by Ann Beattie
* * *
Who knew Kegan had a dog? All he ever talked about was how little money he had, and about Sarah, who was gone for good, anybody understood that. He also talked about Belle and her preoccupation with getting in to a good college. Leave it to Kegan not to even mention he had a year-old dog mottled like an ugly neo-Expressionist painting, a mutt with a blue eye and a brown eye and one ear up, one that dangled like a limp leaf, as it had ever since Kegan picked the dog up on the side of the highway and carried it into his house in his palm. He’d gone out to the mailbox, and there in the gravel had been the half-dead, panting puppy. Which he had named—big joke—“Royal.” The dog loved him. He loved everybody. Kegan mixed canned tuna into his dry food. Every Sunday, Belle made the dog the same cooked-in-butter omelet she and Kegan ate—the one meal a week she was responsible for. The time she’d cut up green pepper and put it into the omelet, the dog had spit out every piece, then rolled in the little collection of soggy green cubes. It was Kegan’s opinion that the dog had better sense than humans. In all ways, Kegan was impressed with the dog. He told them that—including the fact that he’d also personally stopped eating green peppers—in the first five minutes they were in the house.
Kegan popped open three Coronas, and the three Zetes ceremonially blew into the bottles before taking the first sip (and none of that piece-of-lime shit, either) the way they’d done in the old days. Now, over thirty years down the line, they stood outside on Kegan’s spongy deck, where every so often the silence was punctured by the buzzing of the electric mosquito catcher. Belle came out to say hello—taller than the last time Royal had seen her, or maybe it was just the platform shoes she wore (apparently she epitomized Florida style)—then quickly retreated into her room. The dog looked at her with great interest but stayed at Kegan’s side.
“So our road trip’s still on?” Kegan said. “You made the hotel reservation?”
“Yeah, hotel prices down there are extortion,” Royal said, “and I’m not a cheap guy. I took a room with a king and a rollout. It’s on me. And I’ve bought you Christmas presents.”
“Presents? What are they?” Kegan said.
“You don’t tell what presents are. You give them and they’re opened.”
“So give me my present. I’m dying of curiosity,” Kegan said.
To their surprise—to Dick’s, at least—Royal jumped down from where he’d been sitting on the railing and went into the house and unzipped his suitcase. He came back with three boxes wrapped in Christmas paper and handed one to their host.
“Does it explode when I remove the top?” Kegan asked—a reference to a prank they’d pulled years ago. The present was an old-fashioned-looking telephone receiver with a long cord, the kind you saw all over New York now, in the same shade of green that had appeared for the first time in the seventies when pink was “shocking pink,” so maybe the green was “violent green.” You plugged them in to your cell phone, and the reception was much better, and also you were participating in a joke. Kegan had never seen one and really liked it. “You next,” Royal said to Dick, holding out a smaller box wrapped in shiny red paper. It contained a red-and-green-striped satin thong edged on top with white feathers. Dick put it on his head. “Santa to tower, we’re coming in for a crash landing!” he yelled. Everybody exploded with laughter. “And here’s something for Belle to make her take her face out of a book,” Royal said. “It’s the entire series of The Wire. It’ll make her grateful she grew up in the Keys.” He tossed the box, wrapped in shiny blue paper, on the cushion of a redwood chair. “And for myself,” Royal said, reaching in his shirt pocket and taking out a small transparent Ziploc bag, “an antique diamond solitaire ring, one and a half carats, rose gold, with channel-set diamonds, that may be offered to another woman—one I have yet to meet—because Sharon said that nothing would be worse than marrying an underachiever, unless it was marrying a materialistic underachiever, which was not where I thought our relationship was going when I won this 1920s beauty in an eBay auction that got pretty out of control in the last thirty seconds. She kept the tufted box with the little pearl button because keeping that wouldn’t be materialistic, but I understand that without the box, the value of the ring may be less.”
“You’re just telling us now, when I spent the whole day with you?” Dick asked.
“Hey, he didn’t tell us he had a dog,” Royal said, pointing to the dog that lay securely wedged between their host’s size-fourteen sandals.
“I’m sorry to hear Sharon reacted that way,” Kegan said. “She was all over you the time I met you two at that place near Washington Square.”
“She said that to you?” Dick said. “I mean, how exactly did she ask for the box?”
“She just said could she keep the box. I shouldn’t have given it to her. I think she took me aback, if that’s the correct way to say it.”
