Anna is striking, certainly. There have been times in the past eight years when Baker hasn’t been able to stop staring at her. But this woman affects Baker differently. She’s lightly tanned, with freckles across her nose. She wears no makeup. She has blue eyes and straight white teeth. She wears five or six silver bracelets and a simple black jersey dress that clings to her slender frame. Looking at her fills Baker with wordless joy. She looks like hope.
I’m in love with you, he thinks. Whoever you are.
“Sure,” he says. “I’d love to sign the guest book.”
He accepts the pen from her, wondering what name he can possibly sign. He stalls by locking eyes with her and saying, “Can I get you a drink or anything? You seem to have pulled the short straw, being stuck back here in the corner.”
“Oh,” she says. “It’s fine. Chester is keeping me in rum punches.” She holds up a plastic cup containing an inch of watery pink liquid, a maraschino cherry, and an orange slice. “He’ll be back soon, I’m sure.” She sets down the cup and offers a hand. “I’m Ayers Wilson, by the way. I was Rosie’s best friend.” She tilts her head. “I don’t think I recognize you. How did you know Rosie?”
“I… uh… I didn’t, really,” Baker says. “I came with someone who knew her. My brother. He’s at the bar, getting me a beer, I hope.”
Ayers laughs. “Nice brother,” she says. “How did he know Rosie?”
“Um…,” Baker says. “He worked with her.”
Ayers’s eyes widen. “Really?” she says. “Who’s your brother? Is it Skip? Oh my God, that’s right, Skip’s brother from LA, right? But, wait… he’s… she’s transitioning to a woman. That’s not you, I take it.”
“No,” Baker says. Just like that, he’s been caught. “Actually, my brother is at the bar, but he didn’t work with Rosie.”
Ayers shakes her head. “Don’t tell me,” she says. “You guys are crashing, right?”
Baker sighs. “Kind of.”
“Here on vacation, saw the crowd, smelled the pig roast, and figured why not?” Ayers gives him a pointed look and he feels like an idiot. Before he can decide if he should tell her who he really is, she shrugs. “I honestly don’t blame you.”
“You don’t?” Baker says. “I didn’t want to come. My brother insisted.”
“I’m actually happy to meet a complete stranger who has nothing to do with any of this,” Ayers says. “Half the women here are pissed that I’m doing the guest book instead of Rosie’s third cousin or Maia’s preschool teacher, and as if that’s not bad enough, over there in the doorway are my ex-boyfriend and the tramp he left me for.”
Baker looks toward the doorway and sees a chunky guy with a buzz cut and a woman in her twenties who has seen fit to come to a memorial reception without either washing her hair or wearing a bra.
He turns back to Ayers. He’s still holding the pen.
“Just write your name,” Ayers says. “I’ll remember you as the crasher and that’ll cheer me up.”
“Okay.” Baker says. He writes: Baker. Then he hands the pen back to Ayers.
“Baker,” she reads. “Well, Mr. Baker, it was nice meeting you.”
“Baker is my first name,” he says.
“Gotcha,” Ayers says. “You’re afraid to write your last name in case I call the police? Or do you go solely by your first name, like Madonna and Cher?”
“The latter,” he says. She’s flirting with him, he thinks. He stands up to his full height and squares his shoulders.
“Do you want to come outside with me and have a cigarette?” she asks. “Or are you horrified by a woman who smokes?”
He would follow her to East Japip to drink snake venom, he thinks. He answers by scooting the table aside so she can step out. “Lead the way,” he says.
She navigates around the crowd to the back of the tent, where a West Indian man with an orange bandana wrapped around his head is tending to the pig. There’s a rubber trash can filled with beer and ice. Ayers grabs two, then says to the man, “You forgot about me, Chester. I’m taking these.”
Chester waves his basting brush in the air. “Okay, doll.”
Ayers leads Baker to the edge of the parking lot, where there is a tree with a low branch big and sturdy enough to sit on. Ayers pulls a pack of cigarettes out of a little crocheted purse that hangs across her body and lights up. “I’m horrified by people who smoke,” Ayers says. “But my best friend just died and so I’m going to give myself a pass for a while to indulge in some self-destructive behavior.” She hands the cigarette to Baker. “Want to join me?”
“Sure,” he says. He inhales and promptly coughs. “Sorry, I’m out of practice. I haven’t had a cigarette since I was fourteen years old standing out in back of the ice rink. It’s been only weed for me since then.”
This makes Ayers laugh. “So where are you visiting from, Baker?”
“Me?” he says. “Houston.”
“Houston,” Ayers says. “Never been. Are you a doctor? You look like a doctor.”
No, he nearly says. But my wife’s a doctor.
“I’m not a doctor,” he says. “I used to trade in commodities but now I’m kind of between jobs. I do some day-trading and I’m a stay-at-home dad. My son, Floyd, is four.”
“Floyd,” Ayers says. “Cool name.”
“It’s making a comeback,” Baker says. “Your name is pretty cool.”
“My parents are wanderers,” Ayers says. “They travel all over the world. I was named after Ayers Rock in Australia, which is, apparently, where I was conceived. But since then the rock has been reclaimed by the Aboriginals and now it’s called Uluru. And so I am now politically incorrect Ayers.”
“It’s pretty,” Baker says. You’re pretty, he thinks.
“So what brings you down here?” Ayers asks. “Vacation?”
How should he answer this? “Not a vacation, exactly,” he says. “I’m here with my mom and my brother.”
“Family reunion?” Ayers asks.
“I guess you could say that.”
“Are you married?” Ayers asks. She blows out a stream of smoke and looks at him frankly. Something inside of him stirs. Someday, he thinks, he will be married to this girl right here, Ayers Wilson. And they will remember this, their very first conversation, sitting on a low tree branch outside Chester’s Getaway during the funeral reception for her best friend, who also happened to be Baker’s father’s mistress.
“I was,” he says. “I mean, technically I still am. But my wife found a girlfriend. She announced two days ago that she was leaving me for her colleague, Louisa.”
“Ouch,” Ayers says.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Baker says. “It’s nothing compared to what you’re going through.”
“That’s right,” Ayers says. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“I heard your friend was in an accident,” Baker says. He wants to tell her who he is, but he’s afraid she’ll run off and he’ll never see her again. “What was she like?”
“Rosie? She was… she was… she just was,” Ayers says. “You know how sometimes people just click? And there’s no reason for it? Rosie and I were like that. I met her working at La Tapa.”
“La Tapa,” Baker says.
“It’s the best restaurant on the island. When I first got to St. John, it was the only place I wanted to work, but places like that can be hard to break into. I was very lucky to get hired and even luckier that Rosie took me under her wing. Rosie was a local, she’s born and raised here, her parents were born and raised here, and her grandparents. There was no reason for her to befriend me, some white chick who shows up for the season to get in on the good tips, then leaves. But Rosie was nice to me from the very beginning. She was protective. She showed me where the quiet beaches were, she introduced me to a guy who sold me a pickup truck for cheap, she took me to Pine Peace market and introduced me to her mother and her stepfather and just generally treated me like a long-lost sister.”