“Oh, man. That is great.” He was actually beaming. At least for a second. Then he said, “When, do you think?”

“When . . .”

“. . . can we get the replacement?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but before I could, he went on.

“Today? This morning?”

“Um,” I said slowly, “I guess it’s really just a matter of going out and finding one that meets her specifications.”

“But we could do that now, right?”

I just looked at him. “You are pushy, you know that?”

“Well, that depends on your definition of pushy,” he replied, smiling. “Personally, I like to call myself driven. It’s different.”

I made a face, showing I wasn’t so sure about this. “Well, Mr. Driven. Big Club opened at nine.”

“Perfect. Just give me five seconds.”

And with that, he was gone, jogging across the room and disappearing up the stairs. I wondered what time Ivy roused herself, if it was even possible to have the perfect toaster oven waiting for her when she did. Apparently, I was going to find out.

A few minutes later, Theo was easing the front door of Sand Dollars shut so slowly and gently, you would have thought there was a bomb attached to the knob. “Really?” I said. “She’s that light a sleeper?”

“Apparently, I slam doors,” he explained.

I watched him as he turned the lock, also with the utmost care and concentration. “Do you like your job, Theo?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “Why?”

I shrugged, starting down the front steps. “I don’t know. It just seems . . . really demeaning.”

“Yes, but,” he said, “all work has demeaning moments. Otherwise it would be called play.”

“That sounds like a quote.”

“I may have complained about certain tasks at various times.” He cleared his throat. “There was a time when both her cats had simultaneous diarrhea. Not exactly what I had in mind when I applied.”

“What was that, though?”

“Diarrhea?”

I made a face, pulling open my driver’s side door. “Why did you want this job in the first place?”

“The experience,” he replied. Not a moment of hesitation, not even a breath. “I want to be a filmmaker, and I get to spend all day with an award-winning one.”

“Cleaning up her cat shit,” I added.

“One very bad week, yes,” he said. “But I’ve also watched her shoot, and edit raw footage. I’ve been there when she’s taken meetings, begged for funding, somehow drawn out reluctant subjects to reveal things they never planned to. And now she’s even letting me shoot b-roll, which is awesome.”

“If you say so,” I said, cranking the engine.

“Do I plan to include litter box fumigator and purveyor of toaster ovens on my résumé?” he said. “No. But you take the bad to get to the great. That’s just how it works. Right?”

“Well,” I said, “if that’s true, I guess I’m going to have a freaking awesome day tomorrow.”

This was out before I even realized it, and I instantly wondered what on earth compelled me to share it. Too late now, as Theo was looking over at me. “Not that it’s any of my business, but you did seem kind of upset, earlier. You okay?”

“Fine,” I said. “Nothing a trip to Big Club can’t fix.”

I’d meant this as a joke, but as we headed over the bridge in the tail-end of morning traffic, I actually did feel a sense of relief. Like I was leaving the morning, Luke, and everything else behind. In Colby, the roads were narrow, everything small and close together. But where the Big Club was, in McCorkle, things were more spread out, and it felt nice to just get lost a little within them.

“Wow,” Theo said, as I pulled into a space. “Look at the size of that shopping cart. It’s epic!”

“Everything is huge here,” I told him. “It’s a bulk store.”

“Still, that’s insane,” he said, still gawking at the cart, parked sideways in the return next to us. “It’s bigger than my apartment.”

I got out, then went to retrieve it, easing it out backwards. It had a loose wheel, of course. I’d yet to ever have one that didn’t. That, too, was part of the Big Club experience. “Isn’t everything in New York huge, though? Buildings, attitudes, shopping carts . . .”

“Common misconception,” he replied, falling in beside me as I rattled towards the entrance. “The truth is, with so many people packed into such a small island, things have to be compact. It’s, like, the ultimate dichotomy. Such largesse and tininess, all at once.”

“Largesse? Who’s studying for their SATs now?”

He made a face at me, and I laughed.

“Anyway, here everything’s small. Except Big Club.”

“Apparently,” he replied, as we passed a woman pushing a cart piled with large boxes of laundry detergent. “Wow, did you see the sizes of those Tides? Who does that much laundry?”

“Everyone, eventually.” The doors slid open, revealing a guy in a Big Club blue vest. He glanced at my membership card, then waved us through. “That’s the whole idea. You buy big, but it costs less in the long run. It helps to have storage space, though.”

“So we’re buying multiple toaster ovens?”