Night Mares in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  Eight or nine guys lounged in various states of undress and inebriation amid beer cans, pizza boxes, and a cloud of marijuana smoke.

  Connor’s look might have lingered on a water pipe; I drooled at the pizza.

  The first surfer shouted to his buddies: “Hey, dudes, the broad and the Indian are looking for some horse.”

  “Shit, man, we don’t do heroin.”

  “Maybe they’re cops.”

  I shouted above the music: “No, we’re just looking for a lost colt. Has anybody seen one? He’s white.”

  “I saw a yellow squid on the way over here,” one guy said. “Then it turned into a really big school bus, headed straight at me. Red eyes and all.”

  “You were driving? In this condition? And almost hit a school bus?”

  “How else are we supposed to get to Ditch for the tournament?”

  Ditch Plains was in Montauk and had some of the best surfing on the eastern seaboard, or so I understood. It had some of the nicest, classiest professional surfers. These stoned slobs weren’t them. They were stupid rich boys having a good time and not caring whose house they trashed or whose kid they killed. I cared.

  “I’m going to write down your license numbers when I leave. If I see any of you behind the wheel, I’ll report you to the cops for DUI, to the code enforcer for having an illegal group rental, and to Miss Needlemeier for being shitheads.”

  “Who the hell is Miss Needlemeier?”

  “She’s the girls’ phys ed instructor at the school, and she’ll put warts on your winkies if you misbehave. We don’t take kindly to reckless driving here in the Harbor.”

  Two guys clutched their privates. Another one puked. The octopus swore they’d call a cab next time. Or wait to party until they were home.

  “Can she do that, your Miss Needlemeier?” Connor asked when we were outside in the fresh air.

  “I don’t know, but no boys ever tried peeking at the girls’ locker room.”

  “My grandmother can shrink a guy’s gonads to grapes with one touch.”

  “My grandmother can make a cheater’s fall off with one cup of tea.”

  So we traded grandmother curses, or accursed grandmothers, for the rest of the block and had a great time exaggerating. At least I hoped we were exaggerating.

  We spoke to everyone else on the street or left the flyers, then took a break for lunch down by the docks. On the way I asked Connor if he surfed.

  “Sure, we have lots of big waves out on the res. Right between the mountains and the desert and the prairie.”

  “I bet you’d be good. A horseman like you must have incredible balance and”—grace sounded too effeminate for what I’d seen on the video of him and Lady Sparrow—“agility.”

  “Yeah, and if I broke an arm or dislocated my shoulder, I’d be unable to perform. No act, no money sent back home. People depend on me.”

  I thought of those college boys back on Tern Street, then my own life of relative comfort. I was bothered that people expected me to get rid of their nightmares? I couldn’t imagine how Connor must feel.

  The snack bar at Rick’s didn’t have salads, darn it. I had to make do with a cheeseburger. I offered Connor my fries. It was the least I could do.

  Rick told us to check out a couple of backyards that were already on my list and the one Leather Lips had given us. He reminded me about the old Scowcroft ranch—which I was putting off for last, since the place was farthest from town. And since its caretaker terrified me.

  Rick added a new stable near Amagansett that boarded polo ponies, and some summer people who used to have a pony for their kid. They kept a boat at his marina, that’s how he knew, but only the father used the cabin cruiser now. When the kid got thrown, they shot the pony, but they must still have the facilities for a horse.

  The Froelers sounded obnoxious; the Scowcroft ranch was scary. I drove toward the new polo field and stable.

  The place looked like a miniature Epsom Downs, except the field was rectangular, not oval. It even had grandstands for spectators and a refreshments stand. Plenty of flowers in big concrete pots, plenty of room for exercising the gleaming horses, plenty of money on show.

  While Connor entered the sleek-looking stables, a groom directed me to the man who owned most of the horses and captained the team when he wasn’t in Palm Beach or South America. The captain was leaning on a rail, watching one of his teammates put a horse through its paces, or whatever polo ponies did. They weren’t half as handsome as Paloma Blanca, nor as fast looking as Lady Sparrow.

