farewell.
“Look, we’re putting this thing together,” he said to her, an inch or two from her face. “At the studio. All-day Council Rock on the Giant Finger at the Institute of the Consolidated Industrial Divine. Construction strategies and logistical permutations. No pressure on the dead factory space, I promise. Not another word. Just drinks, music, ritual and action fantasies. Productive delusions.”
“Sam’s an industrial designer,” said Amanda, using my forearm to help extricate herself from his grasp. “I bet he knows something about rivets and welds.”
“No shit. Beautiful. You come, too. Remember, though, no rules. No laws. Except the law of gravity. Only thing I give Newton credit for.”
“I’m with you. Thermodynamics was a bust.”
“Beautiful. Amanda, you know where we are.”
Dione smiled at us beatifically as he led her away into the swirl of seersucker and chiffon. Their departure caused the soundproof enclosure that had formed around our conversation to disintegrate, and I suddenly felt exposed and threatened by the congregating mass of privilege and competitive fervor.
I looked around for a way out.
“We can go,” said Amanda. “I already bought something in the silent auction. One of Butch’s sculptures.”
“I hope nothing anatomical,” I said to her as I threaded a path out from under the tent and over to where I’d parked the Grand Prix. The big German sedans on either side had prudently allowed for the wide swing of the Pontiac’s doors, one of which I opened for Amanda, giving her plenty of room to slide fluidly into the passenger seat. Nobody tried to stop us from leaving, so the auction must have been a good diversion. The young guy in the black bow tie saluted as we passed by. By now it was dusk, and street lamps lit our way out of the estate section and through the Village, its sidewalks filled with a parade of summer renters who looked like they were having a nice time, or at least willing to put up a brave front.
“I’m too dressed up to go home yet,” said Amanda, after we’d cleared the estate section and it was safe to talk. “And not the Pequot, thank you.”
So we compromised by heading for a nightspot housed in the dilapidated building that used to be the Hawk Pond Yacht Club. It was next door to the marina where Hodges kept his boat. It was too early in the evening for the regular swarm of clubgoers from out of the City, so after paying a confiscatory cover charge we easily found two stools at the bar.
“Home at last,” I told the gangly African-American bartender as he mopped cocktail napkins and soggy dollar bills up off the bar in front of us.
“Welcome, son. What ll it be?”
Amanda ordered again for both of us, then slipped off the barstool for a trip to the ladies’ room. Before leaving she stood behind my stool and put her arms around me, resting her head on my shoulder. There must have been an airborne narcotic mingled with the smell of her hair, because a single whiff almost gave me vertigo. I steadied myself by brushing her thick hair back from her face and kissing her forehead, much more gently than Butch Ellington had.
“I missed you, Sam,” she said, from someplace far away. “I need you to forgive me.”
“Nothing to forgive.”
“Yes there is, and you know it,” she said.
“We just met, remember?”
“I still need you to forgive me. You have to say the actual words.”
“I forgive you. Trusting you is another matter.”
She squeezed a little harder.
“Okay I’ll take that for now.”
She took in a deep breath and sighed it out again. Then she went to the ladies’ room, leaving me and the bartender to shrug at each other in commiseration.
“Tell me about it,” he said, dropping the icy vodka down in front of me.
I’m not sure what all happened in the nightclub after that, except it involved more drinking and a few terrifying forays on to the dance floor, a place I’d only been once before in my life, with Amanda, coincidentally. This time, though, I got through the whole experience without causing a fistfight or unsettling disturbance of any kind, unless you count my dancing. When the place finally filled up with the usual slithery mass of sweaty hope and brainless expectation, Amanda agreed to make a run for it.
The velvet air outside almost felt cool after the heat of the crowded club. We walked over to the docks that shot out from the southeast shore of Hawk Pond. The moon was close to full, producing a pale illumination that added to the harder light from electric lanterns spaced evenly along the gangways. I picked out Hodges’s boat, but his lights were out.
Amanda took my bicep with both hands and led me toward the waterfowl reserve directly adjacent to the club.
“Let’s go this way. I know a good spot.”
She slipped off her shoes when we reached the end of the docks, defined by the transition from wooden planks to a narrow sandy path. I followed her into the grassy foliage that grew along the banks of the pond. The glow of the moon slowly took over for the artificial lights of the marina, guiding our way over little dunes and through runoffs filled with rounded pebbles and slippery driftwood.
“Watch your step,” she told me, taking my hand to steady herself.
About a hundred yards into the reserve the path led to a small clearing intended as an observation post, with a heavy teak park bench and a little Plexiglas-encased placard mounted on a stand meant to instruct people on the difference between ospreys and cormorants and how to spot Monarch butterflies on their way back from Mexico. It also had a great view of the pond, and the sparkle coming from little North Sea shacks lined up along the western shore, remnants of my father’s time, ramshackle and relaxed.
I sat on the bench and lit a cigarette. Amanda dropped her shoes in the sand and walked out to the edge of the pond. You could hear the pulse of the subwoofers in the nightclub shouldering their way through the dune grass and scrubby plant life, laying down a low bass rhythm under the chatter of insects coming from the marshes surrounding us on three sides.
I watched Amanda, now just a silhouette against the dark waters of Hawk Pond, walk out to just above her knees where she scooped salt water up in her hands to splash on her face and run through her hair.
I must have lost track of her for a few minutes after that because I was surprised to see her suddenly back at the bench, standing in front of me with her hands on her hips.
“Not a bad location,” I said to her.
“It’ll do.”
She reached down with crossed hands and gathered up the hem of her dress. Then she pulled the whole thing up and over her head and sat down on my lap, facing me, knees to either side of my legs. As we kissed she unbuckled my pants.
I slid my hands over her thighs and up her long, smooth back, meeting nothing but Amanda along the way.
“Don’t say anything,” she whispered in my ear.
I couldn’t have anyway. Too absorbed, all the way gone.
—
I think we both fell asleep after that, at least for a little while, because I don’t remember anything but awakening to a chilly breeze out of the north, the feel of goosebumps across her naked back and a dull glow in the east, harbingers of days to come, irredeemably altered.
THIRTEEN
WHEN WE GOT BACK to my house we found Joe Sullivan bleeding to death in my front yard. Or rather Eddie did. As I pulled into Amanda’s driveway I could hear him inside the house barking furiously, something he rarely did.
