Trolls in the Hamptons (5 page)

“I
ask
her to stay because she is family. There is no question of her taking the bus back to the Hamptons when she's sick or tired.”

“And I can't see you when she's here?”

“Well, I am not about to be making love with her sleeping in the next room over. Or go out and leave her alone when she might need help. I thought I'd take her to a museum, if she feels up to it, or the park.”

“And I am not invited.” That was a statement, not a question, so I did not have to answer.

“Well, call me when your new best friend leaves and you have time for me.”

I figured we both knew that wouldn't be for a long while.

I
WAS OKAY WITH LOCKING THE door behind Arlen. Both ways. I guess Arlen was okay with it, too, because he didn't call to talk later, or the next day, either. I didn't call him, not even when my cousin left a message that she wouldn't be coming into the city until Sunday evening. There was a bachelorette party Susan wanted to go to at home in Paumanok Harbor, out at the edge of Long Island's South Fork. I was glad she felt well enough to go.

Mom was glad when I told her about Arlen.

“He was never good enough for you anyway. Once a pig, always a pig.”

This came from my mother who trained dogs and sometimes fostered a couple of shelter animals. Ever since leaving my father and Manhattan, where no dogs are permitted in the apartment, her house at the beach was always full of dog hair and sand. One blot on the scorecard of my sink and Arlen was Attila the Hairy, an unworthy warthog.

But maybe I was judging Mom too harshly, because she went on, “And there was no smile in your voice when you talked about him, no sighs or secret whispers when I saw you together.”

I was touched she noticed, but said, “Mom, I'm not in high school, giggling in study hall.”

“You never seemed excited to be with him.”

How could I be when I was waiting for my mother to go for his jugular? She insisted on being the dominant member of her own pack. That's hard enough for me to take, much less for a man who did not care for dogs. Which was another black mark against him in Mom's book. And mine, now that I thought about it. I'd have a dog in a minute, if I were allowed.

Anyway, my mother had gone on to her favorite topic, after the four-footed variety. “Now maybe you'll meet someone who'll push you out of your comfortable niche, who'll make your head spin.”

I already had, but I don't think Mom meant a troll. To stop her before she could explain how it was my duty to keep the entire race from extinction, I told her, “Actually I met a nice guy this afternoon. A cop.”

“A cop? Oh, that mess in the street.”

“Yes. He came to ask me if I saw anything, and he was a real charmer.”

I thought I heard Mom lick her chops like Georgie, a huge Bernese mountain dog she sometimes boarded. Before she started to drool, I said, “He's black. African-American.”

Now I thought she said, “Jesusmaryandjoseph,” but we're not remotely Catholic. Then she rallied, good liberal that she is. “Well, it's early days. And he must be a nice man or you wouldn't have mentioned it. Unless you want to ruin my day.”

“No, Mom. He just showed me what I was missing.”

“Well, good for him. And for you.”

“Yeah, I think so.” Then I decided to see just how open-minded my opinionated mother was. I knew her liberal leaning stood foursquare erect when it came to fidelity, adultery, women's rights, animal rights, and good housekeeping. “Mom, have you ever seen a troll?”

“The guy who brought me his Airedale might count as one. He had hair on his arms and growing out of his ears, big bushy eyebrows.”

“The guy or the Airedale?”

“The owner. He treated his dog like shit.”

“That's an ape, not a troll.”

“What about the tourists in East Hampton, driving their Hummers and Jags? They don't stop for pedestrians when they're driving, but cross the street in the middle when they're walking, holding up one manicured hand to stop traffic. And they let their kids spit their gum on the sidewalk. Do you know what it's like to try to get that out of a dog's foot? And their poor pets—trophy dogs, all of them. I had to break one jerk's window before his fancy designer dog died of heat stroke inside his fancy car.”

My mother could go on forever about dogs, and about tourists to the Hamptons. She lived in one of the last almost untouched villages of Long Island's peninsular tip, between Amagansett and Montauk, but on the “wrong” side of Montauk Highway. The south, or ocean side was where the money was. The north, or bay side used to be for farmers and fisherman, but the moneyed crowd was encroaching, to the dismay of long-term locals like my mother.

“I meant a real monster, not an uncouth Hamptonite.”

“Come on, Willow. You're just trying to distract me from the black man. That is, the policeman. Is he going to call? Have you made a date?”

“It's not like that, Mom. He was just nice when he didn't have to be.”

“Of course he had to be. It's your tax money paying his salary. Did he leave his card?”

“Yes.”

“That means he wants you to call, so there's no hint of abuse of power or conflict of interest.”

“What about fraternizing on the job?”

“That's for coworkers, isn't it? Call him if he was that nice.”

“He only wants to hear from me if I remember anything else about what I saw.”

“So make something up! You're a writer. Be creative.”

That was the problem, not the solution.

I checked in with my father, who was more concerned with his bad hip ruining his golf game and his tennis matches than with me. He swore my mother's father had been a troll, big, ugly, and mean, but he made me promise not to tell her he said so.

My Fafhrd wasn't mean or ugly. Neither was the troll in the street, I decided. That is, if I was not crazy, if he existed. I went with that, instead of waiting for the guys with the straitjacket.

