Текст книги "The Vacationers"

Автор книги: Emma Straub

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Day Nine

THE CURTAINS WERE OPEN AND THE SUNLIGHT STREAMED in through the window, onto Bobby’s pillow. He tried to turn away, but the whole room felt lit up like a film set. He frowned, peeling his eyes open as slowly as possible, as if the light would hurt any less.

“I guess you don’t want to come for a run with me, huh?” Carmen said. She was standing at the foot of the bed, already in her exercise clothes and sneakers. “Have fun last night? It was great when you came in. I’m sure you don’t remember. It was really something else. What were you drinking? The whole room still smells. That’s why I opened the window.”

Bobby did remember: he remembered his sister’s disappointment, and the British girl’s tongue on his dick, and the way the Red Bull tasted when it came back up. “Ugggh,” he said, not wanting it to happen all over again. He turned onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow.

“Oh, I’m sure you feel like crap,” Carmen said. “So I’ll just see you later, I guess, yeah? I wanted to go on a cruise to the Bahamas, okay? So this is not about me, Bobby. This is on you.” He heard her pivot on her rubber soles and squeak out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her. The reverberations sounded like a truck running over his skull. All he wanted was more sleep—sleep could do anything. It could make him feel human again, it could make him forget. Before he drifted off again, Bobby felt a lurch in his stomach and scrambled out of bed and into the bathroom as quickly as he could, almost making it to the toilet before throwing up again, and littering the bathroom floor with tiny pieces of everything left in his stomach, which wasn’t much. He thought, for only the first time that day, that if he had to choose between living and dying, dying might be easier.

Sylvia was awake but pretending not to be. The only thing she was looking forward to was that it was Sunday, and therefore Joan would not be coming over, which of course was a bad thing, because it was the only thing making the trip even remotely enjoyable, but if he had come over, it would mean that he would have to see her hungover, which wasn’t pretty. Not that Sylvia ever felt actually, clinically pretty, but there were those odd days when her skin behaved and her clothes behaved and the mirror behaved. This was worse than normal, though. The inside of Sylvia’s mouth felt like it had been dried with paper towels all night long, her saliva blotted into nonexistence. She reached for her telephone, the poor dead soldier, and held it over her face. If it worked, she would have swiftly pressed a few buttons and started scrolling away, but all she could do was look at the icons for the apps. The Wi-Fi didn’t work upstairs, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She could imagine what she had missed: new pictures of Gabe and Katie kissing like brain-damaged guppies or pressing their cheeks together like they couldn’tstandtobeapartforasecondlonger. Everyone else would be posting pictures of the parties they were at, or vacations with their families, everyone at the beach and tan and flaunting it. There might even be new and embarrassing pictures of someone else, someone to take the spotlight away from her. She swung one leg out of the bed at a time, crab-walking out as far as she could without raising the rest of her body.

Standing up straight made her head feel wobbly, but it wasn’t so bad. She’d had worse hangovers—twice. The first time was when she was fifteen and the whole family went to a wedding of one of Franny’s friends in Northern California wine country, and every table (including the teenage table, where Sylvia was sitting, miles away from her parents and everyone else she knew) had bottles of wine that were replaced with a rapid frequency. The second time was when she and Katie Saperstein accidentally drank too many wine coolers before a school dance “as a joke” and spent the whole night in the school bathroom, the same place where they had to pee a hundred times a day, reminding them of their mistake forever and ever, or at least until graduation. This wasn’t as bad as either of those times, but it was bad enough that Sylvia knew she’d have to dig through her mother’s bag for some aspirin.

Sylvia shuffled to the door of her room, opened it, and stuck her head out as an exploratory venture. There were sounds coming from downstairs—Charles and Lawrence, she thought—but no movement on her floor. She shuffled farther into the hall and put her ear against the door to her parents’ room. They would both be awake by now—her father never slept past seven, and her mother was incapable of feeling left out, and so even she rose early when there were other people around. Sylvia knocked once and waited. There wasn’t any sound, so she opened the door. The bed was empty, as she’d suspected. “Mom? Dad?”

