Two Time

EIGHTEEN

IT WAS DEEP IN JULY, when the air out on the East End hung like hot, wet gauze, and the sun was busy charring the epidermals of investment bankers, administrative assistants and trophy wives, and irrigation systems drew down the aquifer to convert three-acre flower gardens into simulated rain forests and maintain the water level of organically shaped gunite pools surrounded by tumbled marble pavers and teak recliners with built-in cupholders drenched in the condensate of crystal-decanted, lime-choked gin and tonics. Even then, the weather could turn capricious and redirect the jet stream to flood the atmosphere with oceans of cool, sharp, dried-out air delivered directly from the sainted upper latitudes of Canada. I think I was the only one who wasn’t surprised by this. Maybe because I’d made note of the phenomenon in the past, as a bored child searching for a mystery to divine, relishing every time my secret expectation was fulfilled.

That cool morning air rushed across the bay, setting the view of the North Fork in sharp focus and sweeping stale air and insects aside as if with a casual brush of the hand. Eddie really dug it. He took summer stoically, metering his bursts of energy and visiting his water bowl more often, but it wasn’t his favorite time of year. For him, the cool wind was an intoxicant. He busted out of the side door and ran the perimeter of the property like a dog possessed, stopping every few minutes to bark at me where I’d settled into the Adirondacks with a cup of hazelnut, as if insulted by my lack of appreciation for the change in meteorological circumstances.

I’d finished prefabbing the main components of Melinda McCarthy’s garden extravaganza the day before, when it was still hot and humid, but that was all right. The blessed change was part of my reward—deferred compensation. I took advantage of the air to take a run over to Hodges’s boat. The parallel tracks in the sand road that ran along the bay were worn down to the rocky substrate by the summer traffic heading out to the waterside cottages, and now the occasional behemoth crammed into every square inch of building envelope after the original shack had been bulldozed and carted away. I stayed on the grassy median and worried about twisting my ankle. Eddie crisscrossed in front of me, occasionally disappearing into the underbrush to flush out a bird or disrupt the tranquility of the amphibian population.

I could smell breakfast half a mile before we got there. It was the specialty of the house. Some sort of indefinable multicolored protein swirled around a cast iron grill. Though unfortunately mostly all consumed.

Instead he offered up a few chunks of fried chicken hash brought home from the Pequot and the usual bucket of wretched coffee, served in a cracked plastic mug swiped from the Chowder Pot Café, Wildwood, NJ.

“Salt and pepper are over there. Season to taste.”

“Not sure the word taste’ applies in this context.”

“Drink plenty of coffee. Takes some of the sting out.”

He took a handful of dog biscuits and threw them into the scrub woods on the other side of the docks, occupying Eddie and the Shih Tzus and giving me a little peace and quiet so I could eat.

After a while, I asked him.

“Say Hodges. You know a guy named Ivor Fleming? Owns a scrap-metal business up island.”

“Don’t know him. Heard of him. Gangster.”

“Everybody but me knows about this guy.”

“Not a made guy. What we used to call a punk. Not connected but runs the same kind of deal. Got his own corner of the market. At least that’s the story. Could be all talk.”

“Whose talk?”

“Guys chartering boats. From up island, Nassau County. Like to chat up the tough stuff. Most of it’s bullshit.”

I told him about my visit to Ivor’s house in Sagaponack. And the escort Ike and Connie gave me off the property. I left out our little dance at the lumberyard.

“Well, shit, Sam, that’s what I’m talking about. Be careful. Guys like that always have something to prove.”

I let it drop at that and concentrated on getting through the over-spiced conglomeration on my paper plate. Hodges watched me attentively.

“If I’d known you were coming I’d have saved some eggs Benedict.”

“Chicken’s great. You can keep your traitorous eggs.”

“If you’re thinking Benedict Arnold, that’s a myth. It was actually a secret recipe of the Benedictines. The monks. The ones in France.”

“I thought they were into brandy.”

“Made it to wash down the eggs.”

The northwesterly breeze, concentrated by the narrow channel that led into the marina, was strong enough to flip Hodges’s baseball cap into the water, which he deftly retrieved with a dock hook. All the sailboats, laying perpendicular to the breeze, were heeled slightly to starboard. Unfettered halyards smacked against the masts, laying down a syncopated rhythm over which a low, steady whistle played through the shrouds and stays. Down in the semi-protection behind the dodger the wind cooled the sweat off my forehead and combed stylish waves into the black-and-white manes of Hodges’s frantic Shih Tzus, who’d rejoined us in the cockpit. Eddie went out to the bow to stare at the water in an effort to conjure up a swan.

