The Last Refuge (23 page)

“Bay Side Holdings, is that where we’re at?” she asked.

“Trying, anyway.”

“Okay,” she said, “I can tell you I was young and stupid. Stupider, anyway. I was hired by the lead, Milton Hornsby, who’s general counsel for Bay Side Holdings, as you know. He wanted me to come in as consulting on a big zoning appeals case. Hornsby paired me up with this city guy named Hunter Johnson, believe it or not. He was like incredibly gorgeous, intelligent, rich, witty and handsome. Did I mention athletic and a good cook?”

“And an asshole?”

“Not at first. No, not ever, really. It’s not like they did anything, it’s more like what they didn’t do. Which was actually try to get the funky job done. When you’re going for a variance and you hit a little resistance, you’re like supposed to at least
try
to make your case. I mean, that’s the way you play the game. The appeals board’s not just gonna jump down off their freaking platform and give you a great big hug and say, hey, you want to change a whole bunch of setbacks? Excellent! We’ve been here sitting around on our asses just
waiting
for something like this to happen. I mean, hel
-lo.
I told them how to play the course. I mean, I do know how to play. I do know how to deal with Southampton zoning issues. My God, I used to babysit for the planning chair’s kids. One of the guys on the appeals board has been hitting on me since high school. I know this shit, inside and out.”

“I didn’t know Hornsby was a lawyer. He didn’t tell me. So I guess he failed to take your counsel.”

“Yeah, I guess. They wanted to completely reconfigure a whole slew of properties over in North Sea. Here, it’s in here somewhere. I’ll show you. Though I shouldn’t.”

She spun around again and pulled open a deep legal-sized drawer. She curled her feet around the base of the chair to keep from falling into the file cabinet.

It was a copy of the aerial map I’d pulled from the Town records. Each lot was outlined with white ink over the black-and-white photographic image. They were all numbered, though several, about a dozen, were marked with a yellow highlighter. Only this one had a transparent overlay, which showed an alternate configuration of the lots. Through various combinations and border adjustments, my neighborhood had become an entirely different animal. Maybe twelve properties were converted to five, all bordering the bay or the deep harbor inlet that formed the east coast of Oak Point. The largest of these was at the center of the plan, marked “common area.” Which put it right in the middle of the WB site. A similar reformation was repeated opposite WB’s other shore on Jacob’s Neck. The entire development was enclosed by a green line labeled “privet.” A hedge. The way it was roughed in, the hedge ran down the middle of my side yard. And there was a question mark, also in yellow marker, right on top of my roof.

“This ain’t some third rate pre-existing, non-conforming, switch-a-couple-things-around-all-approved-thank-you-very-much-have-a-nice-day kinda shit here. This is big-time surveys and wetlands hearings and
bulldozers. You’d think a little due diligence mighta been in order.”

While she talked I noticed my heart had contracted down to the size of a cherry tomato. My sore tongue started to throb. Jackie was poking the map with her right index finger and ranting about something or other.

“Due diligence?”

“Well, we hardly got near any actual hearings. Just a lotta backroom chats with all my dear friends on the appeals board, and with the building inspector and some County schlubs. All we ended up with was a list of things we’d have to do if we wanted to pursue. My point being, why go this far and at the first sign of any real tussle, fold up faster’n an origami master on amphetamines? Nobody thought to check this stuff out beforehand?”

She moved away from me and sat back in her desk chair. She slumped down and put her feet up on the desk. Jackie made an art of repose, however briefly maintained.

“Sorry,” she said, “it just still pisses me off.” She gnawed on the cuticle of her right thumb, stopping occasionally to check the results. “It was a big project and I coulda used the damn work. Not the damn money so much, but the complexity. And the credentials. And the trips to the City for lunch meetings with Mr. Johnson, who, forgive me for saying, was a major piece of ass. We don’t get enough of that around here. Not loose anyway.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Though I guess not really loose enough. Not if you count all the floppsies and moppsies draped all
over him day and night. Including some other guy’s wife, which can irritate the hell out of a person.”

