Two Time

TWELVE

IT WAS SATURDAY MORNING when I found an invitation to a fundraising event that night in Southampton Village taped to my screen door. It was actually addressed to Amanda, but she’d written a note to me on the envelope.

“Butch Ellington will be there auctioning some paintings. You’re my date. Don’t give me an argument. I’ve already bought your ticket. Amanda, your former personal banker.”

When Saturday came, I didn’t see her during the day, which made it easier to work on my addition. I’d used up some more of my pay from Frank on framing material, which the lumberyard had left stacked in my driveway. I wanted to get as much into place as possible and nailed in before the wet fir started to warp, which it does a lot easier these days than it used to. It felt good to swing at big common nails after all the finish work at Melinda McCarthy’s, shooting what amounted to galvanized needles into three-quarter-inch poplar with a pneumatic nail gun. A power nailer would have been just as effective on my addition’s frame, but advanced construction techniques didn’t square with the cottage’s general disposition.

I filled in all the rafters and finished the framing detail on both gable ends before calling it a day. Hot, sore, sweaty and covered in sawdust, I felt justified bringing an aluminum tumbler full of ice and vodka with me into the outdoor shower. A frozen bite on the tongue, steaming water on my shoulders, dust and grit circling down the drain.

My mood adequately fortified, I was able to face the question of what to wear to the fundraiser. I still had a few clothes left over from my marriage, in which my wife Abby held full command of wardrobe selection and acquisition. Fortunately for me, she had reasonable taste, combined with an abhorrence for discount pricing, which was not so fortunate.

“Why pay less” is what I usually said looking at the price tags, though she never heard, distracted by her scrutiny of how the fabric fell, or absorbed by where the item might fit into her master sartorial strategy.

I thought I could redeploy the linen suit I’d worn to go see Appolonia Eldridge, but I’d used up my only dress shirt. I dug around some cardboard boxes I’d dumped in the closet when I moved in and came across a light blue silk T-shirt.

“Dimwitted Pretense Wear from a men’s store exclusively serving the asshole in every man,” I told Eddie, who was watching disinterestedly from the bed. It was surprising the T-shirt had made its way into the boxes; even Abby’s relentless hectoring wouldn’t have got me into that thing.

Though it wouldn’t hurt to try it on.

“Not a word,” I warned Eddie.

I wasn’t sure. I either looked like Don Johnson’s idiot goombah cousin or one of my own idiot goombah cousins trying to look like Don Johnson. Eddie was noncommittal. I figured what the hell, I didn’t have anything else to wear and there was a chance fundraisers and benefactors would find it idiotic enough to stay clear.

I walked my indecisions over to Amanda’s house and rang the bell.

“My. Don Johnson or Al Pacino. Which is it?”

“Jesus Christ.”

Amanda, on the other hand, didn’t look like anybody but herself at her best. She was wearing what my daughter called an LBD—Little Black Dress. Made of a material that managed to define her form without giving everything away. The straps were the kind that invited a scissor snip, and helped delineate a neckline that resolved itself in distant proximity to her neck. The lower skirt part I think was simple and trim, but I was distracted by the slit feature.

“I hope you’re driving,” she said, brushing past me and walking down her driveway toward the passenger side of her Audi A4. I caught up to her, took her arm and gently led her to the Grand Prix.

“Got more leg room,” I told her.

The day had made the transition from late afternoon to evening and the air was just starting to shed some of the heat of the day. The sky over the Little Peconic was turning a shade of periwinkle above the shredded bands of magenta glowing along the horizon. Since it was late July the rangy oaks that named the peninsula were still green but had turned pale and lost much of their luster, their leaves curling brown at the edges. We drove through the Oak Point neighborhood and out to North Sea Road. I had the windows partway down to cloak the commingled residue of decaying leather, Camels and unwashed mixed-breed dogs. The artificial wind thundered in, making conversation difficult and messing up Amanda’s hair, which she didn’t seem to mind. She slipped off her shoes, which were just a few delicate straps of black leather, a sole and high heels. She laid her head back on the seat and I put on the jazz station to provide cover for both of us.

