L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (3 page)

Leo and I strolled slowly back to the fallen elm, letting the sun and breeze dry us. Leo made a face. "Yuck, my sneakers are all sopping." 35 "You'll need them for the climb." I pulled my shirt over my head and spoke through the warm cotton. Leo was strapping on his watch. "Your grandfather-" He stopped, and started trying to shove his sandy feet into his wet sneakers. "I think I know him better than you do." "You'll get blisters. Go rinse your feet and your sneakers and put them on at the water's edge." I sounded bossy as all get-out, but I did not like, not one little bit, the idea that someone like Leo thought he knew my own grandfather better than I did. He followed my instructions. When he came back across the sand he said, "In the winters when things get too noisy at home, or I have a problem about something and Dad's too busy and I don't want to bother him"-for a moment the tears filled his eyes again, but this time they didn't overflow-"I bike across the Island to your grandfather's and we have tea together and talk. He's been a very civilizing influence on me. He's a wise man." "I know he is." I stopped myself from adding, 'He's my grandfather.' I don't know why I was feeling so ungracious toward Leo. Perhaps because our weeping together had been more intimate than I was ready to be. "I'm sorry he's sick," he said. "How'd you know?" It wasn't that we were keeping it a secret, as though we were ashamed of it or anything, but we weren't going around talking about it, either. I guess I think death and sex should be allowed privacy. "He told me." I wanted to ask, 'Why?' but I didn't. Leo answered anyhow. "It wasn't long before you came, and I asked him how long you were going to stay, and he 36 answered, Most of the summer. You usually don't stay more than a couple of weeks, so with my big mouth I kept on asking questions, and he told me." And then Leo did something which didn't fit the picture I had of him, even the Leo with whom I'd sobbed out rage and grief. He ran back to the water's edge and shook his fist up at the bland blue sky and the brilliant orb of the sun, too bright to look at, and swore, loudly and steadily. I'd thought, between the kids at school and a year in New York, that I knew all the words, but Leo came out with quite a few that were new to me. He swore with intensity and a strange kind of elegance, and then he dropped his arms and turned his back on the water and the sun and strolled over to me as though he hadn't done anything unusual. We walked without speaking to the foot of the bluff, with the path rising steeply ahead of us. "Where was your grandfather before he came to the Island, before he retired?" I looked at him questioningly. After all, he'd said he knew Grandfather better than I do. He looked down at his wet sneakers. "I never asked him much about himself, because I was so busy thinking about me." "Aren't we all, most of the time?" My mind nicked briefly to Sir Thomas Browne's words in the loft; surely Leo was no more replete with himself than I was with me, and surely we weren't that much different from anybody else. "About Grandfather-where didn't he go and what didn't he do is more like it. When Mother was my age, he was in Africa." "Being a missionary?" "Well--he and our grandmother were living with a very 37 small and ancient tribe, and learning their language and setting down their traditions and their wisdom and their history-which were beginning to get lost as the elders died." "That's not what most people would consider being a missionary," Leo said. "But then of course your grandfather's not most people. What else?" "Well, he had a big church in Boston and he was tremendously popular. His sermons got rave reviews in the paper, and our grandmother used to tease him about women swooning over him. And just when the church was overflowing he handed in his resignation, like a bomb, and he and Gram went to a tiny mission church in Alaska. He was sixty, but the only way for him to get to all his congregation was by seaplane or helicopter, so he got a pilot's license, so nobody would go without at least one visit from him every few months." I'd started climbing and stopped to catch my breath. My climbing muscles hadn't been that much used in New York, and the backs of my legs felt the pull. Leo lived on the far, flatter side of the island, and I could hear him puffing behind me. It had been, I thought, a far more interesting morning than I'd anticipated. I'd learned about the complexity of human beings during the year in New York, but maybe not as much as I'd believed. Leo was certainly much less of a slob than I'd thought. 