by Steve Israel
“I was stuck with the mortgage and all the bills,” Lois told Sam. “I fell behind on some things. I knew I’d get back on my feet. Which I did. Repaid every penny of my taxes. Exactly $780. That’s the whole story, Sam. But we can’t get all that on a utility pole. Can we?”
Sam nodded slowly, soaking in Lois’s confession. Then whispered, “Geez. Maybe people will understand. Maybe it’ll blow over before the election.”
But Lois wasn’t listening. Her face was turned toward the TV, pain etched in her eyes. On the screen, she saw that ugly photo of her and heard: “Lois Liebowitz. She raised your taxes. She cheated on hers.”
Lois’s head slumped. It felt like fall.
23
Sunny McCarthy was in a foul mood. She awoke that morning to video clips of the attack ads on her mother, e-mailed by the infatuated lobbyist from GUN. Plus, she’d been summoned to Otis’s home in New York, but denied the luxury of the Cogsworth Industries’ corporate jet. Relegated to first class on the Delta Shuttle, she was seated next to a chatty passenger named Mel who didn’t seem to grasp that Sunny’s face, buried in a fully unfolded New York Times, meant that she didn’t care to spend the entire flight discussing recent trends in the wholesale carpet business. As the plane descended to LaGuardia Airport, she looked at her watch and groaned. It was four o’clock on a late summer Friday. She’d spend hours in “Hamptons traffic”—ninety miles of gilded gridlock from Queens to the East End of Long Island. All this might have been tolerable if not for her destination: Asabogue.Kill me, she thought.
Outside the terminal, in broiling gusts sharpened by jet fumes, she was met by a baggy-suited driver leaning against a black SUV. The only thing missing from his full-body scan of Sunny was a salivating tongue wagging from the side of his mouth. “Keep your eyes on the road,” she snapped as she thrust her bag at his chest.
They crept onto the Long Island Expressway, jockeying for position among the most competitive drivers on earth: Hamptons weekenders, who were affluent enough to occupy fashionable East End retreats but too poor to commute by helicopter. And since their wealth was amassed in the Darwinian canyons of Manhattan hedge funds, investment houses, and law firms, they took their survival skills on the road, literally. This wasn’t just a drive, this was a group ruthlessly driven to win. They cut each other off, swerved and tailgated, jutted middle fingers, hurled epithets, competed for every square foot of blacktop advantage en route to a weekend of serenity. The entire exercise seemed futile to Sunny, given the fact that traffic never exceeded the approximate speed of a sloth.
The ride made Sunny woozy. She sat in the backseat, dressed in white chinos and a black top, positioned to catch the crisp flow of air-conditioning from the vents. She poked at her smartphone, ignoring the gaudy storefronts and Soviet-style brick apartment buildings of Queens. She fidgeted through the suburbs, where all roads led to malls, mini mansions, and multiplex theaters. She tried, unsuccessfully, to nap through the exurbs, which yawned to stretches of green pine. Sunny lifted her eyes to the exit numbers on large overhead signs, like a countdown to her arrival in Asab-ogue. But there were other signs that they were getting close: her neck muscles tightened, her lips fell into a frozen frown, her fingers whipped at her hair like a high-speed kitchen mixer. And that queasiness grew worse. The road signs should have read WARNING: LOIS AHEAD.
It was twilight when they finally turned off the expressway and snaked through the tiny villages of the East End. Each was a flickering strip of luxury boutiques and elegant restaurants, like a line of tiki torches along the beach. Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sagaponack, Amagansett.
Then, ASABOGUE.
The sign was faded brown and curled at the corners, as if the weather had baked it over many years. For Sunny, it was like one of those impromptu highway memorials where a fatal accident had occurred. Asabogue. The scene of the crime.
“Fuck,” she mumbled.
“Excuse me?” asked the driver. The lingering ache where Sunny’s Louis Vuitton bag had impacted his ribs might have suggested that she wasn’t exactly making an offer.
“Just drive.”
No, don’t. Hit the brakes, buddy. Abort! Abort! Abort!
They passed small farmstands, closed for the night, rickety roofs drooping against an azure sky. Hand-painted signs advertised apples, peaches, blueberries, and corn as well as homemade pies and fresh cut flowers. Weathered old farmhouses, embraced by wraparound porches, glowed from both sides of the road. Sunny saw the Presbyterian church. Once it was a towering landmark near Sunny’s home. Now, it was a patchwork of missing shingles, topped by a precariously leaning wind vane.
They came to a crossroads. Main Street curved to the left, Village Hall in the distance, barely visible in the corner of Sunny’s eye. Just past a flickering streetlight ahead, Asabogue Bluff Lane began its gradual ascent to the right, framed by high, thick hedgerows. As they climbed, a familiar taste settled on Sunny’s tongue, warm and salty. The ocean humidity pressed against her skin and worked through her hair. She imagined her hair beginning to frizz, its permanent state when she lived in Asabogue. They passed the residence where Sunny had spent weekends with her father, until that day when Lois reported that dear old dad had left Asabogue, evidently, she said, to practice real estate law in Saudi Arabia. Sunny knew that Lois was lying, having witnessed Larry’s not so gradual descent into a cocaine stupor. That was when Sunny McCarthy determined she wouldn’t let Asabogue trap her as it did her parents—mired in the quicksand of naïveté like her mother, or blinded by the glitz like her father. No, Sunny McCarthy would find any way out, and stay out.
