“I swear, man, it’s gotten so bad that if I see someone walking up to the restaurant I just irrationally hate them. It’s all I can do to smile and make nice.”

“Welcome to the island in August. Now you get it.”

Labor Day weekend is the last big push of the season, and it couldn’t come fast enough for some exhausted islanders. After another impromptu hootenanny last Friday, Kate up and closed the Green without warning the next night. The place is still dark and she hasn’t been seen since. Meanwhile the hours at Mann’s and the Red Cup have been cut back; if you haven’t done your grocery shopping by 3 you’re screwed, and don’t even think of finding a cup of coffee after noon. And over at the hotel staff are dropping like flies as workers scatter back to college or otherwise return to their off-season lives.

I’m ready to go home and get on with it, but it’s bittersweet, this feeling of loss. If the last few months have been like summer camp for legal drinkers, now comes the morning-after moment when you pile off the bus, sunburned and loaded with macrame, and confront the wide open future.

Sunset comes fast lately–plunging the island into silent darkness at 7:30. It’s very peaceful, and I’m trying to hold on to these last few days of quiet. Last night I sat up sorting through scraps of notes organizing things into piles, before crashing at all of 11 PM. But I woke again at dawn, nudged back to consciousness by some combination of the critters in the cupboard and my own restless mind. Rather than pull the pillow back over my head, though, I slipped on my clogs and wandered down to the edge of the yard in my nightgown to watch tomorrow start.