snarled, “Don’t you ever try to pull something like this again! I forbid it, you hear me!”
Mitch took a sip of his beer and said, “I hear you, Chrissie. But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Like hell you don’t,” she raged. “You’re trying to feed off of Tito behind my back. No way! You want face time with my client then you come through me! I protect those kids. I bleed for those kids. And there will be no secret sessions with Tito Molina as long as I’m-”
“Before you go any further,” Mitch interrupted, “it’s my duty to inform you that you’re way off base.”
Chrissie tilted her head at him mockingly. “Tell me this wasn’t a secret meeting.”
“It really wasn’t, Chrissie,” Dodge spoke up. “It was simply an informal get-together between family and friends.”
“Of which you are neither,” Martine said to her pointedly.
“Honestly, all I want is for this situation with Tito to go away,” Mitch said.
Chrissie let out a derisive laugh. “Yeah, right. I know all about you, Mitch Berger-how you’re the Mother Teresa of film critics. Won’t do the junkets, won’t accept gifts. Well, guess what? I don’t believe any of it. What Tito did to you today is every critic’s wet dream. You’re no different than the rest. You all want a taste,” she jeered at him, grabbing her own crotch for lewd, crude emphasis. “You want it so bad you can’t stand it.”
Mitch gazed at her in stunned silence. They all did. Heads were even starting to turn all of the way back at the dining porch. It was safe to say no one had ever seen such a public display of behavior by a female at the fabled Dorset Beach Club. Certainly not by one over the age of three.
“Young lady, I would like you to go,” Martine said to her between gritted teeth. “This club is for members and their guests only. You will kindly take your potty mouth and leave right now.”
“Are you trying to tell me this seedy dump is private?”
“Get out of here, Chrissie,” ordered Will, moving over toward her. “Get out or I’ll throw you out.”
“Fine, whatever. Just remember what I told you,” she warned Mitch.
“Not a problem. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this for quite some time.”
Satisfied, Chrissie stormed off, her footsteps clunking on the veranda. Heads turned to stare as she went charging past the dining porch.
“Well, it’s been quite some day for histrionics,” Mitch said wearily. “Sorry about that, folks.”
“No need for you to be sorry,” Jeff assured him. “Not your fault.”
“Not in the least,” echoed Dodge.
“That woman thinks everyone else in the world is exactly like her,” Will said, gazing after her. “Greedy, two- faced, and conniving. And when you try to explain to her that you’re not, she calls you a goddamned liar right to your face. She couldn’t get away with that if she was a guy. She’d get punched.”
“You should have given me the signal, honey,” Donna said, putting up her dukes fiercely. “I would have had no problem decking her.”
“She has a hard job,” Dodge said. “That’s not to defend or excuse her.”
“What she has is a personality problem,” Martine argued. “I wish Esme would get rid of her.”
“She didn’t hire her,” Dodge said. “Tito’s agent did.”
“Fine, then I wish Tito would get rid of her.”
“Hey, let’s not let her ruin our party,” Dodge said, forcing a smile onto his face. “Why don’t you folks take a swim while we start the chow?”
“I think I will,” said Mitch. Although in his case “float” would be the operative word. A true child of the pavement, Mitch hadn’t known how to swim at all when he moved to Dorset. But thanks to diligence and hard work, he’d taught himself how to float on his back-the main thing was to relax and trust in his own considerable natural buoyancy. As he started his way toward the changing stalls with his swim trunks he discovered Jeff was tailing him, stride for stride. “Going to take a dip, Jeff?”
“Not exactly… I wanted to ask you something personal,” Jeff said, sucking his cheeks in and out. “Would you go talk to her for me?”
“Talk to who, Jeff?”
“Abby-when she’s at C. C. Willoughby on Thursday. She’s just got to come sign books for me, Mitch. I need this, or I swear I’ll go under. Chrissie totally blew me off, and Abby hung up on me as soon as she heard my voice.”
“What makes you think she’ll speak to me?”
“She’ll at least hear you out. She doesn’t hate you. Will you do it, Mitch?”
Mitch really didn’t want to get involved in Jeff’s marital problems. But the little guy seemed so desperate and alone that he didn’t know how to say no. “Can I think it over?”
“Does that mean yes?”
“It means I’ll think it over.”
“Sure, sure,” Jeff said with great relief. “Mitch, you’re a real pal. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Honest.”
Mitch continued on behind the open-air showers now to the weathered knotty pine changing stalls, which were grouped on either side of a center aisle, maybe fifty of them in all. Each stall was about three-by-five feet, with a door that was cropped a foot short at top and bottom for ventilation. Mitch’s stall was bare except for a wooden bench and a few pegs to hang clothes on.
He emerged a moment later in his baggy surf shorts, and padded back out to the veranda. Martine was already swimming laps in a roped-in area out by the float. There was no one else out in the water. Will and Dodge were busy laying the ears of corn around the edge of the fire, which was getting good and hot. Jeff was seated back under the umbrella in the shade.
Now Donna joined Mitch, wearing a generously cut one-piece suit and a self-conscious look on her round face. Donna was no long-stemmed bikini babe-she was stubby and short-waisted, and she knew it. “Berger, is that you?” she joked, groping blindly at the air before her. She had removed her wire-rimmed glasses for the swim.
“It is.”
“How do you like my new hot girl suit?” she asked, modeling it with a dainty curtsy. She was definitely feeling her margaritas.
“I like it fine. You ready to go in?”
“Absolutely, but you have to go in ahead of me. I don’t want you staring at my big butt.”
“But this way you get to stare at mine.”
“That’s right, honey.” she giggled, swatting his arm with her hand.
The tide was out, the bottom sandy and soft. It fell off gradually as they slogged their way out, the water calm but surprisingly chilly. It was still only about chest deep as they neared the float, where Martine continued to swim laps back and forth, the hazy sunlight glistening on her smooth, tanned flesh.
“What’s up with that Rocky Dies Yellow tattoo?” Donna asked, peering at his biceps. “Are you some kind of a Stallone boy toy?”
“No, Cagney.”
“Oh, sure, that’s from the end of Angels with Dirty Faces. I love that movie.”
“I didn’t know you were into old movies.” Mitch’s eyes continued to follow Martine, her stroke so effortless and graceful that she barely made a ripple in the water.
“Mitch, there are more layers to me that you can possibly imagine. I’m like a really good lasagne Bolognese- but I’m also old-fashioned.”
“How so?”
“I believe that when you go swimming with one girl you shouldn’t be staring at another.”
“I wasn’t staring.”
“Were.”
Mitch lowered his voice. “What do you think of her?”
“That’s a funny thing to ask,” Donna responded slowly. “I should hate her guts.”
Mitch widened his eyes at her. “Really?”
“Oh, totally. There’s never been a day in her life when she wasn’t pretty, popular, rich, could have any boy she wanted. And look at her now, she’s pushing fifty and she’s still built like I was when I was never. Which is, like, so not fair.” Donna paused, letting out a sigh. “But the truth is that she’s a real doll, and she’s been nothing but
