of us are miserable.”

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