The Last Refuge

THREE

I COULDN’T DRIVE into Southampton Village unarmed, so I bought a cup of Hazelnut at one of the roadside delis. It tasted like burnt oak leaves, but at least it was hot and caffeinated.

I crossed Sunrise Highway and drove into the Village, noticing as I always did the sudden change in foliage, the native scrub oak and pine turning into luxurious shrubs and cultivated hardwoods, sycamore and dense privet hedges that rose like battlements in defense of shingled mansions and social status, however tenuous and dearly bought.

I arrived at the Village offices a day later than I’d planned. The autumn season for building permits and zoning appeals was going full tilt. People with briefcases and rolled-up blueprints were meeting with officials out on the steps between the oversized Doric columns. The smell of negotiation tinged the air. Faces looked sincere and cooperative. It’d be an ordinary scene if it wasn’t for the money at stake. There were plenty of people from Manhattan with bank accounts and egos large enough to fill twenty-thousand-square-foot houses built on the most expensive sand in the world. More than the East End would ever be able to absorb, which kept constant upward pressure on real estate values. A small group of regular people who lived out here—teachers, carpenters, pediatricians—had the job of controlling the demand, keeping the golden goose from being strangled by overdevelopment. It wasn’t easy. Every day Planning and Zoning faced down the kind of venal avarice that used to overrun entire continents.

I passed through the middle of the transactions unseen, like a wraith, and entered the building. There were a lot of cops hanging out in the lobby, buckling holsters, drinking coffee, going on and off shift. None of them seemed to want to arrest me for anything, so I moved on down the corridor to the Records Department.

She was still at her station behind the tall counter. She didn’t look up, even after I cleared my throat. I cleared it again.

“Yes?”

“I’m Sam Acquillo. I was here a few days ago about a property up in North Sea.”

“That’s the Town. You’ll have to go there.”

“Yes, we talked about that. The Town told me the records for this place were stored over here. You were going to research it for me and make some copies.”

She looked at me through the tops of her bifocals.

“You were going to come in the next day. I made copies for you.”

Now that she had me on a breach of promise her memory flooded back.

“I had it all ready for you.”

“Yeah. Sorry. If I could have it now I’ll get out of your hair.”

She tapped a few more times on her keyboard, then hauled her mass up out of the chair. Her glasses, secured by a beaded chain, rested on a shelf formed by her uplifted bust. The furrow above the bridge of her nose had formed a permanent crease, casting her irritation into a structural component of her face. She dug a nine-by-twelve-inch brown envelope out from under the counter.

“There’s a charge for these copies.”

“A day late, but,” I said to her, plunking down a five-dollar bill. She snatched it up and held it stuffed in her fist. She waited for me to go.

“I guess that’s all I need,” I said. She nodded once, smiled and went back to her computer. The end of our relationship made her happy.

“Have a nice day,” she said to me, before smacking the enter key on the computer.

“Too late for that.”

Everyone had cleared out from the front steps by the time I got back outside. The autumn leaves were thinning out overhead and the October air was beginning to lose the fight. The sun still had enough strength to warm the paving bricks and the teak bench directly outside the Village offices where I sat to slide the contents out of the envelope.

There were about ten pages. Some were clean Xeroxes, others were slippery old-fashioned photostats. Some had the fuzzy edges and optical distortion common to microfilm enlargements. On top was a site plan, dated 1939. The lines were neatly drawn and the hand-lettering true to the engineering calligraphy of the time. I’d seen the style before on old drawings. I thought it was incomprehensibly beautiful and otherworldly. The plan was covered with stamps noting perk tests, septic and well locations. There were separate sheets with revisions overlaid, and dated as recently as 1998. These were certified by the surveyors, Spring & Spring, in Bridgehampton, and signed off on by the Town building inspector, Claude Osay. Suffolk County had its own stamp, warning all concerned to submit wetlands clearance with any application for a building permit.

The site itself was roughly rectangular, the borders straight and at right angles, matching the one my father bought about six years later. The adjacent lots weren’t drawn in, but there were numbers suggesting subdivisions distributed around the map in a neat pattern. Regina was number thirty-three. We were number thirty-two.

It didn’t say who owned the property at the time the site plan was drawn. Another hand notation, far cruder than the ones made in 1939, read “Bay Side Holdings, Inc., Sag Harbor,” with an arrow pointed at Regina’s lot. I guessed its vintage to be the same as the recent building inspector stamps. There was nothing at all about a Mr. or Mrs. Broadhurst.

Bay Side Holdings showed up on another document that looked like a contract with a real-estate agent, Arnold Lombard Co., Southampton. The contract was signed in 1977 accompanying another burst of perk testing. Spring & Spring had certified the results, as they had later, in 1998. I flipped back to the site plan to pinpoint where the tests were done and found another rubber stamp impression with the name Bay Side Holdings.

There was an aerial photograph showing all of Oak Point, and the land next door that held the old WB plant. The complex was bigger than it looked from ground level. I counted one main building and at least ten smaller outbuildings. The neighborhood property lines were drawn in and numbered with white ink. Regina’s number thirty-three was shaded by something. A highlighter? So was number thirty-five, next door and the lot after that, and several others on the east side of WB’s peninsula. So was the whole of the WB complex. Our lot had a check mark, as did number thirty-eight and number thirty-nine.

There was a letter to the Town appeals board from an attorney named Jacqueline Swaitkowski of Bridgehampton representing Bay Side Holdings, Inc. She wanted to record their intentions to approach the board on a number of lot size and setback issues, all of which she described somewhat hopefully as routine. It was dated June 30, 1998.

That was it. There were no comments from the Town and no record of any actual appeals. I stuffed it all back in the envelope and went down to the corner place for a cup of French Vanilla coffee and a croissant.

Properly fortified, I walked the block and a half up Hampton Road to the big Town building. While the incorporated Village was defined by the traditional boundaries of Southampton, the Town covered half the South Fork, from Westhampton Beach to Bridgehampton, including the Village itself. The geopolitical complexities of New York State took some concentration to navigate, but I’m a trained engineer. Complex systems are my forte.

Bonny Martinez was on duty at the Town tax collector’s office. She wore a wide smile and a print blouse covered with huge tropical flowers.

“What can I help you with?”

“I’m settling an estate,” I said, pulling out my paperwork. “Here’s the death certificate and documentation showing me as administrator. And my driver’s license.”

She scooped it all up and scanned the information.

“Okay, what can I help you with?”

I wrote Regina’s address on a piece of scratch paper from a stack on the counter.

“She’s been living here for many years, but didn’t own the house. I need to know who’s been paying the taxes so I can notify them.”

“Okay,” she said, cheerily.

It took a few seconds for her to sit down at a terminal, tap in the address and pop back up again with the information.

“Bay Side Holdings. Six hundred seventy-five Dutch Wharf Road, Sag Harbor, New York. Attention Milton Hornsby. We had them on biannual automatic payment. Harbor Trust, account number 41-53245-41.”

She wrote it all down on another slip of scratch paper and slapped it down on the counter. Just like that.

When I got back to the car Eddie was in the driver’s seat looking down at the instrument panel. Planning a getaway.

