Dead In The Hamptons (14 page)

I moved cautiously closer. Cindy laughed again, then flung her arms out and pulled Butler into a hug. Most people I knew didn’t hug a cop either. Except in an AA meeting. Could Butler be in the program? If so, she’d had a tight grip on her anonymity when we admitted that we were all in recovery. Maybe she was Cindy’s sponsor, or the other way around. We’d already hit a few AA meetings in the area, and I hadn’t ever seen her there. But she might go up island for meetings so as not to meet anyone she might be called on to investigate or arrest. If so, I wished Cindy had told me. But I could understand if she respected Butler’s anonymity.

Or maybe I was seeing something else. As I watched, Cindy ran a hand over Butler’s hair. I would have said she ruffled it if there’d been enough of it to ruffle. Butler responded with a tug of one of Cindy’s pigtails. They fell back, grinning at each other like there was no one else on the beach. Damn! Had I misunderstood when Cindy said that Oscar didn’t appeal to her? Now Cindy punched Butler lightly on the shoulder and turned away. Was that a buddy punch or a lesbian punch? It seemed to me I ought to know the difference, but I didn’t. Butler kept looking as Cindy marched straight toward me, an enigmatic smile on her lips. I wanted to believe she’d spotted me. But it wasn’t that kind of smile.

She ran right into me.

“Whoa, there,” I said. “What’s your rush?”

“Hi, Bruce.” Her smile broadened to a grin. “Are we having fun yet?”

“Now I am.” Don’t quit five minutes before the miracle. I swear to God, every time I had a thought these days, a program slogan popped up with a clang like the numbers on an old-fashioned cash register. I meant, if she’d been flirting with Butler, so what? I’d flirt better.

She looked up at me, close enough that I hoped my breath smelled okay, but not so squashed together I couldn’t read her sweatshirt.

“Born to party, huh? I guess you’re having fun yourself.”

She tucked her hand in the crook of my elbow and steered us back toward the gang and the picnic.

“Now I am.” Was she putting me on or not? Did she swing both ways or what? For the moment, I didn’t care.

Vendors crisscrossing the beach were making a killing on neon necklaces. When one showed up beside us, I bought us each a glow-in-the-dark choker, hot pink for her and bright chartreuse for me. They were only a couple of bucks.

“Buying me jewelry already?” She flashed her little snaggle teeth up at me. They still turned me on. “Should I let you?”

“Keep it. It’s you,” I said.

A firecracker went off almost at our feet. Some asshole do-it-yourselfer. We both jumped. It made a great excuse to grab her hand, and I didn’t give it back. Her fingers closed lightly over mine.

“Do you really want to see the fireworks?” I asked. “We could make a U-turn and keep going.”

Cindy laughed and squeezed my hand.

“I love fireworks, and Fourth of July comes only once a year. There’ll be other nights.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” I said.

When the fireworks started, I sat down near Barbara and Jimmy, separated from Cindy by piles of stuff and people. As the illuminations leaped and burst and shed streams of sparkles down the sky, she crept up behind me and put a hand on my shoulder. When I turned, she signaled to me to make room. Barbara, who can matchmake even when riveted on something else, scooted her chair over. I pushed mine back, sliding down onto the blanket. Cindy snuggled in beside me. We held hands. Is it Faust who sells his soul to the devil for one perfect moment? In a million years, I wouldn’t have predicted that booze would not be part of mine.

The fireworks ended on a prolonged high note, to communal cries of pleasure as if the occasion were an orgy and the beach one big happy bed. Then everybody started scrabbling for their shoes, separating leftovers from chicken bones and watermelon rind, and flapping and folding blankets. Someone said how nice that the rich Hamptons could spend so much on bread and circuses. Someone else, dragging addictions into it as usual, said we have a disease of “more.” Or maybe they meant our whole society, not just addicts.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have enough fireworks,” Barbara said, “but forty-five minutes is pretty darn good.”

“I’m glad you’re happy, pumpkin,” Jimmy said.

The contented crowd eddied around us as we headed toward the road. Parents carried sleeping toddlers. Young guys we might see in AA in a few years chugged the last can of beer.

Cindy disappeared into the swirling mass of people, yelling, “See you at the house!” as they carried her away. Barbara still clung, hanging on to Jimmy’s shirttail with one hand and my sleeve with the other.

