“I’ll get her shipped over to Pappanasta’s, if that’s okay with you.”
“Sure. Good as any.”
“We can keep talking. Like I said, talking’s okay.”
After I got off the phone with Sullivan I went running to work out the accretion of vodka, good and bad, from the day before. I needed to clear my head. I took Eddie with me, even though he hadn’t touched a drop. When I got back I felt better, even if my head wasn’t any clearer.
I had a manila folder with all the papers I’d been collecting on Regina. I spent the rest of the day sitting on the porch with the file on the table where I could take a look at it from time to time. I wrote a few thoughts and “things to do” on the legal pad. As it started to get dark, I thought about Amanda Battiston and her note. I still hadn’t figured out what to do. So I wrote “fry pan” on the outside of the manila folder and went to take a shower.
The Playhouse was on the main route between Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor. It stood in the center of a huge swarm of parked cars that caught and threw back light from big security spots mounted in the trees. It was a nice house at one time, though decades of hard use had rounded off the edges. During the season you waited in line with the Summer People, but this time of year you could get right in after paying the huge bearded guy at the door. A vintage oak bar anchored the back of an open area where you could dance or sit and listen to the band. The cocktail waitresses navigated the crowd with trays held overhead and faces set in neutral. Smoke formed cirrus clouds around the house lamps, from which warm yellow light painted the plain beautiful and the beautiful divine. The music was loud enough to vibrate your internal organs, but I liked it well enough. A joint wasn’t a joint without distorted electric guitars. God made rock and roll so people would have something to dance to and guys could pick up girls without having to say anything, a huge advantage for most of them.
I shoved my way through a pack of meatballs in baggy jeans, flannel shirts and baseball caps and caught one of the waitresses by the elbow. She cocked her head at me so I could yell vodka on the rocks in her ear. She nodded and moved off again. A dark-haired woman in a scoop-neck leotard top and scarf was looking at me, making flagrant eye contact. She was sitting on a man’s lap, sipping from a shot glass. I broke her heart by looking away and lighting a cigarette. A chubby, wiry-haired guy about my age was twirling a young woman around the dance floor. They moved with the perfect synchronicity you see in dance contests. They looked happy doing what they were doing.
The waitress gave me the vodka. I took my cigarette and drink over to a slippery wet table in a dark corner. People instinctively moved away from me. Couldn’t stand to be near all that charm. Music crashed through the crowd and rolled like foamy surf over the tables and bar stools. All the women on the dance floor seemed lighter than air, moving instinctively, languidly to the crunching rhythms. The men lumbered, or mimicked their partners’ movements with little or no awareness of their own.
A woman with short blond hair the color of freshly polished brass sat down in the chair next to me. She was thick around the waist, and looked stuffed into her jeans and flannel shirt. Her lipstick and nail polish were too red, even in the low light. Each hand was laden with heavy molded rings and hoop-like bracelets. I guessed her to be on the top side of her thirties.
“Hey,” she yelled to me over the din.
I nodded noncommittally.
“Wanna dance?”
I tried to give her a friendly smile.
“No thanks. Just watching.”
She smiled back.
“Oh, I think you do.”
“Sorry, really don’t. Really can’t, actually, but I appreciate the offer.”
“I think you do,” she said, nodding at me and winking her left eye. “If you thought about it, you would really like to dance. This dance.”
She made a play for my hand. I drew deeper into the corner.
“Sorry, just isn’t my thing.”
“Ha,” she said, strangely undeterred, jerking her head toward the dance floor.
I looked past her shoulder and caught a flash of thick auburn hair as it passed through a smoky column of light from one of the ceiling spots.
“So,” I said to the big blond, who was watching me watch Amanda shoulder her way though the crowd. “You really think I’d like to do this.”
“Just a feeling,” she yelled back.
I downed the drink, crushed the butt and stepped out on the dance floor. It was important not to think about it much more, since I had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. I’d dedicated a sizable percentage of my life to sitting in all kinds of bars, lounges and nightclubs, but thus far had escaped all attempts to get me to dance, if that’s what those people out there were actually doing. This was something I knew nothing about.
I did, however, know how to box. And all boxers since Muhammad Ali knew you had to float like a butterfly. So this is what I sort of did, in approximate time with the music. My partner was unimpressed.
“What are you doing?”
“The butterfly.”
She thought about it. I concentrated on my moves, trying to blend into the general mayhem. I was momentarily sorry I’d never tried to do this before, but the thought passed when Amanda slid into view and took both my hands, pulling me as she danced deeper into the writhing tangle of humanity. My blond partner smiled at Amanda, waved at me and made a graceful withdrawl from the dance floor. Mission complete.
“What the heck are you doing here, Mr. Acquillo?” she said in mock surprise.
“Don’t rightly know—driven by little voices in my head.”
“What are they saying?”
“That I look like an asshole.”
She laughed.
“Not entirely. You’re getting it.”
“Yeah, right.”
When she settled us into a small pocket of air up next to the band, I moved in and got her into a standard dance grip. Right away I felt safer.
“I have never in my life danced to this kind of music,” I yelled in her ear.
“Could have fooled me. What kind of dance can you do?”
“Waltz. I thought you couldn’t get laid in college if you didn’t know how to waltz.”
I spun her around a little to demonstrate my waltzing skills. The lack of relevance to the actual rhythm didn’t seem to trouble her.
“I hope waltzing talent wasn’t the deciding factor.”
Our waltz turned into a type of slow dance that might have looked out of place, but felt a lot nicer than that other stuff. It didn’t deter the crowd on the dance floor. In fact, some big kid in a baggy sweater and his girlfriend were getting more frenzied by the minute. Everyone else sort of cleared out of their way, but I liked it where we were. They bashed into us a few times, forcing me to close in on Amanda, which was okay with me. I tried to look more nonchalant than I was feeling.
Amanda danced with her eyes cast slightly downward, and every once in a while would look up at me and smile shyly through those thick Italian lashes.
“Don’t do that,” I said to her.
“What?”
“That thing you’re doing with your eyes. It’s making me lose my balance.”
I spun her around again, right into the dopey kid. It seemed to annoy him, and she winced when he dug his heel into her foot. I spun her back again.
“Sorry,” I said to her.
“Gee, some people.”
I waited until I felt him push into me again. Then as I twirled Amanda I hooked my foot around his ankle and pulled hard, and without missing a beat sent the kid face down into the dance floor. His date rushed over and