2 �*� I lost track of time while we were eating lunch, and that may have been just as well, because I wouldn't have known how to get rid of Leo tactfully if I'd realized how late it was getting. Anyhow, he was still there when Zach- ary arrived in his shiny black station wagon, tooting at the front door. Because the stable is built on the bluff where it elbows toward the sea, you get a good view of the ocean from both the front and the back of the house, though the kitchen and the porch have the better view. Our grandmother wanted it that way when they were remodeling, because she said she spent most of her time in the kitchen, and if the porch was next to the kitchen it could be used as a dining room for maybe seven months a year. Not that she was a slave to the kitchen like some of the supposedly grandma types on TV commercials for lemonade (artificial) or cake mixes. She was a Boston Bluestocking and a cordon-bleu cook, black hat, and Grandfather used to say that if the church went out of business they could always open a restaurant. 39 Zachary stood at the front door. He wore jodhpurs and a fawn-colored turtleneck, and he carried a crop with a silver handle which he was switching against his thigh. "Want to come in for a minute?" I asked, not sure what to do about Leo. "Why not?" I led him in by the side door, pointing out the baby swallows. The three parents were swooping around anxiously, and Zachary seemed amused by the strange menage a trois. "Immoral little buggers, aren't they?" He grinned at me. Once indoors, he looked around, still flicking his crop, glancing into the stalls with all their books; sagging, comfortable chairs; the double stall that was Grandfather's office; and the one next to it, with a long map of the world on the outside wall, which let down to become a table for cold or rainy weather. There was plenty of both on the Island. "Intriguing," Zachary said. "It looks rather like-" "It is," I replied. "It was." "A stable?" "Yes." "A big one, then." "Yeah. It belonged to rich friends of my grandparents, the Woods, who have the big house about half a mile down the road." "They must have an imaginative architect." "My grandmother." "Seriously?" "She could do almost anything she put her hand to." "Will I meet her?" "No. She died a few years after Grandfather retired." 40 "Oh, I remember," Zachary said. "He's the minister." He sounded as though he was saying that Grandfather was involved in organized crime. No-as a matter of fact, Zach- ary probably had considerable respect for organized crime. Everybody was still sitting around the table. Zachary said a general hello, politely, and then looked pointedly at Leo. I introduced Zach first to Grandfather, since the meeting the day before hardly constituted an introduction, then to Leo. You couldn't imagine two people less alike than Zachary and Leo. Zachary was like a negative of Leo, though you couldn't possibly say that Leo was a positive of Zachary. Where Leo's straw-colored hair was bleached by the Island sun and salt, Zachary's was black as midnight. Leo's skin was ruddy-brown and freckled from wind and weather; Zachary's, winter pale. Leo's eyes were hazel and wide apart and guileless; Zachary's were steel-grey, not sea-grey like Adam's but metallic. Well-Adam's eyes were grey,and Zachary's were gray,the way his last name is spelled. And the combination of dark and pale-Zachary was just as gorgeous as I had remembered him during those long months in New York when I never heard from him. Leo said, "I'd better be getting on home. Jacky and I go back to work tomorrow. This is our busiest season." In answer to Zachary's look I said, "Leo and his brother, Jacky, run charters to the mainland and the other islands, if someone doesn't want to wait for the ferry. They also take people deep-sea fishing." Leo bowed slightly. "At your service." "I may take you up on that. Are you expensive?" Zachary asked. , 41 "More than the ferry. We charge the going rate for charters. Monday's our day off. See you, Vicky?" "Sure," I replied, thinking at him, -Go, Leo, go, before you find out who Zachary is, if he isthe rich kid whose boat capsized; and if he is, before he finds out who you are. He went. "How about our ride, Vicky-O?" Zachary asked. I looked at his jodhpurs. "I don't have any riding clothes." "Jeans are fine. Sandals aren't so good. Got anything else?" "Sneakers." Zachary glanced down at his beautiful boots. "Better than sandals." "I'll go change." And I went off to the loft, leaving Zachary sitting out on the porch, in Leo's chair, accepting a glass of iced tea. When I returned I heard Mother saying, "Zachary, I'm so sorry." Sorry about what? That Zachary was in the capsized boat? That he was the one the Commander rescued? If so, better to have it out in the open. But it wasn't that. It was Zachary's mother. She was dead, killed in an automobile accident in California, only a few miles from home. "It was her own fault," Zachary was explaining. "She never should have been allowed to drive. She'd been off, buying her spring wardrobe. Pop sent it all back, several thou'worth." He spoke in an even voice. I wondered if he grieved for her, if her death was what 42 had caused the pain in his eyes the day before, and I wasn't sure. If someone had asked me yesterday