“Yeah, I could teach you to drive, but who’d pay the insurance?”

He hopped back over to his side and I rolled the window down for him. He stuck his head out and barked at the closest passerby, who jumped back in alarm. I pulled away as briskly as the big car would allow.

“Great. Here I’m trying to get along with people and what do you do?”

He looked over at me happily.

When my daughter was little she had a half-dozen imaginary friends, the most prominent of which was Eddie Van Halen. I have no idea how that happened, but the hard rocker was a constant, if invisible, presence in our household for years. She always made sure I had the seat belt around him in the car. Once we were driving along and “Runnin’ with the Devil” came on the radio. She turned around to address the back seat:

“That’s you, Eddie Van Halen!”

I’d often say the same thing to my eponymously named dog, and get about as much back in response.

My daughter had stopped talking to me a few months before the divorce, so I wasn’t sure what she was up to. I knew she had an apartment in Manhattan, where she went after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design. She was doing something with graphics on the computer, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know how to find out without talking to her mother or her mother’s family, which wouldn’t work out. Abby worked hard to keep her away from my family, so she never got to know my sister. Abby always insisted we rent or stay with friends like Burton Lewis, the lawyer, when we came out. My daughter had only seen the cottage on the Little Peconic from the street. Abby said she didn’t want our daughter exposed to that environment, whatever that meant. My mother spent a lot of time with my sister’s kids, little meatballs though they were, so at least she got to have grandchildren. She never complained about not seeing my daughter, though it clearly wounded her. But I deferred to Abby, to my deep and everlasting sorrow.

Since it was on the way to Dutch Wharf Road, I thought I’d I stop at the Pequot for lunch. The woods became more dense as North Sea Road turned into Noyack Road. It was narrow, with a double yellow line down the middle, and twisty as it followed the jagged bay coast and bumpy contours of Noyac’s little hills. The Grand Prix kept its dignity on the curves if you held a firm hand on the wheel.

Eddie finally tired of the wind and jumped into the back seat where he had plenty of room to spread out. I followed the slow arc around Long Beach, the sickle-shaped bay front west of Sag Harbor. The water was rippled and slick, silver-blue like a sharkskin suit. People were walking on the beach, cuffs rolled up to below their knees and hands in their pockets, their clothes pressed against their bodies by the stiffening breeze. It was too far away to divine their thoughts. Gulls circled overhead.

The clouds and mist of the morning had long ago been chased out by a cool hard breeze traveling down from New England. I lowered my window and let the noisy air swirl around inside the passenger compartment. I dropped the Grand Prix down to a crawl when I got to the houses that crowded the antique streets of Sag Harbor. Slow time was woven into the ivy that hung on the gates and fences of Greek Revival mansions built by bold sea captains.

There was always plenty of room to park at the Pequot. I let Eddie take care of business at a little patch of scrub grass and was about to let him back in the car when I saw Dotty waving to me from the front door of the restaurant.

“Your dog?”

“Eddie.”

“He’s cute.”

“Got to be good at something.”

“You can bring him with you if you sit out on the deck.”

“Outdoor seating?”

“The deck. Go around back.”

I didn’t know the Pequot had a small, slightly raised deck off the kitchen with a white plastic table where the Hodges family probably sat to eat their meals and watch the fishing boats come and go. Dotty was there to greet me and fuss over the dog, which was something you have to get used to when your dog’s got a personality like Eddie’s. Eternally bon vivant.

“So you weren’t lying,” said Dotty as she wiped off the plastic table.

“I wasn’t?”

“About having a dog to let out. I thought it was an excuse.”

The two of us watched Eddie run his nose over the whole of the deck before coming back to my table to sit down at my feet.

“I guess you’re all checked out.”

“Absolut?”

“Yup. And a shot of water for the dog.”

“With or without fruit?”

“He’d probably go for a slice of lime.”

While I was waiting for her to bring our drinks I spread all the papers I’d collected that morning out on the table so I could capture the information I wanted on my yellow legal pad. I numbered each point and drew a little circle around the numbers I thought were the most important. Then I made a list of the things I didn’t know, that I wanted to know. These I also put in order of priority, with the most important getting double underlines. The task felt satisfying. I hadn’t done anything like that for almost five years.

Hodges came out with two drinks and a bowl of water. I almost covered the pad and was glad I didn’t. I didn’t want to insult him. He sat down and stuck the bowl in front of Eddie’s nose.

“Good-lookin’ dog.”

“He wants you to think so.”

“I got a pair of Shih Tzu back at the house. Little ugly fuckin’ dogs. They were Dotty’s mother’s. She gets ’em as puppies, then dies and leaves them with me.”

He covered the moment by concentrating on Eddie. Dogs are really good for that.

“I got Regina’s bank accounts and a plot plan for her house,” I said.

He looked over at all the papers spread out on the table.

“She got a million bucks?”

“About eight thousand. Didn’t even own the house. Far as I can tell, though, didn’t pay rent, either. Didn’t pay anything, but,” I placed a series of canceled checks on the table, “oil, LIPA, phone—no long distance— propane for the stove, Sisters of Mercy, twenty bucks a month. Then it’s periodic checks to the IGA, pharmacy, the kid that cut her lawn, occasional cabs.”

“Paid the cab with a check?”

“The rest are checks to cash, mostly at Ray’s Liquors. Can’t tell if some of that went to a little fortification.”

“Lived pretty lean.”

“Leaner than me, which is saying something.”

“You got Pequot expenses.”

“No rent, no medical, no taxes.”

“Didn’t file?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Lived under the radar.”

“Typical of the neighborhood.”

“Who owned the house?”

“Some outfit named Bay Side Holdings. Here in Sag Harbor. Going there next.” I dropped the slip of paper with their address down in front of him. He picked it up and frowned.

“Must be in a house, or something.”

I took the slip back from him.

“Dutch Wharf Road?”

“All houses. Except at the end where there’s a busted-up old dock building. Used to have a launch ramp, but the water got shoaled over and nobody bothered to dredge. Maybe the Town closed it up. Anyway, nothin’ commercial there now.”

I got Hodges to bring me a ham sandwich which I washed down with a Sam Adams. Eddie took half the fries. Something he wouldn’t touch if I dropped it in his bowl at the cottage. Probably didn’t want to offend Hodges either.

It took a while to find the head of Dutch Wharf Road. It was over on the east side of town where a lot of the roads are narrow and tangled up with the grassy little inlets that ring that part of the bay. Hard to imagine that Sag Harbor was once America’s biggest port, filled with square riggers and awash in whale oil.

It was just like Hodges said. A narrow, leafy street lined with small cottages, all built at different times, but well established and lovingly cared for. I followed the numbers to the end of the street and the abandoned launch ramp. Number 675 was the last house on the right. It fit in with the neighborhood—fresh white brick and white clapboard, with the gable end facing the street. It had a very steep roofline, which was the fashion for small Tudor houses in the twenties and thirties. Looked like something you’d find in the Cotswolds. Ivy covered part of the lawn and grew up the facade. No name on the mailbox. There was a basic, anonymous-looking Nissan in the driveway. No garage.