Trigger Happy was up ahead.
Sunny tried to swallow against her nausea.
A sinewy blond assistant named Lars, snugly dressed in a yellow Trigger Happy polo shirt and black shorts, escorted Sunny to the terrace. Outside, a thin ribbon of pink separated dark ocean from sky, and the heavy salt air filled Sunny’s mouth. One hundred of the Cogsworths’ dearest friends, neighbors, and social allies had gathered in an ethereal, torchlit glow. They seemed dressed up to appear dressed down: sockless men in purposefully rumpled linen shirts, pastel sweaters draped across their backs; women wrapped in long floral dresses that barely cloaked their Jimmy Choo sandals. They swirled in accordance with the Hamptons laws of physics, like an undulating flock of birds, not colliding but colluding, calculating the minimum time necessary to see anyone worthy of being seen with, then flitting away. In a far corner, a classical guitarist strummed to the background of nearby waves lapping on the beach.
Sunny scanned the terrace until she found her target, standing alone in front of a bar: Congressman Roy Dirkey, the evening’s honored guest. He wore crisp khakis, a solid blue shirt open at a stiff collar, and a blue blazer gleaming with the requisite American flag lapel pin. His hands were planted awkwardly in his pants pockets, and his eyes darted back and forth in search of any friendly face, relaxing only as Sunny approached.
“There you are!” he said in a heavily released breath.
“Welcome to paradise, Congressman. I need a drink!” Sunny grabbed a crystal glass of red wine from a row that had been neatly aligned on the bar. She sipped, sipped some more, and asked, “Recognize any Dirkey Chevy customers?”
Roy whistled. “So this is the top one percent the liberals keep whining about.”
“Oh no, Roy. This is the top one percent of the top one percent. See that guy over there? With Otis?”
Otis was leaning against a rail, his back to the beach, nodding politely at someone a full head taller, with a long, tanned face and white sculpted hair that resisted the ocean breeze.
“That’s the CEO of McDougal-Loop.”
“The defense company?”
“Biggest arms exporter in the world. Had a bad year, though. He dropped from fourth-highest-paid CEO in America to fifth. Peace is hell.”
“Poor guy.”
“Relatively speaking.”
She reached for a second glass. The wine and salt a
ir percolated on her tongue. “Oh, and that woman over there? Recognize her?”
Fawning admirers encircled a short woman with close-cropped gray hair.
“Runs Celfex Pharmaceuticals. All the blue blood here is pumped full of her products.”
“Do they make anxiety pills?” Roy laughed nervously.
“Relax, Roy. Everyone’s here to show you some love. Big banks, big tobacco companies, big gun companies. All the merchants of death, taking a little break from their crimes against humanity. The crime of capitalism. The crime of success.” She raised her glass. “To greed.” She drained what was left and blew a long breath. She was starting to feel relaxed.
“You okay?” Roy asked.
“I’m getting there.” She raised a third full glass of wine. “To Asabogue!”
Otis had broken away from his conversation and lumbered toward them. He wore a sky-blue Sagaponack Country Club polo shirt. Dark sweat stains had pooled under his armpits and across his belly. His cheeks were flushed and the sleeves of his sweater were tangled against his neck. He kissed Sunny, leaving a wet trail of sweat and the sharp stench of cigars on her cheek. She felt woozy. Then he patted Roy’s shoulders, winked, and proclaimed, “Our man of the hour!” He pulled a thick, tattered envelope from his pants pocket and waved it excitedly. “Good news! We collected a hundred and fifty thousand in checks at the door. And I got commitments for another ninety grand!”
Sunny calculated that Otis’s “man of the hour” had raked in a quarter of a million dollars in that hour. She wanted to ask if the haul exceeded his annual Coon Supper fund-raiser in West Bum-fuck. But she held that in, which she considered a sign of lingering sobriety.
“I’m humbled,” Roy stammered.
Sunny downed glass number three and smirked.
You should be humbled. You’re nothing to these people. A rank-and-file congressman lumped in with all their other charity cases. You’re a stray puppy, Roy. A rare disease. They’re not here because they believe in you. They’re here because you’re a chit in their barter system. Otis asked them to fork over a few thousand bucks; now he owes them. “I’ll trade a donation to your favorite Member of Congress for my favorite prostate cancer charity.’Bend over, Roy.”
She suggested that Otis introduce Roy to his guests.
“Good idea,” Otis replied, then leaned toward Roy. “Didya bring it?”
Roy tapped knowingly at his blazer pocket.
