“She’s an amazing painter,” Kirby says.

“Yeah,” Luke says. “And she knows it.”

Kirby looks at Luke with new eyes. She had originally thought him just a regular guy—privileged, obviously, given the painstakingly restored Willys Jeep, but not so different from guys in Brookline. Now that Kirby is standing in this super-hip beach bungalow, she’s intrigued. Kirby imagines his parents—a midtown financial power broker and a Greenwich Village bohemian artist—with envy. They aren’t hung up on budgets or rules like Kirby’s parents are. They have given Luke his own house, essentially, to live in with his friends.

Kirby peers into the bedrooms. “Honestly, I thought with three guys living here, this place would be a mess. I can’t believe how tidy it is.”

“We have a housekeeper,” Luke says. “Martine. She lives up at the other house.” Luke grabs Patty and starts tickling her and Patty shrieks and the two of them fall over onto the red couch. When they start kissing, Kirby nearly asks them to quit it, but she doesn’t want to be a wet blanket. She wanders over to the kitchen counter and considers the bowl of fruit. The plums and the cherries are nearly the same color, but not quite—deep purple and glorious purplish red—and Kirby realizes that even the fruit is meant to be art. She plucks a cherry out of the bowl. It’s fat and juicy-looking, and Kirby can’t resist popping it into her mouth. Her diet since arriving on this island has consisted of breakfast porridge, fried clams from Giordano’s, and stale doughnuts at the inn. The cherry is sweeter than any she has ever tasted. She sucks on the pit until it’s clean then discreetly spits it out in her hand. Behind her, on the sofa, she hears wet tongue noises and heavy breathing; she tries not to think about Scottie Turbo. No one would ever call Kirby a prude, but she doesn’t want to stand here while Luke and Patty fool around. Kirby steps out the sliding door. In her peripheral vision, she catches sight of Luke leading Patty back to his bedroom. Kirby hears the door shut.

Fine.

She’s not sure why she feels embarrassed. They should feel embarrassed. Patty might not know any better, but Luke has clearly been raised with some social graces. And yet, he’s a boy…and boys want what they want when they want it. Kirby has learned this the hard way.

To distract herself, she takes in the view over the pond. It’s nothing short of spectacular. Kirby halfway hopes that Patty marries Luke and inherits this compound from the banker father and artist mother so that Kirby can continue to visit this spot for the rest of her life.

She sits on the deck with her face to the sun, and a little while later, Patty and Luke appear. Patty looks flushed, Luke triumphant.

“Shall we go to the beach?” Luke asks.

Because Luke lives in Chilmark, he has access to Lucy Vincent Beach. “It’s the most exclusive of all the Vineyard beaches,” he explains. “You guys are lucky you met me.” He grins, so Kirby can’t hate him, though she’s starting to, a little.

Once she steps onto Lucy Vincent, however, she agrees—they are lucky (they meaning Patty) they met Luke Winslow. The beach is wide and golden and backed by stark, dramatic cliffs. It’s far, far more beautiful than Inkwell, not even in the same class, really, which makes Kirby indignant. She wonders if this is an example of institutionalized racism, but then she tells herself to relax—Inkwell is a town beach, and this is an up-island beach, windswept and wild.

Kirby quickly sees that, up ahead, there’s a gentleman walking toward the water who is nude. As in, completely nude. She sees his penis hanging heavy between his legs. Kirby scans the beach and realizes that everyone on the beach is nude. They’re reading in chairs; they’re sleeping facedown, bippies to the sky; they’re walking hand in hand, having conversations—all completely nude.

Kirby tries not to let her surprise show on her face. It’s 1969; nudity is no big deal, she knows, but…my God. It’s more disconcerting being a clothed person on a nude beach than it is being a white person on a Negro beach. Will Kirby be expected to strip down? She casts a sidelong glance at Patty. Her face is bright red, but whether with embarrassment or the sun, Kirby can’t say. She’s a good Catholic. This must come as a shock.

Luke finds a wide-open space and plops down their Styrofoam cooler, which is filled with Schlitz and chicken sandwiches prepared by Martine, the French maid. (Kirby caught a glimpse of her in her black uniform, complete with a white apron and frilled cap.) He sets up the chairs, and Kirby waits, wondering what will happen next. Patty pulls off her gauzy black cover-up to reveal a conservative black tank suit.

“We’re at Lucy Vincent,” Luke says. “Everything off.”

Patty shakes her head.

“Patricia,” Luke says.

“She doesn’t want to,” Kirby says. “And I don’t want to either.” Kirby pulls off her denim cutoffs and peasant blouse but decides her bikini is staying on.

Patty, however, peels away her black suit until she is standing before them in the splendid altogether. Her flesh is plentiful; she looks like a woman in a Rubens painting. She looks, Kirby thinks, like a woman in an Elsa Winslow painting, with her round breasts and ruddy nipples, her generous thighs and the curve of her belly that slopes down to her dark pubic hair. Kirby recognizes the romanticism before her: Luke has found his mother’s art personified in Patty.

But then Kirby notices that Patty is trembling. Kirby sees a pronounced red mark on Patty’s haunches—a handprint.

Luke shucks off his suit while facing away from Kirby so all she can see is his white behind. She busies herself by laying out her towel. She lies on her stomach and unties the string of her bikini top but that’s as far as she’ll go. She cranes her neck to see Luke leading Patty to the water, both of them naked as jaybirds.

Kirby sets her head down on her folded arms. What she told her parents is proving to be true: spending the summer in the Vineyard is quite educational.

A few days later, the temperature soars to the mid-eighties with 100 percent humidity. There’s a breeze off the water early in the week, but by Friday, the sky is heavy, gray, and overcast; the air is hot and soupy. Naturally, the fan in Kirby’s room picks this week to die a dramatic death. It stops spinning for no apparent reason, and when Kirby goes over to wiggle the plug, there is a sudden flash of electrical sparks followed by an acrid smell.