“How’d you want that fish again?”
“Fried.”
He nodded again.
“Better that way. You bake it you got to deal with the parsley, the custom herb mix, the special lemony butter sauce. Fried, it’s just there kind of contained in its lightly seasoned breaded batter, ready to eat. No muss.”
“Next time I’m going baked, no doubt about it.”
He registered that and finally left me alone with my Absolut and Tocqueville. I’d almost started to get a little traction with the thing when his daughter showed up with a fresh drink.
“On the house.”
Apparently, once you actually had a conversation with the Hodges family there was no going back.
The fish was pretty good, especially inside the lightly seasoned breaded batter. I stayed another hour and read, distracted from the packs of malodorous crew coming in off the late-arriving charter boats, and a cluster of kids, probably underage, who piled into the only booth in the place, elbowing each other and goofing on the world in urgent
I walked the bill over to the girl and asked her if I could bother her father one more time before I left.
“How long you been around here?” I asked him when he came out of the kitchen.
“In Southampton?”
“Yeah.”
He pushed out his bottom lip and thought about it a minute.
“’Bout forty-five years, give or take a few. Came out of Brooklyn. Don’t actually remember why, or why I stayed. Fish edible?”
“Definitely sustain life.”
“Then we done our work here.”
“I was wondering about an old lady.”
“Old lady like ‘old,’ or like, ‘lady’?”
“No, just an old lady. Next door neighbor, wondered if you knew her.”
Hodges picked a piece of something out of his back teeth, popped it back in his mouth and then swished it down with a mouthful of beer from a glass stowed out of sight under the bar.
“At my age, old’s a relative term. Which old lady we talking about?”
“Regina Broadhurst. Lived to the east of me at the tip of Oak Point. Been there as long as my folks were. Maybe longer.”
Hodges smiled at something inside his head before he answered.
“Sure. Seen her around. One of the old bitches down at the Center. Never said anything to me that I can recall. I don’t think she’s all that fond of men.”
“The Center?”
“The old folks hangout, the Senior Center down behind the Polish church.”
I was genuinely surprised.
“Senior Center?”
Hodges looked at me like I’d disappointed him. He ticked off a few points on his fingers.
“First there’s the two-dollar breakfasts Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Then there’s the three-dollar cold cut and potato salad lunch every day. Then there’s the five-dollar Sunday supper. You eat better than anywhere else in the Village and it’s practically free. The worst you have to do is say a few prayers and put up with a bunch of fuckin’ old bitches like Regina Broadhurst who act like you’re the only charity case in the joint. Of course, they’re wolfing down the same free shit you are. Subsidized, anyway.”
“I get it.”
“Not exactly. I pay my own way. Work in the kitchen. Once a week, gives me full meal privileges. Can even bring Dotty with me.”
“Dorothy,” said the girl without looking up from the small stack of checks she was tallying up.
“You’re wondering why I’d eat anywhere’s but my own place.”
Hodges looked defensive.
“No. I can see it,” I said.
“You can get tired of fish.”
“He hits on the old ladies,” Dotty slid in.
Hodges gave her a little fake backhand and lumbered back through the swinging door into the kitchen. I thanked him as he retreated and asked his daughter to settle up my bill.
“He actually does it for the church,” she said to me quietly. “For years and years. He’s says he hates religion, but he does things for people. He hardly ever eats there.”
“Nothing wrong with a good deed.”
She seemed to be taking her time with my check. Stalling.
“Why did you want to know about Mrs. Broadhurst?” she asked abruptly as she handed over the slip.
“She’s dead. They fished her out of her bathtub today. I found her.”
“Oh my God.”
“Just wondering if your dad knew her. He’s been around here a long time. She didn’t seem to have any family or friends.”
“He’s going to be sorry he called her a bitch. You should have told him right away.”
“Probably should have. But don’t be too sorry. She was a bitch.”
She almost smiled at me despite herself.
“That’s very harsh.”
“I know. Speaking ill of the dead. God doesn’t like it.”
“God doesn’t care. People do.”
“Apologize for me,” I told her as I started to leave.
She stopped me. “I know Jimmy. Or at least, I used to, sort of.”
“Jimmy?”
“Jimmy Maddox. Her nephew.”
“Really.”
“Wow, like a real asshole. I knew him at school. At Southampton High School. I’m sorry to talk about somebody like that, but some people you just can’t like.”
“It’s okay. He’s not the dead one.”
“I guess he’s still alive. I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for a long time. He got into bulldozers or something.”
“Construction.”
“Big earth machines. Pushing lots of shit around. It would suit him.”
“Lives in Hampton Bays.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“That’s what his aunt told me. She didn’t like him, either.”
“Charming.”
“No other family?”
“That’s all I know about. Jimmy’s parents died when he was still in high school. I don’t know what happened to them, but he was the first kid I knew who lived in his own apartment. But unfortunately he wasn’t cool. He was just fucked up and pissed off all the time.”
“Helluva way to live.”
“Dumb way to live, if you ask me.”
“Yeah,” I said to her, finally leaving, “only an asshole would live like that.”
I’d pretty well forgotten about the whole thing with Regina after a few days. A talent for forgetting was something I’d cultivated since moving into the cottage. I also worked on my body, which was less than it was, but good enough for my age, considering. I’d wanted to be a boxer in my twenties—actually fought a little to help pay for night school. The only Franco-Italian boxer in New York was how I billed myself—in my own mind. I was too