No answer at the door. I’d given up ringing the bell and was about to leave when I heard a sound coming from the back of the house. I went around the north side through a thick stand of arborvitae. The backyard was stuffed with trees and shrubs. It looked like they’d been growing there for about a hundred years, which was probably about right. On one tiny patch of grass, illuminated by a spot of sunlight, stood a weathered wheelbarrow filled with sticks and uprooted plant life. A few yards away a guy’s butt stuck out from under an out-of-control forsythia. The butt wore khakis and belonged on a large man. I shuffled my feet a little and cleared my throat as I approached.

“Excuse me.”

The guy backed out from under the forsythia on his hands and knees and stood up. He was over six-three, reasonably slender, but with a very big head. Thin gray hair circled a bald dome. He looked to be somewhere in his seventies, on the high side, and wore very thick glasses through which he squinted at me painfully.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Milton Hornsby.”

He held a bunch of pulled-up weeds in his gloved right hand. In the other hand was a small garden trowel. He looked down as if trying to decide which to discard.

“My name is Sam Acquillo. I have something important to discuss with Mr. Hornsby.”

He held up both hands as if in surrender.

“That would be me.”

I leafed through the manila folder I had under my arm and pulled out Regina’s death certificate, which I held out in front of him. As I talked he dropped the weeds and trowel on the ground and pulled off his gloves.

“I’m here to notify you of the death of Regina Broadhurst. Died last week. You can see my name here.” I pointed to a line on the death certificate. “I’m also the administrator of the estate.”

I held out that piece of paper with my other hand. He took both to look at more closely. His squint got worse, turning his eyes into thin slits.

“What’s your relation?” he asked, still looking at the paperwork.

“Neighbor.”

“Attorney?”

“Nope. Just a neighbor. Far as we know there’s only one family member, a nephew. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you. If you knew of any others.”

He was big, but not very healthy looking. He had large, prominent cheekbones, but underneath his cheeks were pitted and sunken in. His khakis and flannel shirt were of good quality, but hadn’t been washed in a while.

“I wondered when this would happen.”

“She was pretty old.”

He smiled at that, like it triggered a private joke.

He handed the papers back to me. I didn’t take them.

“You can keep them. For your records.”

He shook his head.

“I’m not going to talk to you,” he said, flatly, still squinting at me through his bottle-bottom glasses. He dropped the papers on the ground.

“You’re not? Why not?”

“I don’t have to.” He started to wiggle his hands back into his work gloves.

“I don’t know. I think you do. I’m not a lawyer, but …”

“That’s correct. You’re not a lawyer. I don’t know what you are. A neighbor? You’re on my property, I know that. Uninvited. I’d like you to leave.”

He bent down to retrieve the little pile of weeds, brushed passed me and took it over to the wheelbarrow.

I could feel that familiar surge of blood warming up my face. I tried to look relaxed and reasonable, even though I wasn’t very good at that either.

“According to the Town tax records, Regina’s house was owned by Bay Side Holdings, at six-seven-five Dutch Wharf Road,” I looked around, “which I guess is here, with you listed as the responsible party. I’m just telling you because Regina’s dead. You get your house back.”

He seemed to loosen up a little at that. He let go of the wheelbarrow.

“Very well. Consider me notified. You can leave your paperwork in my mailbox. You know the way out.”

Before I could say anything else he walked away from me. Stoop-shouldered, he moved off with his wheelbarrow toward some distant corner of his yard, hidden under the dark shade of oak, pine and arborvitae.

As an amateur boxer I lost almost as many fights as I won, and my brief professional career wasn’t much better. There were things about the sport that drew me, things like the training and bag work. Some of the old trainers fit the stereotype of the battered old pros with gritty voices, filled with the wisdom of the street. I liked being around a lot of it. The actual boxing part wasn’t as appealing. A lot of the kids I fought were really desperate and half crazy with hopes and fears. There were more white kids than you’d think, and I can’t say race was any kind of obvious factor at the level we fought. Not that I could see, anyway. Everybody was basically poor, street worn and edgy. Most everybody figured I was Puerto Rican till I opened my mouth. Seemed like there were a lot of bantams and feathers, wiry little guys with vicious quick hands and hard little heads you could pound on all day with no effect. As a middleweight, or light heavyweight, I was one of the bigger ones. The few genuine heavyweights were usually fat guys or big, slow dummies without the heart for the physical conditioning needed to really make it in the ring. Occasionally, some guy would show up who was big, strong, fast and eager. You knew it as soon as they got on the gloves. They had the mental part. They were smart enough to know what you had to do, but also what you got if you pulled it off. Go from having nothing to owning the world.

The fights I was able to win were usually on points. I never knocked anybody out, though I put a few into the canvas hard enough to get the decision. After a fight like that one of the trainers shoved my face into the corner of my open locker hard enough to split my lip. I still had my gloves on, and blood was splashing all over everywhere. I shrunk back and got my gloves up near my head to stop the next blow, which didn’t come. He asked me if what he just did pissed me off.

“What the hell was that for?”

“You got to get pissed, you fuckin’ greaseball. It’s the only way you win. You don’t get pissed, you don’t win the fight. That’s the kind of fighter you are. From now on, I want you pissed off all the time.”

I wanted to kill him. Instead I just nodded. Then I sat down on the bench and watched the blood from my lip pool on the floor and listened to the roar in my head. He wanted me to be pissed. If he only knew.

After talking to Milton Hornsby I sat in the Grand Prix for a few minutes to let that old roar subside. In the past I wouldn’t have let him just walk away from me. I don’t know what I would’ve done, but it would have likely gone on a mental list of all the things I wished I could take back.

Eddie was whining at me to open the window. I opened them all and lit a cigarette. I sat back in the old cracked leather bucket seat and closed my eyes. You don’t get pissed, you don’t win the fight. But what if you don’t want the fight in the first place?

“fuckin’ hell, Eddie. I need a lawyer.”

He wasn’t listening. His head was already out the window, taking in the autumn air, looking around for the next thing.

You got to Burton Lewis’s house in the estate section of Southampton Village by driving down a 2,800-foot driveway that shot in a straight line between two twelve-foot-high privet hedges. You drove over polished white pebbles contained by steel curbing that drew the outside edges into perfect parallel lines. At the entrance was a white wooden gate that pivoted open on huge cast iron hinges bolted to a pair of white posts trimmed out to look like Empire furniture. Fluffy old blue hydrangea flanked the gate and softened the effect of the rectangular call box, perched on a curved black post, where you punched a code to open the gate, or pushed a call button to gain entry. The only clue to the identity of the home was a polite four-by-eight-inch white sign on which the number eighty-five was painted with green paint and circumscribed by a thin green line.

After the initial straight shot, the driveway made an abrupt forty-five degree turn, and if you hadn’t run out of gas by then, you came out from between the privets into an open area defined by an oval turnaround. The interior of the oval was landscaped to look unlandscaped, as if the mammoth shingle-style mansion looming above you was situated there just to take advantage of some perfect act of nature.