The fundraiser was at one of the really big houses in the estate section surrounding Agawam Lake, just south of Southampton Village. The word “house” didn’t really describe it, though “mansion” seemed archaic, or overly abstract. It was more a collection of houses, aggregated into a loose assembly of forms, unified only by the capricious hand of its creator. You entered the grounds via First Neck Lane, following a driveway that seemed ten times longer than it looked from the road. The hedges in that part of the Village often had the effect of distorting perspective, disguising the trackless scale of the original estates, their acres of lawns, pools and tennis courts.

The driveway forked off a few hundred yards from the house. A young man who looked like he sang in the glee club, in white shirt, black pants and bow tie, directed us to a rise beside the lake where cars were clustering around a huge blue-and-white-striped tent.

“I think there’s room for you over there to the left,” he said. “About a square mile.”

“I think he just dissed your car,” said Amanda as we rumbled across the lawn.

“That’s just envy talking.”

“Well, this is an auction. Perhaps someone will make a bid.”

The atmosphere under the tent was humid and laden with social complexity. A jazz quartet of bored black guys already plotting their routes back to Manhattan provided a soothing undercurrent of sound for bored old white guys pretending they were actually listening. Some of the couples stood in a glow of hearty beneficence, pleased to have survived long enough to share their good fortune, their faces open to any opportunity to bestow kindness and generosity. A few of the women wore the proud mark of cosmetic surgery, an oxymoron, unless you like sixty-year-old women with faces tighter than the head of a drum. Bony, undernourished things with an air of profound disappointment, scanning the crowd for someone to talk to who might be more advantageous to their status than the one already filling the role.

Most of the people there under forty were hawking trays of prosciutto-encased shrimp and endive slathered in cream cheese. The rest were either flush with fresh-faced excitement or standing around nervously, looking like newly minted social aspirants. Some even younger were there only through the coercion of parents or grandparents. Whippet thin, or softened by vestiges of baby fat, slack-jawed and heavy-lidded, the girls spoke to each other without making eye contact, and the boys, some looking as if they’d recently carried off a cruel practical joke, slouched in unconstructed Armanis and woven-leather slip-ons, consoled by the certainty of outliving their extortioners, but not their bank accounts.

A huge blond woman crammed into a bright red cartoon of a crinkly red dress suddenly burst out of nowhere and almost knocked us down trying to capture Amanda in an awkward embrace.

“Amanda, the black,” she said. “Just to die.”

“And look at you,” said Amanda.

Which I did until I recognized her.

“Robin. Long time no see,” I said, putting out my hand.

“Actually I saw you last, since you were unconscious at the time,” she said, holding my hand longer than I needed her to.

“I never thanked you for driving me to the hospital.”

“Laura drove. I mopped up blood. Same diff. You’d do the same, I’m sure.”

Robin and her business partner Laura sold real estate. It had been a good few years for them, proven by her being at the fundraiser, the price of entry comparable to most people’s monthly take home. She guessed I was looking around for Laura.

“She’s home. Says she always gets drunk at these things and makes a fool of herself. In reality, hardly touches a drop. I think she means I make a fool of myself. But I don’t care.”

I’d never seen her under a bright light. The thick layer of makeup on her face smoothed out what excess weight hadn’t already filled in. Her hair, rich blond in the dim light of a nightclub, looked almost green under the diffused glow beneath the tent. She had a glass of white wine in her hand that she used as a device for emphasizing the back half of every sentence, miraculously keeping most of the wine in the glass. Maybe because she’d braced herself with a tight grip on my coat sleeve. Abby would have noticed the patch of wrinkles left by her moist clenched hand.

“I bet there’s a bar here somewhere,” I said, gently pulling back from her grasp.

Amanda slid her hand under my arm and led me away.

“You know how he gets when he’s thirsty,” she called back to Robin.

“I don’t, but that’s okay. I know how I get.”

The drink table was commanded by two Asian women with platinum blond hair and silver lipstick wearing bow ties and tuxedo jackets, sans tuxedo shirts. They looked like a pair of retro Playboy bunny, Japanese punk, off-planet archetypes, fitting into the tired old money ambience of the fundraiser about as well as a team of professional wrestlers. It made me feel a little better about my stupid T-shirt.

