Hell, Dabney thought. Bomb. Had Elizabeth said hell of a bomb? Dabney swayed. She could feel herself losing her feet. She reached out to hold on to the back of Martha’s chair.

Old Man Armstrong shouted out, “How much does she want?”

“It’s not her,” Dabney said. “It’s me. I mean, I’m the one asking…for her. She doesn’t even know I’m asking. But she deserves a raise. I would like to see her get a raise. She’s doing her job, and…” Dabney nearly said, and she’s doing mine. But she realized at the last minute how bad that would sound. “And she’s doing it well.”

“We’d like to think all of you are doing your jobs well,” Elizabeth said. “That’s what we pay you for. To do your jobs well. You don’t get extra money for doing your job well.” Elizabeth was looking at Dabney now with piercing eyes. Elizabeth hated Dabney. But why? Dabney had never had an enemy before. There had been Jocelyn, at Yale, at the despicable tailgate. Jocelyn had been in love with Clen, or whatever the collegiate approximation of “in love” was. Now, Elizabeth was after Clen—and she knew, somehow, she knew, that Dabney was standing in her way. How did she know?

How did she know?

“Never mind,” Dabney said. She watched her hand do a slow-motion dance in front of her face, as if wiping away the idea of a raise for Nina Mobley. “Wait, let’s discuss this,” Jeffrey Jackson said. Jeffrey Jackson had a port-wine stain on his neck and the lower half of his face, and in elementary school, two other boys had been cruel about it, and Dabney had defended Jeffrey. Ever since, he had been Dabney’s devoted champion.

“There’s nothing to discuss,” Elizabeth said. “At least not right now. This room is an oven, and it’s nearly six o’clock, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have other plans for my evening. I think we should table the discussion of a raise for Ms. Mobley until the next meeting.”

“Agreed,” Karen the Realtor said.

Dabney blinked; sweat trickled down her back. She wanted to see how Vaughan Oglethorpe would handle this. He didn’t like other board members to overrule his authority, but when Dabney looked over, Vaughan’s face had turned to melting wax.

Dabney thought, I’m going to faint.

But thankfully, Vaughan adjourned the meeting. Martha stood to leave, and Dabney collapsed in Martha’s chair.

Clendenin

Elizabeth Jennings invited him for dinner at the Straight Wharf.

Clen said, “I have to tell you, Elizabeth, I’m not really one for the Nantucket restaurant scene.”

Elizabeth said, “Not a worry. Come to my house instead. Seven o’clock tomorrow night.”

She hung up without giving him a chance to say no.

He brought a six-pack of Singha beer, which he had miraculously been able to find at Hatch’s. This was the beer that he and Mingus and Elizabeth had drunk in Bangkok and Saigon years and years earlier.

Clendenin knocked on Elizabeth’s front door, feeling like an ass. What was he doing here? This felt like an exercise in pointless nostalgia.

She shrieked with joy at the sight of him. She appeared to be three sheets to the wind already. She shrieked again with the presentation of the beer. “Singha?” she said. “Am I really seeing this? Did you have it flown in? And it’s icy cold. Do you remember how good an icy cold Singha used to taste after running around in that godforsaken heat? You’re a genius!”

Elizabeth was wearing a seafoam-green cocktail dress with tiny sequins and her feet were bare. Elizabeth was an attractive woman—the cinnamon-colored hair, the long nails, the perfume—and Clen had never been able to shake a vision of her climbing out of the swimming pool at the resort in Nha Trang. That red bikini. But there had always been a desperate edge to Elizabeth, a part of her that was trying too hard—and then, too, she wasn’t Dabney.

On her deck a table was set for two, and candles burned in hurricane lamps. But first Elizabeth poured him a Glenfiddich and they gazed at the Sound below.

This was a date, Clen realized. She had asked him there on a date. He hadn’t considered this before. He supposed he had thought there would be other people there or that she’d asked him out of kindness or boredom. He was an old friend from another life.

Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at La Caravelle in Saigon, then piled onto a motorbike, which they’d crashed in front of the Reunification Palace. Mingus and Clen had drunk like crazy at the Majestic, and at the Continental as well. What did Clen remember specifically? Rattan ceiling fans, Singapore slings, peanut shells on the floor; he and Mingus used to smoke unfiltered Luckys, lighting one from the next. The cigarettes had killed Mingus, lung cancer at fifty-two.

Mingus had returned to the States when he was diagnosed. He had died in Washington; Clen hadn’t made it back for the funeral. He had, however, sent a long letter to Elizabeth, which was less sympathy than a prose poem of memories: Bangkok, Singapore, Mandalay, Rangoon, Siem Reap, Saigon, Hanoi, Hoi An—and the weeklong vacation in Nha Trang. They had stayed at a five-star resort that Elizabeth paid for. She had insisted that Clen come along, although he’d felt odd about crashing their romantic getaway. It had been a slice of heaven, though, and he had needed it—the infinity pool, the endless chilled bottles of Domaines Ott, a certain spicy green-papaya salad delivered right to his umbrella. There had been one night when Mingus retired early and Clen and Elizabeth had drifted from the dinner table to a spot in the sand. They were both quite drunk, Clen able to do little more than gaze at the moon’s reflection on the South China Sea. Something had happened, she had said something or he had, and Elizabeth had brought her face very close to his. He had thought kiss; it was impossible not to. That red bikini. But he had backed away, stood up, brushed himself off. She had said, “Was I wrong? I’ve seen you looking at me.”