Burton’s great-grandfather built the first house on the site before the turn of the century. That was when really wealthy people competed with Versailles and called the results a cottage. In the thirties, taking advantage of a glut of cheap labor, his grandfather tore it down and built an even bigger monstrosity. Burton grew up in that house, and a town house on the Upper East Side and a half-dozen other houses sprinkled around Europe and the Caribbean. His parents delegated Burton’s upbringing, and that of his two sisters, to a team of professionals. Austrian nannies, Swiss ski instructors, Parisian epicures. All three kids suffered from severe parental deprivation, with mixed results. One of the girls was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and ended up heaving herself off the Reichenbach Falls. The other succumbed to hardcore S&M and died of an overdose hanging upside down in some squalid flop down near Times Square.

Burton took up banking and jurisprudence. Looking like he’d been born in a Brooks Brothers, he took part-time jobs and internships on Wall Street and developed a decent command of international finance before he was out of prep school. He graduated from Columbia in three years, and having grown bored with finance, had earned a law degree from Yale three years after that.

The only conversation he could remember having with his father was when the old man brought him into his study to go over the disposition of the family fortune, with instructions on how to manage it should he die or lose his faculties. Which is exactly what happened about a year after that. Burton was about twenty-three; his father lasted another year before dying insane and leaving Burton, the sole heir, insanely rich.

The first thing he did was tear down his grandfather’s house and build another one. It was still pretty big, but at least it fit the scale of the other houses in the neighborhood, if that’s what you’d call it. It fit Burton okay. He was well over six feet tall, and thin, with a small-featured face made of weathered brown leather. He had a head full of light brown hair that fell over his forehead and a mustache that emboldened a small, thin mouth. His clothes draped over his gaunt frame in the perfect way you see on mannequins. He often wore a look of puzzled amusement, as if struggling to recollect the punch line of an inappropriate joke. I met him through a mutual friend of Abby’s. She’d pulled him into the circle of acquaintances she maintained as a simulation of genuine friendship. We were all still young, but making enough to live in Manhattan. Burton was splitting his time between defending vagrants out of a grungy storefront office in the East Village and an active tax practice down on the Street.

His pedigree was all that mattered to Abby, but Burton’s stuff ran deeper than that.

When I was growing up, people like Burton Lewis moved through the world inside an invisible protective enclosure. We saw them in the grocery store or stepping between their nice cars and Herb McCarthy’s or the Irving Hotel, but we knew they probably didn’t see us. They were a type of celestial being that God had marooned on earth as a penalty for their vanity and arrogance. I didn’t know enough locals then to know how they felt about the Summer People, but I was never resentful or jealous. Just removed. I kept out of their way and only wondered about their lives when I rode my bike around the estate section and tried to see the big houses hidden by giant stands of hundred-year-old maples and copper beech.

Abby tried to hire Burton to represent her in the divorce, but he demurred. Claimed the lack of a Connecticut bar exam. The truth is, though he was fond of her, he liked me better. We used to do shots and watch the Knicks together on TV while the other swells practiced one-upmanship out in his living room. I liked him, too, and not for the reason Abby liked to insinuate, Burton being homosexual.

When I pushed the call button on the intercom at the gate, a Spanish woman answered. She said Burton was out in the back jacking up a small utility shed to repair the foundation. He was always building or fixing something with his own hands. I noted it was after eight o’clock at night.

“We have lights.”

“Tell him Sam Acquillo dropped by. I’ll come back later.”

“No. He’ll want to talk to you. I’ll ring him on his mobile.”

“Is this Isabella?”

“Yes, Mr. Acquillo.”

“Sam.”

“Sam. He hasn’t heard from you for a long time.”

Isabella was Burton’s housekeeper. If that’s the right designation for a woman who ran such a colossal domestic enterprise. Her husband had been a lawyer in Cuba. Burton used him as an investigator until he dropped dead one day in the middle of an interview with a potential witness. Burton let Isabella stay at his flat until she could find other circumstances and she still hadn’t left.

“I’m not much of a communicator,” I told her.

“He thought he’d made some offense.”

It wasn’t that easy to make out what she was saying over the intercom, especially given the accent.

“No, he didn’t. I’ll just call him tomorrow.”

“No, I get him for you. Come on in.”

The big white gate swung in and I piloted the Grand Prix down the privet canyon.

Burton’s yellow and wood-paneled 1978 Ford Country Squire was parked out front. Combine its raw metal content with the Grand Prix’s and you could build a small fleet of Honda Civics. Our taste in cars might have looked like the foundation of the relationship. Though the real reason Burton drove the Ford was simple negligence. He’d had it since it was new and, as long as it ran well enough to get him around Southampton, wouldn’t bother replacing it. People like Burton, who can buy anything, often don’t buy anything at all, or only when driven by impulses most of us would find incomprehensible.

As I hauled the Grand Prix around the circle I concentrated on missing the Ford. I’d stopped off at my house after talking to Milton Hornsby, ostensibly to leave Eddie off so he could spend the rest of the day running around the yard.

I also thought a drink would be a good idea before I did anything else. So I sat on the porch and drank about half a bottle of some no-name vodka I’d bought on sale. The first sip wasn’t too good, but it improved over time.

By dinnertime my nerves were beaten into submission and my appetite was coming back. I had some leftovers that sopped up some of the vodka, so I could convince myself I was fit to drive over to see Burton Lewis, the only lawyer I knew in Southampton. I thought about calling ahead first, but I wasn’t sure if he’d want to see me. Anyway, the surprise visit approach had worked so well with Milton Hornsby.

Isabella opened the door. She looked at me skeptically.

“You lose weight.”

“A little. Nice to see you too, Isabella.”

She backed up to let me in.

“Not that you needed to. A little fat wouldn’t hurt a man your age.”

Burton loped into the grand hall and reached out to shake my hand. He looked as I’d remembered him. He wore a blue and white pinstriped shirt, off-white, mud-stained khakis, ragged tan boat shoes and a blue blazer with the sleeves stuffed up over his elbows. When new, each item probably cost a lot of money, but they hadn’t been new for a very long time. It occurred to me that when Burton died he should donate his wardrobe to the Museum of Ivy League Coastal Sportswear. His handshake felt dry and bony.

“I heard you were out East,” said Burton, as if I’d just gotten in last night. “I thought about calling.”

“That’s okay, Burt, I didn’t expect you to. I’m not such good company anyway. How’s everything with you?”

“But I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it,” he said, completing the thought. “I wasn’t entirely sure about your disposition.”

“That’s okay, Burt. You look good.”

“I imagine you haven’t heard much from Abigail.”

“Only her lawyers. Mopping up.”

“Surely that’s all behind us.”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m not a fan of protracted litigation.”

He showed me the way through what I guess was a sitting room—it’s hard to define what all the rooms are for in a place that big. We went outside through a pair of twelve-foot-high French doors.

“You’re good a man, Burt,” I said. “Which is a rare thing. Speaking of men, how’s the love life?”

He smiled at me. “You haven’t become more tactful.”

“But I have lost a little weight.”

