“She thinks he’s leaving because of her. I’m afraid she’ll romanticize this.”
“Tell her she’s overestimating her own importance. He’s a Fenn. He’s joining up because he thinks it makes him look good. I tried to get a word in about the Pequod with Jack but didn’t get too far. If he’s blackballing me because of this whole business with the kids, I think that’s poor form.”
“Mmmm.” Biddy was unwilling to enter into another round of the Great Pequod Debate. Was Jack shutting Winn out because Winn had excluded Jack from the Ophidian? Was Fee carrying a grudge over their breakup all those years ago? Were the Fenns so collectively shamed by Livia’s ordeal that they simply had no wish to see the Van Meters around the clubhouse? This last hypothesis, she had pointed out to Winn over and over again, was especially silly since he had been on the waiting list well before Teddy’s hapless sperm found its way to Livia’s egg. To Biddy’s thinking, Winn had done everything he could to make his case with the Pequod, and the rest was up to fate. So there was no cause for angst, no need to spin conspiracy theories. In all likelihood, the holdup had nothing to do with the Fenns and everything to do with the club’s internal workings and quotas. And even if the Fenns were the problem, most likely Winn, not Livia, was to blame, as Biddy was fairly certain the Fenns had been genuinely fond of her daughter and would not be so unjust as to think she had tried to entrap their son. At the end of the day, why would you want to join a club where you are not welcome? But Winn saw the consequences of Livia’s mistake everywhere, as though her womb were the source of all disorder in the universe.
“I’ll tell you,” Winn said, “I have an itch to call up Jack and have it out, get the straight story once and for all.”
“No,” Biddy said, “not this weekend, Winn, please.”
Celeste’s voice clarioned down from the roof. “Winnifred!” Winn grimaced. “Oh, Winnifred! The lobsters are here!”
A red-faced man in white shirt and pants appeared around the corner of the house, struggling to push a dolly loaded with two cardboard boxes through the gravel. Each box had a large red lobster stamped on it.
“Van Meter?” he said, consulting something scrawled in black marker on the top box. “Twenty lobsters?”
“You’ve come to the right place,” said Winn. He stepped forward and lifted the first box off the dolly, setting it on the ground and pulling off the lid.
The deliveryman watched dubiously. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Winn said. “That’s why I’m checking them.” He pulled lobster after lobster out of his box, holding each in the air to make sure it was moving its antennae and rubber-banded claws before adding it to a pile on the gravel.
“I’m sure they’re all alive, Winn,” Biddy said, blocking one lobster’s escape with her Top-Sider. People said lobsters were just giant bugs, and they looked it, creeping along, probing with their long feelers.
“Better safe than sorry, dear,” Winn said. To the deliveryman, who had begun to remove lobsters uncertainly from the second box, he said, “Here, I’ll get those if you’ll do me a favor and put these ones back.”
“No,” Biddy said. She bent and grabbed a lobster by its midsection and dropped it back in the box. There was a bed of seaweed at the bottom. “I’ll do it.”
“He doesn’t mind.” Winn turned to the deliveryman. “Do you?”
“No?” the man said, confused.
Biddy set two more lobsters on top of the first, and Winn scooped two out of the second box. “Slow down,” she said, “they’re getting mixed up.”
“It doesn’t matter which box they go in, dear, as long as they’re alive.”
“You can go,” Biddy told the deliveryman. “We’re all paid up, aren’t we?”
“Just hang on one minute,” Winn said. “Let me finish here.” Biddy gave up replacing lobsters, and she and the deliveryman watched in silence until Winn pulled out the last one and waved it at them. “Now,” he said, “aren’t we glad I checked? This one’s dead.” The lobster’s claws drooped limply, swinging from side to side like a pair of oversized boxing gloves. Setting it on the ground among its living brethren, Winn straightened up and put his hands on his hips, victorious. They all looked down at the lobster.
“That’s so weird,” the deliveryman said. “I’ve never heard of someone getting a dead one. These things could live on the moon.”
“He just moved,” Biddy said. “He moved his antennae.”
“No, he didn’t,” said Winn.
But Biddy was sure. The lobster had swept his antennae to the side. As they watched, the long, whisker-like appendages flicked again. “See?” she said.
Winn nudged the lobster with his toe. It didn’t move. “It’s sick in any case,” he said. “We don’t want to eat a sick lobster.” He picked up the lobster and held it out to the deliveryman. “How about running back and getting us a replacement?”
“Well,” the guy said, “that might take a while. I have a few other deliveries to make first.”
“Not necessary,” Biddy said, reaching out and seizing the invalid from Winn. “We have more than enough. Winn, Dicky doesn’t even eat lobster.”
“But we paid for twenty,” Winn said.
“I can write you a credit,” the deliveryman said, eying the lobsters, which were slowly migrating off the path and into the grass.
“Fine,” Biddy said. “That will be fine.”
“I don’t know,” said Winn.
“It’s fine,” Biddy assured the deliveryman.
Agatha and Piper emerged from the side door, Piper catching it before it slammed. Both were in their bathing suits, and the men were, for a moment, too startled to remember to hide their interest in the girls’ breasts and legs.
“We heard the lobsters were here,” Agatha said. “Can we help?”
“Good girls,” Winn said. “You can catch the runaways.”
“You don’t have to,” Biddy said.
“No,” said Agatha, “we’ll do it.”
Winn touched Agatha’s elbow. “Sorry about earlier,” he said quietly.
“What happened earlier?” Biddy asked.
Winn and Agatha looked at each other. Agatha laughed.
“I’m afraid I barged in on poor Agatha in the bathroom,” said Winn.
“Oh, Winn,” Biddy said, “you know the lock’s broken. You have to knock.”
“It was my fault,” Agatha offered. “I should have—”
“No,” Winn interrupted, “no, I was careless. I accept full responsibility. Absolutely my fault. I’m not used to so many people being around, that’s all. Won’t happen again.”
“All right,” Biddy said. “That’s enough, Winn.”
“No big deal,” said Agatha with an ingratiating wink at Biddy. She bent to catch a lobster, her bikini nestled fetchingly in her butt crack.
As the deliveryman wrote up a receipt for the price of one lobster, Biddy held the dead or dying crustacean in one hand and, slipping the other into her pocket, found the bobby pin there. She rolled it between her fingertips as the laughing young women collected the other lobsters, scooping them up and daring each other to kiss the rust-colored noses while the creatures flipped