“The Pinot for me,” said Amanda, “Absolut for him, on the rocks. A double. Keep him occupied for a few minutes.”

I was grateful for the drink. It’d been so long since I’d been around any kind of a crowd, let alone this kind.

“It’s not that bad,” said Amanda, reading my mind. “Drink up. I’ll drive.”

Abby my ex-wife, would have been intoxicated simply by the idea of the scene under the tent. It would have been her natural element, her aspiration and fulfillment, the consummation of all she held dear. If called upon, she could have parsed the whole gathering into specific social strata, the virtuous and venal alike, guided merely by the length of dangles on an earring, or the stitching on the placket of an oxford-cloth shirt.

“Which one is Butch Ellington?” I asked.

“You’ll know.”

Right then someone over in front of the jazz band called to her, and she let go of my arm and glided away. I dealt with the sudden trauma of abandonment by refilling my glass and heading toward the periphery of the event. This gave me a good perspective on the crowd, which eventually yielded results.

Even from a distance he stood out. Average height, but made taller by an unkempt ball of curly reddish brown hair, perfectly round plastic-rimmed glasses over tired eyes, decent shoulders but a tidy pot belly balled up above slender legs slid into old-fashioned boot-flared Levis. His T-shirt was bright white, and unlike mine made of regular T-shirt cotton. Like Robin, he was using his drink, something amber on the rocks, as a facilitator of conversation, but with even more animation. His target was a tall slender woman with straight, unnaturally black hair with shiny bangs cut straight across her forehead. She leaned back a little as if buffeted by his enthusiasm, but was holding her ground.

I didn’t see much of Jonathan in him, but I expected that.

Back-to-back with Butch was a large woman, almost his height, with a round face and frizzy gray hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a blousy native dress with lots of pleats and heavy embroidery that tried unsuccessfully to divert attention from her zaftig figure. She had rings on her toes and a massive necklace made of multiple strings of little wooden balls. I thought about rows of peasants turning them out on tiny little lathes. Like Butch, she was energetically engaged, in her case with a natty old guy in thin wire-rims and white patent-leather shoes.

Amanda must have caught sight of them at about the same time. I saw her working through the crowd in their direction. She got there several steps ahead of me.

“You probably know everything about coastal sand flow,” I heard Butch say to her as she approached. “Amanda’s lived here her whole life,” he said, spotting me coming in on a separate tack. “Everybody thinks sand comes in from the ocean like the waves, only of course it doesn’t, because even the waves are deceptions. The coast is actually just like a river, flowing parallel to the beach, the direction changing with the tides and winds, the intensity dependent on vast oceanic and subterranean forces nobody can even imagine much less control. These fools with their bulkheads and abatements. It makes you laugh. Everything they do makes it worse for themselves. Building castles made of sand, metaphorically speaking and then some, don’t you think, Amanda? Man, you are a stunning thing. Isn’t she, Dione?”

By this time he’d turned his back on the tall black-haired lady and was gathering Amanda into a much more fluidly executed hug than the one Robin had given her. Dione jumped into the action, wrapping her arms around the two of them. I kept a safe distance.

“I want you to meet someone,” said Amanda in a muffled tone from somewhere inside the crush of affection. I waited for her to emerge.

“Butch Ellington and Dione O’Connor, this is Sam Acquillo.”

“Aquila. You must be an eagle. An Italian eagle,” said Butch, grabbing my hand in a sturdy handshake.

“It’s Acquillo. Add a C, change the O to an A, then add another L. Probably means pigeon or something. Or ‘stay clear of eagles.’”

Now that I was closer I saw Butch had the tuck of a scar on his upper lip that usually meant a cleft palate. I listened for the telltale in his diction, but didn’t hear it. Or the words went by too fast to discern.

“I haven’t actually lived here my whole life, Butch,” said Amanda, “but I know the coast is like a river. I’ve actually swum in the Atlantic Ocean.”

“So you’re both Italians,” said Butch, “you must be related.”

“Only by neighborhood,” I told him.

“Sam is really a Frenchman, he likes to say” said Amanda. “I think because the French are more likely to offend ordinary Americans.”

“Then why aren’t you Sam Aigle?”