The doors led to a wide stone-paved patio. It was furnished with oversized wicker lounge chairs and big market umbrellas. The night was getting blacker as a spongy wet mist crept in from the ocean. I could hear the surf through the dense privets that enclosed the side yard. Auras formed around the lights that lit up the patio. A chorus of bugs and reptiles were out there bitching and chirping away as they did for reasons of their own. Somewhere in the distance a stereo was playing a jazz recording. Ellington, with Johnny Hodges sliding sax notes all over the register. It reminded me of softer times out on Burton’s millionacre lawn, under canvas tents, sipping white wine brought in dripping crystal, and bowls of fruit that would leak down your arms when you took a bite. Abby sitting with a long stretch of strong brown leg jutting out from the deep slit of her skirt. Rich old guys in pastel sport coats and white pants trying not to look. Other women, mostly gaunt and affected, and Burton, struggling to act blasé around some vacuous tennis pro or Mexican gardener. Me on frequent trips to the cocktail station, trying to alter my usual state of edgy dismay.

Abby always yearned for a place of her own out here. A real place, in her mind, suitable for entertaining. Ten years before we split she’d campaigned to find the perfect spot, recruiting friends to join the hunt. They had a great time going from house to house, sunning themselves in the obsequious attentions of venal real-estate agents. I was putting the last installments into a fund I’d established for my daughter’s education, and was unenthusiastic about a new round of debt. Of course, it was my waning enthusiasm for Abby that was at the heart of the matter. The day she came to me with the chosen property, I told her no. She thought I was kidding. Then I told her no several more times in several different ways. I probably overembellished. Her mouth hung open an inch or two while I was talking, but then it snapped shut and never opened again to emit a single pleasant word on my behalf.

Burton let us stay with him a few weeks every summer. I remained in Connecticut during the week and worked, or went to see my mother for short, awkward visits at the cottage, or later, at the nursing home. I sat around drinking with Burton on the weekends, often after everyone else had gone to bed. Burton would have worked hard at staying my friend if I’d let him.

Before we settled into the wicker chairs Burton poured us each our regular drink from a cocktail caddy in the corner. His movements were still graceful and fluid, in contrast to his social manner, which could be surprisingly awkward and shy. I wanted to put him at ease.

“I haven’t talked to anybody in about four years. Just been keeping my head down. It’s nothing personal.”

“I’d have helped.”

“I know, Burt, that’s why I couldn’t call you. Turning down your help would have been too painful.”

“Very well. I understand.”

He sat back comfortably in his chair and nodded sympathetically. I felt the warmth of Burton’s undivided attention.

“I did hear some rather startling things about you,” he said.

“It wasn’t the best time.”

“Professionally speaking, you’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“That’s how I look at it, Burt. Luckier than hell.”

“Hm.”

I could see he really wanted to ask me a lot of questions we both knew I was hoping he wouldn’t ask, so the conversation hung suspended in midair for a few seconds. I owed him more than that. I took a deep breath.

“It got away from me a little bit.”

“Apparently.”

“I’d’ve done things differently if I’d kept a better grip.”

“How’re you now?”

“Better. Got a little project, I guess you’d call it. Gave me an excuse to bother you.”

“Really.”

“You wouldn’t remember, but there was this old gal that lived next door to my parents’ cottage. My dad used to look after her, and then I did what I could when I was around. When I moved back there I just took up where my dad had left off. Nothing much, just keeping her place going. Driving her places sometimes. Little shit.”

“Regina something.”

“You still got that memory of yours. Regina Broadhurst. Well, she died last week, and I’m the administrator on her estate, and I’m already over my head.”

“Who appointed you administrator?”

“I got this thing from Surrogate’s Court that named me administrator pending a hearing. Mel Goodfellow said since she’d died apparently intestate I was appointed as an interested party to handle things until some more interested party showed up. In which case it’d be up to the court, though I’m not contesting anything. I’m not that interested.”

“It’s a little unusual, but I think kosher.”

“There’s this Town cop, Joe Sullivan, who rigged it. For some reason he thought Regina’s affairs needed more attention than she’d get from the government. I think he’s a little paternal about the people on his beat.”

Burton nodded, mentally recording everything. I’d forgotten he had such a killer memory. Something I obviously didn’t have.

“There’s only one relative we know of, a nephew named Jimmy Maddox. I found him, and he approved me as administrator.”

I handed the letter to Burton like it was a piece of evidence. Exhibit A. He looked it over.

“What sort of assets did she leave?”

“Well that’s the thing. She’s only got about eight grand in the bank. I don’t think she had anything else. Nothing I can find, anyway. Not even the house, which is owned by a company called Bay Side Holdings, which is a whole other story in itself.”

I told him about getting the tax records and going to see Milton Hornsby. About the little house in Sag Harbor next to the abandoned launch ramp.

“Curious.”

“Exactly.”

“He’s right that he doesn’t have to talk to you. But you have to talk to him, as administrator, as it relates to the transition of the property. You have to handle the dispensation of personal belongings.”

“Her stuff.”

“Her stuff. And settle any outstanding obligations. There might be a security deposit.”

“I don’t think she paid any rent.”

“Then there may be a substantial obligation.”

“Nobody seemed to care. No dunning letters I can find. Hornsby didn’t say anything. Quite the opposite.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I think your administrator status is probably defensible. Though this letter you made up for Jimmy Maddox, while elegantly worded, wouldn’t hold up under challenge.”

“Does it matter if I punched him in the nose right before he signed it?”

“You said you were better.”

“He swung first. And I didn’t provoke him. I mean, I wasn’t trying to provoke him.”

“So the dispute was settled?”

“Absolutely. Jimmy Maddox is actually a bigger asshole than I am. He was okay once he got it out of his system. And like I said, if him or some lawyer wants in, it’s all theirs.”

He let that hang in the air for a moment.

“So, what do you think?” I said.

“If Mr. Maddox is agreeable, and there’re no other family members, there’s no reason you can’t continue as you have. I’d only feel better if the language in this agreement was snugged up a bit.”

“I still want to get Hornsby to talk to me.”

“Don’t punch him in the nose.”

“You know what’s been going on with property values lately. Regina’s and mine are the only two buildable subdivisions that sit on the tip of Oak Point. The only legitimate bay front. Her lot’s about a third again bigger than mine. And better, since mine borders the street, the other side of which is just swamp—wetlands, by law—till you get to the channel. She’s got a breakwater and a beach on two sides. About one and a half acres. It’s worth a bundle. Why isn’t he happier?”

“More hostile than happy, apparently.”

“Exactly.”

“I have no idea.”

“And why wasn’t Regina paying rent? And why didn’t he care?”

“We don’t know that he didn’t care. Or that he hasn’t tried to collect. It’s easier to build a fusion reactor than evict an old lady in New York State.”

“Of course, I thought of that. But then why didn’t I know? That’s exactly the kind of thing Regina would’ve been all over me to figure out. To fix for her.”

“Some things are too embarrassing.”

I’d thought about that, too. Why didn’t she tell me she didn’t own the house? Would she have told me she was in financial trouble? Either admission might have been too much of an insult to her dignity.

“Could be.”

Isabella came out onto the patio. Burton held up his empty glass and pointed at mine. She took care of the refills. She’d done it before. Burton told her we were all set. She left without saying much to me. Still mad at me on Burton’s behalf.

“She didn’t take baths,” I said, after Isabella had left.

“Pardon?”

