I threw on the top to my pajamas.
“Are you going down there like that?” Mom said.
“Who’s going to see me? Franklin’s the only one around.”
I slipped into my loafers and headed down the road.
The rottweilers had been fed about an hour earlier. I’d heard them barking the way they did when the Range Rover pulled up. I’d heard Nevada take off down Ocean Road after.
I knew the package was probably from Alex.
I was signing for it when the sleek white Porsche pulled into the driveway, top down.
“Hi, Lang,” said Cog Wheeler.
I mumbled a hello.
He had on a silk shirt that matched his hair color perfectly. He was waiting for the gate to open, and I imagined the scene Huguette was probably viewing right that moment on the TV.
Cog with success written all over him; me with my hair still tangled from sleep, in pajamas that cried out, “Attention, Kmart shoppers!”
The gate opened, and with a wave of his hand he went up to Roundelay.
I trudged back to the cottage, looking at my watch as I went, wondering what that was all about. A breakfast date?
I sat down on the couch and opened the package.
I’ll call you at 11:30, Happy Birthday. I love you, Spartacus. A.
His note was paper clipped to a blue folder.
Horoscope for Lang Penner, prepared by Madam Rattray.
“What’s that?” Mom asked.
I held it up.
“What a great gift. See what it says for today.”
I had to get past pages of interpretation on the position of the planets and houses when I was born.
The forecast came at the very end.
“It’s monthly, not daily,” I said.
“Read what it says for July.”
I read it:
Your bent to embroider on reality, though done in all good faith, may make you distrusted. You may find yourself “out on a limb.” You are competent, however, and your fast reflexes may allow you to extricate yourself from embarrassing situations.
My mother chuckled. “Your fast reflexes? You’ve been dragging yourself around like an old turtle this morning.”
“Maybe I stuck my neck out when I shouldn’t have,” I said.
She went back to the kitchen, and I sat there trying to remember how that conversation with Huguette had ended…before Nevada called down.
I could hear her saying, “From the very first hello you’ve lied.”
I got up and looked out the window at the kind of perfect summer day there always seems to be after a heavy rain.
Through branches of green leaves under an early-morning sun, I saw the Porsche come back down from Roundelay. Huguette was beside him in the front seat.
Then the phone rang, and Kevin McCaffery told me he didn’t expect me to report to work that night.
“You don’t want help with the party?”
“Nevada says you’re invited to be a guest at the party.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“Suit yourself. Just show up as usual tomorrow when The Failures open. It’s going to be a madhouse here. You got that?”
“I got it,” I said. “I’ll be there.” But I didn’t mean at the party.
TWENTY-FIVE
I SPENT THAT SUNDAY chopping wood and stacking it while Mom went to church and then off to the Fourth of July celebration in Montauk with Franklin.
I napped and woke up at nine P.M., made myself a sandwich, and tried to watch The Agony and the Ecstasy on Bravo. Alex and I would have cracked up at Rex Harrison asking Charlton Heston, “You dare to dicker with your pontiff?” But the line wasn’t funny without Alex around. Funny movies weren’t funny without him beside me to watch them.
I decided to do the unpardonable: take a walk along the beach, in front of Roundelay. The party for The Failures would be just beginning. Only the chows were home up there.
I wanted to think about what had happened between Huguette and me; mainly, what had gotten into me?
I took a flashlight, although I didn’t need it. The moon was full. The sky was lit up with fireworks from Main Beach.
When I reached the sand, I left my loafers behind and headed down toward the hard edge by the water.
What I thought I felt mostly was embarrassment. I walked along imagining what I would say to Huguette next time I was with her. I planned to use my mother’s old remark: that coming out was like spilling a glass of wine at a dinner party. But I could almost hear Huguette telling me off: yelling that I’d owed it to her to be as honest with her as she’d been with me.
I was inventing things to say and crossing them out as soon as I thought of them, when I saw someone coming toward me.
Then I saw the chows romping up on the soft sand…and then he saw me. His flashlight hit my face.
“Penner?”
“Yeah.”
I waited for him to order me off “his” beach.
He turned the flashlight off and stood facing me.
“Why aren’t you at Sob Story?”
“Why aren’t you, sir? It’s your party.”
“I don’t like those parties in public.”
“I don’t either.”
We began walking back toward Roundelay.
I thanked him for the birthday party, and he grunted something about it being Huguette’s idea, not his.
“She’s grown very attached to you,” he said.
I didn’t know if they’d talked since he’d told me to go home; I didn’t know what he knew.
I said, “I like her, too. A lot.”
“Have you told her about yourself yet?”
“I didn’t have to, thanks to you.”
“I don’t think you ever intended to tell her.”
“I did. I was waiting for the right time.”
“Bullshit, Penner!”
“Well, she knows now. What’s the difference?” I knew what the difference was, but I didn’t feel like arguing the point.
“I didn’t want her wondering why you weren’t champing at the bit to date her,” he said. “Thanks to Cog Wheeler, there’s someone who is. He’s been with her all day.”
“I wouldn’t call him the ideal someone.”
“Maybe he doesn’t appeal to you, but he does to her.”
“I don’t mean that. He might be