  The captain wasn’t half as attractive as Grant or Ty, either, but he thought he was. He wore tight white knit pants tucked into shiny high boots, even a silk stock at the neck of his open-collared white shirt. The polo polish did not impress me, nor his slow appraisal of my body, as if he was looking for designer labels or availability. There was none of either. I’d been almost-engaged to a real aristocrat. This playboy did not make the grade.

  I asked about a young white horse away from its mother.

  The captain was paying more attention to another groom leading Connor into the crisp white stable complex. The man didn’t like it, I could tell.

  “He’s a professional rider.”

  The polo guy curled his lip at the idea of a darkskinned, long-haired person of unknown pedigree joining his team. “This is a private club, you know.”

  Which meant, I suppose, you had to put up a fortune and your Ivy League degree to join.

  “It couldn’t be anything less,” I told him. He may have taken my words for a compliment, which it was not, because he gave me the benefit of his practiced smile. “We’re just looking for a missing horse. We thought someone might have brought a stray to you, not knowing what else to do with him. It’s like leaving a baby at a church or a hospital, somewhere you know it’s going to be taken care of.”

  The smile disappeared. “Sorry, we don’t take in strays. Our horses are all registered and documented. That one training”—he pointed a manicured finger at the enclosed field—“just came from Saudi Arabia. We would have directed anyone with a lost horse to the police.” He looked at my flyer. “Now I’ll send them on to you.”

  “Thanks. Please call me if you hear of any news.”

  “I’ve heard better come-on lines, honey.”

  “Have you ever heard of Eastern equine encephalitis?” I hadn’t noticed Connor leaving the stables, but he was right behind us.

  The captain spun on his expensive heels. “Of course I have.”

  “You better check it out.”

  Connor wasn’t saying the horses were sick. He didn’t have to. Just his words could send any horseman, especially one looking for a trophy for his mantel, into a panic. Mr. Cool took off at a run.

  “Did you look in stall number nine?” I asked Connor while we walked back to the car. “Or for a horse who wears that number when they play?”

  “There’s a chestnut in stall nine. And the riders wear the numbers, not the horses.”

  “Are the horses really sick?”

  “Healthiest horses money can buy. But the vet bill to come check might make a dent in that, or if rumors get started and the team is quarantined and disqualified from the coming match.”

  Gee, that would be too bad. I got us back on the road.

  “We going to that Scowcroft ranch next?”

  “Um, no. I thought we’d look at that house with the stable.” I checked my map. “It’s got a permit for a horse. Eight acres to keep it on. Pool, tennis courts, indoor pool. The works. Summers only. And its house number is nine.”

  “But they shot a pony ’cause their kid fell off?”

  I had no answer. Connor hated the Froelers before we got to the big white house. I could tell when he didn’t say a word the whole way there.

  The gates had an intercom system, so I gave my name and said we were looking for a missing horse. Maybe someone knew about it?

  The gates swung open. When we got there, the double doors to the big c
olonial were flung wide. We parked in the porte cochere and walked up the seven wide steps. I expected a maid, maybe, or the owners, not a young girl in a wheelchair. I almost tripped on the top step.

  She was about twelve, I guessed, with long brown hair and thick eyebrows and brown eyes. She looked just like the girl in my book, the girl in my dream. “Hetty?”

  She giggled. “Letty. Only my old nanny ever called me that. My mother insists on Letitia.” She scooted the electric wheelchair back so we could enter. “I am not supposed to let strangers come in the house while the housekeeper is out, but I’ve heard of you. You’re teaching a course at the arts center.”

  “Yes, and this is Connor Redstone.”

  She dropped her eyes, suddenly shy. “Pleased to meet you.”

  Connor nodded, which she couldn’t see with her head down.

  “Are you coming to my creative writing course? I think it’ll be fun.”

  She looked up, but without the smile. “My mother won’t let me.”

  I was sorry. She looked like a bright kid. “Maybe your mom will change her mind. You can tell her I don’t bite. My dog does, but I don’t.”

