Elin Hilderbrand - The Castaways

Once she had seen April standing in front of the magazine rack at the Hub (paging through Elle -predictable), and Delilah had lingered on the other side of the store, fingering the polished shells they sold from barrels. She studied April Peck, she deconstructed her: the hair, the jeans, the ass, the breasts, the lips (moving ever so slightly as she read, which made Delilah feel sorry for her). April’s cell phone rang-it sounded like the bells of Westminster Abbey-and April answered in her silk-sheets voice. “Allo?”

She left the store, and Delilah followed her. April Peck was fascinating. Why? She was the object of Greg’s desire. Greg had been so bitter and banged up on that Sunday night in October that he might have made a pass at anyone. But it had been April Peck for good reason. She was flawless. Delilah allowed herself a few seconds of sheer envy, then decided she would find a flaw. She followed April Peck up Main Street. April climbed into a white Jeep Cherokee while she was still on the phone. She backed up without looking in her rearview mirror and nearly rammed into a guy in a Ford F-350. The guy opened his window to shout, but then he saw April and whistled instead.

There you had it.

How do I know your name? Delilah thought. When you pulled a stunt like you did with Greg, you instantly became famous. Surely April realized that. Still, the question threw Delilah. It made her feel defensive and weirdly at a disadvantage. She knew April Peck, but April Peck did not know her. April Peck was a celebrity and Delilah was a nobody. But this was a ploy by April Peck, a stall tactic.

“I can’t let you in,” Delilah said. “You’re underage.”

“No, I’m not,” April said.

“You-”

April opened her straw clutch purse and produced an ID. A Massachusetts license that furnished her name, April Peck, her address, 999 Polpis Road, and her birth date, June 1, 1988. Which made her twenty-one years and eighteen days old. Delilah peered at the license closely. It was a fake, of course. It looked real, but it was fake.

“You’re handing me a fake ID?”

“It’s not fake. It’s real. I’m twenty-one.”

Delilah laughed. “You just graduated from high school. I know who you are, April, and I know how old you are.”

“It’s a long story,” April said wearily. “I don’t need to eat. I ate. I just want to sit and listen to Greg play.”

Greg. That was a nice touch, calling him Greg. Delilah was wearing a Diane von Furstenberg dress that put her boobs on magnificent display. (When she’d walked into the Begonia earlier that evening, Greg had said, “Would you wear that dress every night for the rest of your life? Please?”) But the dress also stretched tight against the premenstrual bloating at her abdomen. Compared to April Peck in her sleek size zero, Delilah felt like a lumpy cow. She crossed her arms.

“I’m not letting you in.”

April Peck exhaled in one long stream, to let the world know she was growing impatient. “Call the police. Have them run the license.” She stared defiantly at Delilah. “Be my guest. I’m serious.”

Delilah had been fantasizing about a showdown, but now that it was happening, she was uncomfortable. She had been ambushed; she didn’t have her footing. It was a tug of war, and Delilah was about to end up facedown in the mud.

There was a hand on her back. Greg.

“Let her in,” he said.

Delilah turned to him, stunned.

“She’s not of age,” Delilah said.

“Delilah,” Greg said. “Let her in.”

April sidestepped her way around Delilah and walked into the bar. She took a seat, alone, at the table closest to the stage. Delilah felt like she was watching a horror film. Greg followed April and talked with her for a minute. April said something, and he laughed. He laughed! Then he climbed up onstage, and with the predictable toss of his hair, he sat down in the chair and started singing.

Delilah never drank during service. It was a good rule, adhered to even when Addison and Phoebe were in, or the Chief, even when a table full of college boys offered to buy her what they called a glass of “chardonnay wine.” But now Delilah hip-checked Graham aside and poured herself a goblet of cabernet and a shot of Wild Turkey and carried both of them to the ladies’ room. She locked herself in the handicapped stall and threw back the whiskey first-awful-then chased it with a deep swallow of wine.

This was hideous, right? Greg had trampled Delilah’s authority; he had humiliated her. And for whom? For April Peck bin Laden, the lying bitch seductress with her fake ID. The very same woman-girl!-who had trashed his marriage and his reputation. She had nearly cost him his job, and his life here, and yet there was Greg defending her, ushering her in, then laughing at whatever insipid thing she’d said. He was up onstage playing for her now.

Delilah strained to listen from the confines of the bathroom stall. “Tiny Dancer.” Impossible. But yes, he was singing it. He had not sung that song since the mess with April Peck had occurred back in the fall. But he was playing it now. Delilah sucked down more wine, but the wine only fueled the fire of her rage. It was absconding with the last shreds of patience and understanding that she had left. Should she call the Chief? Have him send someone down to charge April with identity fraud? Should she call Tess? And say, Greg is onstage right now singing that song to April Peck.

The door to the ladies’ room swung open and Delilah could hear Greg singing more clearly. The second verse.

The head waitress, Amelia, who was a real hard-ass, barked, “Delilah? Are you in here?”

Delilah drank more wine. “Yeah.”

“Are you planning on coming back out?”

Delilah left her wine on top of the toilet paper dispenser. She did not want a scene where April became the adult and Delilah the adolescent.

“Yes,” she said.

April Peck left at midnight, when Greg took his break. She had consumed three glasses of pinot grigio; one of them, Graham told Delilah, had been comped by Greg. April left a huge tip-forty bucks-which made her Queen for a Day in Graham’s mercenary eyes. April had slipped out while Delilah was in the ladies’ room polishing off yet another shot of Wild Turkey chased by yet another goblet of cabernet, and Delilah did not see her go and did not have the opportunity for another parry. Which was good or bad? Good, she decided. She was drunk by closing time; she couldn’t do the counting that cashing out required, and so she had Graham do it and slipped him twenty bucks for the trouble.

Thom and Faith were at one end of the boomerang bar with their sixteenth or seventeenth vodkas, and Greg was at the other end brooding over a Sam Adams draft. Delilah had seen Greg’s brooding act a million times before; he used it like a petulant twelve-year-old girl. If I make moody, faraway eyes, someone will ask me what’s wrong. Delilah had meant to storm out of the Begonia after closing without a word to anyone. But she was just drunk enough to want another drink. Greg was dopily sitting there and Delilah could not control her urge to vent.

She took the stool next to him, asked Graham for a glass of cabernet, and whispered viciously, “I just don’t get it.”

“I know,” Greg murmured.

“Have you been… talking to her?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Sort of!” Delilah said. She sounded like the indignant wife, the shrew. She was supposed to be the cool girl, the one who could take any news and shrug it off.

“She came in to talk right before she graduated,” he said. “And we decided to mend the fence.”

“Mend the fence,” Delilah repeated.

“Put everything behind us. She asked for forgiveness.”