by Chris Knopf
“I’m with her. Nominally.”
This close in, the smell of the fire was sweeter, stickier. I assumed because of plastic things like PVC pipes, wiring insulation and vapor barriers. I heard a crash and turned to see Amanda kicking over a stand the carpenters were using to support a cutoff saw. The fire official looked at me like it was my fault.
“Maybe you should get her behind the yellow line,” he said to me.
“Sure, just lend me your gun.”
“We’re not armed.”
Amanda was standing over the aluminum stand as if daring it to get back up and fight. I walked behind her and grabbed her around the waist with my right arm. There wasn’t a lot of meat on her, but she was surprisingly strong, in a rangy, slippery way. I still hadn’t fully mastered my balance, so I had to dig deep to carry her all the way to the yellow tape, where I was grateful to see Sullivan standing with a walkie-talkie up to his face.
I put Amanda back on the ground and held the tape up for her. She ducked under without looking at me.
“The County boys are on their way,” Sullivan said to me. “None too happy about it. Dickheads.”
“Isn’t this what they do?”
“They like it better when the fire’s out.”
“Oughta strike while the iron’s hot,” I said.
“That’s my thought.”
I’d lost track of Amanda again, but then saw her leaning on her car, both hands laid flat on the hood. I walked over to her and wrapped both arms around her waist. I put my lips next to her ear.
“You got insurance,” I whispered. “The foundation’s still there. Start over tomorrow. Make an even better house.”
“Fuck the house,” she whispered back. “It’s the principle.”
“Okay, whatever that means.”
“This project was important to me. Something they couldn’t take away from me. That’s the principle. My life is the principle.”
“Who’s they?” I asked.
I stepped a few paces back from her face so I could better see her eyes. They were unflinching.
“You said, ‘Something they couldn’t take away from me.’ Who’s they? Milhouser?”
She just stared at me, her face now an alien thing.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“Then what’s with all the angst? It’s bad, but it’s not the end of anything. You buck up and do it again. Get back on the horse.”
I tried to hold her, but she wiggled out of my grasp, then came back at me, pushing her chest into mine the way kids used to do on the playground when trying to start a fight. I did the opposite of what I used to do in those situations and dropped my hands to my sides.
“Yeah, like you’re the expert on that,” she said, an inch from my face. “Nice job of bucking up. I should be taking lessons from you.”
She had a valid point. I’d made a pretty spectacular hash of my life, and whatever repair I’d managed was a long time coming. So bucking up wasn’t a specialty of mine. I was much better at resignation and denial. And better yet at avoiding emotional conflict.
Amanda and I had built our relationship out of spare parts, and not all of them fit so well together. It’s unfashionable to find individual fault for romantic shortfalls, but I knew most of ours were mine. But those places where we’d found common ground were more precious to me than I fully understood before that night under the glow of her burning aspirations. I’d lived most of my life in other places, filled with cruel, demoralizing words. I might not have made much of myself since then, but I wasn’t going back there.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m the last one to be handing out advice.”
I started to visualize my jogging route, which included a stretch from my house through portions of Jacob’s Neck, the connection for which was only about a half block from where I was standing. I zipped up my jacket as I turned on my heel and started to jog that way, weaving through the firefighters and onlookers and cops standing by their cars and trucks, hypnotized by the blinking lights.
In a few minutes I was on the sandy road, which I followed by muscle memory down Jacob’s Neck to the segment of hardtop that ran in front of the abandoned WB factory, then back on to a sandy path that followed the contours to the tip of Oak Point where my cottage waited for me, equipped with a negligent watchdog, a perfect view of the Little Peconic Bay and the remaining half fifth of Absolut, which fit neatly with a tray of ice cubes into my big aluminum tumbler.
Back within the protection of the screened-in porch I parked myself at the table with the tumbler and a pack of cigarettes. I turned out the light and smoked quietly, looking for signs of something more than indifference from the bay. Some justification for bearing endless witness to the moonstruck water, the black and smoldering sky.
THREE
THE MONDAY AFTER Amanda’s house burned down I was at the corner place in the Village buying a large Viennese cinnamon coffee and a customized croissant stuffed with cheese and Virginia ham. After five years of steady seduction I’d finally established a fragile rapport with the tiny Guatemalan woman who ran the pastry counter. This allowed me to wrangle special orders, managed mostly through the lavish use of terms like bonita, guapa and Señorita Lista.
It was half an hour before I had to show up at Joshua Edelstein’s house, so I sat on the teak park bench and pretended the temperature was above freezing. The coffee helped the cause, steaming up in my face and easing down the ham sandwich.
A battleship gray Crown Victoria swung so abruptly into the parking space in front of the bench I almost pulled my feet out of the way. It was Sullivan, resplendent in Yankees cap, tough-cop sunglasses and aftermarket battle wear. He said something into a radio before getting out of the car.
“You like that faggie coffee,” he said, standing in front of the bench with his hands in his jacket pockets.
“You’re blocking my sun.”
“Stay put,” he said and went into the shop, returning soon after with a bagel and a tall cup of his own. Looked like a latte. He sat down next to me, taking up more than half the space.