When there was no answer from her invisible parents, Sylvia shuffled the rest of the way into the room, and into their bathroom. Her mother traveled with a small pharmacy—sleeping pills, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, antacids, antidiarrheal tablets, Benadryl, calamine lotion, Band-Aids, Neosporin, floss, nail clippers, nail files, the works. Sylvia rooted around until she found the pills she wanted and swallowed them down with a gulp of water from the sink, which felt so good that she did it a few more times, lapping straight from the tap like a dog. She looked at herself in the mirror and began a semi-thorough investigation of her pores. Her face was blotchy, and there were little pimples on her nostrils. She smiled widely, and then bared her teeth. As long as Bobby didn’t try to speak to her, she’d be fine. The thought of seeing Carmen wasn’t appealing, but then again, it never was. Sylvia turned around and wobbled back in the direction of her bedroom.

Her parents’ bed had been hastily made, with the thin cover pulled up to the pillows, but nothing tucked in. On Franny’s side (it was the left side, with the messy stack of books and magazines and two half-full glasses of water), the pillows were dented and askew. On Jim’s side, they were perfectly straight, as if her father’s head hadn’t moved all night. Sylvia walked around to his side of the bed and sat down. She pulled back the cover and put her hand on the bottom sheet, feeling for warmth. There was no trace of her father in the room except for his empty suitcase and a pair of his shoes tucked neatly beside the dresser.

Sylvia had always known that her parents had issues—that was the word people liked to use. They fought, they belittled each other, they rolled their eyes. Everyone’s parents were like that when no one was watching. Sylvia had never actually confirmed that with any of her friends, but it had to be true. It was like discovering that Santa didn’t exist, or the Easter Bunny, or that no one actually liked their extended family. This was doubly true for parents who had been married as long as Franny and Jim. It was a normal part of life, being annoyed at the person you were always with. Healthy, even. Who wanted parents like on fifties television, with pot roasts and implacable smiles? Even so, Sylvia had never even entertained the possibility that one of her parents had cheated on the other one until she started hearing the whispered fights through the walls. Now instead of seeming normal, it all just seemed sad. Her head still throbbed, and her mouth was dry again. Sylvia pushed herself back up to standing, even more mad at Bobby for helping the whole world go to shit, instead of just their parents.

The werewolf movie had gone back for reshoots, which meant more work for Lawrence. He wasn’t surprised—it was the bad movies that needed the most coddling, from the actors to the producers to the location scouts. He stood with his back to the fridge, laptop in his arms. The director had had a last-minute change of heart about the ending (Christmas for all, werewolf love) and had instead shot a version in which Santa Claws had leapt to his death from the sleigh. Reshoots were necessary, and the remainder of the fake hair had already been returned. It was the sort of thing that would have taken him days even if they were at home, but from Mallorca, with the spotty Internet, Lawrence saw the rest of the vacation sliding from mediocre but tolerable to actually hellish. They should have just gone home when they got the e-mail, whatever the end result. Charles seemed to be slipping, too, purposefully avoiding conversations they’d spent the last year having incessantly, and Lawrence worried that he’d changed his mind.

Franny and Charles were sitting at the kitchen table, munching on pieces of fruit and reading magazines—Franny had finally come into possession of Sylvia’s airplane reading material, and was glued to an article. Charles had his sketchbook out and was drawing, but Lawrence doubted he was paying much attention, choosing instead to read over Franny’s shoulder. Franny was one of the earliest hurdles in their relationship—Charles’s parents were ancient and infirm, unlikely to put up a fight about his suitors, but Franny was vocal. Her opinion mattered. They’d gone to a dinner party at the Posts’, the table filled out by another couple (the Fluffers, Franny called them later—“Just pretty window dressing, so that you wouldn’t notice me taking notes”), whom they hadn’t seen since. The food was divine—Franny had cooked for days, and it showed, with dishes more elaborate than anything Lawrence had ever eaten except on holidays at his grandmother’s house. There was a salad with pieces of grapefruit in it, and asparagus wrapped in pancetta, and a rack of lamb with the kind of mustardy crust that Lawrence thought you could get only at a restaurant. She’d been friendly and warm, as Charles had said she would be, but there was no mistaking the glint in her eye. Franny was judging every word that came out of his mouth, the way he cut his meat, the way his hand searched out Charles’s thigh under the table. Not for anything funny, of course, just to squeeze, for reassurance.