“French Canadian,” I said. “More likely to offend ordinary Frenchmen.”

Standing with the Ellingtons made you feel like you’d just been dragged out of a theater audience for use as an onstage foil. Though more benign, innocent as they seemed in their unabashed gusto.

“I think Amanda is just a doll, don’t you, Sam?” Dione asked me, smiling hugely.

“Her mother was a doll maker. Might explain it.”

“Hey,” said Butch to Amanda, “I was thinking of you the other day at the studio. We were talking about the Giant Finger Up the Ass of Authority and where in hell we’re going to construct it. And Edgar said, what the hey, what about the WB building? Am I right? Aren’t we talking, like, huge empty space, out of the weather? Sitting there doing nothing? And it’s, like, yours now, right? Think how that’d make you feel, knowing you made it all possible.”

He took hold of her by the shoulders, which caused her to stiffen slightly.

“Come on, Amanda, don’t get all authoritarian on me.”

“So a Giant Finger Up the Ass would be therapeutic?” she asked.

“It’s a sculpture,” said Dione for my benefit. “Plate steel. Gobs of rivets and welds. Thirty-seven feet high, Butch is thinking.”

“It might be fine, Butch,” said Amanda, “I just need to figure things out.”

Butch was already smiling, but the smile grew, stretching the shiny white crimp in his upper lip until you could almost see through the translucent scar tissue. He gripped both sides of Amanda’s head and kissed her hard at the hairline. I took a step closer, out of habit.

“I love you, Amanda, have I told you that? You need some help figuring, I’ve got this guy who rehabs factory space in Brooklyn. I can give you his number. He buys our paintings, some of the big ones. He’s cool. He’s like this dharma plutocrat. Like some Eastern European, Czech or something. Beautiful-looking guy, like sixty-five years old. Shaped like a bull. Loves to fuck. Women, I think, mostly. Hey you want something to drink? What’s that, wine? Gimme your glasses. Don’t stop me, I’m foraging. Nobody move. Dione, talk to Sam. You know French.”

He left before I could guide him on vodka selection. Dione beamed at us like an Irish-American Buddha in drag. Her face was broad and slightly freckled, contrasting nicely with her gray hair, threaded with streaks of dark brown. A light gleam of sweat had formed on her forehead and under her eyes. She wore no makeup, and doubtless no perfume, beyond the naturally occurring, which was easily discerned in the hot wet air beneath the tent.

“I don’t speak French,” I told her, “though I’m thinking of beefing up my Spanish. Coming up a lot lately.”

“Muchisimas personas Españolas pobres en el pueblo,” said Dione.

“Give it a generation. We’ll be working for them.”

“I hate polyglots,” said Amanda. “I always feel left out.”

“Sam is more optimistic about the prospects for our locally exploited Hispanics than I am,” Dione explained. “But it’s a nice thought.”

“I told Ling and Lo they could stay at the studio tonight if they wanted,” said Butch, arriving with the drinks bunched precariously between his two hands. “They work out of Newark. I mean that’s just nuts driving all the way back there. That’s not their names, Ling and Lo. I made that up. Probably a grave insult. If their fathers heard me I’d have a Samurai sword up my ass.”

“No improvement on a giant finger,” I said, helping extract the vodka from the middle of the cluster.

“How about you, Sam, from out of the City?” he asked.

“North Sea. Shorter drive.”

“I grew up in Shirley. I’m tempted to move back there just for the address. Shirley, New York. It’s like a dumb joke. ‘Where you from?’ ‘Shirley’ Who you calling Shirley?’ I could never say Shirley without saying, ‘Shirley you jest.’”

“Funny town.”

“You haven’t been here your whole life, though. I can tell from your accent. Sounds off-island. Connecticut?”

“Stamford.”

“Butch is amazing with accents,” said Dione, proudly.

“People have no idea how many American accents there are. Not as many as, say, sixty years ago, when elocutionists say we had, like what, five thousand. Now, I bet there’re only, what, eight hundred. Half of them within a two-hundred-mile radius of New York. TV wrecked regional accents. But they keep popping up anyway. Not just geographic but demographic. Every twenty-something in the country now talks like a Valley Girl. The human impulse to distinguish ourselves by place of origin is irresistible. Explains all these new reference groups. Identify with the tribe. How long you live in Connecticut?”