“Regina didn’t take baths. She had an old tin-lined shower next to the kitchen. Used big old beach towels to dry herself off. The bathtub is where you cleaned fish. At least we used to. What was she doing in the bathtub?”

Burton held his drink by the top of the glass and swished it around to melt some of the ice.

“I see where you’re going,” he said.

“I wish I did.”

“What was the cause of death?”

“I’m waiting to find out for sure. Sullivan’s arranged for the County coroner to do an autopsy. The death certificate just says accidental drowning. I mean, what is that?”

“Hm.”

“Maybe I’ve been alone in that cottage too long.”

“You weren’t alone. You had Regina.”

“And Eddie. I got a dog.”

“I’ll have an associate do a little research on Bay Side Holdings.”

“That’s not why I’m telling you this.”

“I know. It’s no trouble.”

Burton Lewis owned a forty-eight-story building in lower Manhattan and all two thousand of the lawyers who worked inside. I guess it wouldn’t be any trouble.

“All I wanted was to knock things around a little.”

“It would be good for your soul to allow me to help.”

That might be true, but it was going to wreak havoc with the rest of me. But that was my fault. I knew I needed the help. Every form of refuge has its price.

“I could use the help. I appreciate it.”

“I know you do. While you’re at it, give me Regina’s Social Security number and I’ll see if we can uncover other assets.”

After that we caught up on the state of professional basketball, discussed plans for adding a library as a separate building on the property, the mechanical status of my Grand Prix and his Country Squire, and a case he’d recently helped bring before the Supreme Court. He kept the conversation focused on himself, which I appreciated.

It was late when I got back to the cottage. There was a note from Amanda pinned to my door.

“I’m going on a girls’ night out tomorrow night. The Playhouse in Bridgehampton. From nine till whenever. If somebody I know just happens to be there too I can apologize again and this time he has to accept!” Signed “A.”

It was too late to untangle any more confused impulses or reaffirm secret pledges I’d made to myself. It was time to go to sleep so I could dream about bathtubs and flying fists, and being too late to pick up my daughter at school, or losing her in a crowded shopping mall, having been too distracted to realize I’d let go of her tiny hand.

The next morning I made a bucket of coffee and smoked my first cigarette before calling Sullivan. I was sitting on the screened-in porch so I could watch Eddie run around in the yard. Somehow he knew how to stay within my property lines, out of the street and away from Regina’s. Even when he jumped off the breakwater down to the pebble beach he stayed within the boundaries. He didn’t like to swim, but he loved to run through the water at about belly height, looking for plastic bottles or dead fish, which he’d put in a pile on shore. It’s hard to say if he achieved anything of lasting value, his air of determined purpose notwithstanding.

I got Sullivan on his cell phone like he told me to.

“Yeah, well, it’s interesting,” said Sullivan, his voice rising just enough above the car noise.

“How so.”

“The cause of death was a traumatic blow to the posterior region of the head—don’t you love that, ‘traumatic’? I guess it was fucking traumatic if it killed her.”

“And?”

“And, it could have been caused by hitting the tub, or it could’ve been somethin’ else. ‘The actual size and concentration of the contusion is not inconsistent with the subject’s head impacting the porcelain surface of the bathtub as the result of a fall, though this does not rule out the possibility of the cause being the striking surface of a broad, blunt object.’ There was no water in her lungs, which isn’t unusual, either. Or other injuries. Nothing under her nails that didn’t belong there, no sign of struggle at all. So, basically, they think she just fell backwards and hit her head.”

“I found her face down. How did she get face down if she cracked the back of her head?”

“The report says you could still be conscious after a blow like this. You get disoriented, you might try to stand up, you pass out, you fall face down.”

“Why not just conclude that it wasn’t from falling in the tub.”

“They aren’t looking for anything else. They’re looking for an explanation for her being face down after falling in the tub and hitting the back of her head.”

“What do you think?”

“I think they’re full of crap.”

I never liked talking on the phone. You can’t see the other guy’s face, can’t judge what he’s really thinking. I took a gulp of the coffee that was cooling down in my mug.

“You think somebody hit her.”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just not happy about the disposition of the body. Just like I never bought that crap about Kennedy lurching forward after getting hit straight on with a bullet. I’m sorry, if I shoot you in the forehead, you’re going backwards. If you smack your head after falling over backwards in the bathtub, you float on your back, not on your stomach.”

“Was there anything else?”

“That’s all I know. That she could’ve been killed by some flat heavy object.”

“Like a two-by-four.”

“Nah, I asked that. Wood leaves a different kind of imprint. They’ve seen lots of those.”

“So you asked.”

“I did. I figured a cast iron fry pan.”

“You did? How come?”

“I’ve seen it before. Women like ’em. About the only thing heavy with a handle they’re used to picking up. Always within reach.”

“You asked them if she could’ve been hit with a frying pan?” I was impressed.

“Yeah, and they said yeah. That’d fit the bill perfect. Heavy, flat, except it wouldn’t leave nothing behind.”

“Too bad.”

“Except maybe a little carbon from her gas stove.”

“Really.”

“Which would wash off in the bathtub.”

“Right.”

“Except they found a tiny residue in her hair.”

“Really?” I said, even more impressed.

“The lab guys can do some amazing shit these days.”

“So what does it mean?”

“Nothing, just curious.”

“You can’t match it with one of her fry pans?”

“Nah. Carbon’s carbon. She could’ve washed a pan, then scratched her head and left a trace. It’s really tiny.”

“So you’re satisfied.”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“You’re suspicious.”

“I am a little, yeah. But that don’t mean shit around here. I start talking like you and Chief Semple would have my ass.”

“I guess I don’t understand cops.”

“Don’t start bustin’ on cops. Nobody likes to go back over something they figured was a done deal.”

“I didn’t mean that. I just don’t get the process.”

“For now, the process is you get the old lady planted. I’ll get you a copy of the autopsy report.”

“Okay. I appreciate it.”

“I’ll get her shipped over to Pappanasta’s, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure. Good as any.”

“We can keep talking. Like I said, talking’s okay.”

After I got off the phone with Sullivan I went running to work out the accretion of vodka, good and bad, from the day before. I needed to clear my head. I took Eddie with me, even though he hadn’t touched a drop. When I got back I felt better, even if my head wasn’t any clearer.

I had a manila folder with all the papers I’d been collecting on Regina. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the porch with the file on the table where I could take a look at it from time to time. I wrote a few thoughts and “things to do” on the legal pad. As it started to get dark, I thought about Amanda Battiston and her note. I still hadn’t figured out what to do. So I wrote “fry pan” on the outside of the manila folder and went to take a shower.

The Playhouse was on the main route between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. It stood in the center of a huge swarm of parked cars that caught and threw back light from big security spots mounted in the trees. It was a nice house at one time, though decades of hard use had rounded off the edges. During the season you waited in line with the Summer People, but this time of year you could get right in after paying the huge bearded guy at the door. A vintage oak bar anchored the back of an open area where you could dance or sit and listen to the band. The cocktail waitresses navigated the crowd with trays held overhead and faces set in neutral. Smoke formed cirrus clouds around the house lamps, from which warm yellow light painted the plain beautiful and the beautiful divine. The music was loud enough to vibrate your internal organs, but I liked it well enough. A joint wasn’t a joint without distorted electric guitars. God made rock and roll so people would have something to dance to and guys could pick up girls without having to say anything, a huge advantage for most of them.

