Scott said, “Babe, you make me sound like the friggin’ Antichrist.”

“It’s your job,” Lisa said.

Poppy was uncomfortable, so she laughed. Lisa had to know that explaining Scott’s work to the sort of people who would max out a credit card on groceries would make Scott feel like a real piece of shit. And Poppy had never been a big fan of Scott’s—she’d always found him insufferably arrogant—but she was not yet drunk enough to enjoy watching him squirm.

John was not enjoying this moment either. He still owed the hospital six thousand dollars from the procedure on his back. Insurance had covered a portion of the surgery, but not nearly the whole thing. He had worked out a payment plan with the hospital but had missed a few payments over time and was now considering the possibility that the hospital would sell the debt to Raslowe & Associates, that he would get sued and start having to turn over a portion of his paychecks to guys like Scott. John quickly drank two-thirds of his glass of sangria. He was allowed to drink with the medication they had him on, but not much, and they advised against operating heavy machinery. He stole a glance at Scott, who looked utterly miserable. John thought it was likely that he and Poppy reminded Scott of all the stressed-out rednecks he sued, who couldn’t quite make ends meet, and Scott was obviously not accustomed to sharing a pitcher of sangria with their kind.

Poppy abruptly pointed out the window at a bird that circled above the kids on the beach. “That thing’s massive!” she remarked. “What is it?”

“Osprey, I’d guess,” Lisa said. She squinted toward the sand. “Is that Ryan with the snorkel gear?”

Poppy nodded. “He’ll be at that all week.”

Ryan was loping, shoulders hunched, along the water’s edge with his snorkel gear fully in place, looking like some disoriented extraterrestrial.

Poppy said, “Kid’s got some interesting interests. On the drive down, he was going on about how the moon might not actually exist.”

Scott grunted a bit of laughter through his nose. “Kids and conspiracies, man.”

Lisa said, “If the moon doesn’t exist, what are we looking at up there every night?”

Poppy said, “A hologram, so he says. The real moon has been eaten away by pollution or inhabited by aliens or something, so now the government projects a false image. You’d have to ask Ryan for more details. Don’t look at me like that! Those are his words, not mine.”

John added, “It’s hard to keep up with the kid. Last week he was talking about brainwashing people with fluoride the government’s putting in the water.”

“Least he’s got imagination and asks questions,” Lisa said. “It’s groupthink that scares me more than any conspiracy theory. Better to have some radicals out there shaking us all up. Better if we’re not all sheep. Bahhhhhh,” she bleated.

Scott gazed at his wife. “I’ve never heard you say something like that,” he said with what sounded like a hint of annoyance or disapproval. “Sheep and radicals.” Then he muttered to himself, “Fake moon.”