“Especially her husband.”

“He’s a drip. She’s a babe. Happens all the time out here. Probably not to you.”

She looked me over.

“You don’t look the type. Too craggy.” She held up her left hand and wiggled her fingers. “No ring?”

“Divorced.”

“Kids?”

“A daughter.”

“My age?”

“A little younger.”

“That’s how I like my men. Sorry.”

She grabbed a clump of her reddish blond hair and held it up to the light, looking for split ends.

“That makes me sound so ageist,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Ageist. Like sexist.”

“Oh.”

She was suddenly back up on her feet.

“So, what else can I do for you? Legally.”

“Who’s Bay Side Holdings?”

She frowned in thought.

“The guys who own all the land. Investors, I guess. I never met any of them. Hornsby was the man.”

“‘All the land.’ Where’d they get ‘all the land’?”

“I don’t know. Groups of guys are always buying up hunks of land. That’s what they do.”

She picked an ashtray off her desk and rooted around until she came up with a half-spent joint. She waved it in the air.

“What do we have here,” she said.

I demurred.

“You go ahead. I’m all set.”

She lurched over to a desk drawer and got out some matches. I waited while she lit the joint and took most of it down with the first drag. She talked as she exhaled.

“What else.”

I had to think about that for second.

“My dad looked after Regina. She didn’t have anybody else. He’s dead, she’s dead. I’m just trying to wrap it up.”

“A philanthropist.”

“I’m still curious.”

“About what?”

“Why didn’t Regina pay rent?”

“She didn’t?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“No. I mean, why would I? I was focused on revising an original plot plan. We never talked about the people living in the houses.”

Then she switched to a singsong lampoon of sensitivity.

“Not that I didn’t care …”

I sensed it was time to wrap this up. I tidied up my file and made motions to leave.

“You could give me Hunter Johnson’s address and phone number, if it’s okay. I might want to talk to him.”

She went back into her file cabinet. She whipped out a letter.

“Voilà,”
she said. Then, “This is from Mr. Doll-face himself.” She pulled it back against her chest. “Why would you want to talk to him?”

“Curious, like I said.”

She handed me the letter.

“Keep it. I got more.”

“Thanks.”

“Can I borrow this?” I held up the map of Oak Point.

She wagged her head as if to shake out the right answer.

“Sure. Why the hell not. Can’t hurt. Just don’t lose it. The case might come back.”

“I’ll make a copy and send back the original.”

“No problem.”

“Thanks.”

“Fagetaboutit.”

She was smiling at me through the tumbled mass of strawberry-blond hair, but I felt her attention starting to dissipate again.

“I guess I’ll let you get back to your case.”

“Thanks a bunch,” she said, and walked out of the room.

I slipped the map and letter into my file and followed her back through the house to the front door. She held it open and leaned her whole body against the jam. We shook hands.

“Good luck with whatever you’re doing,” she said, “which, by the way, is more than you’re telling me.”

I smiled at her.

“Says who?”

“I gave you my freaking map, for Pete’s sakes.”

“You did. I appreciate that.”

“So?”

I pulled out my wallet and gave her a dollar.

“What’s this?”

“A retainer. To assure confidentiality. Attorney-client privilege.”

She held up the dollar bill.

“Never hold up in court.”

I left her watching me from the doorway of her house, pausing for a moment’s reflection before rocketing back into the chaotic Brownian motion of her life. A vision of my daughter threatened to sneak into the receding picture in my rearview mirror, but I distracted myself with thoughts of an army of bulldozers and backhoes led by the profane Jimmy Maddox, crashing over Oak Point like the Blitzkrieg, leveling hedgerows and laying waste to the last refuge on earth.

FIVE

M
Y HOUSE IN
Stamford was in the woods not far from the northern border of town. It sat on the edge of a short cliff formed by glacial boulders. At the bottom of the cliff was a small pond that made a home for Canada geese and bullfrogs. The deck off the rear of the house was shaded by a canopy of oak and maple in the summer, and by hemlocks year round. We had a lot of freeloading birds who worked the half dozen feeders mounted off the deck and in the surrounding trees. One of the few things I enjoyed doing around the house was inventing ways to keep the squirrels out of the feeders. It was a battle of wits I never entirely won. There was one tough, mangy old squirrel who used to sit on the railing and stare at me. I thought he might be the head of engineering, sizing up the competition.

