“She was just here a few days ago.”
“So? It’s a free country.” Then my mother asked, “Does Nick know about you, honey?”
“I never told him, or Brittany.”
“No need to broadcast it,” she said. “How do you handle it at Sob Story?”
“I don’t. That place isn’t about truth. When anyone orders a sizzling steak, right before it leaves the kitchen I toss a piece of lard between the cold serving tray and the hot aluminum plate under the dish with the steak. Then the waiter hoists it up to his shoulder and delivers it sizzling!”
My mother laughed. “But your boss observes the Sabbath, give him that. How many places out here close on Sunday in season?”
“Right!” I said. “Cheat the customer but keep the Sabbath.”
Then she said, “Who’re Cog Wheeler and The Failures? Today Liz Smith’s column said they were appearing at Sob Story July fifth.”
“They’re this rock group.”
I remembered Brittany mentioning it; I remembered her habit of reading all the gossip columnists. I figured she was still trying to get tickets.
EIGHT
“BRITTANY? COG WHEELER AND The Failures are sold out.”
“Oh, hi, Lang!”
I could tell by her voice she’d been asleep.
I said, “Mom said you’d be up late.”
“I’m up. What time is it?”
“Ten thirty. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“No, wait! This isn’t about Cog Wheeler. Did you ever make sand casts?”
“Sand castles?”
“Sand casts. You use plaster of Paris and salt water. And sand too, of course.” She laughed.
“I never have.”
“You know, I’m taking a summer course at Arts and Crafts. I have to make an ob-jay, ob-jet—”
“Objet d’art,” I said, to help her out. Brittany wanted to be an artist.
“That’s it! I have to make one with sand in it that I can bring to class next week…. So this isn’t a date or anything evil like that. I’d just like some input…and I don’t know anyone out here.”
“Where’s Allie?”
“She’s got a job. I’m alone all day and I have Mom’s car this week. There’s no real beach in Sag Harbor.”
Before I could say anything, she jumped in with “I promise not to sing.”
“If you sang, that would be a plus. I like the way you sing.”
“I feel awful about singing on the beach that way! I don’t know how I could have done that!”
“It was fine. Maybe if you’d sing everything you have to say, we’d get along.”
“It’s not me, Lang.”
“So if it’s me, why call me?”
“You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“I hate to go to the beach alone.”
I had to laugh.
She said, “I feel conspicuous.”
“I see.”
“I could pick you up tomorrow.”
“Not tomorrow.”
“Tuesday? Same time? Same place?”
“Go a little past the driveway.”
Brittany always got her way. I didn’t know how to tell her no. Not that Brittany Ball ever took no for an answer, anyway.
NINE
WE ATE CHICKEN SALAD on the 100-foot terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Besides Plato, there were the other two chows: Aristotle and Socrates.
Before he played other rock groups, we listened to The Failures for a while. Nevada remarked that he’d read an interview with Cog Wheeler in Rolling Stone, and he liked the sound of him.
It was a hot, gray, windy day with big waves pounding the beach.
Nevada seemed to like to dress all in black: same jeans I’d seen on him before, same thong sandals, a black silk shirt billowing out in the breeze.
He didn’t talk a lot, except to say what music he was playing sounded like what sixties music. The Orb sounded like Pink Floyd. Sonic Youth sounded like Velvet Underground. That sort of thing.
I didn’t know that much about sixties music. I didn’t have much to say.
Franklin came out with a pitcher of iced tea and refilled our glasses. He took away our empty dishes and put down a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
“These are from Barefoot Contessa,” Nevada said. “They’re hard. I don’t like them soft.”
“They’re good,” I said.
He smoked French cigarettes called Gitanes. He took one from a pack, lit it, and exhaled a stream of smoke.
“Have you got a girlfriend out here?” he asked me.
“No.”
“In New York City?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
“Do you play tennis?” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Good!”
“Why is that good?”
“All right,” he said, looking full at me for the first time, his dark-blue eyes fixed on mine. “I’ll tell you what this is all about.”
He took another long drag from his cigarette. The chows were asleep under the table.
He said, “Old friends of mine—both artists—have asked a favor of me. They live in France, in a little town called Aniane. It’s in the Languedoc region, a part they call Deep France. In other words, the sticks!”
He looked down at his cigarette a moment.
I looked out at the ocean, remembering the first weekend at Roundelay, when Alex and I walked along the beach. Besides chess, I’d never had anything to show him; he was always showing me things. Then I had East Hampton, a place that would be new to both of us. He loved the looks of it. I remember that first morning he just ran into the ocean and threw himself into these giant waves, then came out soaking wet with his hair down in his eyes, hugging me, no sunglasses. He’d lost them in the water.
Nevada continued. “They have this daughter. Huguette. That’s what they call her. They got this damn fool idea to bring her up over there! They’re Americans, but they didn’t want to raise the child here. Thought she’d be safer there, better educated, all that expatriate rot about Europeans being superior to us!”
He paused to sip his tea.
Toni Braxton began singing over the speakers. I wondered if he’d say who she sounded like.
But he went on. “This child, this girl, is about your age. Seventeen.” He looked across at me as if to confirm the fact.
I said, “I’ll be eighteen in July.”
“Huguette was brought up in this dinky little French town filled with grape growers and farmers. She went to school in the place. No more than fourteen hundred people, peasants, in the place.
