She's Not There by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

they’ve heard or whatever it is they’re imagining? They’ll want to do their duty as good citizens. Someone is selling drugs on the island, so they’ll want to find him. Then we’ll say our goodbyes.”
    I agreed, and then I asked about the nouveau-riche 688. “Wouldn’t they want to do their duty too?”
    Joe explained how the 688 escaped the tourist-infested Block Island summers. “They’re in the Dordogne.”
    Richard’s Patio hadn’t been Willa and Ernie’s idea. The real Richard was an entrepreneur who’d rented Willa and Ernie’s empty cottage behind the store. He converted it into a tiny restaurant with a pretty patio outside, paved it with bricks, set out a couple of white wrought-iron tables, and put tubs of flowers all around. But no one came. Richard hung on for two seasons, the second only because Willa and Ernie refused to charge him rent. The million-dollar-vacation-home owners, his intended market, seldom managed actually to fit in a trip to Block Island, what with their own summers in the Dordogne. There was nothing he could do to change the Budweiser-and-burger taste of Block Island’s blue-collar day-trippers. It cost eight dollars and took one hour to get to Block Island from the mainland on the ferry. A ferry to the more chi-chi Massachusetts spots cost twenty-five and meant a serious battle through the heavy traffic making its way up the Cape. So Richard finally called it quits and moved on to Nantucket.
    Willa and Ernie sold the wrought iron tables, threw out the planter tubs, and put back their garbage cans and Pal’s doghouse. But they left Richard’s restaurant untouched, except for the addition of a counter and four stools. Richard hadn’t taken his Josef Albers prints with him, so blocks of bright colors decorated the walls, except in one corner where Ernie had thumbtacked a curling photo of the 1967 American League champions, the Red Sox, a yellowed pennant that read YAZ —400 HOME RUNS —3000 HITS , and a handmade sign, big letters: YANKEES SUCK.
    The coffee shop was open from six to ten in the morning. Willa and Ernie thought of it as a kitchen where friends could feel free to stop by to eat—friends and any guests these friends might bring along was what Joe told me, but I believe he was the only one who ever brought a guest.
    Fitzy and I passed the doghouse and Pal, snoozing in the sun. Fitzy said, “Hey, mangeball,” and Pal lifted his head just long enough to bare his gums and growl.
    I said, “That wasn’t nice.”
    Fitzy said, “I’m not nice. They hate me in this place.”
    â€œJoe says they’re going to want to know what happened yesterday.”
    â€œSo tell them.”
    Joe was already there at our table, the regulars at their usual places. Billy and Mick were on their stools at the counter eating bacon and eggs. If when they’d finished breakfast they didn’t find customers waiting for them out on the pier by the Debbie , they’d go shoot pool, a dollar a point. There was a sign at the pier that read FISHING EXCURSIONS LEAVE AT 10 AM. ADULTS $25, KIDS $25. Billy and Mick were dependent on the same market that Richard had been, but they also attracted fishermen who stayed at the three big inns, which made their enterprise profitable. Joe sometimes played pool with them. He said they’d been exchanging the same money back and forth for years, taking turns bragging about skunking each other.
    Jim Lane’s kid was at a table surrounded by his paraphernalia. He was the boy I’d seen each day selling postcards at a card table in the harborside parking lot—postage included. Since not having a stamp was the main reason tourists didn’t buy postcards, he had a good thing going. Each night, he carted his stuff home so as not to interfere with the town ordinance requiring him to pay a kiosk fee for a permanent stand. This annoyed the