“I think that Polish girl’s in a lot better shape,” said Hodges. “She was all over that goofy secret agent.”

“She’s Irish. Ig’s FBI.”

“That’s just my impression, technicalities aside.”

Eddie trotted back down the deck, poking his head through the lifelines to check for infiltration along the freeboard. I tossed a hunk of chicken into the water to see if I could stir up a little action.

“She brought him around again the other night. Said it was his idea, which definitely plays in his favor.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.”

“New customers always welcome.”

“For her. You got all the trade you can handle.”

“True. It’s important to keep at least half the seats available at all times. In case a bus tour comes through.”

The swans didn’t go for the bait, but a family of Canada geese came out of nowhere, snaking along in single file, a string of furry gray-brown goslings bookended by their parents, the showy male in the lead, the female, unadorned but attentive, bringing up the rear. Eddie grumbled and snorted, but was clearly ambivalent about the prize. Like me, he fared poorly with upended expectations.

“How’s her face?” I asked him.

“She’s going in for another round. The last one, supposedly. Somewhere in the City.” He looked at his watch. “Sometime this week if I remember right.”

“Didn’t tell me.”

Hodges arched his oversized eyebrows at me.

“Why would she tell you?”

“I don’t know. Give her a pep talk.”

“Which is why she didn’t tell you.”

“She might even look better when it’s all over with. I could tell her that.”

“Yeah, that’d buck her up.”

I scooped the rest of the chicken off the plate and tossed it at the Canada geese.

“How’s that coffee?” he asked me.

“Still expressing its unique character.”

“The secret’s in the beans.”

“I thought it was the presentation.”

“The fishing crews really go for it. It’s an important topic of conversation around the bar. I try to tell em the principles behind the ideal coffee bean, but I lose them somewhere between soil composition and sub-equatorial temperature oscillation.”

“I can always spot a premium coffee by the inflated price. You might consider that. Goes directly to the bottom line.”

Hodges pursed his lips in thought.

“I’ll take it up with Dotty. She’s the one who buys the shit. God knows where.”

“Or consult Joyce Whithers. I can get you an introduction.”

He looked mildly surprised.

“Isn’t that a little uptown for you, no offense?”

“I’ve been helping with her fig tree.”

“Figs, coffee beans, nobody knows more about food.”

“Really.”

“The price of a meal is about my gross take for the whole weekend, but they say it’s worth it. Can’t testify from personal experience.”

I told him about her connection to Jonathan and Appolonia Eldridge.

“So she’s a friend of Appolonia’s? Hard to imagine,” he said.

“How come?”

“The waitstaff calls her the Queen of Darkness. Apparently isn’t much better with the customers. I’m trying to picture her as somebody’s chum.”

“I think it’s a socioeconomic thing.”

“Could be, though by my lights, a bitch is a bitch.”

“So I guess a date is out of the question.”

“Only if she helps out in the kitchen.”

I caught him up on meeting Jonathan’s brother Butch and his wife. I tried to replay the conversation, but the full sense of it resisted easy description. He listened carefully, working his teeth with a snapped-off kabob skewer to aid concentration. The wind tugged at the bunches of steel gray hair that sprung from under his baseball cap and rippled the slick white fabric of his warm-up jacket.

“I used to play cards with that artist over in Springs,” he said. “They called him a genius, though to me he wasn’t much more than a nasty drunk. Got so fucked up he could hardly talk. Actually, could hardly talk even when he wasn’t all fucked up. Some of the guys we played with were itching to slap him upside the head, but other guys said, lay off, he’s got his brains all churned up from doing art. So you had to give him a pass, something like innocent by reason of insanity. I was never in favor of slapping people upside the head, so that was fine with me. Insane or not, I just thought he was an asshole. Finally managed to wrap his car around a tree. Killed two women. And himself in the bargain, which I guess was the least he could do.”

“Killing yourself is good for sales, but it puts a cap on future production.”

“Sure wasn’t making it playing cards. Hard to be much good when you’re half-stewed all the time.”

“Unlike Walter Whithers, who Burton said was a first-rate poker player.”

“Way out of my league,” said Hodges.

“Don’t sell yourself short. That game in Springs is taught in art school.”

“If you met Joyce you can understand why Whithers needed to get out of the house. Probably motivated his card skills. Which I heard were considerable.”

“You did?”

“The Spoon’s been open for about twenty years. Used to be a regular game there. Serious. All whales.”

“As in the prince or the big fish?”

“Casino talk for high rollers. Big bet boys. At least that’s what you heard from the people who worked there, parking cars, serving drinks, muscling drunks out the door. When you work in the restaurant business, nothing’s private. By the way, whales aren’t fish. They’re mammals. Descended from herbivores. Used to walk on land. Weren’t as big then.”