He hadn't hurt anyone, except for trying to push them out of his way. He'd been determined to get somewhere, it seemed, but I didn't think he was looking for water. The hydrant was an accident, then a happy surprise. Then he left. Why'd he come? Why'd he go?

I unlocked the desk drawer and looked at my sketches, then put the flash drive files back on my computer. I made some more notes, a list of questions, possible villains, a dramatic rescue. Fafhrd as Lassie? Maybe. He couldn't fly like Superman, or climb like Spidey, being much too heavy. But what if he could wink out of sight at will, the way the street menace had?

I worked on that until I had an outline I was pleased with. I just didn't know if I should consider writing the story. It was definitely out of the box, and I couldn't afford to spend months on a project that might never sell. So I called my boss, Don Carr. As editor and publisher and majority shareholder of the whole company, DCP, he was always busy, but he picked up the phone for me.

“What have you got?” he yelled over the noise of his office. It was a big open loft, with artists and writers coming and going and tossing ideas and Frisbees and donuts back and forth. “That prima donna who writes the werewolf series is going to be two months behind schedule, one of my vampire bride writers decided to go on a honeymoon, and the ghost hunter guy joined his buddies in the afterlife. And I don't think he's going to be emailing any more books. So talk to me, Willy.”

My next book wasn't due for another five months, so he couldn't mean that one. “Well, I have a new idea . . . ”

“Great. I love it. How soon can I have it?”

“I want to talk to you about it first, see if you think it'll appeal to our readers.”

“Come in Sunday morning. It'll be quiet enough to think then.”

I knew Don often came in on weekends to catch up, and to get out of going to his in-laws with his wife and kids. Since Susan wasn't coming until dinnertime, and I had no date for Saturday night/Sunday breakfast, Sunday morning was perfect.

It was one of those rare clear, clean spring mornings in the city, with not much traffic making smog, no heat yet to raise the garbage stench.

DCP's offices were way downtown, near the financial district, so the streets and sidewalks were almost empty on the weekends.

The weekend guard didn't know me, but he had my name on a list, so he let me up without calling first. Don must be desperate.

He had a box of pastries from the bakery, and a plastic container of fruit salad from his wife. I brought trail mix bars. The coffeemaker was on, so we were set.

Instead of trying to pitch the story out loud, I gave him my outline and sketches.

“You eat while I read,” he said, pointing to a chair, but I was too nervous to sit. I picked a blueberry muffin from the box and a napkin and went to the windows that took up almost the whole front of the loft. The streets below were deserted, so I looked around and up. A building across the way was under construction, but no one was working on Sunday.

From what I could see, they were adding upper floors, which would block some of Don's light and view, but I wasn't going to say anything. I looked at him. He was smiling. Maybe at the jelly donut that dripped on my sketches. I hoped not. I put a napkin in front of him, but he kept reading. That was a good sign, wasn't it?

I went back to the window. Some of the new floors were framed out with steel beams, and a crane was waiting next to a bunch more, so I guess they were going higher still. I couldn't quite make out what the red stuff was on the existing roof of the building until it moved.

Fafhrd! My troll was climbing up on the steel girders, swinging like a spider monkey from beam to beam. Then he noticed the crane. I gurgled something, but Don just said, “Coffee's ready. Get some.”

“But—”

“Shh. This is good, Willy.”

Oh, no, it wasn't. Fafhrd—I didn't know what else to call him—was investigating the boom of the crane, snapping the chains and locks that held it in place. There've been a lot of crane accidents lately, what with so much building always going on, so the safety precautions were on high.

Not high enough for a ten-foot, rock-solid troll. Who, incidentally, was now wearing a black sash around his privates, the same as I had drawn on my sketches. I wouldn't think about that.

“Don, you better come see this.”

Fafhrd had managed to loosen the crane and was climbing out on it, letting it swing away from the building, so he was dangling over the street. I couldn't tell if the noise I heard was Don gasping, the crane straining, or Fafhrd laughing as he rode the boom like a kid on a playground whirler.

“That's going to break for sure,” Don shouted, reaching for his phone. While he dialed 911—not that there was anything anyone could do in time to save the crane, the girders it was striking, the other buildings it might hit on the way down—I beat on the window. “No. No, get down!”

Don hit the floor.

“Not you. Him.”

“You see the guy tampering with the equipment?”

“Don't you?” I pointed, and Fafhrd waved back to me, just as the crane's tower separated from the carriage platform and went crashing down toward the street. The troll jumped off, back to the roof.

Don shook his head. “Poor bastard couldn't live through that. Not that it doesn't serve him right.”

The poor bastard was looking down, shaking his head, too.

Don and I got closer to the window to look down at the wreckage below. Pieces of steel, parts of other buildings, a ton of rubble had landed in the street. A couple of cars were buried. “I bet they're going to evacuate the whole neighborhood.”

Then: “Holy shit! That's my car!” He went flying for the elevator. On his way out, he yelled, “I love the idea. Really original, new, fresh. Write it. We'll talk money next week.”

I could see people coming out of buildings, alarms going off. I could not see a troll.

I sat on the floor and ate a jelly donut.