In the kitchen Clyde’s hand rests on Amy’s shoulder as they huddle around a laptop, Clyde demonstrating the new security cameras they’ve installed along the house’s perimeter. My loathing is deep-rooted and instinctual, like a sneeze, impossible to stop.
I walk into The Jaybird, local kid makes good, ‘Midnight Chair’ in the sixth week of its successful New York run, Frank Rich of The New York Times heralding my arrival as a ‘new voice,” and maybe my head is a little full of itself but I still take shifts on Sunday afternoon; I still help Uncle Dan whenever I can, and here I am, ready to knead dough and sling pepperoni, but why are Amy and Clyde in the corner booth, our booth, eating calzones and laughing at some private joke, their feet touching beneath the table, his fat football hand stroking her wrist? Haven’t they read Frank Rich’s review, and doesn’t Amy know that saying I love you means past, present, and future? I love you erases even the possibility of Alex Clyde; it strikes him from the world, forever. I love you is for she and I and no one else. I love you means get his fucking hands off your beautiful wrist.
Officer Mike, or whatever the hell his name is, moves toward me with his small-town cop swagger, and even though he’s out of uniform, in shorts and a loose, frat-boy-in-Margaritaville Hawaiian shirt, he keeps his hand at his hip, the ghost of his gun and holster in a permanent lock and load. He asks me about his script, New Jersey Beach Patrol, have I read it yet? Perfect for the USA Network or maybe HBO; how about Ryan Gosling for the character based on him?
“It’s pretty violent,” I say, “and you might need a stronger villain….”
“It’s a moral story,” he tells me. “The crimes are spiritual, transgressions against decency.”
No doubt he, and not Clyde, wrote the scene where the teenage girls get shot for kissing on the beach. Jill and Maddie cut through the room and I worry for them as Officer Mike follows with his hard-on eyes. Now I’m far from innocent in the realm of the male gaze, but I’ve read The Vagina Monologues three times, and I get it—it deserved to beat my stupid play and win that year’s Obie. So why doesn’t Clyde do something about his partner creep-eyeing his sixteen-year-old daughter? Maybe because his hard-on eyes have slipped down the opening of his ex-wife’s blouse.
That night—you could smell the fire from blocks away, the burning wood, the melting paint; you could still see the smoke in the haze beneath the streetlights, in the black trails twisting over rooftops. Cover your face or you’d choke on it, feel the acid sting in your throat with each labored breath. Touch a windshield and find your fingertips filthy with soot.
The next morning the local paper gloats that it’s been forty-seven years since a house burned to the ground in Holman Beach. The Jaybird does mad business that night—order a pizza, watch the fire, point at the smoke-filled sky and drink beer until the last siren fades.
I’m on break outside the front door, pacing the sidewalks, Donnie Pizza in his apron and baseball cap, when Clyde rolls by on his ten-speed and brakes three feet away, tires shrieking against the pavement.
“Wouldn’t you know it? It’s Ronan’s house,” he tells me. “Pretty funny, huh?”
He’s bare-chested, like Crazy Horse returned from battle, an open bottle of Heineken in his sweaty left-hand. His hair is soaked, as if he’d driven his bike straight from some pirate graveyard in Hell.
“Take a look,” he says, shoving the bottle up in my face.
It’s too dark. I can’t see a thing.
“Lipstick traces,” he says, pointing to the bottle’s long neck. “Don’t you recognize …the lips?”
He laughs, and kisses the bottle, running his long tongue up from the Heineken label to its dark golden rim.
“You shouldn’t have done it.”
He’s all smirk. “Done what? I didn’t do nothing, sir, except kiss the girl!”
The state police and the insurance company will both send investigators, and while the official cause will be deemed arson, no one ever suspects him or Amy.
“Vigilante justice, the way I see it,” Clyde says. “Some good citizen with a spare match and an extra can of lighter fluid.”
Holman Beach has a single fire truck. Before the fire dies seven towns will send an engine. Black smoke drifts above.
“The fucker deserved it.”
“Mr. Ronan had nothing to do with Sarah’s disappearance. Amy is confused…”
“You don’t know shit about anything. Go back inside and fall asleep. That’s about all you’re good for anyway, and now she knows it.”
He flips the bottle into the air and rides off toward the boardwalk, the empty Heineken shattering around my feet as one more screaming siren joins the fray.
Still a Heineken man, Clyde sips from the bottle as he points toward the laptop. “We set up six cameras,” he says. “We’ve got the entire perimeter covered. If anyone approaches, the motion sensors kick in and we capture every step, every movement. Not even Caspar the Jerk-off Ghost could slip through.”
“Thank you,” Amy says, at his side, their arms touching. “I owe you.”
“You bet your ass you do.”
“Nobody’s betting any ass,” I say, and for the first time I notice Kelly at the far end of the kitchen table, looking bored and forlorn, her chin resting on her fist as she gazes at the ceiling fan spinning noisily above. I