Franny pointed to something on the left-hand side of the page, and Charles erupted into laughter. She leaned into his shoulder, an easy, comfortable motion she’d done thousands of times over almost forty years, since two years before she and Jim were married. Lawrence and Charles had been together for almost eleven. Even now that they were married, sometimes it felt like he could never catch up. Lawrence was just about to interrupt their cozy moment and ask what had been so funny when Bobby, looking significantly worse for wear, shambled into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Franny said, sitting up straighter. “Do you want some breakfast?” She scooted out from behind the table and around to the fridge, where there were now three people crowding into a very small space.

“Sorry,” Lawrence said, “let me get out of the way.” He swung his laptop over his head, like a suitcase he didn’t want to soil after jumping overboard, and waded back to Charles.

Bobby opened the fridge and stood there, red-eyed and blurry. “There’s nothing to eat.”

Franny made a noise. “Don’t be ridiculous. What are you in the mood for? Want some pancakes? French toast?”

“That makes you fat,” Bobby said. “I need protein.”

Without bristling at his surly tone, she continued. “Eggs? Maybe some bacon and eggs?” Franny looked up to him for approval. Bobby’s eyelids hung at half-mast.

“Fine,” he said, but he didn’t move or close the door. Franny reached around him to grab what she needed from the refrigerator shelves. He stood still, a statue that smelled of dank armpits and a night of fitful sleep.

“I think Carmen’s already up and at ’em,” Charles said, nodding his chin toward the window. They all turned to look. She was alternating between jumping jacks and burpees, up down, up down, out in, up down, up down, out in. Bobby turned the slowest of all, and let out a thin wheeze of air when he saw her.

“She’s pissed,” he said. “She only does doubles when she’s pissed.”

“What’d you do, tiger?” Charles said, amused.

Bobby shrugged and dragged himself over to the table. Lawrence scooted over to make room, and Bobby collapsed into the nearest seat. “Nothing. God. Nothing.”

“Women.” Charles said, rolling his eyes, then quickly shrugging toward Franny. I don’t know, he mouthed.

“You know what they say about women . . .” Lawrence started, but the look on Bobby’s face made it clear that whatever joke he was about to tell wouldn’t be worth it. They all sat in silence, waiting for Bobby’s breakfast to be ready.

Carmen took a break and squatted down until her butt hit the ground, extending her legs out in a straddle position. If Bobby had asked her to go with him, she would have. If he came outside right then and told her that he loved her and kissed her on the cheek and apologized for interrupting her night’s sleep, she would have forgiven him. If he had waved out the kitchen window even, and smiled at her! Carmen folded over the space between her legs, resting her hands on the rough concrete. He didn’t understand anything at all.

A certain learning curve was to be expected—she was an adult when they met, and he was something else, half boy, half man. Maybe more than half boy, if she was being honest with herself. The first few years hadn’t even counted, not really. He was learning how to balance his checkbook, how to order wine at a restaurant, how to separate his lights from his darks. Bobby had been so sweet, gobbling up every piece of practical information. She was an oracle of the real world! Franny and Jim Post paid someone to clean their house, so no wonder Bobby was confused when his toilet bowl began to show signs of use. They paid someone else to do their taxes, so no wonder he didn’t know what he could deduct, which receipts to save.

And still, the Posts looked down at Carmen. She could feel it, she wasn’t stupid. Certainly not as stupid as they thought she was. She heard their muttered remarks, saw their rolling eyes. She had given up trying to impress them years ago, thinking that it was her newness, her eagerness, that got under their skin. Now she wasn’t sure that she’d ever had a chance. It was a strange feeling, to be someone else’s lightning rod, the glinting piece of metal in the storm. The scapegoat’s scapegoat. She saw how hard it was for Bobby to relax around his parents, and she wanted to help. But she couldn’t help if he didn’t let her.

Carmen rolled back up to a seated position and slid her head from side to side, stretching out her neck. He had five minutes to come outside and talk to her. She could see them all through the window, smiling and laughing. He had five minutes.

Jim wanted to spend the afternoon alone, so he drove one of the cars down the hill to Palma. The countryside was satisfying for only so long. Palma was big enough to get slightly lost in, with narrow streets and dead ends, just the way he liked. There were still some Moorish buildings, and some leftover evidence of the conquering hordes, and some interesting architecture tucked beside the chain restaurants. Let Franny plan the itineraries—Jim was happy to stroll with no destination in mind. He had a notebook in his pocket in case anything occurred to him, but the notebook had stayed in his pocket thus far.

