a folding chair, in a seersucker suit and a pale yellow bow tie. He’d brought a thin folder.
Pearl sat on her own porch next door with a pair of binoculars, which she did not even pretend to hide.
At 3:15, the caterers arrived. Two young women in black aprons carrying trays of shrimp and little crab cakes. They looked at me sitting there, and at the suitcases, and at each other.
“Ma’am, are you… with the party?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said.
At 3:30, Laurelai