“Glad you came?” she asked me.

“Tonight or the Hamptons?”

“Both.”

“Yes, I am,” I said. “I’m even glad I came in out of the cold.”

“Good.” She reeled me in and kissed me on the cheek with a smack loud enough to make Jimmy turn around.

“No horseplay, children,” he said. “Focus, or we’ll never get out of here.”

“The old horse feels the pull of his stable,” Barbara said.

“Computer withdrawal,” I said.

We finally made it back to Dedhampton after a long crawl. We passed the East Hampton village green, almost too pretty, with its pond and ancient graveyard. The resident pair of swans, rumps in the air and elegant necks invisible as they dabbled for whatever swans find to eat in the muck on the bottom of ponds, saved the scene from an unnatural perfection. Traffic thinned out some before Amagansett and melted away on the homestretch.

Our housemates all arrived almost simultaneously in spurts of gravel and a mighty slamming of car doors. Jimmy headed straight for his laptop on the porch. Everybody else piled into the kitchen. More food came out of the refrigerator than went into it. Watching fireworks on the beach is hungry work. Cindy tossed spoons from the drawer with the dexterity of a juggler. Karen passed pints of ice cream back from the freezer. Within minutes, the whole crew was eating out of the container, some propped against various appliances, others sitting on the counter with their legs dangling.

“Shit!” Jimmy’s voice exploded from the other room.

“What happened, baby?” Barbara called. “See if he wants any ice cream,” she said to me.

Cherry Garcia in hand, I ambled into Jimmy’s sanctum. Something major, like a computer crash, would have evoked prolonged curses rather than a single expletive.

“What’s up, bro?”

Jimmy swiveled in his chair to look at me.

“Our friend Phil isn’t out there, is he?”

“No, not a sign of him. His door is closed, so he’s either in or out.”

“I know how he spent his evening,” Jimmy said.

“How? And so what?”

“Look at this.” Jimmy clicked his mouse a few times, and websites started flashing on the screen. “Online casinos.”

“He used your computer?”

“Everybody else was at the fireworks with us.”

“He didn’t delete what he did?” I asked. “Dumb question,” I answered myself. “He did, but Jimmy Cullen, boy genius, tracked him through cyberspace anyway.”

“He played deep,” Jimmy said, “and he lost big. Phil may be a high-bottom alcoholic, but he’s a heavy-duty gambler— way out of his depth and sinking fast.”

I inspected my freshly shaven face in the mirror.

“Oh, you handsome devil, you,” I said.

“Cut it short, Narcissus.” Barbara’s voice startled me. “Other people need to use the bathroom.”

“What part of a closed door don’t you understand?” I inquired.

“The part where you didn’t make sure the latch snapped.”

“Don’t be a smartass,” I admonished her as I opened the door. “Hey, you look pretty.”

“Do I really?” She looked down at herself and twirled. “Let me at the mirror.”

We were getting ready for a party at Oscar’s. I’d dressed up to the extent of smooth cheeks, long pants, and a blue denim shirt. I had rolled my shirt sleeves up and down twice and changed the number of buttons open on my chest three times. The chemistry between Cindy and me had been bubbling quietly since the Fourth of July, and I was more than ready for an experiment.

Barbara did look nice. Her usually intractable hair fluffed attractively around her face. Intricate webs of gold wire and crystal dangled from her ears and on her chest above a deeply scooped black tank top. Gold sandals peeked out from beneath a long turquoise skirt. Her tanned olive skin glowed with health.

“Nice skirt,” I said. “Very Sixties.”

“It’s batik.” She stuck out a foot and wiggled her toes at me. “Like my toenails?”

“They match they skirt. A little weird, but in a good way.”

“Do you think I’m too dressed up? It is the beach.”

“Hey, it’s a party,” I said. “Let yourself go.”

“It’ll be a big evening if I can get Jimmy to dance,” she said. “But let yourself go, yourself. You look terrific.” She stepped forward and buttoned the lowest open button. “There. Now you’re perfect.”

Oscar’s house looked like a cruise ship in full regalia sailing against the sky as we walked up from the road on the land side of the dunes. The parking area near the house was packed solid. I’d heard that every recovering person on the East End from Southampton to Montauk came to Oscar’s parties. Festive strings of lights draped the structure, twined around the rails of the deck, and garlanded the nearby trees against a backdrop of inky midnight blue. Fireflies did their bit to light things up. The night air felt soft against my skin. In contrast, my perception felt sharpened. I seemed to see the gaily decorated scene and hear the music, the laughter, and the roar of mingled voices as we approached with exceptional clarity. Well, of course I did: I used to arrive at parties fuzzed over by preliminary drinking.

