Summer People Read Online Free Page A

hooking upward with pleasure.
    â€œOh, but how are you ?” Franny asked, grasping Ellen’s forearm affectionately before she took a seat on the couch. Franny’s round glasses reflected the light from a nearby lamp and she touched her helmetlike gray coiffure. Nathan asked for drink requests and led Carl into the dining room to let him choose his own wine. Meanwhile, Franny carried on about the exciting Alnombak centennial. Next year the hundredth anniversary of the tennis and golf club would be celebrated with an enormous party and the publication of a limited-edition, leather-bound photo album. They needed additional photographs from the 1920s—and as Franny talked more about it, Nathan slipped into the kitchen. The coffee-machine clock read 9:14 P.M. He exited out the back door to where, in the gathering darkness, he could see the luminous windows of the pastor’s two-story house.
    Nathan wanted to walk over and ask for Leah, but he wasn’t sure if leaving would mean shirking his responsibilities with Ellen. For the first time, he saw the dilemma that would plague him for much of the summer: Was he a caregiver, in which case he could soon walk back inside and suggest that perhaps it was time for Ellen to go to bed? Or was he just a chauffeur/cook, in which case he could just leave her talking with her friends? Neither job description seemed accurate, and as much as Nathan blamed himself for not nailing down his summer duties, he also blamed his father.
    When the older man had called from his office last week to ask if Nathan would be interested in escorting a client to Maine, Nathan’s instinct had been to tell him no. The call had come at seven thirty in the morning, for one thing. Nathan didn’t normally wake up until noon. He’d tried to explain how inconvenient it would be to leave his part-time job at the Cleveland library and sublet his room in the house he was sharing, but his father had not been persuaded. He’d said the job lasted eight weeks and paid eight thousand dollars, tax free. Or, as he’d later phrased it to Nathan,“Two months of doing nothing to earn half of what you make in a year.” Nathan had bristled at this condescension and almost refused; but over the next several days, after receiving another bill from the dentist for his emergency root canal, a Visa bill for the new timing belt on his Civic, and a note slipped under his door asking for the previous month’s rent and utilities, he’d begun to see the logic of his father’s argument.
    Now Nathan wasn’t so sure. Eight grand for eight weeks still seemed like a lot of cash, but he had already spent twelve hours tied to Ellen, and the day still wasn’t over. Wandering down the fragrant, freshly cut lawn, he stopped to stare at the blinking yacht lights reflecting off the dark waters of the bay. Voices and laughter wafted from the boat decks across the water, but Nathan was unable to make out what they were saying. A few minutes later, he turned back toward the house, and noticed Carl behind the porch railing.
    Nathan raised his hand and called hello as he ascended the porch stairs. Carl sipped from his wine and settled onto the swing. In the summer breeze, strands of hair rose and fell around his forehead, his unruly gray eyebrows looking like the bristles of an old toothbrush. “So what did you and Ellen do today?” Carl asked, his voice a low rumble.
    Nathan told him about attending St. Michael’s and explained how the rain had kept them housebound for the rest of the afternoon. Carl said that when the weather was better, he should take Ellen to the Point, a short, jutting plateau, not far from the golf course, which she apparently loved for its incredible view of the Atlantic. Then he asked, “Have you met many people up here yet?”
    â€œJust a couple people at church.”
    â€œI was here for three years before anyone would talk to me,” Carl