The last time Jim had applied for a job, he was twenty-two years old. Loyalty was more common in the old days, when fact-checkers became writers became editors, none of this bouncing from career to career like younger people seemed to do, as if art school and business school made sense on the same résumé. Gallant had been his professional home for decades, for his entire adult life. It had been another marriage, just as complicated and nearly as satisfying. But now here he was, a cool sixty, with no Monday mornings ahead. He turned left and walked up a cobblestone street that led into a small plaza with some cafés and outdoor seating. Jim chose a table in the shade and ordered a coffee.

His thoughts moved in spirals: If this, then that. If they divorced, then they’d sell the house. If they sold the house, then he’d have to move. If he moved, where would he go? If he stayed on the Upper West Side, was that pathetic? Was it aggressive? Was he supposed to surrender the zip code? Was Riverside Drive too far, too remote? Could he live in the nineties? He remembered the nineties when they moved in, how anything above 86th Street felt like it was overrun with drug dealers on stoops. If they didn’t divorce, would they ever have sex again? And then Madison Vance appeared again, as she often did, her hair still wet from the shower but already wearing her makeup, her naked body pressing against his leg like a blind saluki. She licked his neck and then his earlobe. She began to whisper. Jim took a sip of his coffee and tried to make Madison disappear.

Telling Franny was worse than the conversation with the board. It wasn’t easy to surprise someone after thirty-five years of marriage, but he’d done it. She’d laughed at first, thinking he was joking, the way they had often joked about murdering each other’s parents, or accidentally amputating a digit while making dinner. They were sitting in bed, Franny with her nose tucked behind a book, her back slumped down like always. Half a dozen chiropractors had scolded her, but what was she going to do? Stop reading in bed? When he started talking, she held her finger between the pages, keeping her spot, but as he went on, she turned the book facedown onto her thighs. When Jim thought about the worst moment in his marriage, he thought about watching Franny turn her book over, the straight line of her mouth. It was what he’d avoided thinking about when Madison was in front of him, when he thought he might be twenty-five again, if he wanted it badly enough. But there was no getting out of one’s only life. Franny was a fact, and Madison was a mirage. She should have been a mirage. She should have been a jerk-off fantasy, a pretty picture, but instead Jim had let her walk through the looking glass and into his arms, and he couldn’t take it back.

Jim tried to take another sip but discovered the coffee had gone cold and thick. He dropped a few euros on the table and wandered on, turning right and left and right again, eventually finding himself standing across a busy road from a crowded beach. He was sweating through his shirt by now, his long sleeves curled up and cuffed. He jogged across the street, dodging cars, and took off his shoes and socks. The sand was hot, and Jim stepped lightly over people’s towels, side by side like floor tiles, until he stood at the water’s edge. The water lapped in lightly, covering his toes. He absently wished that Franny had come with him, almost looking for her in the crowds of people in their bathing suits. But he would have to get used to doing things on his own.

Carmen insisted on helping Franny make dinner. Together they tore the ends off green beans, mixed a vinaigrette, roasted a chicken, and made a pie. Franny was surprised at how easy it was—Carmen had fair knife skills and wasn’t afraid of using salt or fat, as long as it wasn’t for herself. They passed bowls back and forth, and ducked around each other to reach into cabinets or to open the oven door. Sylvia helped out in the kitchen when pressed into service, but would happily have eaten takeout every night instead. It was pleasant to have another body beside her, helping without complaint.

“I think we’re all done!” Franny said. She broke off a tiny, crunchy piece of fatty chicken skin and let it dissolve in her mouth. “Mmm.”

“Table’s set.” Carmen was nothing if not efficient.

“Thank you,” Franny said. She was moved by the tiniest gesture—it had been a longer week than she’d anticipated, being the chief of an unruly tribe. It would not have been much of an exaggeration to say that she might have cried, if only Carmen had been a little bit younger and a more suitable match for her son. “Soup’s on!” she called into the living room and up the stairs. One by one, they trickled in, Sylvia and Bobby from their respective bedrooms, Jim and the boys from the living room, where they’d been drinking some cocktails. Maybe it was easy, after all, having everyone together. Maybe everyone just needed a few days to settle into their new space, to relax. Maybe they were all going to start having the best vacation of their lives, right now. Franny brought the chicken to the table with a smile on her face. When Sylvia came into the room, still wearing her pajamas, Franny gave her a kiss on the forehead.