morning who I knew best, Zachary or Leo, I'd have answered without thinking: Zachary. If I stopped to think, I knew it was the other way around; and certainly I knew Leo better after this morning than I ever had before. We'd met Zachary a year ago, during the camping trip we took after we'd rented the house in Thornhill and before moving to the apartment in New York. Zachary and his parents had pulled up to the campsite next to ours in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, and we watched them set up camp in amazement and amusement. The black station wagon was last year's version of this year's, and I couldn't have told them apart, except that they were both obviously bran-span new. And Zachary had very quickly made it clear that the Grays' things were always new, and whatever was latest. They had every gadget we'd ever heard of, and several we hadn't. Mr. Gray even unrolled a linoleum rug to cover the canvas floor of the tent, and tied an enormous piece of plastic over the top. He had an aura of money; he positively reeked of it. The Woods probably have as much money as the Grays, but they don't reek. Mrs. Gray in this day and age wore corsets-or is it a corset? Whatever, her pouter-pigeon figure was definitely not her own. She looked as though she'd be lots more at home sitting at a bridge table than watching her husband cook steaks over a charcoal fire on a grill that belonged on a patio rather than in a state campground. And now she was dead. More death. And Zachary didn't look or seem that different. Would the world close around the space that had been Commander Rodney as it ap- 43 peared to have closed around Mrs. Gray, leaving no mark? Then I heard Zachary saying, "Do you know anything about the science of cryonics?" He reached for the pitcher to pour himself some more iced tea, but there wasn't much left. "I hadn't exactly thought of it as a science." There was a chilly edge to my father's voice. Zachary seemed to be having his usual effect on my family. Last summer, when he'd more or less followed us from campground to campground, I'd been flattered and fascinated. I was flattered that Zachary found me worth pursuing across the country, and fascinated by his sophistication. Even now, after a year in New York, I still felt gauche and nai've. "Oh, come, sir," Zachary was saying to my father. "Quite a few people in the A.M.A. are taking it seriously." "What's cryonics?" Rob asked. Whatever it was, I could see that Daddy didn't think much of it. Zachary was explaining, "We belong to a group in California called the Immortalists. We believe that it isn't necessary for people to die as early as they do, and when we understand more about controlling DNA and RNA it will be possible for people to live for several hundred years without aging--and that time is not so far in the future as you might think." We were all silent, listening to him. Mother glanced at Daddy, and then took the silver pitcher and headed for the kitchen for more iced tea. Zachary went on, "Cryonics is the science of freezing a body immediately after death, deep-freezing, so that later on-in five years, or five hundred-when scientists know more about the immortality factor, it will be possible for 44 these people of the future to revive the deep-frozen bodies, to resurrect them." Grandfather spoke with a small smile, "I think I prefer another kind of resurrection." Zachary's lips moved in a scornful smile. "Of course, the problem at the moment is cost. Not many people can afford it. We feel lucky that we can." "You did-you did that to your mother?" Rob sounded horrified. I was, too, come to that. I'd known, vaguely, that this kind of thing was being done in California, but not by or to anybody I knew. I looked at Grandfather. He gave me his special grandfather-granddaughter smile. "Resurrection has always been costly, though not in terms of money. It took only thirty pieces of silver." "Oh, that," Zachary said, courteously enough. "We think this is more realistic, sir. While only the rich can afford it now, ultimately it should be available to everybody." Into my mind's eye flashed an image of the afternoon before, when we were standing by a dark hole in the ground, waiting for Commander Rodney's body to be lowered into it. Somehow that struck me as being more realistic than being deep-frozen. Being deep-frozen went along with plastic grass and plastic earth and trying to pretend that death hadn't really happened. "Of course," Zachary said, "nowadays a lot of people get cremated, basically because of lack of space in cemeteries." Rob was looking at him in fascinated horror. "You mean your scientists couldn't do anything with ashes?" He was sitting next to Grandfather and he reached out to hold his hand. Now Rob was bathed in Grandfather's luminous smile. 45 "I'm not depending on superscientists, Rob. When one tries to avoid death, it's impossible to affirm life." I thought of Mrs. Gray deep-frozen somewhere in California, and Commander Rodney