“Twenty years, give or take.”

“I figured. Not that Fairfield County is exactly Connecticut. More an appendage of Manhattan. New England doesn’t start till north of New Haven. North of Fairfield County you’d think you’re in Chicago, which makes no freaking sense at all. Pronounce car like care.”

“On Oak Point we avoid the word altogether. Ride bikes.”

He pulled back at that with a theatrical expression of astonishment. He pointed at me, then back at Amanda.

“Hey I just got it. You’re in Amanda’s new principality. Sucking up to the princess, eh?”

“Butch, honestly,” said Amanda.

“Nothing wrong with monarchical hierarchies, darling,” he said, patting her cheek. “We’re programmed for them, too. Christ, there’s almost nothing we do that isn’t totally programmed into our fucking DNA. If it wasn’t for random mutations occurring at the quantum level, there wouldn’t be any variation in behavior at all. We’d be like an ant colony. Who have queens, by the way, not sure about princesses. And generals and soldiers, and farmers, and naturally slaves. No artists, though, that’s a cinch. Cause too much social agitation. Can’t afford the hoi polloi witnessing perfect beauty and existential truth. First rule of mass control—kill the creators.”

“But not the engineers,” I said. “Somebody’s got to build the little tunnels.”

“Sam’s an engineer,” said Amanda, finally finding a spot to jump in.

“Singing my days, singing the great achievements of the present, singing the strong, light works of engineers,” said Butch. “Walt Whitman.”

“Quite a singer.”

“My favorite. Next to Caruso. And did I mention Albert Einstein?”

“Didn’t know he could sing.”

“No, but he was a great thinker.”

“Though a lousy dresser.”

“Einstein, Caruso, Picasso, Stravinsky and Joyce. They invented the twentieth century. Along with Conan Doyle.”

“Mysterious choice.”

“Read every story. Studied them. Highly underrated.”

I volunteered to go get the next round of drinks, hoping to rest up for the next round of shagging conversational grounders. A good choice, since it turned out to be another hour before the fundraisers finally judged the donors oiled up enough to start the extraction process. After listening to the announcement over the PA, I used what energy I had left to ease up to a new topic.

“By the way, Butch,” I said. “I’m sorry about what happened to Jonathan. Must have been hard.”

The mention of his brother had a certain cooling effect on the repartee. Both Butch and Dione continued smiling, but for the first time seemed a little stuck for words.

“Whoa,” said Dione, “bummer alert.”

“Sorry,” I said again. “Probably a painful subject.”

Butch shook his disheveled head of curly hair.

“Not at all, man,” he said. “It’s totally cool. Thanks for the thought. Whole thing sucks big time. You knew him?”

“No, but I’ve met Appolonia since. I was there when it happened. Only surviving witness. Me and my friend Jackie Swaitkowski.”

“His lawyer,” said Amanda.

Butch’s prevailing look of curious anticipation, sustained throughout the conversation, was now shaded with something more complicated. I felt a little bad for him.

“Look, I really am sorry,” I said. “I just thought since I had this connection with Jonathan it was unfair not to bring it up.”

“I said it’s cool. Really, it’s cool. I’ve been working it out. Jonathan and I weren’t, like, best buds, but that was more my fault. Typical dickhead little brother. Always had to bust his balls. She’s a creepy chick, though. Appolonia. Could never deal with that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” said Amanda, looking at Dione. “I would have said something before, but this is all news to me.” The pitch of her delivery was a little brighter than the subject seemed to call for. It must have carried a sub rosa communication to the other woman.

“Without mystery, there’d be no revelation,” said Dione, returning the serve.

I didn’t exactly know where that exchange was heading, but I felt the need for a quick diversion.

“You ever talk to any of Jonathan’s other clients? Joyce Whithers for example?” I asked Butch, looking at Dione to pull her attention back on me.

“Not unless you consider getting pissed on at the Silver Spoon for daring to wear blue jeans,” said Butch with an edge I hadn’t heard before.

Dione took his arm.

“Forbearance, lover.”

Butch smiled at her.

