Page 42 of 28 Summers
Mallory mentally adds this book to her list, then chastises herself for being suggestible. “Anyway, my friend Leland and her girlfriend had a fight, a loud fight, during which they said insulting things about me and I overheard them.”
“Ouch,” Bayer says. “What were the insulting things?”
“Not important,” Mallory says.
Bayer tips his glass. “To me, you’re flawless.”
“Because you just met me,” Mallory says. “I haven’t had a chance to disappoint you yet.”
“Amen,” Bayer says. “What’s the other reason?”
Mallory is still coherent enough to stop and ask herself just how honest she wants to be with her new-friend-but-maybe-serial-killer Bayer. “My ex-boyfriend is getting married today.”
“That,” Bayer says, “is quite the double whammy.”
“Tell me about it,” Mallory says.
Bayer suggests food for both of them, says he’s buying, she should get whatever she wants, and she confesses that she used to work at the Summer House and she knows the best thing on the menu is the bacon cheeseburger. She’ll take hers medium rare with extra pickles and she’d like her fries seasoned and crispy.
“I love a woman who knows how to order,” Bayer says. “I’ll have the same.”
“Now you talk and I’ll listen,” Mallory says. “Why are you drinking all alone at the Summer House pool today?”
Bayer just arrived on Nantucket on Wednesday, he says. He sailed in, he’s living on his boat, and he’s rented the slip for the entire summer, though he’s not sure how long he’ll stay. He has a larger boat in Newport—that one has a crew—but he needs time away from them and them from him so he set off on his own for a while.
The Hokey Pokeys have done their job; Mallory has no inhibitions. “What do you do for a living?” she asks. “You sound rich.”
Bayer throws his head back and howls with laughter, and it’s this laugh—andnotthe fact that Bayer Burkhart owns two sailboats, one with a crew—that makes Mallory see him differently. While laughing, Bayer becomes instantly desirable, even sexy.
“I invented a bar-code scanner,” he says. “The one used in most retail stores across the country.”
“Oh,” Mallory says. She grapples with this a minute. He’s not a lawyer or a doctor or an investment banker. He’s an inventor. He invented a bar-code scanner. “How old are you?”
This makes him laugh again and he says, “How old do you think I am?”
Mallory fears the answer is forty or maybe even forty-five, which would be too old. Mallory can date someone ten years older, maybe. “Thirty-seven?” she asks hopefully.
“Bingo!” he says.
They eat and have more drinks, though how many more, Mallory can’t say. At some point, however, she realizes she is too drunk to bike home. Bayer says no problem, he’ll call her a taxi that will deliver her and her bike safely back to her cottage. This is very kind, but Mallory won’t deny that she’s disappointed.
“Don’t you want to invite me to see your sailboat?” she says.
“If you’re too drunk to bike home, then you’re too drunk to see my sailboat,” Bayer says. “I’m not like that.”
Mallory frowns and Bayer lifts her chin with one finger. “I will take your number, though, if you’re willing to give it to me.”
Mallory arrives back at the cottage around sunset. The Blazer is gone; Leland and Fifi are out. Mallory gets herself a glass of ice water and passes out facedown on her bed. She feels like she’s forgotten something. The oven? No. The iron? No. Well, if she can’t think of it, then it must not be that important.
When Mallory wakes up the next morning, she has a headache and her heart feels like one of the mermaid purses she finds washed up onshore, brittle and empty.
She instantly remembers the thing she had forgotten the night before: Jake is married to Ursula.
Mallory, meanwhile, is single and the reasons why have been cataloged by her very best friend in the world: She is neither interesting nor original. She’s suggestible, a follower. She’s “nice,” like a jelly jar filled with daisies or a pony that trots in a circle.
Jake is married to Ursula.
Through the walls, Mallory hears a woman’s voice moaning in ecstasy.