“Yeah, well, we can make her sorry for dissing you, the same way we’re going to make—”
“Shut up, Dick. She’s got her AC off and her window open,” Kegan said, jutting his chin in the direction of Belle’s room.
“Some people are just crazy, you know? We’re supposed to bend over backward not to say women are crazy, but refusing a marriage proposal from Royal, there you go. Crazy.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence,” Royal said to Dick. “I didn’t realize you thought I’d be such a good husband.”
“Well, I mean, I’d turn you down.”
“I got stone crab for dinner,” Kegan said. “Made a deal with my dentist, who’s got a dozen traps or so. Deal was, I’d bite the bullet about this expensive implant he wants me to do if he gave me enough stone crabs for me and my friends. Belle doesn’t like them. And my other friend, here, is always happy with his tuna fish.” Kegan rubbed his big feet over the dog’s sides. The dog snorted, rearranged itself, and flopped onto its back. Its ears looked like someone had given up while folding origami. “You weary travelers hungry? Like to catch the news on the flat-screen, have a shot of Cuervo and a few chips before dinner?” When nobody answered, Kegan said, “You know, it’s unusual, not having any women around. It used to be us outside, and Sharon and Sarah in the kitchen, and that one time at the fireworks, Dick, your very nice girlfriend who had us up to the roof—”
“Beth Anne,” Dick said. “Remarried her first husband.”
“I thought he was sent to military prison.”
“That was the second husband.”
“The one that was younger?” Kegan asked.
“Yeah. Her Ashton Kutcher. Except I don’t think Ashton went out and strangled a guitar player in a bar.”
“We’ve become sort of ridiculous,” Royal said. “Standing around in Florida bouncing rings in our pockets instead of change, with girlfriends who go back to first base like they’re human boomerangs, and Sarah, for God’s sake, going to Vegas to work at some hotel with fake dragons breathing fire outside, some Donald Trump wet dream or something, with some guy she meets at Bikram yoga, for God’s sake, in Florida, where it’s hot as hell to begin with.”
“Thirteen years,” Kegan said.
“My point is, this somehow makes us ridiculous,” Royal said. “I could have left the ring back in New York. Why the hell did I bring it?
“Good pawnshop in Marathon. Guy in the witness-protection program runs it. One week he’s got a beak like a parrot, next week the nose is bandaged, hair dyed brown, bandage comes off, he’s got a snub nose half the size of the original honker. I heard he had his pierced ear closed up and airbrushed or whatever the hell. Something to cover the hole.” Kegan shrugged.
“You know, the more I think about it, the more I really want to get a good answer from John about what the hell he thought he was doing when he screwed us out of that money,” Dick said. “Motherfucker.”
“Keep it down. She’s right behind those blinds, she can hear anything we say. Voices carry out here like we’re talking across water.”
“Kegan, it’s not like sh
e’s in a cloister,” Royal said, frowning deeply.
“It is like she’s in a cloister, and she put herself there, but I respect that, I do,” Kegan said. “She doesn’t drink or do drugs, she doesn’t even go out with guys. She maybe goes out with a group occasionally. It’s too bad some of that maturity didn’t rub off on her mother.”
“I could use some dinner,” Dick said. “If we all crack our teeth eating crab, maybe we can work out another deal with your dentist. I never heard of any doctor striking a deal. Must say something about our present health insurance situation. And excuse me, Royal, but is this a comment on our new world without women you’re making, pissing off the deck?”
“Jesus, what if Belle comes out?” Kegan said. “There’s as many bathrooms inside as bedrooms. Go figure. Selling point of houses here. Everywhere you turn, another john.”
Royal the dog, who’d been sniffing a bug walking along the bottom of the railing, disdained it and walked over to his owner and flopped down. Again, Kegan’s big feet toed the dog’s ribs. “You know, he used to sleep in my hair. I let him in the bed, and he’d work his way onto the pillow and fall asleep curled around the top of my head like a puppy yarmulke.”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a dog person,” Dick said.
“Or a father. Or a volunteer fireman. Somebody who sings in the choir.”
“You sing in a choir?” Royal said, zipping his fly, walking back toward them.
“Yeah, I’m a soprano,” Kegan said. “You should hear me on the Hallelujah Chorus.”
“ ‘For the Lord God om-ni-po-tent reigneth,’ ” Royal baritoned.
“Your shirt’s caught in your fly,” Kegan said.
“HA-llelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” Dick sang in shrill falsetto as Royal unzipped his fly and tucked his shirt down his pants again, then rezipped his fly.