“I got the prelims on the fire from the County,” he said. “Wasn’t much of a challenge, even for those bozos.”
“Arson.”
“Oh, yeah. Gasoline siphoned out of a step van the finish carpenters had left on the site. The hose was still sticking out of the tank. Filled up a couple of empty compound buckets. Threw it all over the house, then tossed the buckets in the backyard.”
“Didn’t put up a sign that said, Arsonists at work?’”
“Next-door neighbor heard voices right before noticing the big glow. Heard a truck pull away.”
“Heard but didn’t see,” I said.
“Said he was just lying there in bed, trying to sleep. Understandable. No reason to look. You usually don’t know you’re a witness to something until some cop shows up at your door.”
He took a bite of the bagel. Cream cheese oozed out of the middle and tumbled down the front of his camouflage field jacket.
“Not a professional job,” I offered.
“Unless their profession was advertising.”
“P.T. Barnum invented advertising. Said there was a sucker born every minute.”
“These guys weren’t suckers. Smarter than that.”
“Smart?”
“Wore gloves and something on their feet that disguised their footprints. Just looked like blobs in the mud. Almost no sole prints.”
“Booties,” I said, after a moment’s thought.
“Booties?”
“Lightweight, disposable shoe covers. Made of Gore-Tex or Tyvek. Used in ultra-sterile, ultra-pure environments. Like clean rooms, where a single piece of dust can louse up a semiconductor. Or in bioresearch, or drug production.”
“You know this?” Sullivan asked.
“I know about booties. I don’t know if they used them. Just a guess. If they did, you’re right. They’re smart.”
Some more deliberation
time passed, which I used to finish off my coffee as a distraction from the envy I was feeling over Sullivan’s chocolate-sprinkled latte.
“They wanted to advertise the act, not the actors,” said Sullivan.
“A summation both trenchant and poetic,” I told him, sincerely.
“I’m gonna assume that wasn’t an insult,” he said, downing the last of his bagel and cream cheese. “Speaking of which,” he said, brushing crumbs off his jacket, “have you talked to Amanda?”
“Had a few insults of her own?”
“After you ran off. She wasn’t happy.”
“Did she hear the discussion with the County people?” I asked.
“Wasn’t supposed to, but yeah. Elbowed her way in. Heard it all.”
“Must have been interesting.”
“Actually shut her up. I figured exhaustion finally got to her. I had Will Ervin escort her back to her house and told him to keep a tight eye on her and her other place.”
“Have any theories?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” he said.
“Nothing worth talking about.”
“In other words, you’re not talking.”
“In other words, if I start talking about it to you in your official capacity, I might be jumping the gun.”
He savored a gentle pull off the top of the latte, smacking his lips like he’d just dipped into Aunt Tillie’s prize-winning apple pie.
“I’m in the mood to try something new this time, Sam. What say you tell me everything you’re thinking now, no matter how half-baked, rather than making me guess until I’m ready to start beating you over the head to get it out of you.”
“No more beating on the head. Doctor’s orders.”
“So I hear,” he said.
“Yeah? From whom?” I asked.
“I’m not ready to talk about that.”
“Christ.”
“Though I might’ve heard a few things one time when I was lifting weights next to a trauma doc. Somebody we both know.”
“Fucking Markham.”
“He said the same crap about me. You’re not the only one who’s had his bean used for batting practice.”
I’d been through some stuff with Joe Sullivan, and truth is, I probably hadn’t been as fair to him as I should have. It was an old habit of mine to keep my lunatic musings to myself until I thought they deserved to be shown the light of day. People misinterpreted that to mean I didn’t think they had worthwhile thoughts of their own. That’s not what I wanted. I just wasn’t done cooking the stew.
“I got into a dumb little dustup with Robbie Milhouser Friday night. Him and a couple of his boys.”
“I know. Judy told me.”
“Hah,” I said. “Who’s withholding now?”
“Ross wanted me to ask if you thought there was a connection between that and Amanda’s fire. Like I wouldn’t have wondered that myself.”
Ross Semple was the Southampton Town Chief of Police. The gripe aside, we both knew he held Sullivan in fairly high regard. The only strike against him being his association with me.
“I’ve got no reason right now to think one way or the other,” I told him. “But it’s a place to start.”
He nodded.
“I’m sure Amanda would get behind that,” he said.
“Who the hell knows.”
“Still not talking, are we?”
“Not at the moment.”
“None of my business,” he said, holding up his hands defensively. “It’s your love life.”
“There’s an oxymoron.”
“Now who’s insulting?”
I stood up and tossed the butt end of the croissant to a skittery flock of chickadees working the sidewalk.
Sullivan looked up at me, squinting behind his tough-cop sunglasses against the sun rising above the storefronts across Main Street. He looked like he wanted to say more, but I left before he had a chance and drove over to Joshua Edelstein’s house, where I worked another ten-hour day. I kept my mind focused on cutting miters, coping inside joints and not shooting myself with my pneumatic brad nailer. It was a nice peaceful day, just me, two other finish guys working in other parts of the house, and a pair of electricians installing switches and wall plugs.
