Chapter 4: The Club Bar

I knelt on the curb and took my brother's chin in my hand.

His lip was split, and he had a scrape along his jaw.

"Who hit you?"

"Nobody hit me," Teddy said thickly. "They shoved me down the steps. It's a very different legal category."

"Teddy."

"I'm okay, Ains. I tripped."

He tried to grin, and it hurt him, and he stopped.

Above us, the boy with the torn card dropped the two halves on the pavement by my knee.

"Sorry, Miss Lockridge," he said. "Club rules. Members in arrears can't sign in guests, and your brother's three months behind."

"Is that right?"

"Everyone knows your accounts are frozen."

"Everyone knows," I repeated.

The other two laughed.

I had known all three of them since we were children.

I had gone to the one in the middle's twelfth birthday, in this very club, where his father had cried over a toast.

I stood up.

"Teddy, can you walk?"

"I can walk, I can dance, I can sing the national anthem."

"Then walk with me."

I took my brother's arm, stepped over the torn card, and climbed the steps of the Greenwich Yacht Club toward the three of them.

They parted.

I think they were too surprised to do anything else.

Inside, the Monday lunch crowd filled the long dining room, fifty or sixty members at white tablecloths with the harbor behind them.

The hostess opened her mouth to speak, and I walked right past her to the bar.

The club manager was there, polishing a glass.

"Good afternoon," I said, loudly enough for the nearest tables. "I understand my brother's account is three months in arrears."

The manager put the glass down.

"Miss Lockridge, I think perhaps we should speak privately."

"No, thank you. I'd like the figure said out loud."

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