“Still probably couldn’t fit em in a fry pan.”

I heard some rustling feet up toward the bow and looked in time to see Eddie launch into hysterics over a pair of swans who’d finally decided to glide into view. I don’t know what it was about the big white birds, but they really pushed his buttons. Maybe because, unlike other victims of Eddie’s belligerence toward all things feathered, swans were inclined to fight back, rearing their long necks and spitting out a deep wet hiss, which scared the crap out of me even if it didn’t deter him.

Hodges’s Shih Tzus joined in the clamor, Eddie’s supporting cast, heedless and vocal, black-and-white balls of reckless frenzy. Hodges stood up in the cockpit and yelled something at the swans, who must have understood, because they quickly turned and slid back around the stern of the hulking houseboat next door. Eddie looked like he was about to give chase, but I told him to cool it, so he sat down on the bow of the boat and stared at the water, ready for the next encounter. The Shih Tzus fluttered back into the cockpit so Hodges could acknowledge their audacity. He had a hand for each, to scratch behind their ears.

“I was just remembering those games at the Silver Spoon. Whithers and Charlie Garmin, Edgar Rose, the producer, ah, what’s-his-name, Balducci, Enrico Balducci, developer, vintner—that’s another word for winemaker. Has a place on the North Fork. I don’t remember who else.”

“Good recall.”

“I remember a lot of stuff, Sam. But only stupid stuff. It’s a curse. Can’t remember where I put my checkbook or whether it’s Dotty’s birthday or the day my wife died. But this wasn’t that hard. Big topic of conversation during the late late shift. It’s tough when you’re a waiter or a bartender—where do you go when you’re done work? The guys from the Spoon would come into the Pequot after knocking off, knowing we’d serve them as long as they wanted. I used to consider closing hours sort of an academic concept.”

“A. legal theory.”

“Exactly.”

With breakfast finished I helped Hodges clean up and get the cockpit of the boat shipshape. I was about to start jogging back to Oak Point when he suggested sailing me back, since he was planning to cruise up to Sag Harbor to relieve Dotty, who’d opened the joint and would be working through lunch. After almost breaking his neck, and succeeding with a stack of ribs, Hodges was having trouble working the eight-, ten-hour days he’d worked for forty years. He’d been lucky enough to find a kid to manage the kitchen, and the rest Dotty could handle on her own, more or less. The medical people had wanted to keep him in physical therapy, but he felt that’s what sailboats were for, and since he already owned one, a cruise up across the Little Peconic, atop Noyac Bay and under Shelter Island to Sag Harbor every once in a while was therapy enough.

We cast off the dock lines and Hodges motored out of the slip and eased along the dock-lined channel and out into Hawk Pond. The light delivered by the Canadian air was hard and brittle, but would deepen as the sun burned up and swept away the morning haze. The tall grasses that filled the marshland bordering the pond swayed in the wind, and cormorants were lining up along the booms of the boats moored in the pond to dry out their wings and crap white graffiti all over the blue-and-tan sail covers. The wind was on our nose through most of the course. Then the channel made a right turn and it hit the port side hard enough to heel us over, an accomplishment given the heavy displacement of Hodges’s stolid old Gulf Star. I checked the wind gauge, which showed around thirteen knots, which was high for the protected reaches of Hawk Pond. Ten minutes later we were through the cut and out into the Little Peconic, beating upwind under power through a succession of buoys that led to the deep water. The boat started to meet a stiff chop shoved up by the northwesterly, but was unperturbed. The gauge showed about fifteen knots of actual wind, which wasn’t much of a challenge for the heavy sea-worn cruiser now that we were underway. Hodges stood behind the wheel and squinted into the light spray that bounced off the dodger, one hand to keep us on course, the other to finish his cup of coffee. I lit a cigarette and followed suit, savoring the bitter concoction like a crystal snifter of vintage brandy. The Shih Tzus were happily stowed below, but Eddie was still out on the bow, face to the wind, fur combed back, legs spread to compensate for the motion of the boat, watchful but otherwise composed.

Once clear of the buoys and into open water, Hodges came up into the wind and I helped him hoist the mainsail. The main halyard winch was in sore need of lubrication, and the halyard itself was bristling with frayed cords, but we got the big sail up and tight behind the mast, so Hodges could fall off toward Sag Harbor and kill the engine. This was my favorite moment, when the sounds of the tightening sails and the gentle slap of water on the hull, the creak and rattle of the rigging replace the chug and rumble of the little diesel, and the vertiginous slant of the boat as she finds her balance and accelerates up into the wind tells you the hand of nature is now engaged in your propulsion, and all pretense of human supremacy is rendered inconsequential.