What do you do at a party when you don’t get wasted? Talk, talk, talk. Eat, eat, eat. Dance, dance, dance. Barbara started pawing the floor and shaking her fanny the second we got in the door.

“Come on!” she said, jerking her head toward the dance floor, though surely not expecting us to obey.

I shook my head. I wondered if Cindy liked to dance.

Jimmy, the pusillanimous coward, said, “Later!”

Barbara shouted something I couldn’t hear. The music with its thumping bass and the roar of multiple conversations drowned her out. Still dancing, she wiggled her way over to the marble kitchen counter, heavily laden with food, to put down the tray of homemade brownies she had brought. I hadn’t eaten a brownie that wasn’t laced with pot or hash since the Sixties. But this clean and sober crowd was into chocolate in a big way.

Barbara reached the middle of the floor and ratcheted up the motion, shimmying to the beat all by herself with her eyes closed and a smile on her face. Jimmy watched her, a big goofy grin on his own face. I still felt uncomfortable in company without a glass in my hand. I skirted the edge of the crowd, some watching the dancers in the center and others jigging along. Spotting a regiment of soda bottles at the far end of the marble counter, I worked my way over to it. I helped myself to an oversized plastic cup of seltzer, squeezed half a lime into it, and fished a few cubes out of a nearby ice bucket to plunk into it. Now I was as ready to socialize as I’d ever be.

I couldn’t see Cindy, so I looked around for other familiar faces. The first one I spotted was Corky’s. She swung her hips and touched down twice on each foot, dancing her way toward me. I raised my glass to her.

“Have you seen the whole house?” she asked me when she got close enough to shout. Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been attempting to converse in this hubbub for hours. “Oscar designed and built it himself. Well, his architect did, but it was Oscar’s vision.”

I shook my head.

“Not all of it.” I doubted she’d show me Ted’s bathroom.

“Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.” She looked around for a place to put her glass down and finally stowed it under the drinks table. She held out her hand.

I waved her ahead of me.

“Go on. You lead and I’ll follow.”

She led me out of the crowd and down the same dark corridor I’d explored clandestinely the day I’d found Oscar and Karen in bed together. She flicked a switch. Track lighting illuminated a gallery of photos I hadn’t even noticed that day.

“We’re all here,” Corky said. “Take a look. They’re not just snapshots. Oscar’s a terrific photographer, you know. Way back, he used to do it professionally— portrait photography and photojournalism. See how many faces you recognize. Not just us— celebrities, too. Oscar really does know everyone.”

She was right. I spotted a number of famous faces known for hanging in the Hamptons: Spielberg, Vonnegut, Paul Simon, Billy Joel. The Clintons. Puff Daddy. Nobody had mentioned Oscar was a world-class portrait photographer. I was impressed, not by the celebrities, but by the photos themselves.

“These are great,” I said. “Why did he stop doing it for a living?”

“He says he found he could make more money with less effort in real estate,” Corky said. “But that’s not the real reason. There was an incident right before he got clean and sober. His bottom, in fact. Here, look at this.”

She pointed to a black and white photo of a young woman. It wasn’t a studio portrait. He’d taken it on the beach. She stood in the water with surf foaming around her ankles, wearing a filmy gauze kind of dress with the skirt bunched up in her hand to keep it dry on one side, wet and clinging to her legs on the other. She laughed up at the camera. Her pale tangled hair flew up and away from her face in the wind. Her even lighter eyes managed to be huge, sleepy, and crinkled with amusement at the same time. Even in black and white, she was luminous.

“Who is she?” I asked. “An actress? A model?”

“No, she was a local girl,” Corky said. “You know the farmer down the road from the house you’re in?”

“Sure. He fixed our plumbing, we picked his strawberries. What about him?”

“Believe it or not, she was his daughter.”

“You’re kidding. American Gothic produced this goddess? You said ‘was.’ Did she die?”

“Yes,” Corky frowned at the picture. “She’s dead.”

“How did it happen? Did Oscar get drunk and drive her into a tree?”