Sunny stayed at the bar, watching Dirkey work the crowd while she worked through more wine. She watched them swoon as Roy fished that bullet-holed Constitution from his pocket and told his war story. They clasped his hands and patted his back. They dried their glistening eyes and thanked him for his service. Roy grew more comfortable, winning them over with that awwww shucks humility, the cocking of his head, and the hick grin. His shoulders seemed to rise, his voice grew stronger, his laugh exploded like fireworks over the beach. He produced that Constitution on demand. As lovable as, well, one of those adorable teddy-bear pups at the East End Animal Shelter gala. Gimme paw, Roy! Attaboy! Good Congressman!
By the time the guests began filing out, Sunny was steadying herself against the bar. She had to get to Otis’s guesthouse, a five-minute walk on a slate path across grassy dunes. Once it was a stable for the Cogsworths’ polo ponies. But Otis had no interest in the sport (and looked rather ridiculous bulging in an equestrian helmet and riding boots). So he sold the ponies and put Lucille in charge of renovations. Nearly two million dollars later, the only memory of its prior inhabitants was the valuable collection of equestrian art decorating the walls.
Sunny wondered where Roy would be sleeping that night. The aptly named Double Action had two bedrooms. A competent congressional staff would ensure he wasn’t alone in the guesthouse with an attractive, half-drunk female lobbyist. They’d arrange for him to be driven to the Riverhead Holiday Inn Express—forty minutes away from temptation.
The good news, Sunny mused, was that Roy’s staff wasn’t that competent. The night had potential.
The bartender began removing glasses, leaving only one. Sunny took a few wobbly steps. Then a voice bellowed, “Carpe diem, everyone!”
Sunny swiped the last glass of wine.
*
Jack Steele made his grand entrance, trailed by young campaign aides plastered with red, white, and blue STEELE SUPPORTER stickers. His gravelly voice cut through Sunny like a buzz saw. “Sorry I’m late. Busy night on the old campaign trail!”
Jack embraced Congressman Dirkey like the old friends they weren’t. “This is my boy,” he proclaimed, dangling his arm over Roy’s shoulder. “When are you running for president?”Roy beamed as if he’d just been nominated.
Sunny thought, What a performance! What range! From killing with his bare hands to glad-handing. And the Oscar goes to...
Steele released his hold on Dirkey and approached Sunny with open arms. He proclaimed, “Sunny McCarthy! Good to see ya! How’s Mom?”
You’re an asshole, she thought. But it came out as an ambivalent, if slurred, “I haven’t really seen her.”
Jack put both hands on Sunny’s shoulders and leaned toward her, the brim of his black cowboy hat nudging against her forehead. He lowered his voice. She smelled peppermint gum on his breath. “Look, Sunny. I know this is awkward. She’s your mother. And blood runs thicker than water.”
Let’s experiment. Someone get me a knife.
“My campaign to defeat that woman isn’t personal. It’s politics. You understand, right Sunny?”
Over Jack Steele’s shoulders, Sunny noticed Otis’s eyes bulging.
In addition to the condescending “you understand,” Sunny McCarthy despised the political pretense of “it’s not personal.” In fact, Sunny knew that politics was always personal. She viewed politicians with the cold clinical interest of an anthropologist. They were, she believed, a species of distended egos shrink-wrapped in diaphanous skin. When the skin was exposed to any form of insult, a chemical reaction occurred. The offended ego unleashed a mixture of volcanic adrenaline mixed with icy indignation, forming permanent landmarks in one’s memory, impervious to erosion. Scores had to be settled, points proven. Before long, a slight became a skirmish, a skirmish a feud, a feud a war, and pretty soon entire continents were being invaded. All because of something that wasn’t personal.
So when Jack said “it’s not personal,” Sunny knew that it was, well, very personal. And his delivery! That condescending tone, as if Sunny knew nothing about politics, compared to this political genius of, oh, about one week, who thought Sun Tzu was a Chinese restaurant franchise in Boca.She narrowed her eyes through her inebriated fog. She studied Jack’s sunken cheeks, pockmarked from half a century of caked-on makeup; the artificially whitened teeth shining through a snarl laced with spittle. Her prior thoughts of sleeping with Roy Dirkey were now overcome with the imperative to screw Jack Steele. She summoned the famous Sunny McCarthy comeback—words serrated to render Jack Steele a eunuch right on the terrace of Trigger Happy in the presence of eye-lifted witnesses.
Otis seemed frozen. Next to him, Lucille gave him a look that said Do something! An ugly scene was approaching, like the occasional squalls that formed on the horizon—dark, flashing, and speeding over Trigger Happy. Until now, the Cogsworths had successfully avoided the ugly scenes that had marred other Hamptons soirees. In fact, they had an unblemished record. But this! Not since that sordid item in the New York Post about the Asabogue billionaire who shed his third wife for a coed waitress at the Lobster Roll in Amagansett had such ugliness been portended on Billionaires Bluff.