Oona came home singing Carly Simon hits??Anticipation? and ?Mockingbird.? She was carrying too much groceries for two people. Too many newspapers for five Berrymans.
She found a rained-on copy of
left out on the porch. She called inside and there was no answer.
Without looking further, she sensed that Berryman was gone on business again. This time she thought she knew what the business was.
Oona stalked around the sea captain?s house for the rest of the day.
In a fit of pouting anger she threw the corn, clams and steak out on the lawn.
She broke a living room window that looked out on the empty shore highway. Rain came in on the rug. Wind blew things around the room.
She called up a friend on Cape Cod and another in California. Whenever she hung up the phone, Ben Toy seemed to be calling for Berryman. Finally, she told him to go fuck himself.
The ocean was unseasonably cold that day, fifties, with scary five- and six-foot breakers throwing assorted garbage up on the beach. She sat on driftwood from a big house, boat, big something. Cold foamy water ran around her legs and wet her bottom.
She walked in the ocean, and the first wave that came threw her face-down into the sand. She swallowed saltwater and ate sand.
She walked up the lawn thinking her nose was broken. It wiggled in her fingers. Maybe it always had. She was noticing things. Sand in the spaces between her teeth. The shape of her legs.
Late in the afternoon a peculiar orange sun finally broke through the black ceiling of clouds. A seagull sat on a post, waiting for the picture postcard photographer. Oona was both nauseated and hungry.
She picked up one of the filets off the lawn and eventually cooked it. Then she fell asleep before eight. Her dreams were fast motion, then Richard Avedon-type shots of herself and Berryman in assorted cinematic disaster scenes.
She had completely different ideas in the morning.
She cleaned up what she?d broken and had the Jamaican fix whatever he could. She went around the house, each room, and examined things, possessions, in ways she never had before.
She called Berryman?s New York number and got a message recorder. ?This is uhm Oona,? she said. ?I?m missing you in H. Ben Toy has been calling. And uh ? No, that?s it,? was the recorded message.
Oona Quinn had reasoned that by leaving her in the house, Berryman was making a commitment to her. She decided that she liked him, liked the way he lived. She decided she wanted to hold on to all of it for a while.
But the girl was wrong on almost all counts.
Quogue, June 24
Paul Lasini was so conservative that at twenty-three he thought Frank Sinatra was the greatest singer in the history of the world. The St. John?s University law student, appointed to the Village of Quogue police force for the summer, was the last person to see the funniest man in America.
Lasini was eating a Chinese-food dinner when Ben Toy walked into the Quogue police station talking to himself on June the 24th. Lasini laughed.
The courtly blond man looked stoned to him. Stoned ridiculous or blind drunk and in either case, stumble- bumming around the station house in one tennis sneaker and one beach thong. His hair was unruly and tangled. He?d also pissed in his pants. There was a big dark stain covering one leg of his khaki shorts.
?Oona Quinn is my left hand.? Ben Toy slobbered his chin as he spoke. ?John Harley is my right hand.?
?Better sit down before you fall down,? Lasini called over advice.
The desk sergeant, a pink and pudgy veteran named Fall, slowly looked up from his
He kept his finger on his place in the baseball box scores, and he squinted a good look at Toy.
?Here! Hey you!? the sergeant yelled without getting up.
Ben Toy in turn spoke to him. ?Which is which?? he asked. It was a serious question: like someone asking about the burial of a loved one in a strange country.
Fall got slightly irritated and burped. ?What is
He looked at Lasini. ?What the fuck is this guy talking about? What is this shit right at dinnertime??
Lasini shook his head and whistled into his soda bottle. ?Check the footwear,? he grinned.
Fall begrudgingly came around in front of his desk. ?Who dressed you this morning?? he asked with poker-faced sternness.
?Oona Quinn is my left hand,? Ben Toy tried to explain once again. His face was getting panicky. ?Harley John is my right hand.
?Pow! Pow! Pow!? he said with a flourish of flailing arms. ?Shot?m.? He winked with a sane sense of timing.
He began circling around the concrete block room. Trying to get out a cigarette, he proceeded to spill his entire pack in twos and threes. The cigarettes rolled around the linoleum and made letters with one another. ?Which is which?? He gritted his teeth a foot from Pauly Lasini?s bug eyes. ?I?m not fooling around.?
The law student said nothing now.
The pudgy sergeant backpedaled behind his desk. His supper got cold.