“And Prince Philip, what’s the deal with him? We heard on the radio he had a stent put in or something?”
“All those years, trailing after Her Majesty,” Kegan said. “Prince Philip and the corgis. Royal, how about some dinner? You can pretend the stone crabs’ claws are Sharon’s neck.”
“Listen to you, and you want everything nice-nice and hush-hush, so the nun can concentrate on her devotions!” Royal said.
“I just need to make the sauce,” Kegan said. “It’s Hellman’s mayonnaise with two key limes squirted into it, a half teaspoon of coarse salt, and a couple tablespoons of horseradish.”
“Lead the way,” Dick said.
“What happened to your tooth that you need an implant?” Royal said, heading into the house behind Kegan.
“Bit down on a sandwich at Bojangle Bill’s with a rock or something in the lettuce and it broke my tooth,” Kegan said. “If I’d eaten lunch at home that day, it wouldn’t have happened. I wash my lettuce. Wouldn’t have been worth it, hearing Sarah bitch if I didn’t. ‘Wash the lettuce, wash the lettuce.’ Then you have to spin it dry for about five minutes, which at least builds your biceps, then you have to dry the lettuce spinner and pick out the stuff that always gets stuck in the top. Now I wash the lettuce under the faucet, shake it over the floor—it’s tile, anyway—dry it on a dish towel. Times change, bros. Times change.” He handed Royal the mayonnaise jar. He handed Dick the key limes and pointed to the cutting board, which was made of multicolored wood in the shape of the state of Florida.
This was three nights before Christmas, two nights before they drove south to confront John Reynolds in Key West about screwing them over, two nights before Yuliana, the Moldovan girl Royal picked up after a private lap dance on Truman Avenue, got the best Christmas present she ever received, which also fit her finger perfectly, two nights before Kegan took off on his own and, as they’d later learn, put down one ice-cold Stoli shot after another, served by a bartender in an elf costume at a beach bar, from which he was ejected when he commented on the elf’s cleavage, after which he apparently wandered down to Dick Dock, stepped out of his Bermuda shorts, Lacoste shirt, and Tevas, and dove into the Atlantic. Three Japanese tourists came upon his body at dawn. Tonight, though, as they stood pouring drinks and mixing mayonnaise with horseradish, it was five nights before Kegan’s funeral, five nights before Royal and Dick rented a car and headed back to New York with Kegan’s dog in the backseat, each trying to manipulate the other into keeping him. Belle didn’t want him. She was, however, tentatively happy to see her mother again—even happier because the boyfriend stayed behind in Las Vegas. Sarah kept insisting that it was all her fault; neither her daughter nor Dick and Royal could reason with her. After the funeral at Christ by the Sea Church (which Kegan had always called “Christ, Chicken of the Sea”), attended by a smattering of people, including Kegan’s dentist (who went around afterward giving out business cards that said he was a member of the VFW), Belle explained to Dick and Royal back at the house, while Sarah sobbed in the bedroom she’d shared with Kegan, that Kegan had been joking with them: The dog’s name was Loyal, not Royal, but her father loved stupid jokes, didn’t he? Like getting drunk and drowning—was that a stupid enough joke for everybody? And her mother’s grief—wasn’t that inevitable, too? One parent in the desert, the other one going as far south as possible in the continental United States to drown in the Atlantic when she still had three years of high school to go before she could go to college. Maybe that information could be shaped into a good “personal statement.” How many people applied to Ivy League schools and could say that? Or was irony not appreciated in such circumstances? That was what Belle demanded to know, a little hysterically, standing on the deck in the same platform shoes, rhinestone-studded jeans, and black T-shirt she’d worn the night they’d first arrived.
