“You’ll know.”
Right then someone over in front of the jazz band called to her, and she let go of my arm and glided away. I dealt with the sudden trauma of abandonment by refilling my glass and heading toward the periphery of the event. This gave me a good perspective on the crowd, which eventually yielded results.
Even from a distance he stood out. Average height, but made taller by an unkempt ball of curly reddish brown hair, perfectly round plastic-rimmed glasses over tired eyes, decent shoulders but a tidy pot belly balled up above slender legs slid into old-fashioned boot-flared Levis. His T-shirt was bright white, and unlike mine made of regular T-shirt cotton. Like Robin, he was using his drink, something amber on the rocks, as a facilitator of conversation, but with even more animation. His target was a tall slender woman with straight, unnaturally black hair with shiny bangs cut straight across her forehead. She leaned back a little as if buffeted by his enthusiasm, but was holding her ground.
I didn’t see much of Jonathan in him, but I expected that.
Back-to-back with Butch was a large woman, almost his height, with a round face and frizzy gray hair pulled into a ponytail. She wore a blousy native dress with lots of pleats and heavy embroidery that tried unsuccessfully to divert attention from her zaftig figure. She had rings on her toes and a massive necklace made of multiple strings of little wooden balls. I thought about rows of peasants turning them out on tiny little lathes. Like Butch, she was energetically engaged, in her case with a natty old guy in thin wire-rims and white patent-leather shoes.
Amanda must have caught sight of them at about the same time. I saw her working through the crowd in their direction. She got there several steps ahead of me.
“You probably know everything about coastal sand flow,” I heard Butch say to her as she approached. “Amanda’s lived here her whole life,” he said, spotting me coming in on a separate tack. “Everybody thinks sand comes in from the ocean like the waves, only of course it doesn’t, because even the waves are deceptions. The coast is actually just like a river, flowing parallel to the beach, the direction changing with the tides and winds, the intensity dependent on vast oceanic and subterranean forces nobody can even imagine much less control. These fools with their bulkheads and abatements. It makes you laugh. Everything they do makes it worse for themselves. Building castles made of sand, metaphorically speaking and then some, don’t you think, Amanda? Man, you are a stunning thing. Isn’t she, Dione?”
By this time he’d turned his back on the tall black-haired lady and was gathering Amanda into a much more fluidly executed hug than the one Robin had given her. Dione jumped into the action, wrapping her arms around the two of them. I kept a safe distance.
“I want you to meet someone,” said Amanda in a muffled tone from somewhere inside the crush of affection. I waited for her to emerge.
“Butch Ellington and Dione O’Connor, this is Sam Acquillo.”
“It’s Acquillo. Add a C, change the O to an A, then add another L. Probably means pigeon or something. Or ‘stay clear of eagles.’”
Now that I was closer I saw Butch had the tuck of a scar on his upper lip that usually meant a cleft palate. I listened for the telltale in his diction, but didn’t hear it. Or the words went by too fast to discern.
“I haven’t actually lived here my whole life, Butch,” said Amanda, “but I know the coast is like a river. I’ve actually swum in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“So you’re both Italians,” said Butch, “you must be related.”
“Only by neighborhood,” I told him.
“Sam is really a Frenchman, he likes to say” said Amanda. “I think because the French are more likely to offend ordinary Americans.”
“Then why aren’t you Sam
“French Canadian,” I said. “More likely to offend ordinary Frenchmen.”
Standing with the Ellingtons made you feel like you’d just been dragged out of a theater audience for use as an onstage foil. Though more benign, innocent as they seemed in their unabashed gusto.
“I think Amanda is just a doll, don’t you, Sam?” Dione asked me, smiling hugely.
“Her mother was a doll maker. Might explain it.”
“Hey,” said Butch to Amanda, “I was thinking of you the other day at the studio. We were talking about the Giant Finger Up the Ass of Authority and where in hell we’re going to construct it. And Edgar said, what the hey, what about the WB building? Am I right? Aren’t we talking, like, huge empty space, out of the weather? Sitting there doing nothing? And it’s, like, yours now, right? Think how that’d make you feel, knowing you made it all possible.”
He took hold of her by the shoulders, which caused her to stiffen slightly.
“Come on, Amanda, don’t get all authoritarian on me.”
“So a Giant Finger Up the Ass would be therapeutic?” she asked.
“It’s a sculpture,” said Dione for my benefit. “Plate steel. Gobs of rivets and welds. Thirty-seven feet high, Butch is thinking.”
“It might be fine, Butch,” said Amanda, “I just need to figure things out.”
Butch was already smiling, but the smile grew, stretching the shiny white crimp in his upper lip until you could almost see through the translucent scar tissue. He gripped both sides of Amanda’s head and kissed her hard at the hairline. I took a step closer, out of habit.
“I love you, Amanda, have I told you that? You need some help figuring, I’ve got this guy who rehabs factory space in Brooklyn. I can give you his number. He buys our paintings, some of the big ones. He’s cool. He’s like this dharma plutocrat. Like some Eastern European, Czech or something. Beautiful-looking guy, like sixty-five years old. Shaped like a bull. Loves to fuck. Women, I think, mostly. Hey you want something to drink? What’s that, wine? Gimme your glasses. Don’t stop me, I’m foraging. Nobody move. Dione, talk to Sam. You know French.”
He left before I could guide him on vodka selection. Dione beamed at us like an Irish-American Buddha in drag. Her face was broad and slightly freckled, contrasting nicely with her gray hair, threaded with streaks of dark brown. A light gleam of sweat had formed on her forehead and under her eyes. She wore no makeup, and doubtless no perfume, beyond the naturally occurring, which was easily discerned in the hot wet air beneath the tent.
“I don’t speak French,” I told her, “though I’m thinking of beefing up my Spanish. Coming up a lot lately.”
“Give it a generation. We’ll be working for them.”
“I hate polyglots,” said Amanda. “I always feel left out.”
“Sam is more optimistic about the prospects for our locally exploited Hispanics than I am,” Dione explained. “But it’s a nice thought.”
“I told Ling and Lo they could stay at the studio tonight if they wanted,” said Butch, arriving with the drinks bunched precariously between his two hands. “They work out of Newark. I mean that’s just nuts driving all the way back there. That’s not their names, Ling and Lo. I made that up. Probably a grave insult. If their fathers heard me I’d have a Samurai sword up my ass.”
“No improvement on a giant finger,” I said, helping extract the vodka from the middle of the cluster.
“How about you, Sam, from out of the City?” he asked.
“North Sea. Shorter drive.”
“I grew up in Shirley. I’m tempted to move back there just for the address. Shirley, New York. It’s like a dumb joke. ‘Where you from?’ ‘Shirley’ Who you calling Shirley?’ I could never say Shirley without saying, ‘Shirley you jest.’”
“Funny town.”
“You haven’t been here your whole life, though. I can tell from your accent. Sounds off-island. Connecticut?”
“Stamford.”
“Butch is amazing with accents,” said Dione, proudly.
“People have no idea how many American accents there are. Not as many as, say, sixty years ago, when elocutionists say we had, like what, five thousand. Now, I bet there’re only, what, eight hundred. Half of them within a two-hundred-mile radius of New York. TV wrecked regional accents. But they keep popping up anyway. Not