I shoved my way through a pack of meatballs in baggy jeans, flannel shirts and baseball caps and caught one of the waitresses by the elbow. She cocked her head at me so I could yell vodka on the rocks in her ear. She nodded and moved off again. A dark-haired woman in a scoop-neck leotard top and scarf was looking at me, making flagrant eye contact. She was sitting on a man’s lap, sipping from a shot glass. I broke her heart by looking away and lighting a cigarette. A chubby, wiry-haired guy about my age was twirling a young woman around the dance floor. They moved with the perfect synchronicity you see in dance contests. They looked happy doing what they were doing.

The waitress gave me the vodka. I took my cigarette and drink over to a slippery wet table in a dark corner. People instinctively moved away from me. Couldn’t stand to be near all that charm. Music crashed through the crowd and rolled like foamy surf over the tables and bar stools. All the women on the dance floor seemed lighter than air, moving instinctively, languidly to the crunching rhythms. The men lumbered, or mimicked their partners’ movements with little or no awareness of their own.

A woman with short blond hair the color of freshly polished brass sat down in the chair next to me. She was thick around the waist, and looked stuffed into her jeans and flannel shirt. Her lipstick and nail polish were too red, even in the low light. Each hand was laden with heavy molded rings and hoop-like bracelets. I guessed her to be on the top side of her thirties.

“Hey,” she yelled to me over the din.

I nodded noncommittally.

“Wanna dance?”

I tried to give her a friendly smile.

“No thanks. Just watching.”

She smiled back.

“Oh, I think you do.”

“Sorry, really don’t. Really can’t, actually, but I appreciate the offer.”

“I think you do,” she said, nodding at me and winking her left eye. “If you thought about it, you would really like to dance. This dance.”

She made a play for my hand. I drew deeper into the corner.

“Sorry, just isn’t my thing.”

“Ha,” she said, strangely undeterred, jerking her head toward the dance floor.

I looked past her shoulder and caught a flash of thick auburn hair as it passed through a smoky column of light from one of the ceiling spots.

“So,” I said to the big blond, who was watching me watch Amanda shoulder her way though the crowd. “You really think I’d like to do this.”

“Just a feeling,” she yelled back.

I downed the drink, crushed the butt and stepped out on the dance floor. It was important not to think about it much more, since I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. I’d dedicated a sizable percentage of my life to sitting in all kinds of bars, lounges and nightclubs, but thus far had escaped all attempts to get me to dance, if that’s what those people out there were actually doing. This was something I knew nothing about.

I did, however, know how to box. And all boxers since Muhammad Ali knew you had to float like a butterfly. So this is what I sort of did, in approximate time with the music. My partner was unimpressed.

“What are you doing?”

“The butterfly.”

She thought about it. I concentrated on my moves, trying to blend into the general mayhem. I was momentarily sorry I’d never tried to do this before, but the thought passed when Amanda slid into view and took both my hands, pulling me as she danced deeper into the writhing tangle of humanity. My blond partner smiled at Amanda, waved at me and made a graceful withdrawl from the dance floor. Mission complete.

“What the heck are you doing here, Mr. Acquillo?” she said in mock surprise.

“Don’t rightly know—driven by little voices in my head.”

“What are they saying?”

“That I look like an asshole.”

She laughed.

“Not entirely. You’re getting it.”

“Yeah, right.”

When she settled us into a small pocket of air up next to the band, I moved in and got her into a standard dance grip. Right away I felt safer.

“I have never in my life danced to this kind of music,” I yelled in her ear.

“Could have fooled me. What kind of dance can you do?”

“Waltz. I thought you couldn’t get laid in college if you didn’t know how to waltz.”

I spun her around a little to demonstrate my waltzing skills. The lack of relevance to the actual rhythm didn’t seem to trouble her.

“I hope waltzing talent wasn’t the deciding factor.”

Our waltz turned into a type of slow dance that might have looked out of place, but felt a lot nicer than that other stuff. It didn’t deter the crowd on the dance floor. In fact, some big kid in a baggy sweater and his girlfriend were getting more frenzied by the minute. Everyone else sort of cleared out of their way, but I liked it where we were. They bashed into us a few times, forcing me to close in on Amanda, which was okay with me. I tried to look more nonchalant than I was feeling.

Amanda danced with her eyes cast slightly downward, and every once in a while would look up at me and smile shyly through those thick Italian lashes.

“Don’t do that,” I said to her.

“What?”

“That thing you’re doing with your eyes. It’s making me lose my balance.”

I spun her around again, right into the dopey kid. It seemed to annoy him, and she winced when he dug his heel into her foot. I spun her back again.

“Sorry,” I said to her.

“Gee, some people.”

I waited until I felt him push into me again. Then as I twirled Amanda I hooked my foot around his ankle and pulled hard, and without missing a beat sent the kid face down into the dance floor. His date rushed over and helped him up. We had our little space back to ourselves. I caught the bass player grinning at me.

“What happened to him?” Amanda asked me.

“Must’ve lost his balance.”

I distracted her with another spin. When she closed back in I added a half spin and caught her around the waist. Her head fell back on my shoulder and her eyes were closed. I was close enough to smell her perfume and the wine on her breath.

The dancing kid’s date was helping him to the bathroom. He was holding a bloody nose, though he was able to say “Fuck you, man” clearly enough as he went by. Not a half-hour in the first club I’d been to in years and already I’d drawn blood. I was glad Amanda hadn’t realized what happened. Abby always wanted me to defend her from the dangers of the world, and always got mad at me when I did.

The band ended the song and immediately took up another, this one nice and slow, matching our tempo. The bass player was still grinning at me. I’d made a friend.

“Isn’t that nice,” said Amanda.

“They’ll do anything to keep you on the dance floor.”

Amanda moved in closer and I pulled her tight. Now my face was all the way buried in that dense mass of auburn hair. I could feel the perfect contours of her body fit into mine, the slim, muscular smoothness beneath her dark blue blouse, open at the neck and collar pulled up, fresh to the touch. The air was thick with pheromones and amplified music, filling up all the space inside the Playhouse, leaving no room for time or fears or regrets to intrude or interfere.

I didn’t know what was really going on with her, but right then I didn’t much care.

Eventually the band took a break and all the clocks started up again and we went over to say hi to her friends.

The brassy blond looked pleased. The other woman was her morphological opposite—tall and thin and dark haired. She looked a lot smarter, but less fun. She wore a white hand-knit sweater and tiny pieces of jewelry around her neck and fingers. Her hair was spun into large, highlighted ringlets. Her complexion was rough, but cared for. I liked her eyes, but not her pinched little mouth—it was too well designed for disapproval.

I had the feeling the two of them had spent much of their adult years together, locked in continuous, unsuccessful quests for romantic involvement. Holding on to each other through shared heartaches and unrequited obsessions.

“Robin and Laura. Sam, my favorite customer.”

“Robin,” said Robin, the one with the blond hair.

“Laura,” said Laura.

“Hello.”