In answer to my quiet prayer, nobody turned on the radio, which was invariably set to the most brainless meatball station Frank’s crew could pull in from Up Island. All you heard were the cutoff saws, the pop-pop of nail guns, compressors turning on and off, and the sound of work boots scraping around the plywood subfloor. We even had heat, since the tapers who came through over the weekend had jacked up the thermostat to hasten drying between coats. I never had to say a word to anybody all day, not even to myself.
After work I stopped off at the cottage long enough to wash my face and hands, change my clothes and feed Eddie. He was free to use his secret door to go in and out of the house, but couldn’t open a can or pour out his own dry food. At least that’s what he wanted me to think. I left him there to chow down and drove over to the Pequot, the crummy little joint next to the marina in Sag Harbor run by Paul Hodges and his daughter Dorothy. It was the only place around where you could avoid the plague of sophistication spreading through the Hamptons, infecting even indigenous dive bars. The clientele was mostly fishermen or mechanics working the marina, so the olfactory ambience alone was enough to frighten off normal people, even if you could stand the smell of Hodges’s cooking.
Dorothy was in her mid-twenties and looked like she’d died recently after being trapped inside a dark closet. Based on seeing other young people around the Village, I guessed the sepulchral disposition was intentional. Something I meant to ask my own daughter when I had the chance.
Tonight she was wearing a wifebeater undershirt, over a black bra, with black polyester slacks and mechanics boots. Her hair, also black, had been forced into angry, slickened spikes. Her skin was so pale you could distinguish between veins and arteries. I thought if you looked closely enough you could see the shadows of muscle, ligament and bone. A tattoo on her left shoulder said “Recriminate.”
“Hey, Sunshine,” I said to her as I pulled up a barstool.
“Vodka on the rocks, no fruit, swizzle stick,” she said without looking up from wiping down the bar.
“Make it two swizzle sticks. Feel like changing things up a little.”
“You want a menu?”
“Bring me whatever you been pulling out of the water,” I told her.
“Not a problem. My father’s been serving fresh snorkelers all week.”
“I thought it was too cold for snorkeling.”
“That’s why they’re so fresh.”
Hodges must have heard me, he came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on the bib of his apron. Somewhere in his sixties, he looked like a guy whose life had shown him some hard treatment. Years of commercial fishing had turned his skin the color and consistency of walrus hide, though the wide shape of his mouth and his bugged-out eyes looked more amphibious than mammalian. He was surely wider around the waist than he’d been as a younger man, but his arms were still thickly muscled and his hands looked capable of squirting clams out of their shells.
“Dotty tell you about the specials?” he asked.
“Dorothy,” she said, though mostly to herself.
“She did. Sounds great. Just hold the flippers.”
“Flippers are the best part.”
He left me alone to drink while he put together my meal. Dorothy talked to me about a story she’d read in the local paper about the rumrunners who used to ply the waters of the South Fork during Prohibition.
“They’d bring the stuff in from big ships that sailed down from Canada and anchored twelve miles off the coast, which was international waters in those days,” she told me while she stuffed beer mugs into the dishwasher behind the bar. “They’d use hot-rod boats loaded to the gunwales. Zip around the forks and make stops all up and down the bay shores. Jacob’s Neck was famous for it.�
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“My home waters.”
“I know. That’s why I’m telling you. I think that old factory was in on it,” she said, popping back up and slamming the dishwasher door closed.
“WB Manufacturing. Wouldn’t surprise me. Do anything for a buck.”
“Why not? Can’t stop people from drinking, for Lord’s sake.”
“No argument here,” I said, with conviction. “Though you could drink less, if you know what I mean.”
“And threaten a cornerstone of the Pequot’s revenue stream?”
“Good point. Want another?”
“Sure.”
The company of the Pequot’s owner came with my meal, as it usually did. Hodges had known my father, which made him think of me as a point of continuity with the dead past. A past he remembered as if it were last week, a penchant that caused him comfort and confusion in equal measure.
When I took my first mouthful he looked at me expectantly.
“So, what do you think? Succulent or merely piquant?”
I chewed on the question.
“More abundantly audacious. Exuberant.”
“See, Dotty,” he yelled to his daughter, “Didn’t I tell you?”
She brought him a bourbon so I wouldn’t feel bad being the only one with a drink. We talked about nothing for a while, then migrated into the realm of the merely inconsequential.
Then I made the mistake of telling him about Amanda’s house.
“No kidding. Wow. There’s a pity,” he said. “How’s she taking it?”
I told him what happened after Sullivan woke us up, including what led to my decision to jog home. He maintained a look of neutrality, which I appreciated. I was less sure how Dorothy, who was nearby pretending not to listen to the conversation, took the news.
“At least she can afford to start over,” said Hodges. “Even without insurance, though I guess that’s not much of a consolation.”
“No. Apparently not.”
“That girl’s had more than her share of trouble.”
“There’s something wrong with this drink,” I said, holding the empty glass up to the light.
Dorothy plucked it out of my hand and filled it with a handful of fresh ice. Hodges took the cue and launched down a different conversational byway. I don’t know how it happened, but something led to something that caused me to mention Robbie Milhouser.