Family of Liars(25)

I watch him for a moment, taking it in. Pfeff is putting forth a lot of effort. To get to me. He’s nearly out of the cove, so I restart the boat and move slowly toward him.

“You’re making bad choices,” I tell him, when he hauls himself up the ladder.

“That is a thing I do pretty often,” he says, shaking his head to get water out of his hair. “God, this sweatshirt weighs a ton.”

He pulls it over his head, along with a soaked T-shirt.

I do not know where to look. He is so close to me. His shoulders are tan. He has just a little hair on his chest. He wears a thin chain around his neck with a dog tag hanging at the end of it. “Thank you,” he says. “For not just driving away when I was making that long-ass grand gesture.” He leans in, soaking wet and naked from the waist up, and kisses me lightly on the cheek, right by my jaw. His lips are very cold. “Okay, let’s motor.”

A kiss. But not a kiss. I don’t know what to make of it, so I pretend I barely remember last night. Like I’ve kissed a thousand guys. Kissing in the moonlight is just how I spend my average Friday evening and nothing means anything in the morning.

I drive toward Edgartown.

Pfeff leans over the edge of the boat, wringing out his shirt and sweatshirt. “We’re going to have to buy me shoes,” he says. “I left my flip-flops on the shore.”

“Do you even have a wallet?” I ask.

“I do.” He unzips the pocket of his shorts, pulling out a blue canvas wallet, thoroughly soaked. He opens it to reveal several wet twenty-dollar bills and a wet bookshop gift certificate. “Oh, harsh.” He refolds the wet paper and returns it to his wallet.

We have to yell to converse with the boat going fast, so we don’t talk much after that. It’s nearly an hour to the Vineyard. By the time we tie up at the dock, Pfeff is dry and his clothes are back on.

“Hey,” he says, touching my arm as we walk up the dock into town.

“Yeah?”

“I’m—ah—I’m sorry I slept so late. And made you think I wasn’t coming.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay.” He smiles at me. His dark eyes are merry. “Let’s shop. Are you ready? I love shopping.”





27.


IN EDGARTOWN, THE sidewalks are brick. The buildings nearly all white shingle. Picket fences line the streets, draped with climbing rose vines. You can walk from one end of town to the other in ten minutes.

The shops are either old and practical—a tiny drugstore, a hardware shop, a “package store” that sells liquor—or quaint and touristy, selling housewares, wind chimes, books, and candy. There are several ice cream parlors.

First, we go to a beach shop. There’s pop music playing. The walls are full of bathing suits with cutesy phrases on the butts (The Vineyard Is for Lovers), Jaws Tshirts (the movie was filmed up-island), inexpensive beach towels, kites, and sun visors.

Pfeff talks to the girl behind the counter, asking about sweatshirt sizes. She looks like a college student. Bored. A few years older than we are. “Do you think I’m a size medium?” he asks. “I might be a large.” And before she can answer, he adds: “Oh, and while I have you, tell me something. ’Kay?”

“Sure.”

“I’m a person who makes bad choices, apparently,” Pfeff says. “Actually, I knew that before today. And the thing is, I made the bad choice to pack for my visit here—well, I’m not staying in Edgartown, we’re on this island out”—he points toward the harbor—“over there somewhere. Anyway. I wonder where a person would go to buy underwear in town. Is this even the sort of place where a person can buy underwear?”

“Yes,” says the girl. “We have underwear here.”

“I already know where to go,” I tell him.

But Pfeff ignores me, and I realize he’s not really concerned about getting the information. He wants to have the conversation. “Okay. Where are the boxer shorts of Edgartown?”

She directs him to the shop.

“And what about socks?” asks Pfeff. “Will there be socks?”

“There will be socks,” she tells him. “But we have socks here.”

She shows him socks with little seaplanes on them, with maps of the island on them, gulls, lobsters, and whales.

Pfeff buys one of each. “These are totally exciting socks,” he says. “I’m like, set for life with these socks.” He shows me the pair with lobsters. “Ooh, do you think they have shrimp?” He turns to the girl. “Do you have shrimp socks, as well? Or crabs? I will buy all the crustacean socks you have on hand. I mean, one pair of each. I’m not going wild or anything.”

She only has lobsters. No other crustaceans.

“Crawdads?” asks Pfeff. “Clams?”

She says clams are mollusks, and also they don’t have clam socks.

“Thank you anyway,” says Pfeff. “I like to be very thorough about this kind of thing.”

He pays with a credit card, buying not only socks but flip-flops that he wears immediately, a Vineyard T-shirt to replace his damp sweatshirt, and two pairs of cheap and deeply silly mirrored sunglasses. “Do I look like Top Gun?”

“Tom Cruise does not have mirrored lenses,” I tell him. “He has normal ones.”