“Out for the weekend?” Robin asked. “People are doing that a lot now—coming out in the fall.”

“Here full time. I live on Oak Point.”

“Used to come on weekends, right?” said Amanda.

“It was my parents’ place. I inherited it.”

“Some nice rentals up in North Sea. We do well up there,” said Laura.

“We do well up there,” Robin repeated.

Laura picked up her glass with two hands and sucked on the straw. I noticed she had a pack of cigarettes and a pretty white porcelain lighter. I dug out the Camels and offered them around. Laura took me up on it.

“Walk a mile.”

“If you don’t run out of breath first,” said Robin. Laura swatted her.

We lit up anyway. Robin had her eyes on me, flagrantly assessing. I hoped my grooming was up to it. She seemed like one of those wide-open women who liked to guess something about you to prove her powers of perception. She was drinking red wine—it went well with her hair. Laura luxuriated over the Camel and looked out at the crowded room, counting the house.

“You’re in real estate?” I asked them.

“Yup. Partners for over ten years. House Hunters of the Hamptons. The old triple H. You’ve seen our signs.”

I had.

“You do a lot of rentals?”

“Half and half,” said Robin. “There’s plenty of both. Do you ever rent your place?”

“No. My mother lived there until a few years ago, then I moved in. Never had the chance.”

“You’d be amazed at what you can get. A lot of year-rounders rent and go someplace else for the summer. Or rent something cheaper. Can pay the whole year’s mortgage. You’d be amazed at what everything is worth out here. Most locals are.”

“Even in North Sea?”

“Especially—tend to have lower mortgages, and in this market, you can still get incredible rentals with lesser properties. No offense or anything. I love North Sea myself. Last of the real Hamptons, if you ask me.”

“I guess I would be amazed,” I said, truthfully.

“What do you get when there’s more demand than supply, and the demanders have more money than God and all His angels put together?”

“Inflated property values?”

“The man’s a genius,” Robin said to Amanda.

“Isn’t yours on the water?” asked Amanda, with innocent sincerity.

“Oh, well,” said Robin, “that’s a whole ’nother kettle of fish. Waterfront you double or triple.”

“Do you rent a lot on Oak Point?” I asked.

The two real-estate women looked at each other and shook their heads.

“I always figured there were mostly year-rounders out on the peninsula. Locals,” said Laura.

“That’s what I thought.”

“Hm,” said Robin.

Amanda was sitting next to me, so I couldn’t see her very well. I could, however, feel the backs of her fingers brushing lightly across my thigh under the table. I let my hand drop to my lap so I could squeeze her hand.

“Ever heard of Bay Side Holdings?” I asked.

They looked at each other again. Exchanging telepathic messages.

“Weren’t they trying for some variances a few years ago?” asked Robin.

Laura nodded. “Yeah, they wanted to reconfigure some of the lot sizes on stuff they owned over there. They were trying to reshape pre-existing boundaries. We didn’t pay much attention to it. I don’t think the Appeals Board let them do it. The Town’s a bitch on non-conformance. Though I don’t remember anybody from what’s-its-nose, Bay Side, pushing real hard. The only reason I remember anything is ’cause the lawyer they brought in from the City was so adorable.”

“If you like tall, dark and loaded,” said Robin.

“It just sort of went away,” said Laura, ignoring her. “I have to admit I was a little curious. I get into that stuff more than Robin—spend enough time in those damned hearings and you turn into a zoning junkie.”

“High drama,” said Robin, sarcastically.

“It can be,” Laura shot back, a little insulted.

“I thought their lawyer was a woman,” I said to the pair of them.

Laura examined her drink before taking a sip. “You sayin’ I’m a dyke?” she said, in an awkward way.

“Jacqueline something—Polish name?”

The two of them rolled their eyes in unison.

“Jackie Swaitkowski,” said Robin.

“She’s a local. Lawyers from out of the City usually like to have a hometown connection. Cutie-pants had Jackie fronting the thing.”

“Fronting’s a good word for it,” said Robin.

“Robin, really.”

“I’m not saying anything.”

“Jackie’s a little flaky. That puts some people off,” Laura explained.

“Some people?” Robin asked, rhetorically.

“She’s actually very nice,” said Laura.

“Not a big career planned in rocket science,” said Robin, with a forced smile.

“She’s a lawyer, Robin, how dumb can you be?”

“In this case, very.”

I was relieved when Laura decided to drop it. Amanda seemed even more uncomfortable than me with the turn of the conversation. Bickering, especially between adults, always makes me tense. I feel like I’m back in the office, struggling to restrain the human compulsion to rend and eviscerate each other. Or back in the dining room with my father glaring down the long table, trying to bait a reaction out of me so he’d have someone to contend with, someone to put up a little resistance against his relentless fury. It always makes me want to be somewhere else.

“I gotta hit the head,” I said to the group. I gave Amanda’s hand a final squeeze and stood up. I wove my way through the mass of clubgoers, avoiding collisions and eye contact, passing unnoticed through clusters of friends and sexual prospectors.

The window was wide open in the men’s room, chilling down the sticky urine smell. A rough queue had formed right outside a separate room for the urinals. There was only room in there for two, so I waited my turn. Once inside the room, you had to step up on a short platform to take a leak, which I was halfway through when I heard the door behind me snap shut. I was about to turn to look when somebody shoved me forward into the wall. Piss sprayed off the back of the porcelain and splattered my pant leg.

It wasn’t an accidental shove. It had plenty of real meat on it. I assumed it was the kid I’d sent into the dance floor. My sphincter had already cut me off midstream, so my next thought was to get myself back into my pants. As I zipped, I hunched my shoulders and braced for the kid’s sucker punch.

Instead, a hole opened up in the universe and a piece of heavy artillery poked through. It fired off at point-blank range into the side of my head.

I’d been hit a lot of times as a regular fighter, but I’d never seen stars. I was a little surprised you actually could. They popped in front of my eyes like a fireworks display. I put my forearms in front of my face to block the next blow, which came from the other direction. It ripped off my head and bounced it against the far wall. Then a fist caught me above the belly button, lifting me right off my feet. I ended up on my knees down on the floor. Red fuzz filled up my eyes but I could just make out a pair of black motorcycle boots. I looked up from there into the eyes of the big trained bear that had been hanging around our cars at the beach.

“You don’t know what you’re fuckin’ with,” he said in his clearest trained-bear voice—as dead and hollow as his eyes.

I was trying to think of a way to insult his BMW when one of those black motorcycle boots came up off the floor and caught me under the chin, snapping my mouth shut and sending my head for another spin around the galaxy.

This time the stars were talking. Or maybe it was the voices of the people coming through the door. I didn’t care. I was on my hands and knees watching my blood puddle on the floor. The bear squatted down next to me and patted me on the cheek.

He left after that, I think. I heard him bust through a group of guys clogging the doorway. They said things like, “Hey man, what the fuck?” I didn’t care. I was hoping to see some more colorful stars, though all I got were these wiggly red balls, framed in darkness that closed in on the red until that’s all there was and I went down into this gooey black hole wondering if this is how my old man felt—watching his life drip out onto the floor of a piss-soaked bathroom at the back of the bar.