“When I was a kid I had a dog that loved everything and everybody on earth. People, squirrels, field mice, cats, other dogs, he just loved the crap out of everybody. Except for this one schnauzer. The little kind. Lived down the street. All my dog had to do was see this thing and he’d bust on over there and try to tear its heart out. And the feelings were entirely mutual. I don’t know what these dogs ever did to piss each other off so much, but it was a hatred as unalloyed as anything I’ve ever seen. It taught me that our eternal universe is held in balance by these random binary units of perfectly harmonized hate. Balanced in turn by equally rare and capricious dualities of pure love. I feel blessed beyond words to have met my divine attraction in Dione.”

She hugged him and beamed. He kissed her cheek.

“And doubly so for having sold Joyce Whithers a painting of this plucky little schnauzer sitting at a dinner table with a napkin tied around his neck, eagerly awaiting a bowl of soup with a great big silver spoon clutched in his cute little paw,” said Dione.

“She couldn’t believe the price,” said Butch. “Bragged that she stole it. Venality is so predictable.”

“How are you with Dobermans?” I asked him.

“Schnauzers, Dobermans, all Nazi dogs to me.”

“This one’s Latino. Ivor Fleming’s.”

I thought I’d finally done the impossible. Butch just stood there and stared at me, as if noticing for the first time there was an actual human being attached to the vodka and baby blue T-shirt.

“A client? Of Jonathan?” he asked me.

“Not real happily, given the results.”

Butch shook his head.

“Jonathan worked for Ivor Fleming, and screwed it up?”

“According to Ivor.”

Butch’s frown deepened.

“These both friends of yours?” he asked.

I could feel Amanda stiffen. I took the cue.

“Farthest thing. Don’t know em, don’t want to. All I know is they’re the only two people who didn’t love your brother’s advice.”

“You know a lot,” he said, his face softening again and the brilliant intensity of his eyes re-igniting.

“Not really. Just can’t help being a little interested. Having been there and all.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” said Dione, half as a question.

“I don’t know about that stuff. Too deep for me.”

We talked some more, and Butch’s mood managed to swing all the way back by the time we heard the fundraiser people take over the PA system from the jazz band and announce the start of the auction. Though the opportunity to abandon the conversation was probably welcomed. He groped Amanda some more by way of farewell.

“Look, we’re putting this thing together,” he said to her, an inch or two from her face. “At the studio. All-day Council Rock on the Giant Finger at the Institute of the Consolidated Industrial Divine. Construction strategies and logistical permutations. No pressure on the dead factory space, I promise. Not another word. Just drinks, music, ritual and action fantasies. Productive delusions.”

“Sam’s an industrial designer,” said Amanda, using my forearm to help extricate herself from his grasp. “I bet he knows something about rivets and welds.”

“No shit. Beautiful. You come, too. Remember, though, no rules. No laws. Except the law of gravity. Only thing I give Newton credit for.”

“I’m with you. Thermodynamics was a bust.”

“Beautiful. Amanda, you know where we are.”

Dione smiled at us beatifically as he led her away into the swirl of seersucker and chiffon. Their departure caused the soundproof enclosure that had formed around our conversation to disintegrate, and I suddenly felt exposed and threatened by the congregating mass of privilege and competitive fervor.

I looked around for a way out.

“We can go,” said Amanda. “I already bought something in the silent auction. One of Butch’s sculptures.”

“I hope nothing anatomical,” I said to her as I threaded a path out from under the tent and over to where I’d parked the Grand Prix. The big German sedans on either side had prudently allowed for the wide swing of the Pontiac’s doors, one of which I opened for Amanda, giving her plenty of room to slide fluidly into the passenger seat. Nobody tried to stop us from leaving, so the auction must have been a good diversion. The young guy in the black bow tie saluted as we passed by. By now it was dusk, and street lamps lit our way out of the estate section and through the Village, its sidewalks filled with a parade of summer renters who looked like they were having a nice time, or at least willing to put up a brave front.

“I’m too dressed up to go home yet,” said Amanda, after we’d cleared the estate section and it was safe to talk. “And not the Pequot, thank you.”

