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closed it quietly and deliberately—before fleeing up to the widow’s walk to tell Biddy he was going to the market.
    The day was warm and unusually still. Split-rail fences and a thickety layer of brush hemmed in the road. The interior of the island was occupied mostly by scrublands called the Moors, low hills with sharp, rusty vegetation and bony, crooked trees, like a piece of the Serengeti delivered to the wrong address. On the ocean side, shingled houses were scattered among scrub pines, cranberry bogs, and marshes. They drove past the undulating, sand-trapped meadow belonging to the Pequod Golf Club, its ovoid greens marching off like footprints left by an elephant. Distant golfers bent and flexed, launching unseen balls into the blue air.
    “Heard anything about the Pequod?” Livia asked.
    “No, not yet,” Winn said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ll have to call up Jack Fenn and get the latest.”
    Livia let her head tip back until she was staring up at the Rover’s ceiling. “Would it be so bad not to join? You already belong to a thousand clubs. You hardly even go to half of them. I don’t see why belonging to the Pequod is so essential.”
    “It’s not essential . Nothing is essential . I think we’ll all enjoy the membership, that’s all.”
    “Can you leave the Fenns out of it at least?”
    “Unfortunately, no. Look, they’re not my favorites, either, but Fenn and I go back long before you and Teddy were even born. We have a relationship that has nothing to do with you.”
    “Not to mention Fee,” Livia said snidely, referring to Jack’s wife, Teddy’s mother, who was an ex-girlfriend of Winn’s.
    “Ancient history,” said Winn. As a consequence of its selectivity, hisworld was sometimes too small. “No need to bring it up. Nothing to do with the Pequod.”
    “No one besides you even golfs,” Livia said to the ceiling.
    “There’s a gym there, and a bar. They have nice events—dances, silent auctions, theme parties. You’ll like it.”
    She let her head roll in his direction. “I do love silent auctions.”
    “Don’t be sarcastic, Livia. It isn’t ladylike.”
    For three summers Winn had languished on a secrecy-shrouded wait list for membership in the Pequod. For three summers he had kept bitter evening vigils on the widow’s walk, staring out at what he could see of the course from the house: only a scrap of the tenth hole, but that bit of grass was the gateway to a verdant male haven and confessional. In the decades he had been coming to the island, he had always thought of membership as something obtainable but deliberately left for later. So it was to his bafflement that he had pulled all available strings and schmoozed all relevant parties, including the Fenns, and still he found himself relegated to guest status. He had an excellent track record with clubs. Though no club could equal the pleasures of his college club, the Ophidian—a brotherhood of such importance that he wrote one Christmas newsletter exclusively for its members and another for the remainder of the Van Meter family’s acquaintance—he had joined other clubs, in New York and in Boston, one in London, all places where he could drop in for dinner and feel welcome and sit in a leather chair and read newspapers hinged on long wooden sticks. He belonged to more specialized clubs, too, for the purposes of swimming or golf or racquet sports, and none had ever hesitated to accept him as a member. But Jack Fenn was on the Pequod’s membership committee and Fee Fenn was on the social committee, and, truth be told, Winn never knew where he stood with them, if bygones were bygones or not.
    To change the mood, he reached over and patted Livia’s bony knee. “So,” he said, playing jolly, “the big day!”
    “It’s not my big day.”
    “Don’t be sour. Your day will come.”
    She moved her leg irritably, and the flowers trembled. “I wouldn’tmind if everyone would stop telling me that. I’ll either get