The View from Castle Rock

had been fiddly and exasperating work. Stuffing various mixtures into mushroom caps and sticking one tiny slice of something on top of a tiny slice of something else on top of a precise fragment of toast or bread. All the shapes had to be perfect-perfect triangles, perfect rounds and squares, perfect diamonds.
    Mrs. Hammond came into the kitchen several times and admired what we were doing.
    “How marvellous everything looks,” she said. “You notice I’m not offering to help. I’m a perfect mutt at this kind of thing.”

    I liked the way she said that.
I
’
m a perfect mutt.
I admired her husky voice, its weary good-humored tone, and the way she seemed to suggest that tiny geometrical bits of food were not so necessary, might even be a trifle silly. I wished I could be her, in a sleek black bathing suit with a tan like dark toast, shoulder-length smooth dark hair, orchid-colored lipstick.
    Not that she looked happy. But her air of sullenness and complaint seemed glamorous to me, her hints of cloudy drama enviable. She and her husband were an altogether different type of rich people from Mr. and Mrs. Montjoy. They were more like the people I had read about in magazine stories and in books like
The Hucksters
-people who drank a lot and had love affairs and went to psychiatrists.
    Her name was Carol and her husband’s name was Ivan. I thought of them already by their first names-something I had never been tempted to do with the Montjoys.
    Mrs. Montjoy had asked me to put on a dress, so I wore the pink and white striped cotton, with the smudged material at its waist tucked under the elasticized belt. Nearly everybody else was in shorts and bathing suits. I passed among them, offering food. I was not sure how to do this. Sometimes people were laughing or talking with such vigor that they didn’t notice me, and I was afraid that their gestures would send the food bits flying. So I said, “Excuse me-would you like one of these?” in a raised voice that sounded very determined or even reproving. Then they looked at me with startled amusement, and I had the feeling that my interruption had become another joke.
    “Enough passing for now,” said Mrs. Montjoy. She gathered up some glasses and told me to wash them. “People never keep track of their own,” she said. “It’s easier just to wash them and bring in clean ones. And it’s time to get the meatballs out of the fridge and heat them up. Could you do that? Watch the oven-it won’t take long.”
    While I was busy in the kitchen I heard Mrs. Hammond calling, “Ivan! Ivan!” She was roaming through the back rooms of the house. But Mr. Hammond had come in through the kitchen door that led to the woods. He stood there and did not answer her. He came over to the counter and poured gin into his glass.
    “Oh, Ivan, there you are,” said Mrs. Hammond, coming in from the living room,
    “Here I am,” said Mr. Hammond.
    “Me, too,” she said. She shoved her glass along the counter.
    He didn’t pick it up. He pushed the gin towards her and spoke to me. “Are you having fun, Minnie?”
    Mrs. Hammond gave a yelp of laughter. “Minnie? Where did you get the idea her name was Minnie?”
    “Minnie,” said Mr. Hammond. Ivan. He spoke in an artificial, dreamy voice. “Are you having fun, Minnie?”
    “Oh yes,” I said, in a voice that I meant to make as artificial as his. I was busy lifting the tiny Swedish meatballs from the oven and I wanted the Hammonds out of my way in case I dropped some. They would think that a big joke and probably report on me to Mrs. Montjoy, who would make me throw the dropped meatballs out and be annoyed at the waste. If I was alone when it happened I could just scoop them up off the floor.
    Mr. Hammond said, “Good.”
    “I swam around the point,” Mrs. Hammond said. “I’m working up to swimming around the entire island.”
    “Congratulations,” Mr. Hammond said, in the same way that he had said “Good.”

    I wished that I hadn’t sounded so chirpy and silly. I wished that I had matched his deeply skeptical and sophisticated tone.
    “Well then,” said Mrs. Hammond. Carol. “I’ll leave you to it.
    I had begun to spear the meatballs with toothpicks and arrange them on a platter. Ivan said, “Care for some help?” and tried to do the same, but his toothpicks missed and sent meatballs skittering onto the counter.
    “Well,” he said, but he seemed to lose track of his thoughts, so he turned away and took another