There was a wall of glass between the deck and the living room. It was so hot that afternoon I couldn’t leave the air-conditioning, so I just sat there and looked through the windows at the competing fauna. I was on my third tumbler of Absolut when Abby came home from wherever she went during the day. She didn’t expect to see me there.

“My God, you frightened me. What are you doing home?”

“Drinking.”

“Obviously.”

She dropped a handful of large plastic bags filled with merchandise on the sofa next to me and poured herself a stiff one from the wet bar in the corner of the room.

“And smoking, too, I see.”

“Yeah. You can’t quit these things for too long. It’s not good for you.”

“Yes, of course. What’s it been, twenty years?”

“About.”

Abby moved very gracefully. She flowed into a chair on the other side of the room, sat back and crossed her legs, resting her elbow on the armrest so she could hold her drink aloft, shaking it occasionally to dissolve the ice. She wore a silk blouse with large square pockets and an off-white skirt. A gold chain looped around her neck and disappeared down the open front of her blouse. Her legs were deeply tanned, nicely offset by a pair of white high heels. Her hair was still mostly natural blond, formed into elegant waves that made me think of Ethel Kennedy. Maintenance costs for hair, nails and face ran about five-hundred a month, not
including yoga, health club and massage therapy. And it showed. Abby set an unachievable standard for women her age.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Are you going to tell me why you’re sitting there getting plastered? Or do I have to guess.”

“Seemed like the best course of action, all things considered.”

The ceiling in our living room was two stories high. There was a balcony above that led to three of the bedrooms. One was my daughter’s. She used to sit up there Christmas night and wait for the grownups to go to bed so Santa could make the scene. When I went upstairs I’d scoop up her limp little body and put her to bed, always wondering if she was faking it.

The house had been designed by an architect who’d been a friend of Abby’s father. She told me this guy was the only architect alive who could possibly do the job. I didn’t think we needed an architect at all. Or for that matter, a custom-designed house. She said I had no aesthetic sensibilities. I’d never seen Abby open a book, or listen to a piece of music that wasn’t on a greatest hits album, or go to a museum that wasn’t having a fundraiser or an opening everyone was talking about. In Abby’s world you defined things worth caring for by how they were classified by her parents’ social set. It was much easier than valuing possessions, vacation spots, friendships and personal beliefs on their intrinsic merits. To this day, I don’t think I could tell you what that house actually looked like. I do remember that I didn’t like living in it.

“The mall was so crowded I thought I’d scream,” Abby said to me. “The people here are so rude and pushy. I don’t know why it doesn’t bother you.”

“The people here” was Abby’s secret code for Jews, presumably plentiful in the area because of our proximity to New York. Abby had grown up in a suburb of Boston that fairly bristled with anti-Semitism. It frustrated her that I didn’t share her feelings. It forced her to keep her bigotry euphemistic, but after twenty-five years, I could interpret.

“Because I love people,” I said.

“Oh please. You hate people.”

“Not all people. Only some people.”

“Could have fooled me.”

She watched the ice swirl in the glass, then took a sip.

“No, you’re right,” she proclaimed. “You’re simply indifferent. You don’t even know there
are
people in the world. You have no feelings for anything. Or anybody. I can’t believe you are smoking a cigarette.”

The way she was looking at her glass I thought she might be trying to see her own reflection. Checking her lipstick.

“Camels. They come in a filter now.”

“How salubrious.”

I looked around at our living room and wondered why it looked the way it did. I paid for it all, but really didn’t understand the significance of the furniture or the decorations. Abby once told me I wouldn’t be much at interior design. She said you had to grow up with nice things to know which things were nice.

“What’re all those boxes in the back seat of your car?”

“That’s the stuff from the office I wanted to keep.”