  She smiled at that, as I intended. “I wish I could. I’m writing a story right now about a magic horse.”

  “Wow, so am I! Can yours fly?”

  “Oh, yes, and he has a magic healing touch.”

  “Mine doesn’t, but that sounds like a great idea.”

  She turned shy again, hiding her face behind her hair. “Oh, I’m sorry. I should offer you something to drink. Would you like an iced tea or a soda?”

  “That would be lovely. But would you mind if Connor takes a look at your old stable, just in case someone hid the missing colt there?”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because if it’s as far from the house as it looks on the map, and no one uses it, it might be a good place to hide something you don’t want found.”

  She did a wheelie in her electric chair and led us to French doors that opened onto a terrace and the pool, and farther, to a gravel path that led out of sight. “There’s a corral first, then the stable. I’d show you, but the gravel’s tough to ride on. Besides, I’m not allowed outside by myself, or to go swimming. They’re afraid I’ll get stung by a bee—I’m allergic, you know—or drown or something. They won’t let me go to the center because there’ll be too many germs from the other kids there. I got pneumonia after the accident. I’m not as bad off as that Superman guy, though. I can breathe on my own and use my arms. My mother is just overprotective. And she likes me to keep to my schedule. Physical therapy in the morning, tutors in the afternoon, swim session before dinner.”

  I’d almost offered to accompany her and Connor to the stable until I realized there was no ramp from the French doors, and none at the front steps. The poor kid couldn’t get down if she wanted.

  She must have seen me staring because she said there was a ramp on the side door, with a paved path.

  She wasn’t in a cell or a closet, but Letitia was a prisoner nevertheless. She watched Connor stride away, and I watched her eyes fill with tears.

  “I almost got stung by a bee. It wasn’t Arabella’s fault. We were practicing for the pony class of the Hampton’s Classic Horse Show. We could have won. We already had a blue ribbon for the jumping event. I batted at the bee and frightened poor Arabella. She stumbled, and I went over her head.”

  “Your parents blamed her?”

  “My mother said she never wanted to see her again. Never wanted another child to be paralyzed like me.”

  “But they didn’t take down the stable.”

  “I made them promise I could get another horse when I walked again. We were hoping for stem cell research, but they say it’s too late. My stepfather’s company does medical research, and he says they’re trying. So I write stories about flying horses.”

  I sighed. “Me, too.”

  “Really? I ordered your books on Amazon, but they haven’t come yet. I didn’t know they were about horses.”

  “They haven’t been until now. I’ll bring the first chapters for you to look at.”

  “You will?”

  “Sure, and I’ll ask your parents if you can come to my class. I’ll be real careful no one has a cold or anything.”

  She almost dropped the frosted carrot cake she was cutting—refusing my help—in her excitement. I drank some lemonade while Connor walked back, shaking his head.

  “I would have known if there was a pony out there,” Letitia—damn, I’d call her Letty if she let me—said.

  I thought I would have, too. “Have you ever been tested by the Royce Institute?”

  “No, what’s that?”

  “Oh, just a research group that tests kids to see what they might be good at.”

  “Yeah, like a paraplegic has a lot of choices.”

  “Some.”

  She changed the subject. “He’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he?”

  “The colt we’re searching for?” I’d given her a flyer with my phone number on it.

  She blushed. “Your friend.”

  I agreed he was very good-looking, then told her his website, so she could see him ride.

  “He’s a rider?”

  She gave him a bigger slice of cake.

  CHAPTER 18

  I ALWAYS GOT THE SMALL PIECE OF CAKE. I always resented it. Like now, I’d had two minutes of being a kid’s idol before being replaced by a guy with more baggage than the boarding line at JFK. Connor’d said exactly two words to Letty: “Thank you,” while I was adding her name to my list of things to rescue.

  He hadn’t said one word after putting his cake fork down either, not when I promised to email Letty about our search, nor when I drove the car around the circular driveway and back out the gate. I tried to remember if he’d talked since leaving the polo field. Ten minutes later, he still hadn’t spoken a syllable.