Everyone filed in, sitting mostly in the seats they’d assigned themselves at the beginning of the trip, the way students in a classroom will always sit in the same place, whether or not they’ve been told to do so. People were all creatures of habit, the Posts no exception. Franny and Carmen brought all the food in, and Charles moaned with pleasure as he usually did, no matter what had been prepared. It was important to have at least one enthusiastic eater on hand at all times. After all the food had been set down, Carmen slid behind the row of chairs to take her spot beside Bobby, wedged in between his right elbow and the wall. He was barely speaking to her, still, even though she was quite sure that it was her right to be annoyed, not his. This was what Bobby did when he felt wounded—he turned all the hurt feelings inside out, so that his pain at having caused pain was tantamount. No matter what Bobby had ever done, it would be Carmen’s job to soothe him. An apology was not forthcoming.

Jim carved the chicken and sent the platter around. Lawrence slid a few spears of asparagus onto his plate and then passed the platter in the opposite direction. The meal worked like clockwork for a little while, everyone taking what they were hungry for, if not a little bit more, not saying much except polite thank yous when a serving dish appeared in front of them. This was what Franny liked the most about being on vacation, the moments when no one was worried about what they should or should not be doing and just did exactly what was right.

Sylvia ate one asparagus spear at a time, letting the long green stalk hang out of her mouth as she made it disappear bite by bite. Jim tried not to be amused. There was little noise except chewing and the clinking of forks and knives. Franny made an excellent roast chicken. Even Carmen was eating, which Franny considered enough of a coup to comment on it from the far end of the table.

“So glad you like it, Carmen! It’s nice to see you dig into something other than your green juice.” Franny mimed the mixing of the powders, a mad-scientist-gone-bodybuilder. “Not that there’s anything wrong with green juice, of course. I did a juice cleanse once, for a week, for a magazine. Remember that, Jim? I lost four pounds and my sense of humor.” Franny laughed at her own bad joke, another sign that things were improving.

Carmen glared at Bobby. He didn’t look up from his plate. None of this was her fault—she had done nothing wrong. Carmen wanted to be the kind of woman who was above pettiness, who didn’t believe in taking an eye for an eye, but she wasn’t. They had talked about how he was supposed to behave with his family, how he was supposed to present her, how he should treat her, and here he was, acting like a teenager. Carmen had done so much work to make him into the right kind of man. If he didn’t respect her enough to not behave like an asshole, well, then she wouldn’t respect him enough to carry on his little charade.

“Bobby sells them, you know.”

This made him look up. His eyes widened, and he shook his head back and forth, imploring her not to. No matter what he’d done, Bobby never thought that Carmen would sell him out, not like this. Not at the dinner table, without warning. She plowed ahead.

“Bobby sells the powders, I mean.” Carmen straightened up and tossed her hair over her shoulders, enjoying the sensation of having everyone listen to her for once. She thought she might never stop talking.

Franny puffed out her lower lip. “What do you mean?”

Sylvia froze with half an asparagus spear sticking out of her mouth, a green cigar.

“He sells them at the gym, at Total Body Power. But also at other places, like fitness conventions. You know Amway? It’s kind of like that.” Carmen had an aunt and uncle who sold Amway, and it wasn’t really the same thing, but she knew the look it would put on Franny’s face, the way the word would sound in her ear, cultish and cheap.

Sylvia spat out the uneaten half of her asparagus. “Wait, what?”

“What is she talking about, Bobby?” Franny said, knitting her fingers together under her chin. “This is crazy!”

Jim leaned back in his chair. The feeling he experienced wasn’t surprise or disappointment, but a very slight letting out of air, like a balloon slowly emptying. It was the sensation of Franny’s focus shifting away from him and onto their son, the kind of feeling no father ever wanted to admit that he enjoyed. His poor son was doing him a righteous favor, whether he wanted to or not. Jim half wanted to try to kiss Franny right then, to see how distracted she’d become, but no, that might ruin it. Instead, he remained quiet and tried to focus on what was being said.