buried on the Island, covered with good Island soil. And Grandfather-perhaps he and Mother and Daddy had discussed what was going to happen to him, to his body, when he died. But they hadn't talked about it around us. Maybe it wasn't time. Not yet. Please. Not for a while yet. Rob was asking Grandfather anxiously, "It doesn't really matter, does it? whether you're frozen or buried or cremated or what, God can manage, can't he?" "I stake my life on that." Grandfather's smile was only in his eyes, but it was there, warm and confident as though he had laughed out loud. I'd almost forgotten Mr. Rochester. He was lying in a corner of the porch in the sun; now that he's elderly he likes to let his old joints warm up in the sunlight. He got to his feet slowly, but still supplely, stepped over Ned, and crossed to Rob, sitting protectively beside him, and stared at Zachary with a look so suspicious it almost made me laugh; a laugh right then would have been a good thing. Ned rose, stretched, and swished into the kitchen, tail switching. Nobody laughed. I said, "If we're going riding, we'd better go." Mother came back with the iced tea. Grandfather pushed his glass toward her and she filled it. Daddy asked, "Where are you going to get horses, Zachary? Vicky's not an experienced rider." "The other side of the Island, sir, at Second Bay Stables." Daddy nodded. We knew, slightly, the woman who ran 46 Second Bay Stables, the way we know most of the Islanders and the regular summer people. Zachary promised, "I'll see that Vicky has a gentle horse. We're just going to meander along the bridle paths, nothing dangerous." "And, Vicky-" Mother called after us. "Don't be late." I got the message. She didn't finish "-John's bringing a friend home for dinner," because she didn't want me to ask Zachary, too. Mother can manage half a dozen unexpected people for dinner without batting an eyelash. It wasn't that; it was Zachary. John's friend was welcome. Mine wasn't. Which burned me. Nevertheless, at the moment I didn't think I wanted Zachary to come for dinner, either, with his talk about the science of cryonics and deepfreezing his mother. I don't know why that nauseated me so. It wasn't because it was science-fictiony; most science fiction comes true, somehow or other, sooner or later. So it wasn't that it wasn't possible; it was that, as far as I was concerned, it was sick. "We won't be late," I promised not very graciously, and led Zachary around to the car the back way. He revved up the engine and started down the zigzaggy road, driving too fast. "Hey, I don't have a death wish," I protested. "Slow down." He lifted his foot a millimeter off the gas pedal. I swallowed and asked, "When did you get to the Island?" "On the ferry," he answered. But that wasn't what I'd asked him. I started to repeat the question, when,not how,and lost courage. I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer. Instead I asked, "How did you know we were on the Island?" "Detective work." Gradually his foot was pressing down 47 on the gas pedal. "You're why I came, Vicky-O. There's certainly nothing else here. No golf club, no decent hotel, no night life." "That's what we like about it. There isa speed limit, though." "Always law-abiding, aren't you?" "If the law's going to protect me from involuntary suicide or murder, yes." He slowed down to about fifty, which is fast for rough roads with no shoulders and sharp curves. "You still didn't tell me how you found out we were on the Island." "I tried to get hold of you in New York, and got the address from your old man's hospital." I was silent. He'd had a whole year to get in touch with me in New York. Why had he waited until now? "I left Pop on the mainland, where he can play golf all day and drink all night." I suddenly felt terribly sorry for Zachary's father, who'd spent his life making money, and all the money could do when his wife died was put her in deep-freeze. "Is he all right alone?" "That's not your problem, Vicky." He had every right to put me down for asking. I shifted mental gears. "What did you do last year?" "Graduated from high school-at last. Got bumped from Choate at Halloween, then went to a punk sweat school for kids who've been bounced out of all the decent places. It was so zuggy I thought I might as well do the work and get it over with if I want to be a lawyer before I'm seventy. If I'm going to live the way I want to, I've got to know law, instead of dishing out all that money to lawyers the way Pop does." 48 "Where're you going to college?" I was pushing my foot down on an imaginary brake, and I was glad we were nearly to Second Bay. "I can drive,Vicky. U.C.L.A., I suppose. It's close to home." Why did Zachary, of all people, want to stay close to home? We drove in silence the last few minutes as we pulled up to the stable. I've ridden a little, enough so that I can post and not fall off if the horse starts to canter. But that's about it. A matronly looking dapple-grey named