Without waiting for Hodges to ask, I unfurled the jib and set it a crank or two shy of the lifelines, flattening the chaotic telltales and pulling the boat up close to her hull speed. I knew from a lifetime of plying the waters of the Little Peconic that we needed to be tight to the wind to make decent headway toward a place where he could drop me off and still have a reasonable sail up through the messy race above Jessup’s Neck and on to Sag Harbor. After tightening and tailing off the jib sheets I looked back at Hodges manning the helm and he grinned, as all seaman do under a set of wind-filled sails and a sunny day. I saw him then as a young man, rough and ugly but receptive to the resonance of sun and salted air, and the cruel unpredictability of the water, the way it seduced you into numb devotion, blind to its terrors until it was too late.

“You know, in about four hours we could have this thing clear of Montauk and be on our way to France. Or the coast of Africa,” he yelled over the wind.

“We could see the lions playing on the beach.”

“Or stroll down the Champs Élysées.”

“Fine if you’re into Pernod.”

“All talk and no action. Tighten down that boomvang, will you?”

Eddie worked his way back toward the cockpit down the windward side of the boat on cautious legs, casting occasional glances over the gunwale at the foam churning out from the hull. For a rejected lubber of a mutt he had great instincts for the random kick and pull of sea movement, demonstrated on both Hodges’s old cruiser and Burton’s elegant thoroughbred. I was poised for a leap across the deck if he got into trouble, but as always, he slalomed through the rigging and bounded nimbly into the cockpit.

“Where’s the catch? I was expecting a mouthful of bass.”

Instead he gave me the privilege of scratching under his chin for a few seconds before scooting down the companion-way to join the Shih Tzus.

Our point of sail exposed us to the full brunt of the rising sun as it crested the top of the short ridge that ran like a leafy spine down the center of the South Fork. Along the coast were little bay-front cottages like mine, slowly but inevitably succumbing to demolition and rebirth. I’d been watching the process from the dirt side as I jogged along the coastal sand roads, but you could see it better out here on the bay. Some of the new houses were very beautiful, architectural jewels crafted by gentle, thoughtful people in cool, sophisticated studios in East Hampton, or Amagansett, or high above the tangle of city streets. Others were clumsy or idiotic derivations, prideful, foolish assertions of self-importance or blind ignorance.

As it always was, as it always will be.

“What say we haul over to Jessup’s Neck, then come back around to drop you off,” said Hodges. “We’re doing over six knots. Gives us plenty of time.”

“No argument here. All I have to do today is help stick a Giant Finger Up the Ass of Authority.”

“I thought you were on a reform kick.”

“Technical assistance only.”

I told him what I knew about Butch Ellington’s project; Amanda had left me a note that the Council Rock was in session later that afternoon. Hodges made some trenchant comment about the dynamic tension between the forces of abstract and representational art, though not quite in those words, but otherwise kept his concentration on steering the boat toward Jessup’s Neck, the sandy wooded peninsula and bird refuge that defined the line between the Little Peconic and Noyac Bays. He took us just shy of the shallow water along the beach before cranking the wheel hard and bringing us about, interrupting the breezy peace with the clamor and commotion of flapping sails as we stuck the bow through the wind and retrimmed for the trip back.

“I never had what you’d call a cuddly relationship with authority myself over the years,” said Hodges. “But I’m not sure I’d want to be sticking them with any fingers, assuming you could find the point of entry.”

“Always the danger they’ll stick you back.”

“That’s my thinking.”

In what felt like a few minutes we were off the pebble beach at the tip of Oak Point. I furled the jib and Hodges dropped the mainsail into a loose pile between the lazy jacks, and Eddie bounded up from below to watch me drop the anchor off a roller on the bow. He knew all this activity preceded a trip to shore in the dinghy, another chance to set a bold figure at the bow of the inflatable as it shot across the water. I cinched a piece of dock line around his collar just to be safe, while Hodges manned the smelly antique outboard that drove the dinghy into shore. I’d seen my cottage, and what was once Reginas, from the water side a million times, though the sight never quite lost its novelty. The houses from a distance looked like miniatures, scale models dwarfed by the surrounding oak trees and the wooded hills beyond.

As we closed in on the beach I could see Amanda in her recliner settled in with book and bikini. Next door was another figure, sitting in one of my Adirondack chairs. Also a woman, with a flare of kinky strawberry-blond hair and a white eye patch. She looked agitated, even from several hundred yards, waving what looked like a big beige-colored envelope.

“Yeah, she’s better all right,” I yelled to Hodges over the snarl of the old two-cycle outboard. “God help me.”