So we compromised by heading for a nightspot housed in the dilapidated building that used to be the Hawk Pond Yacht Club. It was next door to the marina where Hodges kept his boat. It was too early in the evening for the regular swarm of clubgoers from out of the City, so after paying a confiscatory cover charge we easily found two stools at the bar.

“Home at last,” I told the gangly African-American bartender as he mopped cocktail napkins and soggy dollar bills up off the bar in front of us.

“Welcome, son. What ll it be?”

Amanda ordered again for both of us, then slipped off the barstool for a trip to the ladies’ room. Before leaving she stood behind my stool and put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder. There must have been an airborne narcotic mingled with the smell of her hair, because a single whiff almost gave me vertigo. I steadied myself by brushing her thick hair back from her face and kissing her forehead, much more gently than Butch Ellington had.

“I missed you, Sam,” she said, from someplace far away. “I need you to forgive me.”

“Nothing to forgive.”

“Yes there is, and you know it,” she said.

“We just met, remember?”

“I still need you to forgive me. You have to say the actual words.”

“I forgive you. Trusting you is another matter.”

She squeezed a little harder.

“Okay I’ll take that for now.”

She took in a deep breath and sighed it out again. Then she went to the ladies’ room, leaving me and the bartender to shrug at each other in commiseration.

“Tell me about it,” he said, dropping the icy vodka down in front of me.

I’m not sure what all happened in the nightclub after that, except it involved more drinking and a few terrifying forays on to the dance floor, a place I’d only been once before in my life, with Amanda, coincidentally. This time, though, I got through the whole experience without causing a fistfight or unsettling disturbance of any kind, unless you count my dancing. When the place finally filled up with the usual slithery mass of sweaty hope and brainless expectation, Amanda agreed to make a run for it.

The velvet air outside almost felt cool after the heat of the crowded club. We walked over to the docks that shot out from the southeast shore of Hawk Pond. The moon was close to full, producing a pale illumination that added to the harder light from electric lanterns spaced evenly along the gangways. I picked out Hodges’s boat, but his lights were out.

Amanda took my bicep with both hands and led me toward the waterfowl reserve directly adjacent to the club.

“Let’s go this way. I know a good spot.”

She slipped off her shoes when we reached the end of the docks, defined by the transition from wooden planks to a narrow sandy path. I followed her into the grassy foliage that grew along the banks of the pond. The glow of the moon slowly took over for the artificial lights of the marina, guiding our way over little dunes and through runoffs filled with rounded pebbles and slippery driftwood.

“Watch your step,” she told me, taking my hand to steady herself.

About a hundred yards into the reserve the path led to a small clearing intended as an observation post, with a heavy teak park bench and a little Plexiglas-encased placard mounted on a stand meant to instruct people on the difference between ospreys and cormorants and how to spot Monarch butterflies on their way back from Mexico. It also had a great view of the pond, and the sparkle coming from little North Sea shacks lined up along the western shore, remnants of my father’s time, ramshackle and relaxed.

I sat on the bench and lit a cigarette. Amanda dropped her shoes in the sand and walked out to the edge of the pond. You could hear the pulse of the subwoofers in the nightclub shouldering their way through the dune grass and scrubby plant life, laying down a low bass rhythm under the chatter of insects coming from the marshes surrounding us on three sides.

I watched Amanda, now just a silhouette against the dark waters of Hawk Pond, walk out to just above her knees where she scooped salt water up in her hands to splash on her face and run through her hair.

I must have lost track of her for a few minutes after that because I was surprised to see her suddenly back at the bench, standing in front of me with her hands on her hips.

“Not a bad location,” I said to her.

“It’ll do.”

She reached down with crossed hands and gathered up the hem of her dress. Then she pulled the whole thing up and over her head and sat down on my lap, facing me, knees to either side of my legs. As we kissed she unbuckled my pants.

I slid my hands over her thighs and up her long, smooth back, meeting nothing but Amanda along the way.

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered in my ear.

I couldn’t have anyway. Too absorbed, all the way gone.

—

I think we both fell asleep after that, at least for a little while, because I don’t remember anything but awakening to a chilly breeze out of the north, the feel of goosebumps across her naked back and a dull glow in the east, harbingers of days to come, irredeemably altered.