The inn was nearly empty after the weekend, the main house unoccupied. In the Quahog Cottage stayed the retirees from Minnesota: a lumbering man with burst blood vessels on his cheeks, and his tiny, wire-haired wife. They’d been motorcycling around the Maritimes on matching Harleys. In the Whelk Cottage were the young windsurfers who came to breakfast each morning in wet suits. Kevin had stumbled upon them on the beach the night before while walking Oscar. They were naked in the firelight, the girl acrobatically on all fours, her ass in the air. Kevin came back to the main house holding a hand to his mouth.

What? Douglas asked.

Whelks on the beach, Kevin said.

Whelking?

Kevin nodded.

Oh my God, you saw it?

Yes, Kevin said. Regrettably.

He couldn’t wait for them to leave. The boy had the tiniest brown beard hanging from his chin like a shred of steel wool that practically begged to be snipped off. And just that morning, he’d knocked meekly on Kevin’s office door and mumbled something about a clogged toilet. Kevin discovered later a blue condom flushed down there, despite the quaint signs he’d calligraphied himself—perhaps too quaint—that warned of the delicate island plumbing, not to put anything “incommodious” in the “commode.” What didn’t they understand: Incommodious? Commode? Thank God, they’d be gone in the morning, along with their colored condoms.

Kevin placed the last of the dill in the basket. A scarf of clouds crept off the ocean—vaporous, metallic blue. He left the garden and walked to the bluff for juniper berries. On a clear night over Trachis, he often saw the aurora borealis this time of year. On any cloudless night, the stars were overwhelming on the island, and if he looked up he could see, among all that acreage of sky, tiny red navigational lights flitting across the atmosphere. Airplanes, hardly noticeable, tacking across the Atlantic on their way toward Europe or Asia. Other times the Canadian Navy flew practice runs directly over the island, the F-16s thundering so low, so loud, the windows of the cottages shook in their frames. That night was too cloudy, and the moon too full, for the aurora borealis. Oscar sniffed the air, tail erect, and growled. Kevin groped for berries among the juniper needles. The offshore fog slipped eerily beneath the moon.

Back inside, the office lights blinded him. Douglas lay sunk in a Mission rocker, immersed in the pages of a Consumer Reports. Their chain saw had died earlier that summer and he was shopping for a new one.

It looks like either a Stihl or a Husqvarna, Douglas announced. He didn’t look up; he wore a look, so familiar lately to Kevin, of concentrated annoyance.

The displacement values are better with the Stihl, he muttered. But the price with the Husqvarna. He sighed and turned the page.

Kevin set the basket of dill on the counter.