Night Film

48

We walked down Whaler’s Way, along the wood fence to the beach, beyond the reach of the streetlamps. I took out my pocket flashlight. We trudged through the sand and up the sloping hill, a freezing headland wind hitting us hard, slicing right through my clothes. Not knowing Oubliette’s dress code, I was wearing all black — leather jacket, slacks, button-down — hoping the Russian vor look (vor being Russian slang for crime lord) would be enough for people to sense I should be left alone.

The wind grew stronger, the rumbles of the Atlantic deafening as we crested the knoll. The beach looked deserted. The ocean was rough, choppy with whitecaps, the waves crashing along the shore violently, their white explosions the only interruption in the dome of darkness surrounding us.

Staring eastward, far ahead of us down the coast, were condos and houses — all of them looked dark, boarded-up for the winter — and beyond the streetlights of town, Montauk’s steep cliffs rising along the shore.

Duchamp’s staircase.

It was an ambiguous clue, to say the least. I knew the modernist Cubist painting of 1912 it seemed to refer to: Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Nora and I had Googled the work before leaving Perry Street, though how I was going to associate that with something on this beach, I had no idea.

I turned to Hopper, but he’d wandered down to the water, standing there, immobile, his coat whiplashing behind him, seawater frothing inches from his feet. He looked so dark and melancholy, contemplating the thundering waves, I wondered if he was considering walking right into them — letting them swallow him.

“It’s this way!” I shouted, my voice scarcely audible above the wind.

He must have heard me, because he turned and started after me.

The walk was slow going.

The sand was littered with debris after a recent storm — tangled ropes of seaweed, smashed shells, bottles and rocks, long bony arms of driftwood reaching out of the sand. The wind picked up as we trudged on, trying to shove us back, the salty air abrasive and biting. We hiked past blocks of boxy condos with empty porches and parking lots, motels with dark welcome signs. I scrutinized every battered flight of stairs leading down to the beach, looking for some sign of life — but there was nothing.

We were alone out here.

After twenty minutes, we’d walked beyond the town of Montauk and had reached Ditch Plains, the surfing beach. It was empty, nothing but a surfboard’s lost ankle strap half buried in the sand. As I scaled some rocks, I didn’t move out of the way in time as a wave crashed to shore and I got soaked up to my shins in icy water. I could forget about a Russian vor; I was going to look like Tom Hanks in goddamn Cast Away by the time I arrived.

If I arrived.

Here, the beach narrowed considerably, the massive cliffs like muscular knotted shoulders bulging down the coast. Ahead, there were only multimillion-dollar beachfront estates, and it certainly wasn’t a stretch to imagine that a secret party took place at one. But looking far ahead, my eyes watering in the fierce wind, I could see black silhouettes of beach houses perched high on the bluffs, but not a single light.

Oubliette. The forgotten place.

Maybe that meant they partied in the dark.

Hopper had moved ahead of me. He’d been silently striding along with dogged resolve, staring at the sand — unaware, it seemed, of the cold or the tide drenching his Converse sneakers, the hem of his coat now soaked. I picked up my pace to catch up, my flashlight whipping over the rocks, empty crab shells, the chains of seaweed. I could see he’d stopped and was waiting for me beside a flight of wooden steps.

They stretched from the sand up the cliff to a house, hidden high above us over the precipice.

“Think this is it?” he shouted.

There was nothing about those stairs that reminded me of the painting.

I shook my head. “Let’s keep going!”

We moved on and within ten minutes, we reached the next flight, this one half demolished. Though at first glance I saw nothing here either that brought to mind Duchamp, I inspected it with the beam of the flashlight and saw with surprise that the steps above actually did look Cubist. Pieces of splintered driftwood had been nailed crudely together, zigzagging randomly up the sheer rock face and disappearing over the top. It wasn’t so much stairs as a rickety ladder barely attached to the rock.

It was, however, the second staircase we’d passed. And the title of the painting included No. 2.

“This might be it,” I shouted.

Hopper nodded and leapt up onto the first step. It was five feet off the ground, the lower stairs, including part of the railing, strewn in mangled pieces across the sand. The structure shuddered dangerously under his weight as he climbed farther up, eventually reaching a part where the handrail was intact so he could use that to balance himself.

I stepped up onto the first platform and, making a mental note not to look down, took off after him. Every wooden plank felt damp and rotten, sagging under my feet. At one point, a plank Hopper stepped onto snapped in half, his leg going through two more rotten planks below that, so he hung by the railings and I had to duck so the wood didn’t nail me in the face as it careened past, crashing onto the beach below.

He managed to scramble onto the next step, which held his weight, and took off climbing up again. Within minutes Hopper had vanished over the top. When I made it, it was a white-knuckled pull-up, as the last few steps were completely out. I stood up in tall beach grass, switching off the flashlight.

We were in someone’s backyard.

Beyond manicured grass, a covered swimming pool, and clusters of black cherry trees sat a massive cedar-shingled mansion — entirely dark and still.

I checked my watch. It was after one.

“Maybe we’re too late,” I whispered.

Hopper eyed me. “Sounds like you need to get out more.”

He took off deliberately through the shadbush onto the path, making his way toward the house. I followed him, though when we were some twenty yards from the back patio, without warning, a door opened. Dense, throbbing music filled the air. Pale white light flooded the flagstones.

Hopper and I froze, pressing our backs into the hedge along the path.

A lanky kid sporting a black bar apron emerged, dragging numerous garbage bags.

He hauled them across the patio, tossing each one against a low wall stretching around the side of the house, the sound of shattering glass bottles exploding through the night. After he tossed the last bag, he retreated back into the mansion, slamming the door hard.

Silence again engulfed the house.

Hopper and I waited for a minute, the only noise the wind, the faint roar of the ocean far below.

With a nod to each other, we sprinted the final distance to the patio and up the steps. Hopper tried the door. It opened easily, and we slipped inside.