When Biata handed her a message telling her that Arthur was due to pick her up at noon that Friday, she felt a nervous, confused thrill. She wanted to see Arthur. She did. But she’d lost track of her emotions. She’d close her eyes and try to remember him, but he came to her in parts: arms, eyes, shoulders, hips, toes. She decided it was time to come off the booze and the speed to prepare, the way she’d floss the night before having her teeth cleaned. Besides, what good was speed out on Jesuit Island? She’d go crazy there, lazing around with Arthur and Goldie while the world sped by elsewhere.

Withdrawal was brutal. Her insides felt like they were being scraped dry. She wanted to snap at customers when they complained that their steak wasn’t prepared the way they liked it, and she had little patience for Carmen, who constantly barged into Sherri’s room and yapped incessantly while trying on her makeup without asking. Ginger came across as bossy, taping notes to the bathroom mirrors reminding the girls to rinse the sink after they brushed their teeth. Boo sat back and took it all in, and Sherri wished she’d say something, do something. The only person who didn’t bother her was Val, because she was hardly ever around. Curtis placed more demands on her time, showing up in his yellow truck at the end of her shifts to drag her back to Beloit with him.

Even though it was still technically summer, Sherri could feel a slight shift in the atmosphere at the resort. The kids who were usually underfoot, threatening to knock her down while she carried her tray or begging her to play backgammon with them when she worked her shift in the game room, were instead back-to-school shopping. The college girls dribbled back to their campuses with their stashes of saved tips, and the guests returned to their old lives. Gloria said it was the start of the shoulder season—not peak, not off-peak. The upcoming weekend would be one of the last big blasts of the summer before Labor Day.

The changes ushered in with the transition between seasons snuck up on Sherri. She found the rusty smell of burning leaf piles and the slightest hint of cool, dry air from the north unsettling, because they evoked sharp memories of her mother’s decline. One of Sherri’s last good memories was of wheeling her mother to the square. Muriel had been so frail, her muscles atrophied from disuse. Still, she’d managed a smile when a monarch butterfly alit on her arm. That time of year had felt like an end then, and it was a new kind of end now.