Daphne, with definite middle-age spread, was chosen for me. I fed her a piece of apple and she nuzzled my palm so gently that I felt pretty relaxed about riding her. Zachary was on a large bay. He'd asked for a spirited chestnut who was prancing and flinging his head about, but the owner of the stable came up and said it was already taken. I had a feeling she didn't want Zachary riding one of her best and fastest horses. She wore worn riding pants and a plaid shirt and had a determined, wind-burned face, and she wasn't going to take any nonsense. We started off side by side, on a wide, woodsy bridle path. The trees were their fresh, early-summer green, without the dusty look they get later on. I sniffed the lovely Island smell of green growing things and silver salty breeze. Neither of us spoke, and as the silence stretched out-and it was not a peaceful or companionable silence- I knew that I could not be the one to break it. Zachary hadn't answered my question, and until I knew the answer, nothing could work between us. Finally he spoke. He turned toward me and his face was white and his eyes dark, and I hadn't noticed before how 49 bruised-looking the shadows under them were. The reflection of the leaves gave a greenish pallor to his skin. "I'm not sure why I needed to see you, Vicky. I'm not good tor you." I looked at him and waited. "I tried to kill myself." Again the silence stretched out like an old rubber band. "Why?" I asked. "I'm bored with life." "Bored?" "Bored. So bored it hurts like a toothache." "Why?" "It's a lousy world." "Would being dead be less lousy?" "Sure. It would be nothing, nice quiet nada, nada, nada." "So how come you're still here?" "Some boy scout Coast Guard foiled me by rescuing me." His words were like lead in the pit of my stomach. "Commander Rodney." "That's the name. They took me to the hospital on the mainland. I'd swallowed a lot of water before he interfered." Interfered. I wanted to scream with outrage. "I know he meant well, Vicky. And I didn't know he'd died until yesterday evening." "Didn't know-" "In the hospital I was taken right to ICU and they didn't think I'd live. My lungs were a mess and my heart had been pretty badly strained. At first nobody had time to 50 say anything, they were so busy plugging me into various life-support systems. And I certainly wasn't in any condition to ask questions." He paused, looking at me, but I was staring straight ahead, avoiding his gaze. After a bit he continued. "Then, when I came round in intensive care, mighty displeased to be there, Pop asked that I not be told because he thought it might make me have a relapse-my heart was still fibrillating." "Would it have made you relapse?" "I doubt it, though that would have been a consummation devoutly to be wished. And then Pop would have put me in deep-freeze and I could wait quietly to be thawed out in a more enlightened age." Our horses pushed slowly through the shifting green shadows. A vine brushed across my face and tickled my nose. "Commander Rodney wasn't put into deep-freeze. He was buried. Yesterday. In the ground." "Stop trying to make me feel guilty, Vicky. I'm not hung up on moralism like you Austins. I didn't know he'd died till after I saw you yesterday and something made me ask a few questions." Our horses plodded along placidly. Small green branches brushed against their flanks, scratched my legs through my jeans. The sun filtered sleepily through the leaves. I felt that my mind had turned to dust, to the fallen leaves bruised under the horses' hoofs. "Leo," I said. "The one you met this afternoon at Grandfather's. That's his oldest son." "So what?" Zachary urged his horse into a trot and Daphne followed. "Wait a minute. There's something I don't understand. You came to the Island looking for me, and then instead of 51 coming to me you rented a boat and set out to drown yourself." "There're a lot of things you don't understand." Zach- ary smoldered his gaze at me. "I came looking for you, and then when I found out where you were, suddenly it didn't seem worth it. It wasn't you. It was everything and nothing. Life. Ma's death. Talking to anybody. Not worth it." "I'm sorry," I said, wanting to reach out my hand to touch him. "I'm sorry about your mother." He shrugged. "I miss her in a funny sort of way, but not so's you'd notice it. She gave me anything I wanted, but so does Pop. Nothing's changed that much." Did he really mean that? "If you've been so sick, should you be horseback riding?" He glanced at me obliquely. "Why do you suppose we're just ambling along the bridle paths?" "Up to this minute I thought it's because I'm not an experienced rider." He reached across and patted my hand. "That's part of it. But also I'm taking care of myself, Vicky-O. I don't want to be back in that stinking hospital again. Give me credit for some sense." "Capsizing a sailboat wasn't very sensible." "Shut up! I didn't ask to be rescued, damn him!" He dug his heels into his horse's flanks and they