“You’re probably the only person around here who noticed I was gone. I took some time off.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I needed to study for the bar exam.”

“You’re a lawyer?”

“I hope so. Why so surprised?”

“I just didn’t know.” Sherri knew that backpedaling would make the situation worse.

“I should find out how I did on the test in a few weeks.”

“That’s amazing,” Sherri said. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”

She was supposed to be happy for Gwen, and she supposed she was, but this meant that she would leave. Sherri hardly knew her, but she wanted everyone to stay in place forever. Summer was just kicking into full swing and already she was beginning to feel like the stagehands were taking down the set at the end of a production. Why couldn’t the resort mean as much to everyone else as it did to her? Why did it have to be temporary? As Arthur had said, people were becoming rather than being.

Gwen stood and wiped down the front of her outfit. “First thing I’m going to do when I get my law license—well, after I quit this place—is sue the property owners on your boyfriend’s ‘island.’”

“Jesuit Island?”

“Uh-huh. I went to that party of yours. Or I tried. The guy in the gatehouse at the entrance wouldn’t let me drive my black ass past him.”

Sherri’s stomach turned. “God, Gwen. I’m so sorry. I wish I’d known.”

“And if you had, Sherri, tell me: what would you do, huh? What does anyone out here do?” Gwen stubbed her cigarette out on the picnic table. “I’ve got to get back to work. I can’t believe people pay good money to see Engelbert Humperdinck. An old guy at my table is watching the show through his goddamn bird binoculars.”

Gwen breezed past her, her heels clicking against the pavement. Soon they’d click down the hallway of a fancy law office.

Sherri returned to her shift, smiling to cover the bad feelings about what Gwen had told her as she poured shot glasses of rum into Coke for the steelworkers’ union members who’d planned their annual meeting at the resort. Their mood wasn’t any more upbeat than her own. They spoke of inflation, deregulation, and interest rates—the same stuff Arthur read about in his newspapers. Sherri liked to think those were problems that existed elsewhere and didn’t concern her.

“Good thing you girls aren’t unionized,” one of them said to her, “or you’d come to work wearing turtlenecks and overalls.”