“Where did they make you, anyway?”
“In the Bronx. I think people pile their past up in these big emotional landfills where they decompose and produce nothing but toxic emissions. Personally, I’m working at shooting all that stuff out into space. I don’t want it anymore. I don’t want mine, I don’t want yours.”
She looked toward me and pulled back—maybe to see me better through her sunglasses.
“You can’t forget your whole life. Why live it in the first place?”
“No reason I can think of.”
“Maybe you don’t want to.”
Now I got to laugh.
“Jesus, this is exactly the kind of shit I’m trying not to talk about.”
“You started it.”
“I did?”
“Because you thought I was going to say something. Maybe I wasn’t.”
I loved the way the waves were breaking under the offshore breeze. Tidy, well-organized curls. Good surfing waves, especially for Long Island.
“I like you, Amanda. But I’m really not what you’re looking for. Whatever that is. I tend to end in disappointment.”
I felt a subtle increase of pressure at the point where our two shoulders touched. Maybe a millionth of a psi. She was also looking intently at the ocean. The two of us, sitting there side by side. Nobody talked for a while.
“Okay,” she said, finally.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I understand. Here.”
She stood up, brushed off her butt and pulled an overstuffed, sealed number ten envelope from the inside pocket of her barn jacket. She sort of tapped me on the forehead with it before she put it in my hand.
“Copies of her last twelve statements. That’s all I have. Anything older would be buried in old microfiche from the original bank, if it exists at all.”
She started walking back to the path through the dunes. I followed her, feeling a little off balance walking across the dry sand. Probably what she intended.
When I came up over the slot in the dunes I saw her Audi and the Grand Prix. Along with a big black BMW 740 IL sedan parked there looking invincible and overpriced. Apparently it came with a matching guy in a long black leather duster, black peg-legged pants and motorcycle boots. Even his hair was black as an oil slick. Only the half ton of gold wrapped around a meaty pinkie introduced a touch of color. Any other beach he’d look out of place, but this was Long Island. He was leaning against his car, staring at Amanda.
She acted like she didn’t notice him. I acted like I did, looking him straight in the eye to pull his attention away from her. When he finally looked, it was like eyeballing a black bear. Only less sentient.
I moved a little quicker so I could escort Amanda to her Audi. She probably thought I was being chivalrous holding her door—she had that awkward, shy smile back on her face.
When I went to get into the Grand Prix, the trained bear was leaning up against my driver’s side door. I took my hands out of the pockets of my jean jacket and approached him without hesitation. I wondered what kind of traction I’d get from the old Adidas Countries I had on my feet.
I stood there and waited for him to move. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. Amanda was busy backing out of her space, and wasn’t noticing anything. After only a few seconds he shrugged, like we’d just wrapped up a long conversation, and moved out of the way. I waited until he was outside cold-cock range and climbed into my car. My hand shook a little when I put the key in the ignition. Adrenaline.
I made a wider than necessary arc when I backed out of my space so I could align the rear bumper of the Grand Prix with the BMW’s. I looked at the guy when I gave his car just the gentlest little tap, the armored-car- gauge chrome of the Grand Prix thumping wetly into the polymer composite that tucked around the ass of the BMW. He didn’t seem to mind. He just looked at me with a pair of eyes that would have cooled off a ski slope. They were pinched tight to the bridge of his nose, then angled off to the outside of his face. I couldn’t tell if they’d grown that way naturally or been mashed into place. Either way, they showed no affect. He just stood there and looked.
By this time, Amanda was long gone. A little red warning light went on somewhere way in the back of my head. But like we usually did with those things back in the plant control rooms, I ignored it, hoping it would shut itself off again.
THREE
I COULDN’T DRIVE into Southampton Village unarmed, so I bought a cup of Hazelnut at one of the roadside delis. It tasted like burnt oak leaves, but at least it was hot and caffeinated.
I crossed Sunrise Highway and drove into the Village, noticing as I always did the sudden change in foliage, the native scrub oak and pine turning into luxurious shrubs and cultivated hardwoods, sycamore and dense privet hedges that rose like battlements in defense of shingled mansions and social status, however tenuous and dearly bought.
I arrived at the Village offices a day later than I’d planned. The autumn season for building permits and zoning appeals was going full tilt. People with briefcases and rolled-up blueprints were meeting with officials out on the steps between the oversized Doric columns. The smell of negotiation tinged the air. Faces looked sincere and cooperative. It’d be an ordinary scene if it wasn’t for the money at stake. There were plenty of people from Manhattan with bank accounts and egos large enough to fill twenty-thousand-square-foot houses built on the most expensive sand in the world. More than the East End would ever be able to absorb, which kept constant upward pressure on real estate values. A small group of regular people who lived out here—teachers, carpenters, pediatricians—had the job of controlling the demand, keeping the golden goose from being strangled by overdevelopment. It wasn’t easy. Every day Planning and Zoning faced down the kind of venal avarice that used to overrun entire continents.
I passed through the middle of the transactions unseen, like a wraith, and entered the building. There were a lot of cops hanging out in the lobby, buckling holsters, drinking coffee, going on and off shift. None of them seemed to want to arrest me for anything, so I moved on down the corridor to the Records Department.
She was still at her station behind the tall counter. She didn’t look up, even after I cleared my throat. I cleared it again.
“Yes?”
“I’m Sam Acquillo. I was here a few days ago about a property up in North Sea.”
“That’s the Town. You’ll have to go there.”
“Yes, we talked about that. The Town told me the records for this place were stored over here. You were going to research it for me and make some copies.”
She looked at me through the tops of her bifocals.
“You were going to come in the next day. I made copies for you.”
Now that she had me on a breach of promise her memory flooded back.
“I had it all ready for you.”
“Yeah. Sorry. If I could have it now I’ll get out of your hair.”
She tapped a few more times on her keyboard, then hauled her mass up out of the chair. Her glasses, secured by a beaded chain, rested on a shelf formed by her uplifted bust. The furrow above the bridge of her nose had formed a permanent crease, casting her irritation into a structural component of her face. She dug a nine-by- twelve-inch brown envelope out from under the counter.
“There’s a charge for these copies.”
“A day late, but,” I said to her, plunking down a five-dollar bill. She snatched it up and held it stuffed in her fist. She waited for me to go.
“I guess that’s all I need,” I said. She nodded once, smiled and went back to her computer. The end of our relationship made her happy.
“Have a nice day,” she said to me, before smacking the enter key on the computer.