Bobby’s stare remained fixed on his plate. He held his fork in his left hand, and his napkin in his right. He didn’t turn back to Carmen, or direct his chin upward to face his family. She was doing this to him on purpose. He told the truth to the moist chicken now cooling in front of him.

“It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just to make some extra money. The market’s been slow for the last couple of years, and Carmen thought . . .” Here he paused, closing his eyes. “It’s not her fault. I needed to make some money, and she got me a job at the gym.” Bobby looked up and made eye contact with his mother, who was still holding her hands as if in prayer. “I’m an assistant trainer, and I sell the Total Body Power Powder. It’s not bad. I’m much healthier than I was before.”

“Tell them the rest.” Carmen made a tiny smacking sound, satisfied. She wasn’t going to let herself smile, but she sure as hell was going to make sure everything came out that she thought should come out. He’d made her wait long enough.

“There’s more?” Franny made a noise like a fish on dry land.

“Take it down a notch, Fran,” Jim said, jeopardizing his newly secure position.

“Wait, so you’re a personal trainer now, too?” Sylvia said. “Like, people pay you to force them to do sit-ups? Like a gym teacher? Do you have a whistle?”

“What’s in the powders?” Lawrence wanted to know. “Is it that Xendadrine stuff that’s supposed to give you a heart attack?”

“Jesus!” Bobby said, pushing his chair back from the table. Carmen looked smug. Everyone else waited for him to continue. It wasn’t that working at a gym was so sordid, it just wasn’t what people like the Posts did, that’s what they were all thinking. Charles and Lawrence experienced pangs of guilt at this internal admission, having been discriminated against for their entire lives, and still occasionally hollered at on the sidewalk by morons in passing cars. Franny felt like a failure. Sylvia was trying to imagine her older brother wearing a sweatband and a Britney Spears–style microphone, doing dance steps at the front of an aerobics class. Jim, who had paid for Bobby’s college education, was the most disappointed, though he knew enough to mask such feelings. He had long suspected that Bobby’s career might not be going quite as gangbusters as he wanted everyone to think, and wasn’t entirely surprised by this new information. “Fine,” Bobby said, shaking his head. His soft curls bounced, as pretty as they’d always been, and Franny began to tear up.

“I started selling the powders because it seemed like a good way to make money more quickly, but in order to do that, I had to buy them in bulk, like, really in bulk, and they haven’t been as easy to unload as the manager at Total Body Power made it seem. They’re really good, all whey protein, but the shakes come out kind of grainy if you don’t mix them with enough liquid, and there’s an aftertaste.”

“You get used to it,” Carmen said. “Bobby doesn’t even drink them anymore, but I do. They’re really good for your muscle recovery after a workout.” Bobby gave her a sharp look, and she stopped talking.

“Eww,” Sylvia said, and Franny pinched her, hard.

“Anyway, I used my credit card to buy the powders from the distributer, and I haven’t been able to pay off my card in a while, and so it’s just getting a little, you know, expensive.” Bobby’s cheeks were the color of the wine, a red so deep they were nearly purple.

“How much are we talking, honey?” Franny leaned forward and reached for Bobby’s hands. The room was completely silent while everyone waited to hear the number.

“A hundred and fifty. Or so.” Bobby let his mother stroke his hands but wouldn’t look at her.

“A hundred and fifty?” Franny wasn’t thinking. She’d begun to brighten, and looked over her shoulder at Jim, confused. He frowned.

“A hundred and fifty thousand?” Jim asked.

Carmen was the only one who didn’t make an audible reaction, because she already knew the figure in question. It was $155,699, actually, but Bobby was rounding down. He hadn’t told her until it was nearly half as much, and that was a year ago, shortly after he began to work at the gym. It had been sweet watching him, Carmen wanted to tell his family that—seeing him holding a heavy bag steady for a middle-aged woman who wanted to get rid of her upper-arm wattle was nice, and Carmen liked that she could teach him things. Give him pointers. Some of the trainers had been to kinesiology school, but most of them were just gym rats who’d stuck around long enough to make a good impression. Bobby was neither, a pale New York City half-Jew who’d never done more than jog on a treadmill. The ladies found him unintimidating, and he reminded them of their sons up north. He was popular. If he’d only stuck to that, it would have been fine. They probably would have been married by now, maybe even living closer to the beach. But Bobby had liked the idea of easy money, and what was easier than making a milkshake?