Two Time

He jerked back his head and smirked.

“Kill you? What the hell for?”

“Well, it’s either that or beat me up. But, if you beat me up, you’ll have to kill me.”

The skinny guy didn’t like where this was going. He was thinking we’d have more foreplay ramp up to the scary stuff about killing and maiming.

“Connie won’t kill you unless I tell him to.”

“Connie?”

The meaty guy stopped picking his teeth and looked at me like he’d heard that plenty of times before.

“Short for Constantine. My grandfather’s name. From Hungary.”

“Oh, sure. They’re still talking about him in Budapest.”

The skinny guy struggled to get control of the conversation.

“You’re a talker,” he told me.

“Design engineer. Even worse.”

“So you understand what I’m sayin’.”

I hated it when I said things to myself like, “there was a time,” but that’s what I was thinking standing there, leaning against the Grand Prix’s ten-ton driver’s side door, sizing up Jack Sprat and his fat friend. I’d been coming around to the realization that fifty-three-year-old guys aren’t as resilient as they used to be. I could probably drop both of them, but there was a real danger somebody’d get a shot in on the way down, and they told me at the hospital that I was one shot short of my life’s allotment.

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to kill me. Because if all you do is beat the shit out of me, you’ll only mess up my brain. It’ll make me crazy, and then I’ll have to hunt you both down and kill you.”

Then I shrugged, like it was all out of my hands.

The skinny guy ran a long finger down his hollowed out cheek and squinted at me.

“I think maybe you’re already crazy. We’re just talking here.”

“That’s a relief. I got a lot of things to do today. You just got to let me out so I can get at it.”

I made a show of climbing back into the Grand Prix. I stuck my head out the window.

“You gotta get that tank out of the way. This thing’s too big to squeeze around.”

Then I lit a cigarette to give the meatballs time to gather themselves up enough to open the gate and move the pickup truck. Which they did, slowly, like it was their idea, or to buy time to figure out what had just happened. I cruised casually out of the driveway, but gave the Grand Prix a good kick once I was looking down a clear stretch of pavement.

Like Satchel Paige, I resisted the urge to look back until I’d made it out of Sagaponack, up through Bridgehampton and on to Sag Harbor and the Pequot, where I could get Hodges’s daughter Dotty to give me a midmorning glass of vodka to counter the nerve-unsettling effects of all that iced tea.

TEN

I NEVER TIRE of the smell of fresh-cut Douglas fir. I guess I would if I smelled it all the time, but I didn’t have to because Frank Entwhistle let me work more or less when I felt like it. Though he was definitely glad to hear from me when I called, the day after I’d been to see Ivor Fleming.

“I need a guy to do finish at the Melinda McCarthy job. Actually, tomorrow would be a good time to start. All the rock’s up and the floor’s in. She’s sort of eager to get in while there’s still a little season left. She’s on me pretty hard.”

“Timing is everything.”

“I’m ahead of what I told her, but she doesn’t remember.”

“I can only go so fast.”

“Not your problem. The pool’s almost finished. That’ll cool her off”

“Good way to focus the crew.”

“Don’t hammer any fingers.”

I didn’t call Sullivan or Gabe Szwit or anyone else that week. I didn’t want to think about Jonathan Eldridge or Jackie’s face. I wanted to earn a little money and chew on my meeting with Ivor Fleming without having to share every little detail with people who’d have more questions than I was ready to answer. I thought about Ivor’s meatballs, wondering what would have happened if anything had actually happened. It made me a little nauseated to think about. I’ve had too much of that kind of thing in my life. It’s not like exercise, where repetition builds up your strength. It’s the other way around. The more you get, the less you can withstand.

Not that I got hit as much as other people during my brief boxing career. I wanted to hit harder, I was just better at avoiding than delivering a punch. I was fast and athletic, but lacked the pile-driver power real fighters brought to the pursuit. I usually made up for it with a kind of blind, reckless fury.

But I got hit enough. In and out of the ring. And now, at this age, intimations of mental deterioration were stealthily eating at what was left of my indifference to consequences.

So instead of thinking about all the stuff I didn’t want to think about I spent the next two weeks putting trim, baseboards and crown moldings in Melinda McCarthy’s new house. She’d picked some fairly simple molded poplar, easy to work with and destined for paint, so it wasn’t a hard job. The painters were right behind me, plugging holes, caulking and sanding over my lapses in concentration. They were Spanish guys. Central American, as were most of the Spanish people moving into the hard labor jobs on Long Island. Worked like bastards. Kept their heads down, trying to be invisible to administrative threats. Friendly enough, amused by my mangled Spanish. I thought about asking them how to say “be a good Doberman and go bite your little shit of an owner” but never got around to it.

When I was done with the job I took part of my pay and invested it in a case of Absolut and a harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables from the fancy green grocer in the Village. Countervailing forces. I was just settling into one of my rotting Adirondack chairs with a plateful of celery and the first vodka of the evening when I caught some movement over at the place next door. Eddie was already trotting across the lawn in that direction.

The evening was warm, but a fresh westerly was doing a good job of sweeping the languid haze of the day off the beach so the magic-hour light of the sun could saturate the dune grass and hydrangea growing along the breakwater. It looked good on Amanda, too, as she strode across her lawn to meet Eddie and toss him another Big Dog biscuit. She had the type of skin that looked slightly tanned even in the dead of winter. But it was July, and she was a deep reddish brown, contrasting sharply with her pale yellow dress. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses, but I could tell she was looking at me. I was about to look away when she waved. I waved back. No self control.

“I have a nicely chilled bottle of white,” she called to me, holding it aloft. “But I could use a place to sit.”

While I was working on a response she crossed her yard, stepped carefully over Reginas wildflower garden and the collapsed split-rail fence that divided the properties, and completed the trip to my Adirondacks. She usually had a way of hiding behind her thick auburn hair, but the freshening breeze off the water was brushing it aside, bathing her face in the evening light. Up close, the dress looked like some kind of rayon that flowed around her legs and painted itself across her midriff and breasts. She stood in front of my chair holding the wine bottle by the neck, tapping it distractedly against her thigh.

“And a glass,” she said.

“And a corkscrew. Unless you’re planning to use your teeth.”

“And an invitation would be nice.”

“You’re already here.”

She used the bottle to point to the other chair.

“To sit. You could say, Have a seat.”

I stood up and took the wine bottle out of her hand and brought it into the house. I pulled the cork and brought the bottle back with a wineglass. It was meant for red wine, but it was all I had. When I got there Amanda was in my chair, legs crossed with an espadrille dangling from her toe. Overall, you’d have to say Amanda was a beautiful woman, but her legs, now mostly on display, could stop your heart. She tapped on the arm of the other