At half past one o’clock, I hung up my apron, washed my face and hands in the lavatory, and climbed back on my bicycle. The air outside was dark and hot, threatening the kind of rain that did nothing to refresh you. Sometimes a gust of wind came off the water to batter me on my bicycle. I trundled on past my cottage, past the golf course, the stretch of barren road along the shore. There was a rumble of thunder. Then the good old British Colonial, brooding in the heat. Hardly a soul reclined on the sand outside. The harbor, now. That was bustling. A steamship was in the process of attaching itself to the dock. I cycled carefully around the excitement and came to a stop outside the Prince George. It was now past two o’clock, plenty late for a drink. I propped the bicycle against the wall outside and made straight for the bar.

To my surprise, Jack himself stood behind the counter. Surprise because Jack didn’t usually saunter to his duty until later in the afternoon, on account of staying up all night to hear everybody’s secrets. Some younger fellow watered the lunch crowd, I never could remember his name. Today that fellow had his back to the room, however, was polishing the glassware one by one with a clean white cloth, and Jack faced the tables and stools, braced his eight fingers and two bony thumbs on the wood, shirt crisp and waistcoat black. The ceiling fan whirred directly above his head. I slid into place and told him his countenance was looking wilted today, was something up?

He stepped away and reached for a glass. I laid my arms on the counter, one folded over the other, and watched him pour me a gin and tonic. Because of shortages, there was no lime. Just bottled, concentrated lime juice, an unsatisfactory substitute that tasted of metal. Jack set it before me on the counter and assumed his original stance.

“You ever think of moving back home?” he said.

“Home? This is home.”

“I mean back where you came from, Mrs. Randolph. Where you was brought up. Family and friends.”

I set down the glass. “I come from nowhere, sonny. I’ve got nobody.”

“You have a mother and a father. Brother and a sister.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Family’s family, Mrs. Randolph. They might could help you find what you’re looking for.”

“Oh? I didn’t notice I was looking for anything.”

“Everybody’s looking for something. If you ain’t looking for something, you’re trying to get away from something. Ain’t that so?”

He had lowered his face a little, so that when I raised my face a little, we met right in the middle, eye locked with eye, tonic fizzing our chins, fan stirring our hair.

“Where do you get your ideas, Jack?”