Chapter 1

The first thing you should know about me is that I'm a nosy bitch. That's actually how I make my living; I'm a stringer for a news service. Every few weeks I'm off chasing dirt on a crooked politician, a wacko on a murder spree, some new fad, or a celebrity with a new boob-job. I don't have enough clout to get much in the way of foreign correspondent or war coverage gigs, but every month, or so, I get to see Gail Friedman on the byline in some of the best papers in the country. Sometimes it's an important story that needs to be told, mostly not, just a piece of fluff my editor wants. But I take pains to do my job well, even the fluff pieces. I'm a professional nosy bitch, and that has made all the difference.

After eight years of this, I found myself with more Frequent Flier miles than any normal human being could possibly use. I could fly free to anyplace you've ever heard of and most places you haven't. I also found myself with nowhere I wanted to go, nothing I wanted to do, and no one I wanted to do it with. My life had progressed with steady, and now that I think back on it, dreary predictability. Hard work and a bit of talent (remember the nosy bitch part?) had gradually improved my professional standing. Living two or three weeks out of four on the road had also, predictably, destroyed my marriage. He was also in the news business, so I'd naively thought it was perfect. Nope. Not even close.

I decided to celebrate my divorce by taking stock. I took a sabbatical from late spring until the fall. My best friend from college, Suzzy (pronounced "suh-zee," she just hated it when anyone called her "soo-zee"), offered to lend me her house on Nantucket. Suzzy was always the smart one. When we roomed together at Columbia I dated eccentric poets, intense musicians, and inspired bohemian artists. She picked up the nerdy scientists, business majors, and medical students. I had wild, animal sex on rooftops and in Central Park. Suzzy patiently showed her boyfriends where her clitoris was and taught them how to please her. Twelve years later, I had a byline and an apartment in Washington full of dead plants. Suzzy had two children, a house in Westchester, a house in The Hamptons, and a small, but cozy, cottage on Nantucket. She had her law practice and the devoted ophthalmologist she married. Looking back, I can see that the moral of this particular fairy tale seems pretty obvious.

So I accepted Suzzy's offer and moved to Nantucket for an extended vacation. I had no real plan other than to think, relax, and walk the beaches. The reason Nantucket is a charming, unspoiled, expensive place to relax is that it's an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Cape is very nice, but in summertime the mass of tourists that swarm the beaches is overwhelming. The islands in the Nantucket Sound, Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, were quiet, lovely, and picturesque primarily because you had to either take a ferry or fly to get there. It was impractical for crowds from the mainland to swarm the islands.

I had almost half a year to recapture my composure and find enjoyment in life again. Who knows, perhaps I had a novel writhing around inside me? It could happen. There are lots of popular authors who are more stupid and less talented than me. I should know -- I've interviewed them. Maybe it would be a sly, witty piece lampooning a guy an awful lot like my ex-husband. That would be fun to write.

I had everything I needed to completely relax and contemplate my life and direction. I had no alarm clock. I would wake when my body woke me and walk the beaches in solitude. Nantucket is one of those increasingly rare places where you could actually find solitude on a beach. One of the tricks to Nantucket living is knowing which beach to choose. It's a small island, about fifteen miles wide. The island perimeter consists almost completely of beaches. To spend a pleasant day lounging on the beach, all you need to know is the wind direction. A strong wind in the wrong direction will drive sand into your face, insuring an annoying, rather than relaxing experience. Each morning, the tourists on Nantucket would gauge the wind and pick an appropriate beach on the lee side of the island.

All I had to do to assure my solitude was to pick the wrong beach. Equipped with a good pair of sunglasses, I could walk the beaches in relative isolation. Suzzy's cottage was on the beach front, which meant that a walk along a path through a dune led me to the beach. Most of the beaches surrounding Nantucket had a few sand dunes on the edge of the beach. Standing on the beach, the dunes tended to hide the houses and other man-made hallmarks of civilization. Don't think Laurence of Arabia dunes. These are pleasant, gentle hills sparsely covered with sea-grass. It's the grass that keeps them from blowing away in the steady wind. There were long stretches of beach where you could walk without seeing any sign of anything man-made.