shot off down the path and disappeared around a curve. My placid dapple-grey broke into a trot and then a gentle rocking canter. I didn't try to push her. I didn't want to catch up with Zachary. He'd always had a death wish. But I'd thought, when we'd said goodbye a year ago, that he was pretty well over it and ready to get on with the business of living. Now it 52 seemed he was just the same as when we first met. Galloping his horse was proof of that. Commander Rodney had been committed to life. And he was dead. The woods thinned. The trees became smaller and scrubbier. Then we moved through some low bushes and the bridle path ended on the beach, the great, gently curving oval of Second Bay. Zachary's horse had stopped its wild gallop and was standing at the water's edge, flanks heaving. I pulled gently on the reins and Daphne slowed to a walk. Zachary had accused us of moralism. I'm not positive what moralism is, but I'm sure we're not hung up on it. I think it means that you're certain you know what is right and what is wrong, that you're morally omnipotent. Grandfather, if no one else, taught me long ago what a snare and a delusion thinking you know all the answers to everything can be. Half the time I don't know what's right and what's wrong, and I learned last year that my parents don't, either. Was Daddy right to pull up all our roots and take us to New York, for instance? I don't know, and I don't think he knows, either. We had a pretty rough time, but on the other hand we learned a lot of things we'd never have learned in Thornhill. And are Daddy and Mother right in leaving New York and going back to Thornhill? The big New York hospital offered Daddy a grant for another year. Was he right to turn it down? Maybe time will tell, but right now we certainly don't know. No, I don't think we're hung up on moralism, not nearly as hung up as Zachary on his death wish and cry- 53 onics and outsmarting the world. And yet when he cried out, "Damn him!" I knew it was not Commander Rodney he was damning but himself. �*� I think I was even sorrier for Zachary than I was for Leo, and that was peculiar indeed. In a strange way Zachary and Leo were bonded together by Commander Rodney's death, and I wondered what Leo would feel or do when he found out who Zachary was. I wasn't predicting. If you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have thought Zachary was quite likely to stand at the ocean's edge and curse the universe, not Leo. But at this moment Zachary was simply sitting slumped on the big bay. Daphne and I drew up alongside them, facing the ocean and the long stretch of water out into eternity. Still hunched over, Zachary turned toward me. "This Leo." "Yes-" "When you introduced us, he didn't react or anything. He didn't seem to know who I am." I thought for a moment about Mrs. Rodney and how, if she knew the name of the kid in the capsized boat, she'd quite likely have kept it to herself. "I guess he didn't." What was important to Mrs. Rodney was that her husband was dead; that was what mattered, not Zachary. "Is he going to come between us?" Zachary asked. "What's to come between?" "Come on, Vicky-O. You know you and I have something very special going." "Why did it take you a year to bother to get in touch with me, then?" "I told you. I spent last year at this prison of a cram 54 school so I could go to college next year. I put everything else out of my life." "I'm not sure I want to pick up where we left off." I kept my voice level and steady. "I've changed a lot since last summer." "Have you?" He straightened up and smiled at me, slowly, intimately. "Seem the same lovely Vicky-O to me." I nudged Daphne's flanks and she started ambling along the beach. Zachary followed. "I've done a lot of growing up. I'm not just the hick kid from Thornhill any more. I've had nearly a year in New York." "Fancy that." His tone was lightly mocking. "And after this summer?" "Back to Thornhill." "Your old man couldn't make it in New York?" I didn't even bristle. I just said calmly, "It's not a question of making it or not making it. He wanted a year of doing research, but he's a people person and he wants to get back to being a people doctor." "Okay. Gotcha." He smiled at me and this time it was a real smile. "But this summer you're going to spend on this one-horse island?" "I see two horses right now," "You know what I mean." "Yes. We're going to spend the summer here." I didn't explain. I'm pretty confused on the subject of death myself, but Zachary, I was sure, was even more confused. "I haven't ridden in a while, Zach, and I want to be able to sit down tomorrow. Let's go back." "Wait." When Zachary wanted to, he could move like greased lightning. His hand flashed out and took hold of Daphne's bridle. "What are you going to do about Leo?" 55 "Do? Nothing." "Do you see a lot of him?" "The Island's pretty small. We all bump into each other." "That's not what I'm talking about." I let Daphne shuffle along in the soft sand. Leo