“Your dad sure did love you, no doubt about that,” Dick said to Belle, not having any idea what to say in response to her outburst. Royal echoed those words. It had been Royal who’d identified Kegan’s body. That was him: the onetime president of their fraternity at the University of Virginia, the one who’d lived most on the edge, or at least the one who’d made the most sincere retreat from real life. The one with the blue veins on the bulb of his nose from drinking too much. The one starting to get a paunch in spite of kayaking, basketball, and twice-weekly tennis. Just another guy who, like so many others, had been left by his woman. He’d been wearing black Jockeys, nothing else. In India they could have started the bonfire on the beach, but as unpredictable as Key West was, Higgs Beach cremations had not yet become a custom. Instead, Kegan was carried away on a stretcher, pushed into an ambulance as some weedy Rastas suspended their badminton game to stare at the sad, bloated, soggy mess that was what remained of him at dawn. He’d gone to Key West to confront John Reynolds and had ended up confronting vodka shots and a Christmas elf—an elf who’d handed over the guy’s keys and his cell phone to the bouncer, because she’d had enough of him and was sure he’d come back. Royal’s number was the first to pop up—the last name with its double A’s had helped or hurt him all his life—when the cops went to the beach bar to inquire about whether “the deceased” might have been there the previous night. They made the call to the hotel where Royal, still asleep, fumbled for the cell phone on the table a little before noon, expecting it to be Reynolds, enraged, or Yuliana—that was right; her name had been Yuliana. The autopsy found no trace of Kegan’s daily heart medicine (who knew he took it?), which led the coroner to conjecture that because of Kegan’s seriously low blood pressure and no presence of the drugs that should have been in his system, several factors might have contributed—along with alcohol, of course—to the heart attack.
* * *
Before Dick, Royal, and Kegan had gone their separate ways when they left Titters that night, they’d had a pretty nasty encounter with Reynolds. They had walked through the unlocked front door of Reynolds’s house on Catholic Lane—the one he was renting after he’d had to short-sell the big house on Eaton—and strong-armed him into a chair while they told him in detail what a devious, self-serving shit he w
as. He’d certainly neglected to tell them he was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that if he declared it, they’d be low on the totem pole of creditors, which meant he had his own little pyramid scheme going. He’d known when he’d borrowed their money that the bank was about to repossess his house, which meant he could get no further loans against it, which meant he wouldn’t have his promised 50 percent to put down on the old schoolhouse conversion project, which meant he’d have had to appeal to them for even more money if the schoolhouse investors had accepted his offer. Cowering in the chair in his cutoff jeans and Mile O tank top with the white-painted O crumbling like dandruff, his tennis shoes and his big fat diver’s watch, he’d tried to convince them all over again that he was a good businessman. But he wasn’t. He only pretended to have access to cash, to loans, to know the way to grease the palms of the code-enforcement guys. They made him turn over his wallet: All that was in it was a driver’s license and a five-dollar bill and a rubber, which Dick opened and stretched over Reynolds’s head as he screamed they were tearing out his hair. “Who cares, Reynolds! We lose a shitload of money, you lose your fucking hair?” Dick had hollered in his face, then he’d gone into the kitchen and returned with kitchen shears and, as Royal pinned Reynolds’s shoulders to the back of the chair, cut off gobs of hair, pushing so hard with the tips of the shears that Reynolds bled. On the table was a silver Christmas tree with fake snow on the branches. Dick cut two boughs and returned to the chair and punctured the stretched prophylactic so that two green antennae protruded from either side above Reynolds’s ears, as little rivulets of blood ran down his face. They turned on Christmas music, loud, and tied him to the chair with bungee cords triple-knotted behind the chair, and walked out. They walked down the street to the gated cemetery, where young women in halters and little skirts steered their bikes around the speed bumps, calling, “Merry Christmas!” to them. Kegan, who knew Key West pretty well, led Dick and Royal down an alleyway that led to the back parking lot of a strip joint beside a liquor store. That was where Dick met Anja, who lured him into a private room for a lap dance. Kegan—still fuming about all the money down the drain—said no thanks to both girls who approached him—he didn’t want to be tricked anymore; he wanted his fucking money back from Reynolds, that was what he wanted—and sat back gloomily with his beer bottle, waiting for the pole dancer to begin her routine again. Royal bought a Moldovan girl champagne, which had about as much resemblance to champagne as Royal had to royalty. Several expensive plastic flutes later, she sneaked him her number and whispered when she’d be off work. Oh, right—to be mugged by her brothers, no doubt. He left Dick and Kegan in Titters and walked to the hotel, watched TV for a few minutes—Jon Stewart, what was with that guy and his perfect silver hair and his twirling pencil?—then flipped through a guide to Key West that offered pizza delivery, biplane rides, windsurfing, an all-night pharmacy, and transgender counseling. Maybe all in one day would be fun, he thought. He channel-surfed, did not do much of anything but stare at the TV for a half hour or so, wondering why his mood was so bad. He had been thinking about the terrible falling-out he’d had with Dick back, what, twenty-five years ago, when he’d dared to date Dick’s girlfriend after they’d separated, and Dick had thrown a punch at him. He’d ducked it, grabbing Dick’s hand, and then Dick had started to cry, which was what he really held against him, wasn’t that it? In the intervening years, neither of them had ever mentioned the incident.