  I figured, after the surfers, the polo players, and now the Froelers’ mansion, he was tabulating all the ridiculously conspicuous consumption of the Hamptons, and how different it was from how his family lived.

  Mine, too.

  “You know, Connor, no amount of money is ever going to get that girl what she wants most. She’ll never ride a horse again.”

  Connor grunted.

  Maybe I made my point. Maybe not. I kept driving. I thought we’d check out a couple more of the big estates while we were in the high-rent district. After the third long driveway, the fourth locked gate, and one sign saying Beware of the Dogs, with a silhouette of Doberman pinschers, Connor grunted again.

  I looked over to the passenger seat. “You have something to say?”

  “Yeah. Why don’t you want to go to that abandoned ranch? You’ve been avoiding it all day.”

  Now he wanted to talk? “I thought we’d finish up here, then go back to see if Ty is awake and wants to come along.”

  “And?”

  And I hated the idea of going to Bayview Ranch. I didn’t think Connor needed to know all my reasons, but I gave him a good one. “Snakes.”

  He took off his sunglasses to see if I was serious. I was.

  “But you don’t have poisonous snakes here. I checked. Nothing that could hurt a horse. Or you.”

  “A person can die of fright, can’t she?”

  “I can’t believe you’re afraid of a couple of what? Garter snakes? Maybe a rat snake?”

  I didn’t know why he couldn’t believe it. Everyone in Paumanok Harbor knew I was terrified of snakes. They’d heard me screaming from all the way up at the hill ranch, and never let me forget it, even seventeen years later.

  Kids used to sneak up to the ranch on summer nights, even when it was in operation. The stable guys knew and didn’t care as long as we didn’t spook the horses or start fires. There was a lake and grass and no one in sight. I lost my virginity up there that summer to a boy named Tripp, John James Hennessy the Third. Or maybe it was James John. No matter, he was suntanned and cute a
nd worked on some rich guy’s boat.

  The experience itself was not worth remembering. It was short, painful, messy, and entirely unrewarding. Then a snake slithered over my foot.

  My screams spooked the horses, the grooms, the Scowcrofts and a whole cocktail party they were throwing for half the town, and Tripp’s boss. Did I mention I was naked when I ran by the house?

  I made my father take me back to our apartment in the city the next day. That deprived Grandma of an unpaid helper at the farm stand, which she never forgave me for either.

  They closed the ranch soon after that. Not because I’d caused such a riot, and not because snakes always seemed to breed up there, big black rat snakes that ate the rodents inevitable around horse feed. They shut the ranch down because it finally lost more money than even Mr. Scowcroft was willing to waste on his pet hobby.

  Thoroughbred racehorses were not pets, and throwing money down the toilet was a crazy hobby. The winters were too cold; the grass not rich enough; good trainers didn’t want to be so far from the southern tracks; Mr. Scowcroft couldn’t breed a winner if it already had a blanket of roses on its back. Then lightning struck the big house. No one was home at the time, but that was enough for the owner. Rather than rebuilding, he sold the horses, razed the ruins, and moved to Hawaii. His corporation put the ranch up for subdivision about the time land was multiplying in value and the rest of the Hamptons were getting filled.

  The town was protesting. They’d given Scowcroft special variances to build a stable on the hill here in order to keep the land agricultural, like Grandma’s farm. Bayview was supposed to stay that way, not be divided up into ten luxury lots, ten huge mansions with a view, ten behemoths filling the open vista.

  While the court case was going on, for years now, Paumanok Harbor was dickering with the town and the county and the state and the Nature Conservancy to see about making the ranch public parkland, but the corporation wanted top dollar, and preservation funds were drying up.

  Meanwhile, the old place deteriorated more. The fire department came and burned down the main stable after its roof collapsed. Everyone came to watch, including me. In high boots. Now almost all that was left was the old breeding barn, overgrown fields, and the bunkhouse where the staff used to sleep. And snakes, lots of snakes. And Snake.