I spent the first couple of weeks in as complete isolation as possible. I ate when I was hungry, slept when I was sleepy, rose when my body woke me, and roamed the beaches listening to the stories the roar of the waves told. My waking and sleeping cycles wandered the clock. I found one of my favorite times was to wander during twilight and into the evening. The night skies on the beach were stunning. The stars spread out like another rocky shore above me. It was a study in scale: the grains of sand beneath me, the small crabs that hunted the remains of even smaller lives, the infinite sea to my left, and the sky above me so vast that even the infinite sea was insignificant.

The beach, sea, and stars were so pristine that it was easy to destroy my perfect peace. I had a neighbor. Actually, I had neighbors on both sides and more inland. They almost never bothered me. They followed the common wisdom and visited the popular beaches during the day or shopped in town. We lived on opposite poles — all of them except my neighbor to the right. My total harmony with the waves and sky would shatter when this lumbering oaf would walk into view and nod a wordless hello and trudge past. His Border collie would rush to greet me, circle me a few times, then chase off after her owner.

I resolved to avoid the man; however, this appeared to be impossible. His schedule was so irregular and unpredictable that I would frequently encounter him on my solitary walks. I worried, at first, that he might be following me. I found the pepper spray that I carried when I walked alone in the city and started carrying it when I left the cottage. I spent most of a week hardly leaving the house. I watched the man's cottage and logged when he left and returned. Then I would take brief walks to see if my venturing out altered his patterns at all. Nope. He and his dog seemed to go out on pretty much the same schedule (or actually lack of schedule) as before. Apparently my paranoia had no effect upon canine bowel movements.

I learned several things. Either the man was not following me, or he was doing it so cleverly that I couldn't catch him. I was also reminded that not only am I a nosy bitch, but I'm a methodical, paranoid nosy bitch. I suppose it's a good trait for my profession.

I returned to my long walks at random hours. I can't say that it helped much, but I did get very muscular calves from so much hiking in the sand.

It was a cloudless, moonless night without any of the haze that sometimes obscures the sky. The weather was unusually warm for May. It was warm enough for me to wear shorts, but I wore a heavy sweatshirt since it was still chilly. The view of the stars was more spectacular than any I could remember seeing. The stellar mist from the Milky Way could be clearly seen and the sky was littered with stars that were much more vibrant than the dim world around me. I listened to the surf and walked with my attention split between the stars and the surf. I was startled when a wet nose rubbed just below the bottom of my shorts.

I took a dog treat from my pocket and gave it to the shameless beggar. While I still considered her owner the bane of my existence, I had grown fond of the dog and had taken to putting a treat in my pocket when I left to go walking.

"I know you're not out alone, so where's your buddy?" I asked the dog. Like the loyal creature she was, she refused to answer.

I walked a bit farther and came upon him. He was sitting on a blanket and staring up at the sky. For some reason, I felt less hostile toward him than usual. Maybe I took pity on him; after all, he probably had no idea that his blundering existence annoyed me to distraction.

"It's so huge," I said, obviously referring to the stars that he was lost in. "It makes me feel so small."

A brief silence spread between us like the vast distance to the starts, and then he spoke for the first time.

"I used to think of it as distance and size, also," he said.

"So what do you think of now?"

"Time."

"Time?" I asked, not seeing the connection.

"Time," he repeated. "See that dull red one over there?" He pointed to the lower part of the sky to our left. I saw a star that was kind of reddish, so I nodded. There was no way he saw me nod because his eyes never left the heavens. "That's Mars. The light we see took about three and a half minutes to bounce from Mars to here. See the bright white one over there?" I wasn't making the same mistake twice. I saw it, but didn't assume it was a star. "That's Saturn. The light took about two hours to get here. Can you find Polaris, the North Star?"

That time, he actually looked at me. I couldn't see his face for most of this odd dissertation. I'd assumed he'd have a look of feverish intensity, or maybe a cold, knowing stare. He actually looked rather sad. I didn't know where any star was, except to point up. I shook my head, no.